Our First Spiritual Guides: Parents

Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem
Allahumma salli 'alaa sayyidinaa Muhammad, wa 'alaa aali sayyidinaa Muhammad, wa 'alaa as-haabi sayyidinaa Muhammad, wa baarik wa sallam.

As-salaamu 'alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu : )

I'm taking this class called "Race, Gender and Motherhood" and it's been making me think about a lot of things. For starters, I just keep being reminded of how grateful I must be for being Muslim. SubhaanAllah, the kinds of things I hear in that class from my classmates make me shudder... but actually the scary thing is, I have to hear them twice a week, for four hours straight, for six weeks in a row, so I'm almost becoming immune to them. I remember on my first day of class when someone said, "the only difference between a mother and a father is that the mother breastfeeds," I had to make some serious dhikr to get my blood to cool down, all the while fighting off chakkar. Now I've reached the point where I hear rabid feminist statements and hardly so much as flinch. I'm ashamed to admit it.

But anyway, that wasn't what I came on here to say. I've naturally been thinking a lot about motherhood because of this class, and furthermore about how much I really just don't know anything about motherhood because it's the kind of knowledge which is 95% experiential... except for the love... that's 100% experiential. No one can ever understand the love a mother has for her child unless she herself has had her own. Not even the the father can understand. His love is different. Beautiful, without doubt, but different.

So then these thoughts of motherlove and mothercare extended themselves to thoughts of both parents, mother and father, and I remembered something Shaykh Hamza hafidhahullah once said that was so beautiful, and so beneficial to hear. I'm not sure if these ruminations were his own, or if he was passing them on from another great heart and mind in our Islamic spiritual and intellectual tradition, so I apologize if I'm not giving proper credit (though such "credit" is not needed among Muslims.... do you see anyone's signature on the Haram Shareef, or Masjid un-Nabawi, or Masjid ul Aqsa, the way one expects to see a signature on any great work of artistic expression?)

Shaykh Hamza was talking about one of the many hikmas behind the immese amount of love and respect commanded of us in the Qur'an and hadith towards our parents. Think about what it's like when you're born. You're weak, feeble, and entirely dependent. You can't even so much as lift your head on your own, let alone eat or drink to keep yourself alive. And who is it that facilitate your ability to do these things? None other than your parents. Therefore from the very start, you can't help but love your parents, even if it was simply because of the care they took of you. Then, on top of the things they did for you, is their love for you. They watched you, took care of you, listened for your voice, ran to you at the slightest whimper, shed tears upon your first step and gave themselves to you, mind, body, and soul. Hazrat Zulfiqar quoted in his book Love for Allah: "Love itself will teach you the aadaab of love." What your parents showed you were the aadaab (proper manners) of love. They didn't need to tell you they loved you (though in many cases they usually do), their love screamed itself known through their actions.

So what he was saying is that the relationship we have with our parents, from the very beginning, is a way for us to learn about and understand, through experience, our relationship with Allah as His slave (what an honoured status....) Think about how similar it is- when you're born you're entirely dependent on their looking after you for your survival and growth. The same way, we are always entirely dependent on Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala for our survival, growth and anything else we could ever need. Then, on top of the fact that He keeps breath in our lungs and causes our hearts to beat and that He nourishes and sustains us, He loves us. He loves us sooo much, and that love is made manifest in every single thing in our life, whether we are wise enough to realize it or not. The very fact that you are alive shows He loves you. And then, subhaanAllah, the fact that He gave us Islam and His Beloved Messenger salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam shows His love for us. Every single thing you see in or around you, feel, hear, smell, taste, touch, understand, or experience is a sign of His love for you. SubhaanAllah. How can we not then love Him in return? How can we not then make sacrafices for His Sake? How, then, can we go on disobeying Him? He who loves us more than our mother. Not just "more"... infinitely more... subhaanAllah.

May Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala make us among those who are entirely obedient to Him in every facet of our lives, and may He grant us a beautiful relationship with our parents... the two people He chose to be our first teachers of Love for Him. Wa aakhiru da'waana anilhamdulillahi Rabbil 'aalameen.

Where's your heart?

Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem

As-salaamu 'alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu everyone,

Just a friendly reminder from your fellow slave to check your heart. What is it remembering? I feel like that reminder on TV: "It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are?" with all these images of young kids with pouty lips looking into the camera. Well, it should really say: "You're alive. Do you know what your heart is remembering?" and through your mind should run images of the Day of Judgment... of you standing before your Creator, His beloved salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam, the sahaba radiAllahu 'anhum and all the awliyaa and 'ulema who sacraficed their blood, sweat and tears to preserve this perfect Deen so it could reach us today.... and as you're standing there the video tape of your life is played before all.... and it will be made plain to you what was really in your heart at that moment, and that moment, and that one.

I know, it's hard, because your heart is so used to remembering this and that, and your mind so used to processing hundreds of thoughts between one moment and another. But your heart is crying for Allah's remembrance, so remember Him! And Allah 'azza wa jal Himself has given us His Word in the Qur'an: "Remember Me; I will remember you." When you think about someone you love to pieces who's far away, sometimes you wonder, "do they think of me? I spend so much time thinking of them, remembering them in my heart... I wonder how often they think of me... I wonder what I can do to make them remember me..." In the case of your Beloved, you never have to wonder : ) You remember Him, He remembers you. Easy formula.... it's all up to you.

So take comfort in the fact that at this very moment, when you read al Lafz ul Jalaalah "Allah," and at that moment you remembered Him, know that He just remembered you too : )

And don't forget all the benefits:
"Verily in the remembrance of God do hearts find rest."
"Everything in this world has a polish, and the polish of the hearts is the remembrance of Allah."
What more could we want than to put our hearts at rest, to purify them, and to have Allah remember us, all in one moment's pleasure?

Please keep me in your du'as..
Was-salaam ma'al ikraam,
Zareen

Click on the link below for a beautiful lecture on constant remembrance of Allah jalla jalaaluh, by Shaykh Kamaluddin Ahmed damat barakaatuh (with a beautiful du'a at the end.)

Wuquf-e-qalbi

Nafs and Sunnah

Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem

As-salaamu 'alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu,
Just a reminder. This something I've been thinking about lately, so I thought I'd make others think about it too. Imam 'Abdallah ibn 'Alawi al Haddad rahimahullah once said:

Discipine the ego with constant isolation
silence, sleeplessness and hunger.

So most of us aren't awliyaa of Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala, so doing such a thing seems rather impossible. But if you're among those who yearn to purify their hearts, then just try it for a few days... I'd say, just take one of those four and work on it. Maybe focus on one each month. No, one every forty days. Write it on your calendar. Mark off the next forty days and tell yourself that you're going to be strict on your food and drink intake. Be strict with yourself, and whenever you feel yourself lax, remind yourself that the majority of the time RasulAllah salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam, the Beloved of Allah, who we yearn to be like and ache to be with, used to be hungry most of the time. So think about how sweet it is that you're fulfilling a sunnah when you feel that hunger.

At the time of RasulAllah salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam, there was a sahaba radiAllahu 'anh and he was African. He knew that RasulAllah salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam's blessed hair would sometimes fall and create a part down the center of his perfect head. Now this sahaba's hair radiAllah 'anh was like any African's hair, so it wasn't the kind that could part. This pained him so much... he would look with sad yearning at the hair of his beloved master salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam and would lament deeply that he could not be like him... that he could not do what Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala had shown was beloved to Him through His Habib salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam. One day, he couldn't take it any longer- he grabbed hold of the thin, metal stick used to cook meat over a fire, pulled it out of the burning fire, red hot, placed it down the center of his scalp, and burned away a line of hair, creating a part. The other sahaba radiAllahu 'anhum, upon seeing the blood and burning skin on his head, cried, "what are you doing!! Doesn't it hurt?!" to which he replied, "I swear that the pain I felt upon knowing that I could not fulfill this one sunnah was more intolerable than the pain of the burning of my scalp."

May Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala grant us a taste, a small piece, of the kind of love and devotion to the beloved of Allah salAllahu 'alayhi wsallam that the sahaba radiAllahu 'anhum had. May He grant us the ability control our nafs and thus to experience at least a part of the hunger and sleeplessness that he salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam experienced, purely out of our love for him, and out of yearning to purify our hearts, so that we are not entirely shamed and disgraced when we stand before our Beloved subhaanahu wa ta 'aala on that Fateful Day. Ameen.

Be a Part of Hazrat Zulfiqar's Ijtema' : )

Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem
As-salaamu 'alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu to anyone who happens to still read my extremely inactive blog.

I just thought I'd post this incase someone here actually does still read my blog.... Insha'Allah Hazrat Zulfiqar Ahmad damat barakaatuhu and some of his khulafaa (authorized representatives) have gathered in Chicago, IL today and tomorrow for an ijtemaa'.... one of those once-in-a-rare-while, completely-change-your-life-around gatherings. Even though the vast majority of the world has to lament about the fact that we can't be sitting in his blessed and beautiful company, there's still hope! Insha'Allah they'll be teleconferencing all the talks, so we can listen from our bedrooms with our cell phones : )

Click here for teleconferencing information.

By all means, if you have even a moment of free time during these bayans you absolutely must call in and listen. We yearn to purify our hearts and we sadden deeply when the reality of our hearts is plastered before our sore eyes... eyes remain dry when reciting Allah subhaanahu wa ta 'aala's Kalaam, our hearts don't quiver with fear and love upon hearing His Name jalla jalaaluh, or upon thinking of His Beloved salAllahu 'alayhi wasallam.... so if we want our hearts to be brought back to life, to sing the praise of Allah, the remembrance of Him, then we need to emerse ourselves in the company of the prophets' heirs, the awliyaa of Allah 'azza wa jal, the lovers of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Loving, Most Kind.

So now's your chance to do so.... enjoy : )
Was-salaam ma'al ikraam,
Zareen