Chill Yo Islam Yo

I wonder how many Muslim brothers will buy this T Shirt, haha.

I came across it randomly at Bustedtees.com

Shatan loves whispering in our ears, especially if they are big.

Just playing, big or small, he loves whispering in our ears and tries to find ways for us to miss the act which is most beloved to Allah swt. Anyone want to guess what act this is?

Salat! ding ding ding, you just won a free dawah pamplet. Anyways, whether your on campus or your out shopping, your bound to run into a time where one of the five daily prayers come in. Oh, sorry nike for changing up your marketing, hehe. I should make a shirt out of that.

So Ideally, you would want to schedule your life around Salat and not the other around. As Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad said ” A busy life makes prayer harder, but prayer makes a busy life easier”. Now we are all victims of Missing Salat, or praying late. Some people are consistent with performing their five daily prayers on time and that allows them to live a better lifestyle, Alhumduililah.

Once we are going strong on the daily prayer grind, it’s easier for us to spot weaknesses in other people. Now that makes sense because the person who is more conscious will remind others.

There are a couple of issues I want to talk about and insh’Allah we can all including myself learn from it. The first is all about getting others to pray with you, I’m not saying tie them up and bring them to Salat, you don’t have the power to do that. But when you can do is simply remind them, often times we see brothers or sisters far from the deen and we think “hey, they aren’t worth the time to call towards Allah”. Astugfurillah, drop that mentality and don’t underestimate anyone’s potential to change. Matter of fact, stop being arrogant.  I know a brother who used to disappear in the middle of our basketball games. When he came back, we all asked him where he went and he said “I went to pray”.

Bad planning brother, you could have reminded everyone else on the court and by not being selfish you could have gotten all those extra good deeds. So yea it’s good your remembering Allah internally, but when you remind others, your getting more reward. It’s a great blessing to have that constant dhikr, but if your not going to share it then whomp whomp.

The reason I bring this up is because if we had more Muslims reminding others for Salat, maybe those who missed prayers would have one less excuse to use, =).

A lot of times I’ve noticed that the easiest excuse to miss Salat is “I don’t have a place to pray”. Well if you can connect to the internet from anywhere on earth, then come on you can do a wireless connection with the lord of the worlds. Don’t worry about the carrier, because you are the carrier. If you get your khushu (the degree of humility or submission before Allah) on point in your salat, then it’s all good.

Another excuse which is Shatan loves to brand is “I haven’t prayed in so long, so there isn’t any point now”. This is probably one of the most annoying ones to hear, but it’s a reality. People after a while think Salat isn’t for them since the only time they pray is on Eid, and maybe not even that. Well if you fall victim to this, then don’t let the devil trick you into this game. It’s never too late, as long as you are alive then the door is always open to repentance.

I remember one time, I was with some friends and we offered another Muslim brother to come to the masjid to pray with us and he said “No, I’m not a good Muslim”. After some effort, he agreed to join. He actually ended up leading the salat and afterward he said “I’m haraam, I prayed with a bag of weed in my pocket”. At least he felt bad about this sin, right?. Well on the other hand, he ended up coming to pray and it required a little bit of effort from our end.

Oh yea, missing Salat at work is not a good idea, one of the things that increases your rizq (sustenance) is Salat. So definitely not a good idea.

The last excuse is all about missing an event. This makes sense because sometimes we fall short and begin to tell ourselves, if we pray then we’ll miss this game, or miss this class or whatever. I find it hard to believe that Allah swt will make your life harder if you offer your prayers, in fact there have been many times when I’ve seen peoples priority’s backwards and Allah swt makes it harder.

5 tips on How to Stop making Excuses:

1. It all starts with recognizing that your Muslim and it’s an obligation for you to pray. If you miss your prayer make it up, that’s better than not praying at all.
2. Revolve your schedule around prayer and not the other way around! Salat is a shield against sin, and we are all witnesses to that.
3. Plan accordingly. If your on campus, find the MSA and ask others where they pray. If you don’t want to do that, figure out the Qibla and pick a corner.
4. It takes 5-10 minutes to pray, depending on your speed. That’s nothing, don’t be fooled into thinking Salat is a big physical workout, if you can hit the gym for an hour then yea. It’s actually a spiritual workout and it is tough, but without sincere effort and consistency, you won’t see any progress.
5. Reflect on repeated reminders from the Qur’an and Sunnah, “Indeed he will be successful the one who purifies himself. And remembers the Name of his Rabb (Allah), and prays.” (87:14-15)

There you have it, now go play. I mean pray.

Shout out to YM and Br. Asim for sharing this via facebook.

Click here to visit YoungMuslimsTV, the official Channel for YM.

Sorry for not posting this whole month, I’ve been busy recently since I went to California to give Dawah to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Just playing, I was there chilling with family under palm trees and getting some work done.

Anyways, I wanted to write about an idea which I realized is coming into the minds of some Muslims.

So the issue is some brothers and sisters who have gone through a transition of not practicing to practicing Muslims have developed a mentality of rejecting “Marriage” in Islam, they have this black and white view of opposite genders because of their past experiences.

Now past experiences can obviously effect a persons psychology, but that doesn’t give you the right to say things like “all men or women are evil”, because that’s obviously not the case. When you make a statement like that, I take it as you dissing yourself  and your own parents. We should be real careful how we use our rhetoric and separate the actions of some people from a group of people.

See let me break it down like tetris, just because you had a relationship with someone and things went wrong for whatever reason, it doesn’t give you the right to use that experience and reject marriage, which is so sacred in Islam.

Most of the time, the relationships that went wrong just had wrong objectives and people didn’t have sincere intentions and a proper approach in the first place. I don’t need to go into details, but I think you all know what I mean.

This brings me to another point, sometimes I hear young Muslims say statements like “oh right now I’m going to chill and mess around, we’ll worry about marriage later when we get older”.

Well guess what, your not guaranteed another breath of your life. So your gamble isn’t justifiable in any way, but I guess if Allah swt allows you to live after you entered into this state, then you have begun to take his mercy for granted.

Back to the issue, we have no right to make a final judgment on any person , this can only be done by Allah swt alone. A lot of brothers and sisters have messed up and are trying to come closer to Allah swt, this is very common in the society we live in. Let’s stop acting like we’re all perfect and we haven’t messed up either, only through the mercy of Allah swt have our hearts opened up again and we should look at everyone with the same potential rather than being arrogant.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was how some people show off about how they have dated or had a relationship with such and such person in the past, they bring this up although that person they dated when through a transformation and have mash’Allah begun practicing Islam.

This annoys me the most, we should be happy when we see a brother praying who didn’t pray before start praying or a sister start dressing modestly. If you keep bringing up the past, then your just playing devil’s advocate. This topic is very deep and I can’t sum it up in a couple of paragraphs but I wanted to just bring awareness so we can speak out about it once we see it.

Anyways, let’s keep everyone in our dua’s.

Some tips to remind ourselves with:

1. Stop bragging about your sins, start asking for forgiveness. Our beloved Prophet said: “No one with the slightest particle of arrogance in his heart will enter paradise.”
2. Don’t say no to Marriage! If you don’t get married then what are you going to do? Exactly, everyone gets lonely eventually, after all Allah swt created Eve for our beloved Prophet Adam.
3. Not everyone is evil, don’t judge the whole world off experiences with certain people, that’s not fair.
4. Don’t backbite about the sins people have committed in the past, that person might have repented and yea you never know!
5. Look in the mirror everyday and thank Allah swt for the progress you have made as a Muslim, we are all struggling and some of us are at different stages than others, be patient with people.

Sorry for the crusty post, haha. Insh’Allah this coming month I’ll try to deliver better.

May Allah (swt) help us take constructive criticism, give us understanding of the deen and dunya! Ameen.

Salam,

I came across a shirt that said “Your breath would make an onion cry”, and it reminded me of an important hadith.

Alot of brothers from time to time come to the masjid with their breaths kicking like soccer.

All of you know what I’m taking about, onions! Maybe garlic also, hehe.

Just in case your Muslim and you don’t already, Abu Huraira reported that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said:

He who eats of this plant (garlic) should not approach our mosque and should not harm us with the odour of garlic.

In another hadith, it was said by Jabir (R):

The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) forbade eating of onions and leek. When we were overpowered by a desire (to eat) we ate them. Upon this the (the Holy Prophet) said: He who eats of this offensive plant must not approach our mosque, for the angels are harmed by the same things as men.

Being clean is half the deen, not only purifying our inner selves but besides doing wudu and taking showers, we should all be on top of other aspects such as having a clean breath. Something so fundamental in Islam is often left aside when we are trying to be a practicing Muslims.

Nowadays Alhumduililah we have alot of options. This includes Alcholol free mouthwash, miswaks, oral b sonic toothbrushes with herbal mint ADA (American Dental Association) approved toothpastes and I forgot the 10,000 options we have for different gums when we enter the grocery aisle.

So the resources are here, we just need to utilize them. At the end of the day, we are all representatives of Islam and we should do our best to present this religion in a beautiful manner to Non Muslims. This begins with our character leading to other aspects such as how we dress, talk, pray, remember Allah swt and help those who are in need.

Don’t take this personally, we are all victims of this. I just find it interesting how some of the most impressive Muslims who stay on top of everything else can’t have a clean breath.

Anyways it’s all good when your fasting though. =)

Here are some quick tips on how to avoid having a bad breath:

1. Do wudu
2. Keep remembering your walking Daw’ah, this will encourage you to keep yourself fresh.
3. Brush your teeth or use mouthwash right after you eat
4.  Use the miswak after you pray
5. Carry some halal gum or mints at all times
6. Don’t go to the Masjid right after you eat onions or garlic unless you kill the odor. After all we wouldn’t go to a job interview in that condition.
7. As stated above, our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him) said the Angels are harmed by them! See this website for more details.

I’m sure there are other ways to get rid of bad breath, share your ideas or tips!

Here is another article I wrote a while back called - Miswak or Toothpaste…just clean your teeth please.

Oh and this article is meant for brothers and sisters, May Allah swt guide us all on the straight path, Ameen.

Since everyone likes to talk about time management these days, I decided to take it back to some wisdom from one of our beloved Sahabah’s.

A few days ago I came across a quote by Hazrat Umar (R) which was very powerful, he said “Do not put off today’s work for tomorrow.”

If your balancing a life mixed with work, family, college and helping out the community then advice like this is very beneficial.

As you live life, simple tasks/errands which pile up can cause a lot of mental cluttering. Personally for college, I used to save assignments till the very last minute, this past semester I learned to be ahead of the game and handle my business earlier.

That way your not procrastinating and stressing about work which you could have completed earlier, after all it was in your control. Rushing will also cause the quality of your work to be less. All the top companies in the Business world plan ahead, this allows them to take advantage of market opportunities when they come that will pay handsome dividends later.

One thing we will never get back in life is time, your not guaranteed another minute and like the scholar told me “the only thing guaranteed in life is death”. So while your here, why not maximize your potential before it’s too late?.

If we continue to avoid being efficient and don’t increase our productivity although we have the time and resources, then our progress will be delayed as Muslims.  As we transition to professional work environments or even through different stages in our academic career, we will be challenged with our time, however we need to tie our camels and trust in Allah (swt).

There are many Hadiths and ayahs from the Qur’an that remind us of the importance of time, I’ll quickly quote two.

1. Abdullah bin Abbas (R) reports that Rasulullah said (صلى الله عليه وسلم) “There are two bounties of Allah wherein most people are deceived, health and free time”. 
2. Secondly, one of the most important Surah’s in the Qur’an, Surah Al-Asr (the declining day).
   
3.  Allah swt says: By the ‘Asr (passage of time),
   Indeed all of mankind is in a state of loss,
   Except those who have emaan (faith),
   Conduct righteous actions,
   Call each other to the truth,
   And call each other to having patience.”

Here are some quick tips on how to maximize your time, a lot of it is common sense:

1. Don’t save little tasks for later when dealing with people, this will just cause more problems and disrupt communication. If you need to respond to an email, don’t tell yourself “Oh, I’ll do it later”. Next thing you know days have passed and a task which could have been completed in literally 5 minutes is now a problem because you left it.
2. Prioritize all your work and give each of your tasks weight.
3. Don’t call it a night unless you sincerely feel like you had a productive day, however you define productive is up to you.
4. Plan your day around the 5 daily prayers, Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad said “A busy life makes prayer harder, but prayer makes a busy life easier”.
5. Keep your commitments real, if you can’t do someone a favor in an expected time frame, let them know in advance. Don’t set their expectations and not deliver, better to be on the safe side.

There you have it, a quick reminder on the importance of time. Now watch yourself, literally!

May Allah swt shower his blessings in the time he has given us and allow us to be productive Muslims, Ameen.

I came across these pictures on facebook and thought they were pretty funny.

May Allah swt perserve Shaykh Bin Bayyah, Ameen!

In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful,

Praise be to God and blessings and peace be upon our master, the Messenger of God

On both religious and humanistic grounds, we are grieved by the decision of the Swiss people to prohibit the construction of minarets for mosques in the independent nation of Switzerland.

We perceive in this decision a new obstruction on the road to coexistence and integration between the various ethnic and religious segments in this country, which is, in the minds and hearts of many Muslims and others, an exemplary model of harmonious coexistence that transcends the stereotypes that some people hold of others.

We also perceive a failed hope—in the most progressive of democracies which is studied in universities and seen as the best practitioner of democracy in the world in the area of constitutional practices—for such a democracy to issue an undemocratic and unconstitutional decision.

We say undemocratic because democracy represents a system of equal opportunity and equality for all, and [this decision represents] the devaluation of ethnicity, color, and religion in its interaction with its citizens. And it is unconstitutional because the constitution supports these concepts—and makes them a standard for cooperation.

Switzerland used to represent all of that. And perhaps, it still does. That is, at least, our hope and desire.

In light of that, we will address messages to four constituencies:

* One is to the Swiss people, the owners of the deep-rooted history in resolving ethnic and linguistic disputes. Our hope is that they will commit to introspection. For a wise man once said, “Turning back to truth is better than continuing one’s march into falsehood.” Similarly, we hope they will make a different decision that ennobles and increases the nation’s human capital in the future and not plunge them into backwardness; a decision that appropriately mirrors their history and serves their true interests, not one that is born of emotion and racism.

* The second message is for the Swiss government. We offer gratitude for its notable stance in expressing its opposition to the extremist points of view and for inviting us to utilize the appropriate constitutional and legal means to appeal this decision.

* Our third message is directed to Europe. Thanks to all of those who continue to cling to the principles of morality and humanity and those who defend human rights in the simplest of its expressions, and especially the European Union, the Vatican, and other commissions. And special thanks go to the Swiss clergy.

We call on those organizations and peoples to challenge the views that have begun to surface in Europe from fanatical right-wing parties that are striving to ignite violent conflict and popularize historical resentment; [to challenge] things that do not support the success of dialogue and the dousing of the fires of tension in the world, a world that has no need for more fires.

And we call on those of goodwill to create a space for tolerance, accord, and coexistence. Construction is not happening only in Europe; it is happening throughout the globe. We are calling on all people of sound minds and wisdom to not content themselves with timid calls [to right action]. They should, instead, be more active and engaged.

* The fourth message is to the Muslims of Switzerland especially, and to those of Europe in general. We offer our blessing in observing your maturity, wakefulness, and prudence. And we invite you to represent the values of your great religion: perseverance, tolerance, and forgiveness. “Yet if anyone is patient and forgives, that is determination that will resolve affairs.” [Qur’an, 42:43]

Therefore, alerting one’s brothers and sisters to [the following] principles appears to be a necessity in both particular and general circumstances:

1. There should be a rational and wise increase in public relations activities which support humanistic principles and the rights of citizenship.

Continue Reading…

So you all remember when the convenience store of Mohammad Sohail was robbed right?

Well the robber who is still unidentified became Muslim after the incident and recently he sent a thank you letter to the store owner (Mohammad) enclosed with a $50 bill.

Here is the letter:

Thanks CNN for sharing the video.

May Allah swt reward brother Mohammad Sohail for his great character and showing mercy, Ameen.

Reminds me of the hadith when our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said:Have mercy to those who are on earth and the one in the heavens will have mercy on you.” (Tirmidhi)

LOL! What’s so oppressing about dressing modestly?

Perhaps this is another breakthrough in mainstream brands marketing to Muslims. Mattel did it on their 50th anniversary.

Britain’s biggest Barbie fan Angela Ellis said of the show: “Bring it on Burka Barbie, I think this is a great idea.”

The 35 year old from Cheshire who has a collection of more than 250 dolls — added: “I think this is really important for girls, wherever they are from they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.”

Brigitte Gabriel, you just officially won “hater of the year award”.

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