Contemplations

People May doubt what you say, but they always will believe what you do

Adornment of the people of knowledge and virtue are calmness, decency and respectability.

How many a true saying is abandoned, because the teller is inglorious amongst the people! And how many false saying is accepted, because the teller is of high rank and honour”! [Arabic Poem]

1.      Sound mind in a sound body [Arabic proverb]

2.      People love to receive but always dislike to give

3.      People are fixated in erecting buildings but neglect the building of men!

4.      Time is like wealth- as with wealth the value of time is measured by how well it is spent and used. A miser is one who does not spend from his wealth except a little; similarly the one who does not spend his time well is a miser too.

5.      ‘I have no country but Islam’ [Iqbal]

6.      Successful are those who do not delay today’s work till tomorrow

7.      Only the weak hide behind pre-destination [al-qadar]

8.      The difference between the worldly [dunyawiy] pleasures and those of the heaven, heavenly pleasures are unadulterated while worldly pleasures are contaminated with pain and grief.

9.      A Muslim’s character is always political! [Adapted from Dr al-Qaradawi]

10.  Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

11.  There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all.

12.  Tajwid, the art of learning to speak to God

13.  ”From the signs of ones success in the end is turning to Allah in the beginning. Whoever’s beginning is radiant his end will also be radiant”. [Ibn 'Ataillah]

14.  Sign of man’s success in this life does not lie in how much wealth he has accumulated, but true success lies in the legacy he leaves behind

15.  Repentance [Tawbah] is like a washing machine that cleans your sins. Which make are you?

16.  People require food once or twice a day but they require knowledge at every breath [Imam Ahmad]

17.  Seekers of the Akhira are elevated while seekers of the Dunya are debased

18.  Salah, the court of God on earth, so decorate yourself with humility when you stand in front of him

19.  You may find things in the river which you will not find in the ocean [Arabic proverb]

20.  Hope necessitates action

21.  Hope without patience is like a ship sailing on dry land

22.  The difference between Secularism and Islam is ‘the difference between monotheism [Tawhid] and polytheism [Shirk]’. [Sh Salman al-‘Awdah]

23.  Dhikr [Remembrance of God], like a magnet it pulls one to God.

24.  The mind of the youth is like an empty vessel, easy to fill.

25.  Fiqh without tasawwuf [spirituality] is like a body without a soul.

26.  The Dunya is like a play in which everyone has a part to perform

27.  The Dunya is like a station in the journey to God

28.  ‘The one who is (truly) imprisoned is the one whose heart is imprisoned from Allah and the captivated one is the one whose desires have enslaved him’. [Ibn Taymiyyah]

29.  The a’mil [worker] without knowledge is like a traveller without a path [Hasan al Basri]

30.  The concern of the Scholars is to nurture and the concern of the foolish is to narrate. [Hasan al-Basri]

31.  Whoever lives for himself [only] dies small and whoever lives for his Ummah dies great. [Syed Qutb]

32.  The Dunya is like a mirage, when one comes close to it, it fades away

33.  A learned man who doesn’t restrain his passions is like a blind man holding a torch, he guides others but not himself. [Shaykh Sa’di, Gulistan, p.207]

34.  Scholars are like doctors, they heal the wounds of ignorance.

35.  Narrating stories [Qisas] is in fact following them since qassa means to follow

36.  Al-Nafs [soul] can be your greatest ally and your greatest enemy if it is not nurtured in the obedience of Allah.

37.  For everything you leave there is a substitute, but if you depart from Allah there is no substitute for him. [Arabic poem]

38.  The Dunya is like a dream, a person believes all that he sees are true and real

39.  The word شمس “shams” (sun in Arabic) is feminine, and قمر “qamar” (moon in Arabic) is masculine. The sun burns itself out to give light and life to everything around, and the moon isمنير muneer, meaning it reflects the light. Within itself it has no light; it radiates the brilliance of the sun. So when we shine as men, the implication is that we are reflecting the glorious light of our women. [Adapted from Sh Abdullah Adhami]

40.  Wudhu [Ablution], purification from the visible and non- visible dirt

41.  Purifying the Hands, is to refrain it from harming others

42.  Purifying the Mouth, is to renounce saying and eating that which is forbidden

43.  Purifying the Nose, is to prepare it to smell the fragrance of paradise

44.  Purifying the Face, is to ornament it with modesty and shyness

45.  Purifying the Neck, is to  free it from the disobedience of God

46.  Purifying the chest, is to relieve ones heart from bearing malice against others

47.  Purifying the Feet, is to chain it from approaching sin

48.  The word qa-ra-‘at in Arabic means to read, the word raqqa means to enslave, hence reading frees oneself from the intellectual enslavement [Adapted from Sh Abdullah Adhami]

49.  The Sunnah is like medicine, sometimes sweet and sometimes hard to swallow

50.  Raising the hands in prayer symbolises the raising of the veil between us and God [Sh ‘Uthaymeen]

51.  Salah, get connected with God – its good to talk!

52.  Today when the roots of Islam are under attack, we have been busy taking care of the leaves [Maulana Anwar Shah Kashmiri]

53.  Takbirat ul Ihram, is permission to enter the divine presence

54.  Tasleem, is permission to leave the divine presence

55.  Adhan, the Islamic national anthem [Adapted from Syed Qutb]

56.  Qur’an & Sunnah, my life coach [Suhaib Webb]

57.  Taqwa is from qa-wa-ya which means strength, so Taqwa gives strength

58.  Whoever holds history in his heart has added the lives of others to his own [Arabic proverb]

59.  Garments cover the physical nakedness while Taqwa covers the spiritual nakedness

60.  Your status with people depends on your relationship with God

61.  In order to live in the present and aspire for a better future, one has to have a cognisant recourse of his history

62.  Musa [as] said: ‘’O my Lord, the people say things about me that are not [true]!’’ So Allah revealed to him ‘’O Musa, I did not make that [privilege] for myself, so how can I make it the case for you?’’ [al-adab al-shari’yyat of Ibn Muflih]

63.  Love deafens and blinds [Hadith, Abu Dawud]

64.  The desire of the Salaf is to affirm the perfection of God and the desire of the Khalaf is to negate any imperfection to God

65.  There are those who visit the Prophet, and there are those whom the Prophet visits [Adapted from Sh M.Hassan]

66.  Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow – it empties today of strength

67.  Not many to go to reach 100 IA

Abdullah Hasan

3 comments so far

 muhammad on July 3, 2009

The Dunya is like a mirage, when one comes close to it, it fades away? Can you explain this to me brother as i have diffcult understanding this one?

 maqasid on July 21, 2009

Assalamu Alaikum,

 

Apologies for the late reply. The meaning of the aforementioned contemplation is as follows:

The Human being in this world is like a traveller in the desert, who has no water to drink. He is on the verge of death from thirstiness and hunger. Then he finds what appears to be a spring from which clean and cold water is flowing. Before he begins to drink from it looks at the spring and sees that it is a mirage and begins to follow it. Every time he approaches the mirage it fades away from him and continues to follow the mirage until he dies from thirst.

This is true in the case of the dunya. It is only a mirage in comparison to the next life. Whoever leaves the next life and preoccupies himself with this life is like the traveller who leaves a over flowing spring and runs after the mirage.

Allah says: ‘’And those who disbelieve their works are like a mirage in a desert which the thirsty deems to be water until when he comes to it, he finds nothing, and find Allah with himself’’ [Nur: 39]

 

Wallahu ‘alam

Abdullah Hasan

 quantum on September 3, 2009

 

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