How to visit the time of The Prophet Muhammad (saw) and the Sahabah?

Many of us wish we could have lived with the Prophet (saw) and that we could have lived among the greatest community to ever exist... The Sahabah (may Allah be pleased with them all).

We know some of their stories we read the seerah of the Prophet (saw) and we long to be in that time.

Recently myself and my husband have been going though the Seerah of one of the greatest Sahabah Umar Ibn Al Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him ameen) by Imam Anwar Al Awlaki (may Allah preserve him ameen).

Words can not express how wonderful an experience this is for me. Although I may sound surprised I shouldnt really as I have listened to many lectures by Imam Anwar and each time Im blown away by not only his style of delivering the lecture but the wonderful amoun of detail he goes into.

Listening to this particular set has realy allowed me to feel as if I too am walking the streets of Makkah and Madinah with the Sahabah as if I am witnessing how Umar (ra) arrived at the door of Dar Al Arkam to declare his faith in Allah, as if I climbed up the mountain after the battle of Uhud with the prophet (saw) and the sahabah to the point that when the Imam spoke about the death of the Prophet (saw) and when he narrated the words of Abu Bakr Siddiq (ra) I felt as if the prophet (saw) had just passed away and I was left with tears streaming down my face.

There is so much to be learnt from the lives of the Sahabah they were after all the best of generations. And I have never come across anyone who has told the story of the life of Umar(ra) so well masha'Allah.

My advice to anyone and everyone who reads this post is to go right now and get these cds and listen for yourself. Also available by Imam Anwar are The life of Muhammad Makkan period and Madinah period part 1, Abu Bakr (ra), The Here After, Lives of the prophets and various other single lectures.

Last 10 Nights!

The last 10 nights of Ramadhan are fast approaching us... Oh my how this blessed month has already flown by so quickly.

Here is a short but beautiful dua to memorise which can be used in sujood, after our prayers... when are sitting at our office desks with 2 seconds to spare basically when ever we have time insha'Allah also after the month of Ramadhan we should continue to stick onto the good habits we adopt in this blessed month so of course carry on using the dua through out the year insha'Allah.

So its time for us all to humble ourselves before our Lord and get our heads onto the floor and beg for His Mercy, Guidance and Forgiveness.

Aishah (radhiya Allahu Ta’ala anha), reported that she said:

“O Messenger of Allāh! What if I knew which nightLailatul-Qadr was, then what should I say in it?”

He said ‘Say:

اَللهُمَّ إنَّكَ عَفُوٌّ تُحِبُّ الْعَفْوَ فَاعْفُ عَنِّيْ.

Allahumma innaka ‘affuwwun tuhibbul ‘afwa fa’fu ‘anni’ ”

O Allāh You are The One Who pardons greatly, and loves to pardon, so pardon me.

(Tirmīdhī)

Forever Grateful! Alhamdulillah!

I recently had a wonderful to trip to Uganda in Africa. Apart from really enjoying myself there with family etc I really had an eye opener to the world.

Here in the west well in the UK anyways we spend so much time moaning and complaining about what we dont have and we even moan about what we do have. We need this and that etc and I could go on. Then we see people who have really been blessed and they have so much but they are not really happy... on a day to day basis you dont see them smiling in their every day lives, laughing and joking, speaking pleasently to one another etc... perhaps Im being slightly harsh but whenI saw the simple and poor people in Africa this is what it seems like.

The people in the villages and even on the outskirts of Kampala are so poor they do not even have the basic hygiene facilities we all take for granted, their children grow up on the road sides in torn clothing which barely covers their bodies and they take their afternoon naps curled up in he dirt on the bare floor. But when you see them... its amazing as they look so happy subhana'Allah! Full of smiles for each other and full of smiles for me the complete strange driving past. Its strange as although I could clearly see the state they were living in complete poverty I mean one little girl I stopped to talk to when she went to call her mother from the house I saw that the tiny hut they had for a home did not even have a front door to close it was just the frame of a door but no actual door, even though I saw this with my own eyes I felt a deep longing to want to live along side them, to join into their simple but happy lives, I wanted to be part of them.

Their buildings are barely what we would call buildings... small tiny huts, their shops are hardly the Tesco's, or Asda's with neatly and cleanely displayed fruits yet their little homes look so welcoming and their stalls look so fresh and appetising. I kept asking myself... 'Can these people really be so happy? and IF so how and why?'

I then asked my husband who grew up in Uganda 'These poor people are they happy?' 'Yes' he replied, 'Because their lives are simple'. Thats is that was the secret. Its because they dont have such a huge standard to live by they dont have this idea in their heads that need this and that to be happy etc. They work hard, enough to live by and are happy with that alhamdulillah.

These people make the most our of everything... look at their bus stops when they do have them most of the time they dont have even that but when they do its so simple, so humbling.

They make use out of everything... from making shoes out of a disgarded foot ball or tire as its been punctured, to turning a wire hanger into a small model motor bike or car. Even a small ditch on the road side is turned into a car wash! These people dont sit around moaning that they have no means to work they turn what we may call rubbish into work.



Its amazing how much one can learn from what we call 'The 3rd World'. So many lessons of basic humanity we can learn from them if only we opened our eyes.



Having said all of this, at the same time... you do see how much in need these people are and many a time whilst driving past these people I could not help but cry. One time I small boy in torn up clothes who was filled with dust and dirt looked up and saw me slowly driving past, his face beamed with happiness as he waved me goodbye... this made me cry why I dont know.

Another time something which deeply affected me was a small girl I saw. She must have been about 5 years old. Again her clothes were torn, her hair was matted, her body full of dust and she was struggling as she walked down the street as she was carrying a dirty heavy container filled with water. It was one of the most heart breaking things I have ever seen in my life, why not only because of the effort she was goign through to take water home, not only because she was so young, not only because the state she was in but also because even though she was going through all of this effort carrying this container which was easily the same weight as he frail body but also because... at the bottom of this container there was a hole where the water was leaking out from. How far she had to travel I dont know how many time a day she had to do this I dont know but what I Do know is that a child her age should not be doing that. It was so sad to see this. Her face was full of struggle it actually looked like an old women yet when I stopped her to offer her something and when her face beamed into a smile through all the dirt it actually glowed and I saw the child in her the baby in her and I cried and thought to myself... never again do I have the right to moan or complain about what I dont have let alone moan about what I do have and never again do I have the right to moan about how much house work I have. It was a huge reminder of how grateful we all need to be of the countless blessings we have been given. Alhamdulillah!

I choose Heaven at my feet!

Well firstly I welcome all of you and myself back to my lonely blog! For my old visitors you can see Ive given it a facelift of some sort.

Anyways for ages Ive always wanted to read an article, story or even a comment which expresses clearly and simply the issue of men and women in Islam and finally just the other day I received one in my inbox which I thought to share here.

Woman's Reflection on Leading Prayer: Yasmin Mogahed

'Given my privilege as a woman, I only degrade Myself by trying to be something I'm not--and in all honesty--don't want to be: a man. As women, we will never reach true liberation until we stop trying to mimic men, and value the beauty in our own God-given distinctiveness.'
On March 18, 2005 Amina Wadud led the first female-led Jumuah (Friday)prayer. On that day women took a huge step towards being more like men. But, did we come closer to actualizing our God given liberation?I Don't think so.
What we so often forget is that God has honored the woman by giving her value in relation to God not in relation to men. But as western feminism erases God from the scene, there are no standard left but men. As a result the western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the standard, and thus a woman can never be a full human being until she becomes just like a man-the standard.
When a man cut his hair short, she wanted to cut her hair short. When a man joined the army, she wanted to join the army. She wanted these things for no other reason than because the 'standard' had it. What she didn't recognize was that God dignifies both men and women in their distinctiveness-not their sameness. And on March 18, Muslim women made the very same mistake.
For 1400 years there has been a consensus of the scholars that men are to lead prayer. As a Muslim woman, why does this matter? The one who leads prayer is not spiritually superior in any way. Something is not better just because a man does it. And leading prayer is not better,just because it's leading. Had it been the role of women or had it been more divine, why wouldn't the Prophet have asked Ayesha or Khadija, or Fatima-the greatest women of all time-to lead?
These women were promised heaven-and yet they never lead prayer.
But now for the first time in 1400 years, we look at a man leadingprayer and we think, 'That's not fair.' We think so although God hasgiven no special privilege to the one who leads. The imam is no higher in the eyes of God than the one who prays behind.
On the other hand, only a woman can be a mother. And God has given special privilege to a mother. The Prophet taught us that heaven liesat the feet of mothers. But no matter what a man does he can never be a mother. So why is that not unfair?
When asked who is most deserving of our kind treatment? The Prophet replied 'your mother' three times before saying 'your father' only once.
And yet even when God honors us with something uniquely feminine, we are too busy trying to find our worth in reference to men, to value it-or even notice. We too have accepted men as the standard; so anything uniquely feminine is, by definition, inferior. Being sensitive is an insult, becoming a mother-a degradation.
In the battle between stoic rationality (considered masculine) and self-less compassion (considered feminine), rationality reigns supreme.
As soon as we accept that everything a man has and does is better, all that follows is just a knee jerk reaction: if men have it-we want ittoo. If men pray in the front rows, we assume this is better, so we want to pray in the front rows too. If men lead prayer, we assume the imam is closer to God, so we want to lead prayer too. Somewhere along the line we've accepted the notion that having a position of worldly leadership is some indication of one's position with God.
A Muslim woman does not need to degrade herself in this way. She has God as a standard. She has God to give her value; she doesn't need aman.
In fact, in our crusade to follow men, we, as women, never even stopped to examine the possibility that what we have is better for us.In some cases we even gave up what was higher only to be like men.
Fifty years ago, society told us that men were superior because they left the home to work in factories. We were mothers. And yet, we were told that it was women's liberation to abandon the raising of another human being in order to work on a machine. We accepted that working in a factory was superior to raising the Foundation of society -just because a man did it.
Then after working, we were expected to be superhuman-the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect homemaker -and have the perfect career. And while there is nothing wrong, by definition, with a woman having a career, we soon came to realize what we had sacrificed by blindly mimicking men. We watched as our children became strangers and soon recognized the privilege we'd given up.
And so only now-given the choice-women in the West are choosing to stay home to raise their children.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, only 31percent of mothers with babies, and 18 percent of mothers with two or more children, are working full-time. And of those working mothers, a survey conducted by Parenting Magazine in 2000, found that 93% of them say they would rather be home with their kids, but are compelled to work due to 'financial obligations'. These 'obligations' are imposed on women by the gender sameness of the modern West, and removed fromwomen by the gender distinctiveness of Islam.
It took women in the West almost a century of experimentation to realize a privilege given to Muslim women 1400 years ago.
Given my privilege as a woman, I only degrade myself by trying to be something I'm not--and in all honesty--don't want to be: a man. As women, we will never reach true liberation until we stop trying to mimic men, and value the beauty in our own God-given distinctiveness.
If given a choice between stoic justice and compassion, I choose compassion. And if given a choice between worldly leadership and heaven at my feet - I choose Heaven.