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From Issue: 288 [Read full issue]

Living the Quran

Al-Hujurat (The Dwellings)
Chapter 49: Verse 13

Universal Brotherhood
"O Mankind, We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of God is he who is the most righteous of you"

There are several principles, which this verse presents:

  1. This message is not just for Muslims only because Allah is addressing all of humanity. While Muslims are one brotherhood, this is part of a larger brotherhood of humanity.
  2. Allah is telling us that He has created us. Therefore He knows the best about us.
  3. He says that He created us from one man and one woman meaning that all humanity is from the same origin.
  4. It also means that all human beings are created through the same process, not in a manner in which some are created with a better mechanism than others.
  5. Allah is the One who made human beings into different groups and people.
  6. These differences are not wrong, rather a sign from Allah ("And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colors. Verily, in that are indeed signs for those who know" [Quran 30:22]).
  7. Note that no word equivalent to race is used in this ayah or any other verse of the Quran.
  8. Islam, however, limits the purpose of these distinctions to differentiation and knowing each other. This is not meant to be a source of beating each other down with an attitude of ‘my group is better than your group' or false pride as is the case with tribalism, nationalism, colonialism, and racism.
  9. The only source of preference or greatness among human beings is not on a national or group level, but it is at the individual level.
  10. One individual who is (higher in Taqwa), more conscious of his Creator and is staying away from the bad and doing the good is better, no matter what nation, country or caste he is part of. Individual piety is the only thing that makes a person better and greater than the other one.
  11. However, the only criterion of preference, Taqwa, is not measurable by human beings. Indeed Allah is the One Who knows and is aware of everything so we should leave even this criterion to Allah to decide instead of human beings judging each other.

Source:
"Islam's manifesto of Universal brotherhood of human beings" - SoundVision.com

Understanding the Prophet's Life

Satan the third one

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is reported to have stated that “whenever two strangers of the opposite gender are alone with each other, Satan becomes the third one between them.” (At-Tirmidhi)”

Muslims should have good relations with all people, males as well as females, at school, at work, in our neighbourhood etc. We should be kind and courteous to everyone. However, it is not allowed in Islam to take a non-mahram person or persons of the opposite gender as a very close friend. Such friendship often leads to haram.

It is not allowed for a Muslim boy to have a girlfriend or for a Muslim girl to have a boyfriend. Howsoever pure our intentions may be, the danger is that it will lead us to sin. Or at least we will be alone with each other and spend more time together.

Thus, we should be friendly with your classmates, boys and girls both; but a boy should not take a girl as his intimate friend or vice versa. Of course, homosexuality is also forbidden in Islam.

Source:
"Having a Girlfriend Permissible?" - Muzammil Siddiqi

Blindspot

Time Is Not Money

Islam encourages Muslims to care for time, to utilize it and not to waste it. It holds them responsible for their time. The righteous predecessors were aware of that responsibility, so they acted accordingly. Describing their care for time, Hassan Al-Basri said, "I saw those people and how they were more careful about their time than about their Dirhams and Dinars [i.e. their money]."

An important requirement for a Muslim's life is to be careful about time, to invest it wisely and to benefit from it. In this regard, Ibn-ul Qayyim says, "The highest, most worthy and most useful of reflection is what is intended for Allah and the Hereafter. There are various forms of reflection intended for Allah. One of them is reflecting on time duty and function and focusing entirely on it, for the knowledgeable one is the breed of his time. If he wastes it, all his interests are wasted, for all interests arise from time. If he wastes his time, he can never regain it."

As expressed by Imam Hassan Al-Banna, "Time is life itself." This reflects Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah's saying: "One's time is in fact his age. It is the material of his eternal life either in everlasting joy or painful torture. It passes more quickly than clouds do. It is only the time one dedicates to Allah that constitutes one's real life and age. The rest does not count; the life he leads in it is only animal life. Compared to a life of indulgence in appetitive activities, false aspirations and negligence of Allah's remembrance - and at best in sleep and being idle - death is a much better alternative."

The sad and painful thing about us now is that "our nation has been improvising ways of wasting time at the public and the private levels. As a result, the world is already proceeding to the future without us, as if we were the 'orphans of history'. If such improvisation is not directed to investing and utilizing our time properly, the gap between us and the future will widen further, and we will remain importers and consumers of cultural products. Eventually, our survival will be entirely dependent on the producers of those products." [Khuldun Al-Ahdab, "Reflections on the Value of Time"] Therefore, Muslims must unite their efforts to identify weaknesses for treatment, and must give time its due attention as demanded by Islam.

The following are some of the most important duties demanded of Muslims:

  • Ensuring benefiting from time
  • Utilizing leisure time
  • Racing for good deeds
  • Learning from the passage of time
  • Seeking the superior times
  • Planning and organizing time
  • Fulfillment of time commitments
  • Necessary awareness of time wasters

Source:
"Time Is Not Money" - Khaled Al-Jeraisy

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