Surah Al-Qasas Verse 83

Notes taken at a brief session by Ustad AE. All Glory and praise is for Allah SWT alone, all good comes from Him and all faults are from my own self. These are my personal notes and not to be taken as Ustad's word verbatim.

Ayah 83 Surah Al Qasas :  That home of the Hereafter We assign to those who do not desire exaltedness upon the earth or corruption. And the [best] outcome is for the righteous. main focus of talk

The entire quran is relevant to every person. Even though Allah may be talking about the disbelievers or even firawn, if we analyse the ayah; it will apply to us and we will learn something for ourselves from it. So we can never look at a verse and say that it isn’t talking about me. Every muslim should try to find the message for them in every ayah.

The above verse speaks about 2 qualities, the absence of which is the cause for a “good  end” – “al –‘aaqibah” These 2 qualities are status/power and  corruption - ‘uluw and fasaad .  These 2 qualities are linked in the Quran in multiple places; and one does cause the other. The greed for power will cause corruption, whether willingly or otherwise. Islam does not allow the means to be justified by the end – hence one cannot take wrong measures to attain power in order to “fix” things – because he is causing fasaad, even though it may be unintentionally.

To understand the real and true meaning of a “good end”, a muslim must first fathom that this dunya is not meant to be comfortable and fun. According to the hadith of the Prophet SAW, this world is a “sijn” (prison) for the believer and Jannah for the disbeliever. Why did the prophet use “sijn”, he could have said its hard.. the idea he wanted us to grab is all the things a prison is associated with is exactly what this dunya is : so its not meant to be fun, or luxurious and its meant to be uncomfortable, strange, unjust, cruel, stifling, etc etc. The kuffar along with shaytan are making it a paradise for themselves, and want to drag you into it so you spend this life making this prison into Jannah when it can never be. Once you come to terms with what this dunya is, 1) you accept your circumstances and difficulties because you say I know its suppose to be tough 2) you know a better end, the best end awaits you. That is what the “good end” truly means. It is the only “good end” .. and it is for those who are not arrogant and don’t cause corruption/oppression.

These words are usually associated with political figures/ heads of states, etc but as stated earlier everything in the Quran is relevant to you. So you have to see how you are seeking status among people and how you are/could be the cause of someones’ or your own destruction.
One of the tools of destruction that the kuffar have employed is “interest”. It is the greatest oppression of its kind; however we must analyse why and how we get ourselves in situations which trap us in interest. Why are we so materialistically attached to this dunya (remember its supposed to be a prison!) that we must get ourselves into debt. Debt cannot be forgiven by Allah, because it is a right of the person you have borrowed from and only he can forgive it to you.

Having wealth or status is not impermissible and it has always existed and will always exist – it is the arrogance and feeling superior and demeaning others which is meant by the above verses.

Ibn Taimiyyah divided the people into 4 groups in his explanation of the ayah,
1)      Those who seek power and destruction eg bashar al assad
2)      Those who desire corruption without elevation, such as the thieves and criminals from the riff-raff amongst the people.
3)      The third type: Those who desire elevation without corruption, such as those who have the deen, they desire to elevate themselves by it over other than them amongst the people.
4)      Those who seek neither : this is the group that the good end is for. These people don’t want fame and don’t seek for themselves to be known, rather only spread the word and name of Allah. They would gladly give up what is rightfully theirs in order to maintain peace and are of those who join people not cause divide. Eg. Hasan ibn Ali RA who gave up his khilafa because not doing so would have spent the lives of 1000s of people although every companion would have backed him.
Al- Aali is Allah’s name and ‘uluw is His attribute and only He can have it.

"e"tiquette

I have written about social media before and how the changing dynamics of etiquette irks me. Yet here I am again, writing about it. Why, you ask. Its getting worse. Our greed for shortcuts has compromised the quality of communication greatly. From bad grammar to acronyms to emoticons to plain bad etiquette. The art of communication is fast becoming lost on us.

The “e”-dynamic

I recently attended a presentation about communication and it placed great importance on the mindset of the “receiver”, in getting across the correct message. The technology today, although facilitates communication yet it has presented us with a complex challenge of “connecting” with the audience.

Consider this: You write an email/text message, Come out! Now you were excited about something and wanted the receiver to come out right away to share the excitement. The receiver on the other hand, had a stressful day at work and reads this and thinks,  Oh great! Now she is mad too! She hastily types back “what’s your problem?” You can pretty much guess how this goes.

Texting has “text” and punctuation only helps so much however the sender should be careful to communicate their emotions clearly – if the text is emotional. If however, its a business email/text, then it should as void of emotion as McDonalds is of nutrition (ouch!). WARNING: Void of emotion does not mean void of akhlaq (etiquette).  The Quran teaches us the art of letter-writing for when Moosa AS wrote to the queen of Saba, he started his letter with “Bismillah” so right away we remind ourselves and the receiver of the watchful eye of our Lord; and right away we hold Him witness to what we write.

When you write a text/ email, make sure you read it from all angles possible. Avoid using ambiguous statements which may make perfect sense in person but remember the receiver cannot see the “eye-roll” in the email. Avoid emailing when emotionally charged. If you feel the urge to write someone when you are too emotional; type out the text and save it in drafts. Review when you are calmer.  And lastly, try your best to not email or text important/emotional convos, or atleast follow it up with a phone call or visit to clarify any misunderstanding.

In brief, care about the message, care about the receiver and handle accordingly. Our prophet SAWW, the ones who epitomised brilliance of character showed care in each of his interactions. His message was always relevant, clear and considerate and hence he “connected” with the audience whether it was a child, his wife or a congregation of non-believers.

Emoticons – the messiah of virtual communication

Apparently, you can ask someone for anything and end with a smiley and it makes it ok. It actually does! Many a times I end a difficult convo with a smiley (winky for the really tough ones) just to make it cordial. A meme i read recently, said Thank you LOL for being there when i had nothing else to say. How true is that?!  On a serious note though, emoticons are great and all but they donot replace emotions and context and tone are still very relevant.

Let me diverge a little here - What you see rampant on social media these days though is cross-gender convos having smileys, winkys and lol. Umm excuse me... did you get the memo about how cross-gender convos should go? What we aren’t allowed to do in person with each other, how are we allowed it on social media? Our texts to the other gender (non-mahram) should be relevant and to the point and we should consider exhausting other more halal options before approaching the non-mahram. Although this wouldn’t apply if you were referring to a scholar for advice/help – no smileys please.

Im sure we have all seen young men and women hitting it off, all under the guise of “dawah” work. Ofcourse it is inevitable to cross paths with the other gender, even in dawah work, but the interaction should be carefully guarded and definitely limited. Keep reminding yourself, when a man and woman are alone together – shaytan is the third among them. It applies to social media too – surprise! How a “relevant” text turns into an entire conversation and future conversations, is all shaytans work.

#WhoCares

Hashtags are the new thing, apparently you missed that memo too eh? The attitude of youth for the last decade, perhaps longer has been just that – who cares? People say it so much and so casually that it has actually become real. We don’t care. Except that being social animals that we are, we are inevitably in need of each other and must care. When we post photos/statuses on facebook in the spirit of “who cares”; as in we don’t care what anyone thinks, we are who we are, facebook is not my life, my status is not about you etc etc  - why exactly did we post it then. Its social media – you post something that you want to share, and others to see. If you didn’t care- why share! When we put ourselves out there, we are doing just that and we expose ourselves and our vulnerabilities to all sorts of people. Allah created each of us and bestowed us with izzah (honor), we must honor ourselves in order for others to do so. Let’s not reveal things about us that should only be privy to dear ones. Let’s care about ourselves enough to keep the social media platform a means to communicate and not show-off or advertise. Let’s care about each other to cover each others weaknesses as we would like Allah to cover ours in this dunya and the Hereafter.  #wecare

Oh Sorrow.. you will never be the same

Humanity has bourne no greater loss than the loss of Prophet Muhammad SAW. No Muslim will
ever lose anything more than what he has with the passing of our Prophet. Why am i saying this, you ask... almost 1400 years have gone by afterall.I remember while reading the seerah, i started feeling so close to the Prophet SAW - his physical attributes and his personality both became so vivid to me. So strong was this feeling, that i could not bring myself to read chapters about his passing. I felt i was loosing him and i know his seerah and sunnah live on; so i forced myself to go through the final part.
And it was painful, just as it is painful for me to write about it even now. And one can only feel this loss, if they have felt the connection.. else its just a superfacial emotion. If one wants to feel that connection, the ideal way is to follow the Sunnah and read the seerah. I have mentioned about loving the prophet in one of my earlier posts (For the Love of Prophet SAW). I wish we could all embody the Sunnah, and feel this connection even better than we already do - for our Iman is incomplete
without this love.
When you will love him, you will feel his loss truly. When you feel his loss, no other loss will ever compare .. SubhanAllah!

Hadith 101

We all read and forward hadith all the time, so here is some basic information on what is a hadith. A great deal of work went into reporting and classifying a hadith; which cannot and must not be discounted at any cost! There is actually a science to the study of hadith, this alone should convince one its intricacies and validity.
I am attending a course on the subject and there will Inshallah be a part 2 to this entry. May Allah forgive me if i make any mistakes in typing this information; not because my source is not credible but because i am human and prone to error.
Hadith comes from the root Ha Da Tha; which means coming into a new situation, or something new which has occurred. Hence, it is used for the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad SAW which were something new for the people of the time (changing their current situation). The word muhdith (from the same root)  is used to define Bid'aa for the same reason; as its an innovation which didnt exist.

A hadith can refer to any:
1) saying of the prophet saw (qawl)
2) action of the prophet saw (F'ayl)
3) His agreement in a matter i.e. he didnt do a particular act/ or say a particular thing himself but agreed with it when someone else performed it (taqreer)

What can entail a hadith:
1) Sunnah - the root of which means creating a way so as to make it easy for the followers. According to the fuqaha (scholars of jurisprudence), sunnah is an act that is highly ranked/rated and preferred but not performing the act, is not a sin. On the other hand, a sunnah which becomes a symbol of Islam has a greater weightage and highly recommended for Muslims to adhere to it. For eg, the minarets on a mosque are not an obligatory part of building a mosque but have increasingly become a sign of a Muslim prayer house; hence its a recommended sunnah. Since we believe the Sahaba were the closest people to the prophet also in practice, their acts too are part of Sunnah. eg: 20 rakahs of tarawih prayer initiated by Hazrat Umar RA.

2) Khabr - any narrative of which news is received to be associated with the Prophet SAW. A more general term than hadith.

3) As (th) ar - of which evidence is found to be associated with the Prophet SAW

4) Wahi - that which was revealed to the Prophet through divine intervention. Wahi is further divided into 2: Jalli  and Khafi

Sciences:
There are 2 types of hadith study/sciences. Please dont take these as official terms, rather as english terms.

1) Rivayah - Hadith which is memorised by muhadditheen and related to us
2) Dirayat - Scholarly  deductions of ahkam (commandments)  or lessons from the hadith.

A hadith has 2 parts:
1) Sanad - the chain of revelation. i.e. who heard it from whom all the way to the Prophet SAW
2) Matan - the actual words of the Prophet SAW

Some Extra Info:
1) one who has memorized over 300,000 hadith - Muhaafizh
2) one who knows more than Muhaafiz - Imam al hujjat (h)
3) one who knows even more than that (close to 600,000) - Ameer ul mo'mineen fil hadith

This post is open to your comments. Please feel free to correct me. May Allah guide me and you.

Abaya and Pink Heels...WHAT?!

The title is pretty self-explanatory, but here goes! One too many times i see women wearing an abaya only to pair it one really s*** stiletto, and it disturbs me more than seeing a girl with no hijab on. No! i dont think its better that atleast they are wearing an abaya. Dont get me wrong, i am not holding it against the person because they may not know it or havent reached "there" yet. I just want to address the issue.

There is nothing wrong with wearing a good-looking shoe; Im a sucker for high-heeled, fancy footwear too. Just dont wear it when you are going to a large crowd with men in it. Truly sister, it destroys the purpose of hijab. Lets consider for a moment, what the hijab must entail. To begin with, it should be a loose "outer-clothing" that is not see-through and covers your satr. Allah commands us to hide our adornments ie jewlery, hair, clothing, figure. With such strict commandments for hiding our adornments, how do you think wearing shiny clickety heels fits the bill when all it does is draw attention to you! Hijab is not only physical, rather its more behavioural and the physical part just reinforces the behaviour part. So one must observe haya and humility in speech, posture AND clothing. The same holds true for blingy abayas or shaylas that dont cover the chest or earrings peeking out of the scarf or skinny jeans and hijab or heavy make-up and hijab! Sisters, these are important details that complete our hijab and without which there really is not point of hiding our hair! I, too was like this but nobody guided me and i was ignorant enough to not have learned it myself. But i know better now and hopefully sisters you will think through your hijab too.

Would the prophet saw approve of your hijab? Would Allah be pleased with your appearance? As these 2 questions before you leave home. May Allah guide all of us on the straight path. Ameen

For the Love of the Prophet (SAW)!

Since childhood we have been told to love the prophet sallalahu alaihi wa'alihi wassalam. When i gained consciousness of my way of life - i questioned how can i love and i mean really love (not just revere) a man, whom i have never seen or met. SubhanAllah! The answer is through his Seerah and his sunnah. We must strive to read as much as we can about our prophet and we must absolutely follow his sunnah. By Allah, that is the only way to love him that is accepted by Allah. and Allah knows best.
Love you for the sake of Allah!