Musings of a Servant of Allah
Verily in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest. (13:28)Archive for Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Almost there…
Alhamdulilah, only a few more days left til I fly to Jordan 
Hasn’t quite hit me yet, and it probably won’t, not until I’m on the plane with my brother! Please pray that we’ll arrive safely, and return safely too, God willing. Packing up and leaving everyone and everything I know is exciting, especially after such turmoil over the past few years of my life. A fresh start, in the company of those loved by Allah. I can’t ask for more, alhamdulilah. Part of me misses med school (crazy, I know lol) but the rest of me knows that this break is for the best.
My trials remain, as always. Despite the obvious pain, my hardships are a means to reaching Allah, and I’m learning to be optimistic and think the best of my Lord, and my circumstances. Like Sheikh Nuh said to us in the Sydney Suhba, out of all the infinite possibilities for our lives, Allah has chosen the absolute best for us, in His Divine Wisdom.
You are exactly where you need to be. It’s up to you to use this moment to draw closer to God, or stray away. So whether it be the loss of a loved one, your health, your wealth – whatever it may be – it happened because God willed it, and He loves you, and He wants you to return to Him. It’s the nature of the human being to forget….the root word for the arabic word for human (insaan) is naasiya, which means ‘to forget’. So these blows of fate, no matter how painful, are gentle reminders that God is the one in control, and that He is the only one whom we can seek solace from. What a lonely existence it is, without Him. So ask Him! He loves to be asked. Another beautiful gem Sheikh Nuh gave us at the Sydney Suhba was this: each time the tongue of the servant utters a prayer for something, know that Allah wants to give it to him.
If there’s one thing that can fill your heart with distraction and empty it from any longing for God, it’s music! So check this link out, and download that mp3 file.
Here’s an interesting article:
Getting Rid of the Need for Approval
Posted by Abu Ulfah in Guidance, Priorities, Reflection, The Self on 03 15th, 2009 | no responses
Bismillāh ar-Rahmān ar-Rahīm
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
On getting rid of the need to look to creation for approval
Strive to purify your heart from the fear of creation and from putting your hopes in them, for this would make you remain silent when faced with falsehood, compromise your Dīn and neglect exhorting to good and forbidding evil, this would be humilation enough, for a mu’min is strong by his Lord, he has no fear and no hope except in Him.
When one of your brother Muslims offers you something by way of showing affection, take it if you need it, thank Allāh for He is the real giver and thank the one whom Allāh has chosen to deliver it to you. If you do not need it, see whether it would be better for your heart to take it or refuse it, if you refuse, do it tactfully so as not to hurt the heart of the giver, for the feelings of a Muslim have great rank with Allāh.
Beware of refusing for the sake of acquiring a reputation, or of accepting for your lust, however, to take for lust is better than to turn down to acquire a reputation of ascetism and of turning away from dunyā. The truthful and sincere will not be confused by this, his Lord gives him a light in his heart by which he knows what is required of him.
Imām ‘Abdallāh Ibn ‘Alawī al-Haddād
Risālah Ādāb Sulūk al-Murīd
http://www.spiritual-tendencies.com/2009/0…d-for-approval/
On the Harvard suhba…
Shadhili tariqa: the path to the divine
Do check out the very interesting audio selection on the left hand side. A very soothing reminder, especially in times of difficulty.
The entire selection is here: Harvard suhba.
I particularly like how Shaykh Nuh reminds us all about that eternal truth – everything perishes except for Allah. Where will we be, 50 million years from now? All gone. But Allah remains – and all deeds that done for His sake.
May Allah accept our good deeds.
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A few of my close friends from med school are back from overseas…can’t wait to catch up! Lots has happened. Alhamdulilah, I’ve been blessed with a few good friends, and I can’t wait to sit down and catch up over coffee or dinner. I’ll miss not being in their cohort, with my whole deferral and all…but all things happen for a reason. Allah is the best of planners.
I used to honestly believe in this quote “I am the Master of my fate and the Captain of my soul”…but that’s not the truth of the matter. Allah is the master of every atom in this universe. That’s a huge blow to the ego, but also a relief – realising that no matter how well-intentioned and perfectly executed a plan is – if Allah decides it not to be, it will not, and if He decides it is to be, then it will. Allah is the one in charge. And alhamdulilah for that, because we’re human, necessarily imperfect, and Allah runs the universe to perfection. We’re just too limited to see it, at a macro level. He does not wish bad upon His creation, and loves us more than we love ourselves.
Surrendering to the decree of Allah can be difficult for control freaks e.g. myself. Just…let…go…
On accountability
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, for blessing me with another day of life on this Earth. May He bless me with the privilege of being one of His beloved slaves. Imagine that – Allah turning to the angels in the heavens, and telling them that He loves me. There is no greater honour. O Allah, let me be worthy of your love.
I spoke to my mother once, during one of my darker moods, and asked her this: “What’s the point anyway? Of all this? We’re all going to die anyhow.”
She smiled at me and said in her quiet, unassuming way, “Well…this is a very susah (difficult) state to get to, but the point is to want to reach Allah. And that is very beautiful.”
Yet again, she has the answer.
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‘Rabb’ is by far one of the most poorly translated words in the Arabic language. It’s loosely translated as ‘Lord’, so ‘Rabb-el-alamin’ would mean ‘Lord of the World’….but the word has far more depth to that.
Rabb means Creator, Sustainer, one who raises us in degrees…one who is concerned for our well-being. He loves us more than we love ourselves.
Shaykh Nuh says that the one who sees reality for what it truly is, will measure his or her actions against the yardstick of eternity. Will this bring me closer to or further away from Allah?
Hence the title of this post. It’s all about accountability.
I want to live my life according to two cardinal rules:
1) Giving Allah His due
2) Giving everyone else (including myself) their due.
Easier said than done, no? Giving Allah His due means performing all my obligatory and recommended acts of worship with the intention of seeking His Countenance. Giving everyone else their due means acknowledging the rights of others upon me – including my own body parts. Muslims believe that on the Day of Judgement, our own body parts will speak against us, if we had sinned with them in this life.
It makes sense. Everything is on loan. Our bodies, souls, families, talents, wealth…..it’s all a test to see who will do good.
That which is on earth we have made but as a glittering show for the earth, in order that We may test them – as to which of them are best in conduct. [Chapter 18, verse 7]
Life, to me anyway, wouldn’t make sense any other way. Without an Afterlife and A Fair Judge…. too many souls are abandoned to the vagaries of fate. And life is cruel. There is far too much injustice and bloodshed on this Earth for this life to simply be it.
God will not wrong us in the least.
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Shaykh Naeem has this fascinating concepts of many things in this world being reflections of the paradisial reality. How does one define reality, to begin with? Let’s check good ol’ Wikipedia:
Reality, in everyday usage, means “the state of things as they actually exist.” The term reality, in its widest sense, includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense may include both being and nothingness, whereas existence is often restricted to being (compare with nature).
So Muslims believe that this life is a temporary reality, whereas the afterlife is the eternal reality. The real reality, if you may. With that in mind, Allah, in His mercy, has ‘dropped hints’, so to speak. Clues that point to our Eternal Home.
Look at the ritual of Hajj, for example. Totally strange, at surface glance. Leaving the world behind, wearing simple garments, men shave their heads, and everyone circumambulates around this big black box (Kaa’ba) in the middle of the desert.
What I didn’t realise til very recently was the fact that 70,000 angles circumambulate around an equivalent black box (Baytul Makmur), in the heavens, every day, until the Day of Judgement.
Spine-tingling, isn’t it? We were all made for eternity. This world is just a pit stop. A tantalising, alluring pit stop for some…..and absolute hell hole for others. Personally, the former is far more useful as far as saving our souls is concerned! The more attached you are to this world, the easier it is to find God irrelevant. The more hardship you face, the easier it is to fall to your knees and beseech His help.
May Allah keep us steadfast and on the straight path.
On faith
Spirituality, in our secular day and age, has come under fire.
A very good friend and colleague of mine, Rob, is a devout Christian. He married his wife, Christina, a fellow churchgoer, and they’re amongst the sweetest people I’ve met. He told me that: “Although they say that Australia is a Christian nation….it’s still very popular. People think I’m weird for believing in God.’
Sad, but true. Yes, to each their own, but it seems like atheists are really, really pushing their views upon the rest of the world. I had a neuroanatomy tutor who did just that. We have the infamous “Letter to a Christian Nation.” We have people who claim that religion is all about violence, and the world is better off without it.
Au contraire. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps I’m biased, but I know that faith is what sustains dying patients in hospital, and faith is what helps their mourning families cope. Hospitals are places of death and dying, and this is where humanity, is in its rawest form. Strip away the distractions of everyday routine, and you’re faced with very mortal, very finite, incredibly vulnerable human beings. And in this state, people turn to God. And He listens.
Unfortunately, there are religious leaders who cause far more harm than good. This cuts across all faiths. We can name disgraced priests, imams, monks….but the point is not to give up on the concept of spirituality all because of a few bad apples.
Shaykh Nuh has been a Godsend. He’s my spiritual guide. I hope I can save up enough to do my medical elective in Jordan at the end of 2008, so I can also spend my evenings learning from him. His very presence is calming. Truly, he is beloved to God. Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad is another brilliant scholar. Both are so engaging, and they really speak to me in ways others cannot. And of course, my local scholar, Shaykh Naeem Abdul Wali. Hilarious, witty, and pure genius. He wrote this article Jesus and Muhammad (upon them be peace): Brothers in faith and the challenge of walking in their footsteps in a secular world. I highly recommend that you read it.
So if you’re searching for God, spirituality, faith – don’t give up. Don’t listen to the anti-religion chant that has soaked our angry, bitter world. Listen to that voice within you that is not content with material wealth and chasing this illusionary world. Listen to the stories of those who have found God, and felt inner peace ever since.
Most of all, listen to your heart, and to your soul. The less involved you are with the hallucinogens of Life, the more aware you are that there has to be a purpose to this life. I wish you the best in your journey, and hope you find the tranquility which you seek.
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.
….
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?
