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Living the Quran

Al-Tawba (Repentance) Chapter 9: Verse 111 The Supreme Transaction: "Verily God bought from the believers their selves and their possessions in exchange for Paradise." People ask: “Everything will leave our hands, perish, and be lost. Maybe there is a way to make it eternal, to preserve it.?” While engaged in such thoughts, they suddenly hear the Quran’s heavenly voice say: “There is a beautiful and easy way that offers five advantages or profits.” What is this way? To sell the trust - your body, spirit, and heart, and so on, as well as your outer and inner senses (e.g., sight, taste, intelligence, imagination.) – to its real owner. The resulting five profits are: First Profit: Transient property becomes everlasting. This waning life, when given to the Eternal and Self-Subsistent Being of Majesty and spent for His sake, is transmuted into permanence and gives everlasting fruits. Second Profit: The price paid is Paradise. Third Profit: The value of each bodily limb and sense is increased a thousand fold. For example, if you sell your eyes to its All-Seeing Maker and use it on His behalf and within His limits, it rises to the rank of a reader of the Great Book of the Universe, a witness of the miracles of His creation, a blessed bee sucking on the blossoms of Mercy in the garden of this world. Fourth Profit: If you do not rely on the All-Powerful One of Majesty, trust in and submit to Him with full confidence, your conscience remains troubled by vain torment, pain and regret, all of which destroy your understanding. Fifth Profit: Those who unveil the true nature of things and experience the truth agree that the reward for worshipping and glorifying God performed by your limbs, senses, and faculties will be given at the time of greatest need, in the form of Paradise’s fruits. If you refuse, you suffer the following five-fold loss: First Loss: Your beloved property and off-spring, your adored self and its caprice, your foolishly loved youth and life all are replaced by pain and sin. Second Loss: You are punished for betraying the trust, for you wrong yourself by using the most precious tools on the most worthless objects. Third Loss: By debasing your precious faculties to a level much inferior to animals, you insult and transgress God’s Wisdom. Fourth Loss: In your helplessness and poverty, you shoulder life’s heavy burden and continually groan under the blows of transience and separation. Fifth Loss: You convert the Compassionate One’s fair gifts, meant to be used for laying the foundations of everlasting life and blessedness in the Hereafter, into ugliness. Why do many people not want to sell? Is it so hard? By no means! The resulting burdens are not hard. The limits of the permissible are broad and adequate for your desire, and so you do not need to indulge in what is forbidden. The duties imposed by God are light and few. To be His servant and soldier is an honour beyond description. Source: "Humanity, Belief, and Islam" - Said Nursi pp. 40-48

Understanding the Prophet's Life

Sunnah - An integral source of Shariah In today’s day and age, it is not rare to find a Muslim (or one who claims to be one), who might accept the Quran as a source of divine guidance, yet have doubts about the status of the Sunnah. And it is this confusion that leads these people away from the Quranic message, itself. For, we have to realize that a text can only come alive when someone lives by that text, to its fullest with the proper understanding of it. Now since this text (the Quran) is of divine origin, who better to exemplify its message than the bearer of the message himself. The Prophet Muhammad (may Allah bless him) was not a mere postman who delivered the message and disappeared. Acting under divine guidance, he not only delivered the message but launched a movement. He changed man and society; founded a community, established a state; and spent every moment of his Prophethood in guiding, directing and leading his followers. His life example of living by God’s guidance, consisting of whatever he did or said or approved, is the Sunnah. The authority of the Sunnah is firmly rooted in the Quran and in the historically continuous consensus of the Muslim Ummah. The explicit statements in the Quran in this respect are many. Every Prophet was sent to be obeyed (al-Nisa 4:64). The Prophet Muhammad is the last and perfect model (Al Ahjab 33:21, 40). To obey him is to obey God (al Nisa 4:80). To follow and obey the Prophet is the only way one can love his God and be loved by Him and have one's sins forgiven (Ale-'Imran 3: 31-32). All matters which cause differences or disputes are to be referred to God and His Prophet as the final authority (al-Nisa' 4: 59). No one can be truly a believer unless he accepts the Prophet as the final judge in all affairs and submits to his decisions, willingly and free from all misgivings (al-Nisa' 4: 65). The Prophet has the authority to permit and prohibit (al-A'raf 7: 157). And, finally, whatever the Prophet gives must be taken; whatever he forbids, must be avoided (al-Hashr 59: 7). Source: "Shariah - The Way to God" - Khurram Murad, Pg 10

Blindspot!

Assessing Spiritual State Should a person wish to know whether they are rising or falling in their deen (religion), they should look at how his or her state and conduct had been a month or a year ago. If he finds that they are better than his present state and conduct, he should know that he is descending into degradation; whereas if she finds that that her present state and conduct are better, she should know that she is rising and improving. It has been handed down that "he who finds that his day resembles the previous day has been cheated, and he who finds that his day is worse than the previous day is accursed". Accursed here means remote from a particular and specially accorded mercy. He who is not increasing is diminishing. To explain, if when thinking about previous days, you feel that you then had no desire for the world, were eager for the hereafter, scrupulously avoided doubtful things, were quick to good actions, quick to obedience, remote from transgressions, and by comparison are now no better or are to any extent worse, then know that you are going down, deteriorating in the deen, in your aspiration for God, and in striving for the hereafter. You should then feel apprehensive and fearful and then begin to show resolution and exert effort. If, on the other hand, you find that you have more aspiration and eagerness than before, then thank God the Exalted even more, remember His gifts and grace, and be ever attentive to them. You should not feel pleased with yourself, nor think that it is due to your own ability and power, for as God has said, "Had it not been for the favour of God upon you, and His mercy, not one of you would ever have grown pure; but God purifies whom He wills, and God is all-Hearing, all-Knowing". [Quran 24:21] Compiled From: "Knowledge and Wisdom" - Abdallah ibn Alawi al-Haddad (translated by Mostafa al-Badawi) SOURCE: http://www.fridaynasiha.com