Friday Nasiha

Living The Quran

Investing in this Life
Al-Anam (The Cattle) - Chapter 6: Verse 29

They say: "There is nothing beyond our life in this world, and we shall never be raised to life again."

Some people are quick to speak against belief in the hereafter, claiming that it causes people to adopt a negative attitude towards this life, exerting no effort to improve it. They abandon it to dictators and their corrupt regimes, because they prefer to aspire to the blessings of the hereafter. This is an unfair criticism, one which combines injustice with ignorance. They group belief in the hereafter as advocated in Church concepts that have deviated from Christianity under the same classification as its Islamic concept. In the Islamic view, this life is where you place your investment in order to reap the benefits in the hereafter. To strive to put this life on the right course, to purge it from evil and corruption, to repel all assaults on God's authority, to smash tyrants and ensure justice and goodness to all people are the keys to the hereafter. It opens, for those who so strive, the gates to heaven and compensates them for everything they sacrifice during their struggle against evil and for the harm they may suffer.

How is it possible that the followers of such a faith could abandon this life and allow it to stagnate, deviate or become corrupt? How could they allow injustice and tyranny to establish their roots and spread? How could they allow it to remain backward, undeveloped when they aspire to receive reward from God in the hereafter? That reward is not given for a negative attitude.

Compiled From:
"In The Shade of The Quran" - Sayyid Qutb, Vol. 5, pp. 90

Understanding The Prophet's Life

Science and Traditions

"When you get up from your bed, don't put your hand in a bowl [of food or drink] before washing it three times. You don't know where your hands have been while you were asleep." [Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud]

People often suffer from allergies or an itch. They might have scratched the affected places while sleeping, thereby accumulating germs, particularly under their fingernails. If such people eat (from communal bowls) without washing their hands, other people may become infected.

The Messenger always depended on Revelation, whether explicit or implicit. His Companions, famous for truthfulness, followed him as closely as possible and narrated whatever they received from him. Meticulous, truth-loving Traditionists collected the Traditions reaching them through reliable, trustworthy, and upright narrators. Some authentic Traditions predict certain future events and scientific developments. Just as none of these have yet proven to be false, so too no one has been able to falsify any other authentic Traditions.

Creation still holds some mysteries, and will continue to do so, regardless of human scientific and other progress. Psychic events or supernormal phenomena like telepathy and second sight, necromancy and other transcendental experiences, give clues to the existence of worlds or dimensions different from our own. As it is possible to find references to this in the Quran, some Traditions also may be dealt with from this viewpoint.

Compiled From:
"Muhammad: The Messenger of God" - Fethullah Gulen, pp. 355

Blindspot!

Attention to Silence

Reformist thinking has as a principle not to change Muslims of today into imitators of Muslims of yesterday. Faithful to the principles, they must find out how to live within their own time. In the same way, Muslims of today must not become imitators of the fashions of the day or be satisfied with the law of least resistance by contenting themselves with "Islamizing" whatever "goes" commercially. When this first stage of adaptation drags on, it is because laziness is overcoming us and we lack imagination. The indicators of this tendency to imitate are legion: in numerous Muslim gatherings, the bands, the varieties of music, and the types of presentation are pure reproductions of what one might see on television or at some young people's parties. The event has been "Islamized," that is to say, made permissible (halal), without any great concern for the implicit messages conveyed by this so-called substitute (badil) culture. For a party (exactly as at other parties where-we-must-not-go), we want bands with loud music, dim lighting, very up-to-the-minute performances, because that is what young people want. What is unconsciously reproduced is a kind of relation with consumerism and a focus on celebrity (the same as there-where-we-must-not-go), a relationship with night, with noise, with entertainment. Behind the entertainment that is being offered to people is a particular psychology of silence and noise, day and night, relation with oneself and with the other, which as a whole translates into a philosophy of existence. The message of Islam makes us attentive to silence, to the quality of what replaces or disturbs it. It also makes us aware that there is another way of facing night, by making way for silence in a sort of recollection. Ultimately, it guides our entertainment toward the exploration of that state in which one forgets the world without forgetting oneself, by remaining human and safeguarding one's dignity. These promptings should make it possible, even in the West, not to neglect the psychology that should underpin art and entertainment in the Islamic philosophy of life, not in order to isolate oneself or to forbid everything but, on the contrary, to commit oneself—to develop a critical mind, to make choices, to contribute, to renew, and always not to imitate either the past or the present. To be Western Muslims is to confront reality with all its challenges and, sustained every day by the "need of Him," to take on all our responsibilities.

Compiled From:
"Western Muslims and The Future of Islam" - Tariq Ramadan, pp. 222, 223