Musings of a Servant of Allah
Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest. (13:28)Archive for June, 2007
Med school tips
“O you who believe! Fear God and be with those who are true in word and deed.” (Surah At Taubah 9:119)
This ayat much sums up how to survive medical school, dear Muslimah. It’s a challenge, keeping company with upright Muslims when your course doesn’t have any! I would have loved to have you as my classmate as well.
An alternative to hanging out with like-minded Muslim students would be to stick to the ‘conservative’ bunch, for lack of a better word. Not the crazy party-animals, but the harmless, modest, conscientious lot whose idea of a Friday night is much more in line with yours! e.g. staying home with family vs getting intoxicated. I kid you not. They’re all great colleagues and hard-working, but live for the dunya, so they’re oriented towards different things. Having good character with your non-Muslim friends is also a form of dawah…Allah guides whom He wills, and perhaps through your good behaviour, Allah may guide a few to His Deen.
That being said, always remember that no matter how strong your faith is, the company you keep WILL affect you, for better or for worse.
On the authority of Abu Musa al-Ash’ari (رضي الله عنه ), the Prophet (صلي الله عليه و سلم ) said:
A good friend and a bad friend are like a perfume-seller and a blacksmith: The perfume-seller might give you some perfume as a gift, or you might buy some from him, or at least you might smell its fragrance. As for the blacksmith, he might singe your clothes, and at the very least you will breathe in the fumes of the furnace.
[sahih al-Bukhari, vol 3, #314 and Muslim]
Shaytan does not raid an empty bank, figuratively speaking, and all it takes is a small degree of deviation before a pious Muslimah/Muslim can fall from grace. Always be aware of that. Hanging out with non-Muslims may make you question your limited ‘freedoms’, in comparison to your colleagues who delight in the dunya.
Iblis said: “O my Lord! Because You have put me in the wrong, I will make wrong fair-seeming to them on the earth, and I will put them all in the wrong.” [Chapter 15, verse 39]
Bearing that in mind, always make sure you touch base with your Muslim family members, your Muslim friends….attend weekly halaqas if at all possible. Sign up to Sunnipath course so you can attend live sessions/recorded ones from the convenience of your own home. Read the Quran daily to keep you connected to Allah. Stick to praying on time, as much as possible, and inshallah Allah will put barakah in your time. Being in medical school is a blessing, and a privilege….so purify your intentions.
Inshallah you’re training to become a doctor for the sake of Allah and Allah alone, because He is the one who will reward you. Keep humble, and know that Allah was the one who created the circumstances allowing you to get in, and be His grateful servant by obeying His commands. Use medical school as a form of worship, inshallah you’ll be rewarded for every single moment of study which you do.
Hope that helps!
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I’ve been tagged by Snowdrops a while back…10 simple pleasures hey? When I figure out how to put up images, I will, and once I know 3 bloggers to tag, I will inshallah lol.
Here’s a brief list:
1: Chilling out with family.
2: Playing with my cats.
3: Having a warm mug of hot chocolate.
4: Coming home to Mum’s delicious food after a long day at uni.
5: Basking in the sun in my backyard. My hijab stays on don’t worry lol.
6: Browsing through www.masud.co.uk
7: Listening to Imam Anwar’s lectures.
8: Listening to Shaykh Nuh.
9: Reading Islamica magazine.
10: Being grateful to Allah for guiding me to Islam.
About the name-change – It’s Saliha now, because c’mon….all Muslimahs are inherently ubercool 
Back to study!
hiatus
Salams to all of you who’ve been kind enough to read and comment on my blog 
I’m currently eye-ball deep in study for an upcoming exam, and probably won’t be updating til then. Allah knows best. Creativity does tend to spike during times of stress…
I will get back to tagging you, dear Snowdrops, and reply to your kind comments Safiya, inshallah!
Snapshot
All Muslims believe in Allah, and that He is transcendently beyond anything conceivable to the minds of men, for the human intellect is imprisoned within its own sense impressions and the categories of thought derived from them, such as number, directionality, spatial extention, place, time, and so forth. Allah is beyond all of that; in His own words,
“There is nothing whatesover like unto Him” (Koran 42:11)
If we reflect for a moment on this verse, in the light of the hadith of Muslim about Ihsan that “it is to worship Allah as though you see Him,” we realize that the means of seeing here is not the eye, which can only behold physical things like itself; nor yet the mind, which cannot transcend its own impressions to reach the Divine, but rather certitude, the light of Iman, whose locus is not the eye or the brain, but rather the ruh, a subtle faculty Allah has created within each of us called the soul, whose knowledge is unobstructed by the bounds of the created universe. Allah Most High says, by way of exalting the nature of this faculty by leaving it a mystery,
“Say: ‘The soul is of the affair of my Lord’” (Koran 17:85).
The food of this ruh is dhikr or the ‘remembrance of Allah.’ Why? Because acts of obedience increase the light of certainty and Iman in the soul, and dhikr is among the greatest of them, as is attested to by the sahih hadith related by al-Hakim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“Shall I not tell you of the best of your works, the purest of them in the eyes of your Master, the highest in raising your rank, better than giving gold and silver, and better for you than to meet your enemy and smite their necks, and they smite yours?” They said, “This—what is it, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said: Dhikru Llahi ‘azza wa jall, “The remembrance of Allah Mighty and Majestic.” (al-Mustadrak ‘ala al-Sahihayn, 1.496).
Increasing the strength of Iman through good actions, and particularly through the medium of dhikr has tremendous implications for the Islamic religion and traditional spirituality. A non-Muslim once asked me, “If God exists, then why all this beating around the bush? Why doesn’t He just come out and say so?”
The answer is that taklif or ‘moral responsibility’ in this life is not only concerned with outward actions, but with what we believe, our ‘Aqida—and the strength with which we believe it. If belief in God and other eternal truths were effortless in this world, there would be no point in Allah making us responsible for it, it would be automatic, involuntary, like our belief, say, that London is in England. There would no point in making someone responsible for something impossible not to believe.
But the responsibility Allah has place upon us is belief in the Unseen, as a test for us in this world to choose between kufr and Iman, to distinguish believer from unbeliever, and some believers above others.
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Now, in traditional ‘Aqida one of the most important tenets is the wahdaniyya or ‘oneness and uniqueness’ of Allah Most High. This means He is without any sharik or associate in His being, in His attributes, or in His acts. But the ability to hold this insight in mind in the rough and tumble of daily life is a function of the strength of certainty (yaqin) in one’s heart. Allah tells the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in Surat al-A‘raf of the Koran,
“Say: ‘I do not possess benefit for myself or harm, except as Allah wills’” (Koran 7:188),
yet we tend to rely on ourselves and our plans, in obliviousness to the facts of ‘Aqida that ourselves and our plans have no effect, that Allah alone brings about effects.
If you want to test yourself on this, the next time you contact someone with good connections whose help is critical to you, take a look at your heart at the moment you ask him to put in a good word for you with someone, and see whom you are relying upon. If you are like most of us, Allah is not at the forefront of your thoughts, despite the fact that He alone is controlling the outcome. Isn’t this a lapse in your ‘Aqida, or, at the very least, in your certainty?
