So many preachers preaching. So few apparently practising what they preach. Do you order righteousness of the people and forget yourselves, while you recite the scripture? Will you not reason? Quran 2:44 These the words that spring to mind encountering the multitude of preachers that teem online. Would there be any need for such preaching if …
Worship none but God. Be good to your parents and kinsfolk, to orphans and the poor. Speak good words to all people. Establish and keep up the prayer. Pay the prescribed alms and give charity. Do not shed one another’s blood. Do not evict one another from their homes.
“Are we living in the end times?” asks the internet. Well, clearly the lifespan of every human is finite. Thus, for every generation, these are certainly the end times. Each of us is hurtling towards our end. For some, death comes too soon, while a few may see out a century. In the nineteenth century …
Never does the vanity and conceit of self-praising preachers get any less vulgar. To see sages traipsing the stage praising themselves is quite bizarre. What next? Playing recordings of others praising them? Long ago we learned that the act of praising another is akin to breaking their back. Throw dust in the face of those …
Today’s khutbah was about Abu Bakr, the famous companion of the Prophet, peace be upon him. The imam told the congregation that he was the first Muslim — or rather, the first to believe in the prophethood of Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Abdal Muttalib ibn Hashim. On our way out of the mosque after the …
From a little town called Bethlehem
Speaking of the events of the day with a guest at the weekend, I confessed that I’m the least qualified to express an opinion given that I’m not a fighter at all. “You’re basically a pacifist,” they nodded, smiling. A fair diagnosis, for I believe war should be a last resort. A necessary evil at …
I wake again in the middle of the night with intense agitation in my heart. I think it’s a result of my subconscious turning over our attempt to give our youngest some independence. Perhaps we are overprotective and overly restrictive parents, but my anxiety seems to have shot through the roof on their return. We …
You may not like it, but one day — an epoch the like of which is fifty thousand years — we will all be held to account. Indeed, God does not wrong the people at all, but it is the people who are wronging themselves. Quran 10:44 It terrifies me. What about the warmongers, responsible …
Rays from the same lamp, needed now more than ever. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall …
And hasten to forgiveness from your Lord and a garden as wide as the heavens and earth, prepared for the righteous. Those who donate during ease and hardship and who restrain anger and who pardon the people — and God loves the doers of good. Quran 3:133-4
