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Give charity without delay, for it stands in the way of calamity

The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: “Give charity without delay, for it stands in the way of calamity.” — Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 589

“They ask thee what they should spend (In charity). Say: Whatever wealth ye spend that is good, is for parents and kindred and orphans and those in want and for wayfarers. And whatever ye do that is good — Allah knoweth it well.” — Al-Baqara ( The Cow) 2:215

After a long time in exile, I went back to Somalia in 2005 to see my father for the first time in fourteen years. It was a heartfelt reunion: I had grown up; he had grown older. But there was nothing much I could find to say to him. I had mixed emotions: I was frightened yet excited to meet and get to know relatives who I did not know before.

My father often had visitors in the afternoon, most of them long term friends. Some of them were internally displaced and had no income. Although not in a great position to help others financially, my father always shared the money sent to him by his children (us). I noted my father’s particular care to his old friends as much as his relatives.

There was one man who would never ask for help but came to my father’s house each week. He was pleasant. He had lost his family in the war and later remarried. He had two young sons. I got to know him better. As there were other people asking for financial help, I hardly had any money left, so was incapable of providing him with any financial support. I got back to London. But his face stuck out in my memory. Subsequently, I sent him $50 through my father. My father took it as a gesture of genorosity. No, I did it for myself —to lift my sadness about the man’s plight. Yes, selfish (we help others to help ourselves in whatever way you look at it).

A year later I went back to Somalia again. I saw the man, charming as ever. He visited just as we (my father and I) were about to depart to the airport. I had $20, which I divided between him and a cousin of mine, Abdullahi. The man informed me that he was recently diagnosed with Hipatius, and that he would insha’Allah be cured if he purchased the medication. He said the $10 would do it. I wished him all the best.

I made a promise to myself that I would send some money to the man and to my cousin Abdullahi as soon as I got back to London and started working. In February 2007 news reached me that my cousin had been killed in the outskirt of Kismayo. Sadness overtook me for a while, but life had to go on. I never stopped wanting to send money to the man. I had to save it.

Meanwhile, my father fled the country to Nairobi, Kenya. Although I kept telling my mother that I saw so and so man ( she knew him) and that I would like to send him $100 for medication, I barely made a concious effort to find him…until one day. I telephoned my father and asked the whereabouts of the man. He replied: ‘I will enquire about him’. It took him about a month to find out any information. Sadlly, the man had passed away a few months earlier.

Had I tried harder to send him the money, I would not have felt so guilty about not acting quickly enough. Had I not bought that expensive perfume, perhaps I would have been able to save the $100 earlier.

While I cannot turn the clock back, I learnt to act quickly and timely. I may not be able to help everyone but I try to be charitable in my voice.

“Kind words and the covering of faults are better than charity followed by injury. Allah is free of all wants, and He is Most Forbearing.” — Al-Baqara ( The Cow) 2:263.

Guest Post by Nimo Shire

Hold fast to the rope of Allah

Hold fast to the rope of Allah and never take your faith for granted. These are not empty words.

I have passed through those phases of great despair — despair at my own propensity to overwhelm myself with the same sins over and over — when a voice from within whispers, “There is no hope for you.”

God is Most Merciful insists optimism in one ear. But my sins are too many, too consistent, too repetitive, too foolish, too inexcusable… too much to bear. The pessimistic soul feels them weighing on him too heavily. It is not long before he is contemplating abandoning his soul to destruction, not because he disbelieves in God, but because he disbelieves in himself.

This blog has documented many such troughs in my own life, but I am not alone. A friend’s words were once littered with sentiments such as these, though few noticed at the time, attributing them to modesty or humility instead. “Be who I am not,” they once said, telling us how far we had misjudged them: “From these depths, I see what goodness is, and this is why I want you to aspire to it.”

These were not the words of one who had lost their faith in God, but of one who had lost faith in their own capacity to rise above whatever dragged them down. They saw what faith could do for you, but they had already given up on their own self. Such is the nature of despair.

But who despairs of God’s mercy except one who has gone astray? This verse reverberates in my mind each time I descend into that heavy gloom under the weight of my sins. There remains an intense fear that we take His forgiveness for granted, and that He might withdraw it from us. The fear remains that those sins will come back to haunt us, but hope must prevail for it is the antidote to despair. The ultimate outcome of despair is simply giving up: my sins are too many, too vast, too great, so why bother?

The answer, I have found over recent months, is to make gradual steps towards rectifying one’s condition. For a decade I was unable to read the Qur’an in Arabic, for I told myself that the task of learning it was beyond me, but these past few months I have begun to make progress. For five years my Qur’an teacher instructed us to make a regular habit of reading the Qur’an, but only in the past few months have we begun starting the day with a portion of Ya-Sin and ending it with Surat al-Mulk.

My shortcomings outweigh my progress for sure — and I am not immune to continuing to fail — but it is necessary to put in place an antidote to despair. It is necessary to take small steps now, in order to make greater strides in the future, if the Most Merciful wills. “Certainly,” says our Lord in a Hadith Qudsi reported by al-Tabarani, “I run the affairs of My servants by My knowledge of what is in their hearts.”

In these past few months when our little universe has changed immensely, when great blessings have descended upon us unexpectedly, I have come to appreciate the rope of Allah all the more. In God is the remedy to all of our affairs.

There is no strength except with Allah

It is now two years and a month since I was told that I could never have children. The news was broken by a Locum Doctor while my GP was on her summer holidays – he didn’t know much about the disorder, had to look it up in his medical encyclopaedia, then advised me to read up on it online. What a stupid idea that was; I Googled it, read disturbing descriptions about it and then became exceedingly paranoid. Was all that silence through the years due to this? Was I a bit slow because of this? Was my poor performance at school due to Learning Difficulties? Well no, for the past ten years I have always been honest about this; I was simply very lazy. Nevertheless, the paranoia remains; but it is nothing compared with the emotional pain.

We cancelled our travels that August because of its effect on us. Between us we shed tears; we would sit and read the Qur’an, making the supplications of Zachariah, who cried to his Lord for a child until He answered that prayer. As time went by, however, I began to come to terms with this news and accept it as the absolute truth; while my wife prayed daily, mine became occasional, for the doctors had convinced me of the futility, despite my knowledge that He who created me only needs to say “Be” for new life to come from nothing. Every time my old friends from university announced that they were now a father, my mind told me that I should be happy, but instead I felt sad. With every visit from my niece I had to hold back tears. It is pain like mourning; like losing someone. It is a loss, but others do not understand; life goes on as normal… “How’s the job search going?” “How’s work?” Perhaps these things are not important to me at the moment, perhaps I need some sympathy, some time out to mourn this loss of mine.

It is the pain of knowing that you have reached the end of the line, that you will be an ancestor for no one, that you will never have grandchildren who will ask you about your youth. Surely my family worried that I would raise my children in accordance with my faith, not theirs; but it was a dream of mine that they could trace their Muslim ancestry, that the English Muslim would not forever be viewed as the queer aberration that comes and goes with every conversion and death. Instead there is this pain.

Not long before we received this news I had a dream one night which troubled me. My wife often has what I would call spiritual dreams, but mine are non-descript meanderings of the mind. But this particular dream stood out and bothered me. A huge flood was overcoming me, its waves menacing and fierce, my resting place submerged. Somehow it prepared me for some devastating news and a difficult test. Without a doubt, these two years have been hard, but I have come to terms with it nevertheless.

Things change. From where does one find the strength when he learns that perhaps things are not as clear cut as he was told? In England we were told that the only way to have ‘our own’ children was through donor insemination, a course of action we would never take. But in Turkey where donor insemination is not practiced at all, research has advanced apace to help people in our situation have children of their own – and a good number of men with exactly my condition are now fathers, some to twins and triplets. The strain returns; now there is a possibility that we could have a child, but also the possibility that we will again be disappointed. The treatment running beyond our agreed leave, the strain grows again, the two of us fearing what will happen to our jobs. The financial and emotional burden grows and we wonder from where strength will come.

There have been so many times that I have read the phrase, “There is no strength except with Allah,” but sometimes we have to put advice into practice before we see the truth of something. To rely solely on your Creator is one of the most beautiful aspects of faith. Sleepless for four nights, wandering silently through the streets of Turkey, anxious about all of this, I did not know from where I would find the strength. Like so many times before I lamented that I am not strong enough for this. But instead, finding myself in beautiful mosques, I prayed. Suddenly the situation has altered, relief has come. Our employers were sympathetic, our financial situation okay, the high emotions lessened. It is true: there is no strength except with Allah, the Creator of us all.