Disgusting...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/23/perry.tyre/index.html
if this story does not fill your eyes with tears, if this story does not fill you with anger and sorrow, if this story does not dry your mouth and fill your throat with a helpless lump, if this doesnt force you to get up and make dua, if reading this does not evoke any emotion from your heart, you have a serious problem.
Ya Allah grant Mohammad Mansour Jannah! Ya Allah forgive him all his sins and write him down as a shaheed! Ya Allah remove any pain and suffering from little Muhammad and his sister Maria! Ya Allah if it is their time to go, ya Allah grant them shahadah and grant them ease to their pain! Ya Allah forgive sister Nuhader Mansoor all her sins! Ya Allah forgive her her sins, multiply her good deeds, and pour upon her patience! Ya Allah grant her ease in this difficult time! Ya Allah grant Ali and Ahmed ease in this difficult time and take all pain and grief away from them! Ya Allah you are the Witness over all of your creation and You are the Most Just, grant this entire family jannah without reckoning, make this missle attack be the cause for their being admitted into Jannatul Firdaws, and make them witnesses against the Jabbareen who did this to them on the Day of Judgement, where judgement will be Yours and Yours alone ya Allah! Taqabbal duaa'ee, wa akhiru da'waana aanil hamdulillahi rabbil aalameen.
Wansur al Mujahideena fisabeelika fee kulli makaan...
So as I watch the news about the terrorist state of Israel and see images of the sheer destruction that these Jabbareen have done to the lives of so many innocent Lebanese, I am filled with so much anger and rage that literally my muscles are cramping up and flexing like I just came back from the weight room. To think that 2 soldiers being captured by Hezbollah (which is in no way shape or form an act of terrorism) has triggered the Israeli government to allow the indiscriminant bombing of civilian installations including caravans of refugees, apartment buildings, masajid, trucks bringing aid, roads leading out of southern towns, cell phone towers (making impossible any communications from the south) and news station broadcasting locations (so the news of the devastation cant get out to the public) is something that is making my blood boil.
To think that all this obvious criminal, oppressive, disgusting behavior is going on is enough to make me fume, but then, to turn on the tv and see 'mideast specialists' and so called 'un envoys' come and clearly show that they are merely war monging, racist, two faced SOBs who have redefined terrorism to mean any act of agression done by a Muslim against civilian or military target, whether legitimate or not. I mean, how could someone possibly be looking at the same images as me, of mass graves filled with children and women, entire families murdered at their homes, fathers jumping into the graves of their children to kiss them one last time, and try and come on television and explain to me me that these types of attacks are legitimate?!! This is absolutely maddening!!!
This attack on Lebanon is another Furqan just as Badr was a furqan, and you are clearly seeing a line being drawn between haqq and baatil. People are coming on tv and clearly saying that this is WW3, between judeo christians and radical Islam. Subhan Allah! They are drawing such a clear line, yet we are afraid to even speak out against injustice and obvious atrocities because we are afraid.
This is terrorism!! We should get up and say loud and be heard that we will not put up with such injustice against human life.
I was so angry last night that I made dua to Allah that he give me hidaya from anywhere I could get it, and subhan Allah my Wisdom for the Seeker by Shakyh Zulfiqar Ahmed was sitting on the sofa in the basement right next to me. I said bismillah and opened to a random page and
THIS is the letter that I opened to.
Subhan Allah, how great a reminder?!
May Allah destroy those who spread mischief upon the earth
Ya Allah, Ya Qawwiyu ya Azeez! Grant victory to the Mujahideen all over the world!
Ya Allah, you accept the dua of the believer and the dua of the opressed, ya Allah accept my dua and accept the dua of those who are being oppressed in Lebanon...ameen
Faghfirlee, fa innahu laa yaghfirudh dhunuuba illa unt...
Shaddad ibn Aws narrated the Messenger of Allah PBUH said "The best of istighfar is 'O Allah! You are my Lord, there is no god but You, You created me and I am your slave, and I uphold Your pledge and promise as best as I can. I seek Your protection against the evil that I have done, I acknowledge Your blessing upon me and I acknowledge my sin. So forgive me, for none can forgive sins except for You.' Whosoever says it in the evening with firm conviction and then dies in that night, will enter Paradise" Related by Bukhari
The Good, the Bad, and my big toe
Where do I begin...
I guess the good news is where I should start my story.
By the grace of Allah swt my sister got engaged to a brother from London this passed weekend, and though there really is no such thing as an 'engagement' in Islam, there such thing as a commitment to get married so before you shoot me with your bida gun you betta recognize foo.
The wedding insha Allah will be in the States so my sis's fiance wanted to throw a party with all his homies there. The party was great, my sis looked beautiful on the sisters side (yes he is also a partitioner like us) and we had a grand ol time.
London is an awesome place, especially East London which reminded me very much of Karachi with all the niqaabis, sunnah beards, masajid and ghetto desi strip malls. Even though it was hella expensive there and really crowded, i could actually see myself living there if the need arose.
The muslims there were stronger, they were an intricate part of the culture of the place and not just some doctors and engineers who make their money and live out on a hill like we are here. Their presence was actually in the streets and they were known. This became obvious to me when i would walk around and the people wouldnt stare at me. Here in the US i walk around anywhere and I get the death stare like im automatically Osama's cuzzin cuz i got a beard and my skin is brown, but there I even saw advertisments for things that had hijabis in it. How gangsta is that!
Oh, and I flew business class on the way back alhumdulillah, to be honest I was not that impressed. I mean, of course you get better food, gangsta chairs that recline like all the way back, but then you got people getting free alcohol and they are no afraid to get drunk as a skunk. I even told the girl seated next to me that I wasnt even going to act like ive been here before or fake like this is how im livin. Im here cuz i got a hookup.
So that pretty much sums up the good part of the trip, lets move to the rest of it...
Now i was supposed to leave to go to London on Thursday, but I ended up staying at the airport all day only to find out that all the flights to the connector in Atlanta were overbooked and I wouldnt get a flight. Problem is I checked my bag already so I didnt know where it was, but was assured by the counter lady that I would reunite with it in London.
So Friday morning I go back to the airport and catch a flight early in the AM to Atlanta alhumdulillah and then get the flight I expected all the way to London. But before the flight to London I ate some Panda express at the airport which gave me some serious acid burn to the extent that I actually felt like I had a fever. I still think it was something wrong with the food since my stomach felt some serious cramping but I just figured it was acid. I ended up taking 2 8hour PM tylenols and just being asleep throughout the flight.
When I get to London I go to the baggage counter only to be told that my bad has not arrived and that it is still stuck in Baltimore. Yes, Baltimore as in my hometown. I am now stuck in London with 1 pair of clothes that im wearing, and a backpack full of books, a phone charger, face wash, and some chappals. Ohhhh yeah this trip was not looking good.
I end up buying a punjabi-ish outfit for the party that night which came equipped with a dupatta which i promptly turned into a turban.
Fastforward through the party.
So im sitting at the computer in the living room of the house we were staying in and I call someone over to check out a video that I saw on googlevideo. As I move over (im on my knees btw) and feel some glass like material on my foot which makes me go 'ouchouchouchouch' until I roll over to see that a push pin had gone almost a quarter inch into the top of my big right toe and bent, lodging itself in the bone of my toe. I could not really understand how something like this happened, and everyone was too busy playing karron board to really be paying attention to my foot except the one I called over to the cpu. I then tried to gently pull the pin out of my foot but it would not budge, it was lodged pretty good. I had to give it a good tug until it finally came out, and with it came a lot of blood. Alhumdulillah the needle didnt break, and the bleeding eventually stopped, and I didnt need a tetnus (sp?) shot since I had gotten one a couple years before when I was playin basketball and got a tooth lodged in my head (long story). To make a long story short, my toe swoll up pretty good and I just lost the knot on the location of the penetration today.
Now came the return flight...
We spent an entire day at the airport in London only to find out that we could not get onto a flight back because there were 40+ people on standby and barely 15 seats available all day. After hours there, we went back home, only to find out that the next day would be even less likely to get a flight, with the lady at Delta telling me and my sis's fiance that flights would freeing up in Mid August. MID AUGUST!!!????
We all then decide that we are going to go on a trip 5 hours away to Manchester where it seems more likely that we might actually get on a plane back home. My sis's fiance books tickets on a double decker coach bus with AC to get us to Manchester, and when we get on the bus it looks like we're gonna have a fun road trip.
Wrong.
5 minutes into driving we notice a burning smell, then a smell of fumes coming from the engine, then we notice that the AC doesnt work and that the engine heat was taking over the bus. I sweat straight through my clothes as did errybody else, until we finally arrived at our destination.
Of course we couldnt just end the story on such a happy ending right?
We get to the airport at 12 midnight and our flight that we wanna catch is at close to 2PM, so we had a lot of time to kill. We sleep in waiting area chairs until we find a musallah where me my future bro in law and his friend end up sleeping. Time goes by, and finally comes time for us to catch our plane. We're on stand by, there are like 12 seats with 15 people listed, which means our priority level determines if we get on or not. They call names, people go, until they call my fam and I up. The guy at the counter tells us that there are 3 seats on this plane and that all 4 of us would not be able to board. My dad decides to be gangsta and try and take the next flight (to NY) which my sis my mom and I get on this one to ATL. We get to ATL only to find out that my dad, who alhumdulillah made the flight to NY, got in from Manchester late and missed the connecter flight back to MD, which meant he had to spend the night at the airport and try and catch the flight to MD in the morning. We have to switch our flight from MD to DC since the MD flight is booked, and we get back home at 12AM Thursday morning alhumdulillah.
My dad ends up getting home this afternoon and by the time i got home from the summer camp he was like sleeping unconscious on the couch (poor guy).
I just got back from the airport which had been keeping my luggage since my departure and subhan Allah they had this huuuuuge letter on it to explain to me what happened cuz they knew id be blown.
So what have I learned from this trip.
1) My sis is so happy its rediculous, and she has a right to be because she deserves it. Her fiance is awesome and I am, for the first time, comfortable (not happy) giving my sister away.
2) London is bananas
3) There is a reason traveling is a tazkiyyah and the dua of a traveler is accepted. Because it is hardship that you endure that you have to endure with no choice, and this patience is a patience of purification from Allah swt.
4) I hate flying
5) Praying on a plane stinks.
May Allah make my sister and her fiance a couple joined together for the sake of Allah, and may Allah swt protect her and him from haram, and allow the marriage to be done quickly and with ease...ameen
London bound insha Allah...
So I found out today that tomorrow afternoon I will be leaving for London insha Allah.
Please make dua for me and my family, and pray that my journey is safe to and fro.
Salaamu alaykum
One of my Favs...
Juwayriyyah, ummul mu'mineen, may Allah be pleased with her, narrated that once the Messenger of Allah PBUH went out of his apartment when she was offering the Morning Prayer. When he came back in the forenoon she was still sitting there. Observing this he said "I have recited 4 words 3 times after I left you and if these were to be weighted against what you have recited since morning then these would outweigh them: Subhan Allahi wa bihamdihi, 'aadada khalqihee wa ridha nafsihee wa zinaata arshihee wa midaada kalimaati (Glory be to Allah and praise is His (as great as) the number of His creatures, the extent of His satisfaction, the weight of His domain and the ink (needed to write down His countless) signs (of presence, omnipotence and grace)."
Related by Muslim
Qadr Allah wa ma shaa fa'al...
Subhan Allah
Sometimes some people randomly come into your life and you cant even avoid em, like you would not even see them coming yet they just appear into your life, benefit you, and then they make their exit.
Theres that hadith of the mujaddid that is promised to come at the beginning of every hundred years and reattach the muslims to the Quran and Sunnah, and subhan Allah I think each one of us has our own personal mujaddideen (someone check my plurarlization) who come and revive the love for Allah and Muhammed PBUH's way on our own personal level.
You dont even realize it but as you are seeking Allah and searching for the straightest path you find a guide who sometimes doesnt even realize that they are a guide and they take you by your hand and put you on the path your seeking.
I dont know how someone can not believe in the Qadr of Allah when you can just bump into a person like this for what is an insignificant amount of time, their beautiful smell rubs off on you, and you both continue on your own path but you notice as you continue on your path that now you smell of this beautiful smell and benefit from a light that they added to yours helping you to illuminate your path even clearer.
May Allah swt reward these people and make them among those whom He loves...ameen
Rant upon Rant...
Ultrasensitivity of a believer
Be very shy and have delicate feelings. Be greatly sensitive to beauty and ugliness; the first pleases you, while the second pains you. Also, be modest without being lowly and meek, or selfproud. If you demand less than what you deserve, you will receive what you deserve.
I remember When I first read that piece of advice from Imam Hassan al Banna I reflected on what exactly was important about sensitivity of our senses. If one is to just raise his head in the street he would not have to look far to see something that would consititute zina of the eye. So other than the fact that this type of use of the eye is considered a sin, what exactly is the harm that this action does to a believer?
Let me give you two extreme examples that can allow you to guage the importance of guarding your eye before I even explain my theories.
1) I remember back in the day I was at a particular conference and there were one of these marriage sessions, where the brothers were seperated from the sisters and all the brothers asked all these questions to the shuyukh about how to get married, what to look for in a wife, etc. One brother stood up, grabbed the mic and asked the shaykh: "Now I know that we are supposed to marry sisters who cover and wear hijab or whatever, but all the sisters who wear hijab are ugly."
2) One of my dear friends studied in Yemen for a long while, and while he was in Yemen I remember him telling me that almost every sister there would wear niqaab. While he was in the company of one of the shuyukh a brother came and asked the shaykh a question. He said to the shaykh that when he went to Hajj, the women obviously are not permitted to wear niqaab so their faces were exposed when they were making tawaaf around the ka'ba. He said that while he was making tawaf he would notice the faces of the women and he could not help but get aroused and so he was asking the shaykh about the acceptance of his tawaf in such a state because he could not help what he was feeling.
Now just reflect on these extremes and try to fathom the difference of sensitivity each person had to the opposite gender.
One person obviously sees nothing but fitna around them and as they see this fitna they cant help but set up standards as to what they want their future wife to look like. There was a study conducted earlier this year in which it was reported that an average woman thinks about her weight every 15 seconds. EVERY 15 SECONDS!! This 'standard' of beauty being setup by the media is a standard that is not even real, most of the actors have had some sort of enhancement done to their face or bodies, are wearing tons of makeup, and if that isnt enough the pictures are airbrushed and manipulated to create this 'perfect' body.
What happens when you go from a room which is dark to a room which is bright with light? Your eyes have to adjust right? But that initial sensitivity to the light is not something that lasts unless you protect your eyes from light again, and then the next time you see the light your eyes will once again have to readjust.
To me this is exactly what happens to people who do not lower their gaze and fall victim to the fitna around us. This desensitization leads to many many evils from thinking that a woman is ugly because she has covered her beauty up from public view, all the way to homosexuality which stems from oversaturation and indulgence of the senses to the point where nothing pleases you anymore and you want to 'experiment' with other curiousities you may have which you hope will quench your desires.
Imagine that in the East people men are having children way into their late fifties, while here in the West men are impotent by then and are getting their doctors to prescribe them drugs that can cure this problem. I have a theory that this is because of the desensitization in this society with regards to the senses being guarded, and this leading to these problems.
The lowering of our gaze is not just a physical lowering of the eyes, but is a state of being.
Constantly talking to the opposite gender and hanging out with them and having casual relationships with them leads to desensitization as well.
Imagine you are a guy who talks to women without guarding yourself with regards to your adab and content of the conversations, you would be desensitized to an extent regarding relationships with the opposite gender and may expect that your wife act a certain way that you are already comfortable with, and if she doesnt you would be dissappointed. This desensitization is extremely dangerous to me because I think many divorces happen because a person was not 'satisfied' with their spouse which comes from a particular definition of 'satisfaction' developed through over-interaction between the genders.
I mean, imagine a man looking at a model constantly and not lowering their gaze; this persons most likely not going to marry a model so then what? He is going to be disappointed in what he has because it isnt what he is used to seeing. While a man who lowers his gaze, and lives in a place where the beauty of a woman is not for public display, this person gets married and is satisfied with whatever Allah swt gives him because his standard of what beauty is is almost non existent other than his family and what he might occassionally notice around him.
Our souls need to be kept in a way that they will be extremely sensitive to beauty and ugliness, the beauty of Allah swt and the ugliness of disobedience.
I had been reflecting on what types of things I hear brothers say they are looking for in a spouse.
1) Someone who wears Hijab
2) Someone who is funny
3) Someone who likes the same things I do
4) Someone who prays 5 times a day
5) Someone who reads Quran all the time
etc
I have been thinking about exactly what it is that I want in a wife which can possibly guarantee the most good in that person. Like, what is it that I can find out about a sister that when I hear it I check off like 75% of what im looking for in a mother for my children.
Now I could marry a hafiza, but that would not safeguard her character as being soft and gentle. I could marry a daughter of a well known scholar of Islam expecting her to have been brought up knowing right from wrong but then what about the son of Nuh PBUH? I could marry one who wears hijab and jilbab and the works but would that safeguard that under all that cloth would be a woman who trembles at the thought of standing before Allah swt naked that Day?
The only thing that can possibly safeguard this is if the sister is devoted to the inner realm of her being, the purification of the heart by means described by the Quran and Sunnah, by focusing on the diseases that her heart contains and trying to estinguise them, she has consciously recognized the futility of action without ikhlas, the riyaa which is wearing hijab while not living it, and the vanity of action without sound knowledge.
Irony...
I first started working at Sears when I was going into my senior year of high school in the summer of '99. I was in the mens department and I had a pretty fun group of guys who worked with me: Jeff, Matt and Ryan. Jeff was a crazy guy who dreamed of one day becoming a Marine and though I was not really a practicing Muslim, I still had a pretty strong sense of reality and I used to warn him of joining the military of this most corrupt country.
But ive never been a good caller to Islam.
I dont know what it is but ive never successfully brought someone into Islam as hard as ive tried, but truely Allah swt is al Haady and He alone guides to the truth. But though I didnt have the hottest dawah skills, I still used to make clear right from wrong and express my disapproval for things like drugs and such, and I think this used to be my only success in dawah: Making clear a difference between Muslims and Non Muslims in terms of habits, norms, acceptable behavior, etc.
So a couple years back Jeff and I reunite, he comes and searches me out at work, and I find out that he had gone over and fought in Afghanistan. He comes and tells me sad stories of what kind of stuff he had scene and how he was told that when he did return as a civilian that he not tell us of what type of stuff they took part in, but he did anyway. He had no choice but to affirm what I had warned him about earlier, recognizing that it wasnt the brightest idea to join the Marines. As usual we have some talks about stuff he has done that we as muslims dont do, so as he would tell me about his escapades I would nod yet my facial expression would tell him clearly how I really wasnt trying to hear what he was talking about. Then again we lost contact.
Last week I get another call from Jeff.
"Ibrahim!"
"Yeah?"
"This is Jeff from Sears!"
"Wassup Jeff!"
"Dude im chillin..I need you to do me a favor"
"Wassup?"
"I need you to get me a Quran"
"Sure bro, no doubt"
I had my doubts as to exactly why he wanted a mushaf, yet I did my best to get one.
By the will of Allah swt I could not get my hands on a translation Quran in time so I instead got Surah Shu'ara on cd with the translation (a beautiful dawah tool made by my boy Kareem at www.qurannow.com) and I got some Why Islam packets together so that when I met him id give him the whole package.
So I went to his job this past Friday and we talked.
"So Jeff..whats up?"
"Im kind of on a search for my Lord dude"
"Yeah? Exactly what is it that you are looking for?"
"Hapiness. Ive done everyone ive wanted to in my life and I just dont feel happy. Im not content. I want to have a relationship with my Lord, and I knew I should call you."
"You know what Jeff, everyone ive met who has converted to Islam, as different as everyone's story is, they have one thing in common: That the were seeking their Lord, and the thing that seperates Islam from other religions is the fact that Islam establishes a direct connection between you and your Lord without having to go through anything else."
"Yeah man, I just wanna know exactly what it is that the Lord wants from me"
Subhan Allah! This amazing statement affirmed to me that insha Allah this guy is sincere in his search for Allah swt because hes not just looking for some easy way to hapiness, he wants to put in work and find out exactly what it is that ALlah swt wants from him!
"You know Jeff, there is a precise necessity in everything of our being. We need water to survuve, we cant just say we're only gonna drink soda and never drink water and then somehow stay alive. It is precisely water that allows us to live. Just like it is oxygen precisely that we must breath in order to live, the same way there is only one true way to God."
"Yeah, its like i go to church and I ask questions and I dont feel like I get the answer im looking for. I went to a gas station the other day and this Pakistani man starts talking to me about Islam. He says that he is content with what he has, and hes just an oil changer. I want to be content like that!"
" You know Jeff, when you get to the status of having a special relationship with your Lord then you know that everything that happens to you is going to be good for you in one of two ways. 1) there is an immediate good that is gonna happen or 2) there is something good that will come later. So you know that everything that does happen is always gonna be good."
So then we started talking about other stuff and questions he had about just life, and I gave em the cd and pamphlets, giving him one last piece of advice.
"No one prays to God saying 'oh God make me a Christian, or oh God make me a Muslim' what you need to do is stay sincere and say 'Oh God guide me to that which is true, and guide me to you' and you should be fine."
He took the stuff and I told em to call me if he has any questions on the material, but ima call him tomorrow iA and follow up with em to see how hes doing.
Ya Allah! Ya arhamar rahimeen! Ya Haady ya Allah! if Jeff is sincere in seeking the truth then facilitate his search! Make easy for him his path, and if he deserves guidance then guide him by my hands! Ameen Ameen Ameen wa akhiru da'waana anil hamdulillahir rabbil 'alameen...
