May 25, 2011

Making the best use of your time

I don't really think I have been able to make the best use of free time. I actually didn't know how could I use my time for the betterment of my Islaamic knowledge. How I realized the difficulty of seeking knowledge without a teacher, I badly need a teacher to do it the right way. Because sometimes when someone doesn't have a teacher it's tough for them to keep themselves motivated. You'll be okay if you feel you are trying to learn whatever you can by yourself but if you are not content with it then you'll try to justify the obligation of learning knowledge and slack off saying 'knowledge is only for the scholars' or 'I'm not learning much'. Well knowledge wouldn't come to you if you weren't giving your full commitment to it.


Shaykh Bakr Abu Zayd said: Whoever tries to acquire knowledge wholesale will have it slip away wholesale. It is also said that, Trying to pack too much knowledge into the ears at one time leads to misunderstanding.

To be honest, I have committed to this mistake many many many times. I never was sure where to start how to start and what to start. However, whenever I tried to punctuate myself with a single topic at a time I succeeded Alhamdulillah. Also starting to study at this matured age was a bit tough & it's still tough as I'm growing older & older.

And as I got a job recently now it has become way more tough for me to acquire knowledge. I have wasted much time thinking about the process of learning but now it's time to act I guess. Yesterday I registered for the upcoming course of alkauthar titled 'Lord of the worlds' by Shaykh Towfique Chowdhury. I'm very excited about it, I guess it will be more beneficial when I sit with the brothers & study about it inshAllah. I missed the last course due to some unavoidable reasons but inshAllah soon I'll get the audio lectures of it & listen to them.


By the way, if you are thinking about studying knowledge then I strongly recommend you the alkauthar courses, because it's perfect for the people that are extremely busy. They are basically tertiary level one weekend course & they'll leave you with a good solid foundation on the subject taught in the course inshAllah.

:)

SO I gotta stop now lol, talk to you later inshAllah
happy learning
Nahiyan.

May 22, 2011

Second day at Work :D

Hey folks!
Whats up?
I'm doing super-cool Alhamdulillah :P Sorry couldn't write to you after my first day at work which was pretty much exhausting,now Alhamdulillah even on my second day I'm getting the hang of it. I completed my work for today and now getting ready for dhur prayer inshAllah :)

May 11, 2011

The fitna of Islaamic forums :-

Listen up ppl! Recently I noticed something on the internet forums. I'm sure you'll also notice if you look at the forums that there is access for the non Muslims & reverts alike.

Well what this does is it confuses the hell out of them. Because in those forums if you want to register you'd have to show that you are following some school of thought. However, this is not the main problem. The problem is different people from different school of thoughts engage in unnecessary debates which confuse the less knowledgeable Muslims & it scares the non Muslims as well as the new Muslims big time.

My question is if you would debate & call others names why letting the non Muslims know what you are! If you have decided you are not going to be humble then why speaking this out loud to some revert who have known Muslims to be good humble people?

I mean really, we do dawaah to assure the non Muslims that Islam is not complicated & then we complicate things ourselves. As we are on the topic now just today I was listening to a lecture by shaykh Riadul Haq & he said we should not look at others but rather we should think what our contribution is in that fitna.

SubhanAllah more often than not you'll understand what school of thought the person is by noticing the way they put their words. Although there are mash a Allah brothers/sisters who don't go to the extremes in their madhahib, nonetheless; for the most part these days belonging to a school of thought has become a matter of pride. And these people, they just find a way to exalt their Imams over the other, as if they were kind of rivals.

Wake up people while you can, because prophet sallalahu alayhissalam said in an authentic narration - Who has an atom's amount of pride wont smell Paradise. Just look at the severity of pride. SubhanAllah I remind myself first & then all others inshAllaah.


May Allah give us a heart that is free from arrogance, ameen

May 09, 2011

Learning Arabic!

I've been trying to learn Arabic for quite a while now, but with no success. For me,the intent of learning this language is not to be able to converse in it but rather to better understand the Qur'aan inshAllah. Unfortunately, it's not possible for me to go to an Arabic language teacher hence I've been trying it online. AS I said I wed through a lot of Arabic language programs online & each time I start the course & later on lose the enthusiasm in the middle of nowhere.


Recently in Kalamullah.com I found a series of books on Arabic grammar & morphology. So I downloaded them & started reading the first volume & found that it's extremely easy! The author explained the concepts so simply with very little words subhanAllah. May Allah reward him abundantly for his effort, ameen. :)

After reading this book it finally occurred to me that I can also learn Arabic & I can also understand the Qur'aan like many others inshAllah. So I was very excited about it & I still am. However, I'm still not sure how long this euphoria will last lol. NEED DUAS!!! Please, inshAllah!

Oppss! By the way, the name of this series is Arabic Tutor. It's divided in four volumes. I strongly recommend it as I saw people saying they largely benefited from this book Alhamdulillah.

So you start learning now!!I'm also learning inshAllah. And since language is for communication, I need people to communicate with me in my new language :). So anyone who is interested lemme know, we'll talk. Oh brothers of course :)

May 06, 2011

To talk about experience

We get a lot of lessons from life, whether they be very significant or simple. However little or big the lessons are they work as our umbilical cord. History is our umbilical cord. We learn lessons from history, but, unfortunately man is never good at learning from history.

there is, however, a subtle difference between history & experience. Experience is a part of history but not the other way round. For something to be history it has to be significant & in general history is made so that we all can ponder upon it. But experience is completely different here because experience is an individual thing.

Unfortunately, it sounds far-fetched to say that people will learn from their experience when they do not learn from history. However, interestingly some people do learn from their experience. But these people are very few in number.

I'll give you a short example. You know, I mostly go to two masjids in Dhanmondi. One is at road no 7 & the other one is at road 6/A. Well, that's just beside the point. So I was saying both these masjids are mashAllaah very well decorated & beautiful. But you would get shocked to see the lack of common sense in some of the worshipers there.

You see lecture after lecture year after year the Imams are requesting the worshipers to switch off their mobile phones once they get into the masjid. But in vain. Is this not lack of acting upon experience?

The irony of the matter is we come into masjid to remove the thoughts of this world & submit ourselves to our Lord, the Merciful. But do we not see the contradiction in our own selves? How come it's so tough on ourselves to switch off the mobile phone for only about 10-15 minutes only?

And the thing is, you see, the most embarrassed in this situation is the one whose phone rings in the middle of our prayer. Why do we put ourselves in situations where we wouldn't naturally like to be in?

On the other hand, here we are who have some experience on learning knowledge. We haven't yet learned how to deal with these people. We don't know how to lovingly advise them while not offending at the same time. We get all arrogant when talking to the general people. Yeah! Thus we create a safe distance from these people so that we don't have to deal with them.

We see their doing the salaah incorrectly, we say nothing. We see them talking during khutba, we say nothing. We think about their reaction, but concealing the knowledge is not the correct methodology. We have to tell them the right way, no matter what. We are here to please Allah not the people. However, we are not displeasing them for the sake of doing it but rather we do it for their own sake.

I have seen how we tend to avoid the Imams, why because they do not open up for the most part. And more often than not their scholarly image will keep you from asking them questions.

You don't pray according to the maddhab of this Imam or that Imam he will come up with different ways of ridicules to demean the 'other'. Whereas, there was a time when four of the school of thoughts respected each other although they differed.

So is it really that we are Muslims first or salafi, hanafi, hanbali or whatever first?

So at the end of the day it all goes back to our experience which we do not use for our betterment but rather to grow in arrogance.