drops from an ocean

mashaAllah!  Sh. bin Bayyah’s DIL is starting a blog:

Bismillahi Rahman ar Rahim

It’s common knowledge that it is harder for us women to get our questions answered by our beloved shuyukh due to many reasons. I hope with the start of this blog that will be no more.

Since moving to Saudi and living in close contact with Sheikh Abdallah I have come to realize how much untapped knowledge he posseses. I know there is also a lack of his work in english which is also being worked on. I have never seen someone understand both life in the west and the correct balance of our deen as well as Sheikh Abdellah Bin Bayyah. He is truly a veiled treasure, and I wish to share this beautiful man with my beloved sisters in Islam.

Send your questions to question.binbayyah@hotmail.com. I hope to answer most at  least weekly. Plus I would also like to start putting up a weekly note from the Sheikh addressed to us women touching on diverse topics. Please feel free to give me any advise on what you would like to see as this is all new for me. Thanks.

poke poke

Poking myself out of my antipathetic slumber:

Fasting: the Book of Assistance by Imam Haddad

You should work only for the hereafter in this noble month, and embark on something worldly only when absolutely necessary. Arrange your life before Ramadan in a manner which will render you free for worship when it arrives. Be intent on devotions and approach God more surely, especially during the last ten days. If you are able not to leave the mosque, except when strictly necessary, during those last ten days then do so. Be careful to perform the Tarawih prayers during every Ramadan night. In some places it is nowadays the custom to make them so short that sometimes some of the obligatory elements of the prayer are omitted, let alone the sunnas. It is well known that our predecessors read the whole Qur’an during this prayer, reciting a part each night so as to complete it on one of the last nights of the month. If you are able to follow suit then this is a great gain; if you are not, then the least that you can do is to observe the obligatory elements of the prayer and its proprieties.

Muslim devotees offer “Tarawi” prayers on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta on August 31. Families across Indonesia are having to cut back during Ramadan as rising food and fuel prices limit spending power for the nightly festivities. (AFP/File/Jewel Samad)

A Lebanese Muslim man prays during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan at a mosque in Sidon, southern Lebanon September 3, 2008. Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. REUTERS/ Sharif Karim (LEBANON)

An Egyptian boy looks up as his father prays on a street during the first day of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan in Tukh, about 60 km (38 miles) north of Cairo September 1, 2008. Muslims around the world congregate for special evening prayers called “Tarawih” during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, when they abstain from eating, drinking and conducting sexual relations from sunrise to sunset. REUTERS/Amr Dalsh (EGYPT)

Blind Muslim women read the Braille Koran during Ramadan in Jakarta September 3, 2008. Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking, and sexual relations from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. REUTERS/Dadang Tri (INDONESIA)

a fool

Imam Shafi’i (ra) was asked, “Who is a fool?”

He replied, “He is the person who does not pray.”

by Deen-ul-HaQ

drunk

THEY WILL ASK thee about intoxicants and games of chance. Say: “In both there is great evil as well as some benefit for man; but the evil which they cause is greater than the benefit which they bring.” Quran 2:219

Sure, getting drunk can be fun.  Walk through any college campus on a Friday night and you’ll see students having tons of fun. 

Then go and talk to someone who’s had a loved one killed by alcohol.  Which is greater, the fun of the college students, or the anguish that someone was lost too soon?

The driver who killed Dawn and injured Hatem was drunk - at 11:45 a.m.  Did his benefit outweight the evil he caused?

inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon

to God we belong and to Him is our return

“Alif Lam. Ra. Asad(10,1) THESE ARE MESSAGES of the divine writ, full of wisdom.”  Quran 10:1 Asad(10,2)

Humanity

Via a Deenport post:

“People are of two kinds: your brethren in faith or your equals in humanity. Be forgiving to them as you wish Allah to be forgiving to you.” - attributed to Imam Ali (ra)

The Etiquette of Disagreement

From Lampost Productions via islamica

by Dr. Abdul Hakim Jackson

They came in fact to Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal who used to say that if your nose bleeds then you have to renew your wudu. Imam Malik said that if your nose bleeds you do not have to renew your wudu. So they went to Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and they said what if you were praying behind somebody and they have a nose bleed and they don’t renew there wudu, do you continue to pray behind them? And Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal said, “How can I refuse to pray behind somebody like Imam Malik? I have daleel (evidence), he has daleel; I have solid daleel, he has solid daleel.” The companions of the Prophet (s) took different things from him and went out to the various parts of the Muslim world and they taught those different things in those various parts. All of them got what they taught from the Prophet (s) so Imam Malik has his point of view and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal has his point of view. This was the spirit of our pious ancestors, and this is what we have to get back to.

Affliction

Reaping the Fruits of Afflictions

Abu Sa`id and Abu Hurairah (ra) reported that the Prophet (saws) said, “No fatigue, nor disease, nor anxiety, nor sadness, nor hurt, nor distress befalls a Muslim, even if it were the prick he receives from a thorn, but that Allah expiates some of his sins for that” (Al-Bukhari and Muslim).

How else then should we worship God?

“Do you really believe that God expects you to show Him your respect by repeated bowing and kneeling and prostration?  Might it not be better only to look into oneself and to pray to Him in the stillness of one’s heart?  Why all these movements of your body?”

As soon as I had uttered these words I felt remorse, for I had not intended to injure the old man’s religious feelings.  But the hajji did not appear in the least offended.  He smiled with his toothless mouth and replied:“How else then should we worship God?  Did he not create both, soul and body, together?  And this being so, should man not pray with his body as well as with his soul?  Listen, I will tell you why we Muslims pray as we pray.  We turn toward the kaaba, God’s holy temple in Mecca, knowing that the faces of all Muslims, wherever they may be, are turned to it in prayer, and that we are like one body, with Him as the centre of our thoughts.  First we stand upright and recite from the Holy Koran, remembering that it is His Word, given to man that he may be upright and steadfast in life.  Then we say, “God is the Greatest,” reminding ourselves that no one deserves to be worshipped but Him; and bow down deep because we honour Him above all, and praise His power and glory.  Thereafter we prostrate ourselves on our foreheads because we feel that we are but dust and nothingness before Him, and that He is our Creator and Sustainer on high.  Then we lift our faces from the ground and remain sitting, praying that He forgive us our sins and bestow His grace upon us, and guide us aright, and give us health and sustenance.  Then we again prostrate ourselves on the ground and touch the dust with our foreheads before the might and the glory of the One.  After that, we remain sitting and pray that He bless the Prophet Muhammad who brought His message to us, just as He blessed the earlier Prophets; and that He bless us as well, and all those who follow the right guidance; we ask Him to give us of the good of this world and of the good of the world to come.  In the end we turn our heads to the right and to the left, saying, “Peace and grace of God be upon you” – and thus greet all who are righteous, wherever they may be.

‘It was thus that our Prophet used to pray and taught his followers to pray for all times, so that they might willingly surrender themselves to God – which is what Islam means – and so be at peace with Him and with their own destiny.”

~From The Road toMecca, by Muhammad Asad

Al-Wasatiyyah

Al-Wasatiyyah: The Lost Middle Path

Bearing in mind this concept of the whole totality of a Muslim character, we can realize that a true Muslim is not rigid nor too progressive, not a rejectionist nor an extremist. Rather, he is the middle in between these because he treads in the middle path for which he is created and to which he is supposed to stick in order to realize the commands of Allah and fulfill his mission as a vicegerent on earth.

Upholding Faith, Serving Humanity

To watch when I get home - the Sheikh Hamza ISNA speech from which I quoted earlier.