Sacrifice, Umar's Advice, Eid Resources, Fawahish
Issue 208 » February 7, 2003 - Zul-Hijjah 5, 1423
General
Al-An'am
(The Cattle)
Commentary: It Ain’t No Piece of Cake Nobody says Islam is easy. Nothing of any value ever is. Indeed it is not easy to wake up for Fajr prayer on a cold winter morning. It may not be convenient to cook food for your ill neighbour. Nor is volunteering at an Islamic conference or a local food bank effortless. It may not be pleasant to offer others your shoulder to cry upon when their personal or family life is in crisis. Sure, resisting the peer pressure at school, university, or work place is extremely challenging. And we know it requires real faith and guts to speak out against oppression, racism, and tyranny. Therefore, Islamic life is a life of sacrifice par excellence. It entails a struggle (jihad) that must be ceaselessly waged, to actualize Islam, inwardly and outwardly, to make it a living reality. Complete Dedication The present verse expresses complete dedication, with every pulse and every life movement. It is a form of glorification of God and submission to Him in the most absolute of terms: it combines obligatory and voluntary prayer, life and death. All is dedicated to God alone, the Lord of all the worlds, who controls and sustains them all and conducts and determines all their affairs. It is the sort of submission to God that leaves out nothing within oneself, one's conscience or in life, without dedicating it totally to God. Sacrifice: A Struggle to Surrender Sacrifice means giving up things which are valued or desired. Those things may be (1) tangible, countable like our time, wealth or life, or (2) intangible, immeasurable like our feelings, attitudes, opinions or aspirations. They are given up for the sake of something that is more worthy or more urgent to us. Without sacrifice, our lives would be devoid of harmony and cooperation, full of conflict, a prey to self-centredness and immediate gratification of desires. [Compiled from "Sacrifice: The Making of a Muslim" by Young Muslims Publications, and "In The Shade of The Quran" by Sayyid Qutb, Vol 5. p. 375] |
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Advice of 'Umar (the second Caliph) to Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, leader of the Muslim army in Persia (may Allah be pleased with them both): "... Furthermore, I emphatically advise you and all the soldiers with you to fear Allah in every situation, for the fear of Allah is the best equipment to fight the enemy with and the strongest strategy in war. I also advise you and the soldiers with you to be more watchful of your sins than of your enemy, for the sins of an army are more destructive to them than their enemy. The Muslims are only granted victory because of their enemy's disobedience to Allah. If not for that we would not have any power over them since our numbers are lesser than theirs and our equipment is inferior to theirs. So if we are equal to them in sin, they will have the edge over us in strength. Know that in your march, there are protectors above you from Allah and they know what you do. Be ashamed of them and do not commit any act of disobedience to Allah while you are in His path." [Taken from "Problem Faced by the Da'wah and the Da'iyah" by Fathi Yakan: pp 148 - 149] |
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Some helpful links to help you celebrate the upcoming Eid-ul-Adha |
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Fawahish Fawahish applies to all those acts whose abominable character is self-evident. In the Quran all extra-marital sexual relationships, sodomy, nudity, false accusation of unchastity, and taking as one's wife a woman who had been married to one's father, are specifically reckoned as shameful deeds. In Hadith, theft, taking intoxicating drinks and begging have been characterized as fawahish as have many other brazenly evil and indecent acts. [Taken from SoundVision.com's "Glossary of Islamic Terms"] |
