LESSON # 42.

Alhamdolillah, we are four months into our Taleem ul Quran Course now and it couldn't have passed any quicker. Three years, that seemed so long when I was registering for the course, have started seeming so short now. Especially since we completed Surah Al-Baqarah last week. The longest surah of the Quran, we had went over it's tafseer already and I coudn't hep but feel at loss for all the classes I had missed, all it's ehkamaat that I had faied to implement and all that I might have forgotten already.

So there I was, sitting and thinking about how I could improve on these mistakes, when we did our, yet another, beautiful tafseer lesson, today. I thought how lucky I was to be still sitting here and being blessed with the oppertunity to listen to Allah's beautiful Words again. Ahamdolillah. I realized how dreadful it would be to lose this, as my ustaza says "Use it or lose it!" and there are far better people than me out there, who could get so much more out of these than me.

So, here are some of the lessons we derived from the 9 verses(23-32 A'al-Imran) Today.

"...those who were given a portion of the Scripture...then a party of them  turns away.." (3:23)

• It is not necessary that one who has knowledge will be acting upon it too.

Even though these people of The Book had knowledge from their books, that what they were being called towards was the truth, they turned away from it. It is important to evaluate ourselves, are we acting upon the little knowledge, that we do have, of the deen? Are we at least trying to act upon it? or we turn away like they did?

.."O Allah , Owner of Sovereignty, You give sovereignty to whom You will and You take sovereignty away from whom You will." ...(3:26)

• The real owner of all power and status is Allah. To seek it from any means other than Him is foolishness. 

We slack in our religious duties because we are too busy chasing after worldly gains. We forget that Allah is the One Who Owns the world, too. How silly are we, displeasing Him to seek that which belongs to Him?

..You honor whom You will and You humble whom You will...(3:26)

Being hesitant in acting 'religious' because that would humble us in the eyes of people. Hanging with the 'cool crowd' because that would make us cool. We have it al wrong. He is the source of all Honour and Glory. It is only Allah that we should seek for these things and His is the only path that can actually lead us to them.

Say, [O Muhammad], "If you should love Allah , then follow me, [so] Allah will love you and forgive you..." (3:31)

We claim to love every other meal that we eat and new dress that we buy but is it truy love? Love, according to scholars, is the emotion that brings you so close to the object of love, that everything except it, the beloved, perishes. All that matters is the pleasure of the beloved. Allah Says that His pleasure can be sought by following the footsteps of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. A measure of our love, our true love, for Allah is how much are we trying to follow the  Sunnah of The Holy Prophet.
ALSO, Allah Says that He will Love us if we do that. So if we want to know how much Allah Loves us, we can find out by checking how much of the sunnah do we follow.
One wonders why not just follow Allah's Commands? Because among all of Allah's creation Prophet Muhammad  (صلى الله عليه و سلم) was blessed with the Title of Habeeb Ullah (The Beloved of Allah). So to be His beloveds we must be like the one who was THE Beloved.
A plus point for all of us who cant help but wish for instant worldly benefits too: 

The Prophet said, "If Allah loves a person.... then he is granted the pleasure of the people on the earth."

Following every command of Allah is such a Win win for both this world and the hereafter. May Allah make us all realize that and may we follow more and more of His commands to attain His Love. Ameen. :)

SHYING AWAY FROM THE TRUTH.

"Verily, Allah is not ashamed to set forth a parable even of a mosquito or so much more when it is bigger (or less when it is smaller) than it. ..."

                                                                                                      Surat Al Baqarah: 26.

The tafseer of the above mentioned verse of The Holy Quran is very vast and several lessons have been derived from it. But one of those lessons struck me more than the rest, probably because it is the one I mostly try to avoid. When it was here, in the Words of Allah, giving His own example, it was too strong a lesson to overlook.

                                   NEVER SHY AWAY FROM THE TRUTH.
                     NEVER BE ASHAMED OF SAYING THAT WHICH IS RIGHT.

Previously, I thought Godly Attributes were not for humans to aim for. Until I came across Imam Al-Ghazali's book '99 Names of Allah'. In it he briefly describes the characteristics associated with each of Allah's 99 Blessed Names and how we can adopt some of those characteristics in our limited human capacities. 

Shying away from mentioning the truth is something I find myself doing ever so often. There are innumerable excuses I could list for different occasions where I couldn't muster up the courage to say the truth, which I knew of. From the little I have learnt from my usatazas, I do know that my no.1 excuse has always been completely invalid i.e "They will not accept it".  Why most of us fall in falsehood is because of our ignorance, if some of us have been given the blessing of knowledge it is our duty, not an option, to convey it regardless of its acceptance or rejection. My perception of their reactions is only but a display of shallowness of my faith. If an unbelieving man who set out with a naked sword to end the life of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him)  ended up having good deeds equal to the number of stars in the sky, because someone dared to stop him midway to inform him of the truth. How can you and I, expect any less of a fellow believing Muslim? When we were astray and Allah sent along the learned to help us out of it.

In fact, my shying away from the truth always has to do with what I fear to be their reaction towards me, rather than what I have said.

What I think will happen if I advise my friends against backbiting.

What I fear will happen.

What  really might happen.

What I sadly end up doing. (No more inshaAllah.)

P.S I'm far from good myself. I was feeling guilty for not sharing anything from what I have been learning these past few weeks. May Allah Help us all in becoming the true reflections of His Commands and Attributes. Amen :)

Discovering Ourselves.

I found myself smiling during my isha Salah (namaz) a while ago. I instantly blamed it on Satan and thought "Booya Shaitan! Do all the tricks you want till today, You are getting chained up tomorrow for good! "

Allah's Messenger  said, "Ramadan, a blessed month, has come to you during which Allah has made it obligatory for you to fast. In it the gates of Heaven are opened, the gates of al-Jahim are locked, and the rebellious devils are chained..."                           -Hadith al Tirmidhi #1962

This is what I love the absolute most among the countless blessings of Ramadan. I usually blame every shortcoming on Satan and hardly ever bring my nafs to blame. In Ramadan, when we know Satans are chained and all that we do is a result of our own nafs/desires/heart's wishes or whatever anyone might want to call it. 

This is the time when one gets to identify their real self. We might not like what we find ourselves to really be, its easy to forgive ourselves when we have shaitan to blame all the time but it gets hard to accept that this evil could come from within ourselves too. BUT that is the point of it, we get to identify the wrong in us and have the perfect opportunity to get rid of it in these 30 Blessed days and be prepared to fight the devil with a super clean heart when this month comes to an end and (sadly) Satans are unchained.

I hope I wont be finding myself smiling over worldly thoughts while standing in Salah before Allah during the next 30 days.. but if I do, I would be very lucky to have realized its source, being my heart, and try to improve on it. For if we never know a fault and its cause we can never fix it. One cant expect to randomly keep on adding spices if the food doesn't seem to taste right, its only going to get worse. I cant expect to get khushu in my namaz if I keep on reciting duas for protection from Satan when he isn't the source of the problem. It is only going to distress me more due to its ineffectiveness. Be a little more mindful of your actions in Ramadan and analyse yourself. Not only do we get to know ourselves better this way but have more ease in identifying the traps of shaitan, which we find ourselves falling into, during days other than Ramadan.

So I cant wait to get in touch with the real me again in a few hours inshaAllah, with no whispering into my mind by the shayateen! :D  I hope we all make the best use of all the blessings of Ramadan and find ourselves much closer to Allah by the end of it :) Amen.

Mattar Pulao Anyone?

As soon as my mother opened the door to let me in, as i got back home from school, after greeting her with salam my first question was "It smells weird, did you cook biryani?" She replied telling me that it was 'mattar pulao', this came as a little disappointment but no worries, I was stuffed after having a hotdog sandwich in school.

Mama said she had intended to give some of the rice to the maids but they never showed up so she was hoping the kids from the 'kachi abaadi' nearby would show up in the street for something and she would give it to them instead. Just as we finished discussing the whole rice issue, we heard some kids in the street and my mama quite literally 'leapt at the opportunity' and called them in. As the two little brothers were leaving, with the rice in one hand and trash bags in the other, I saw the two most adorable little girls walking by our gate. The little boys called to them and told them to come get food too. I couldn't get over their smiles and surprise for several minutes after they left.

I still had not really processed the lesson i was to derive from this experience. I went upstairs to my room. The curtains had been pulled back to let in the rays of the scarce winter sun. Through the window I saw the two little boys, sitting by the side of the drainage canal, amidst the garbage they looked like they were having the time of their lives and there couldn't have been a better place to rest and a better meal to eat.
Seeing this I remembered my reply, after being told that mattar pulao was cooked, had been "I really don't get why people even cook that?(I like meat)."
I felt ashamed of my ingratitude, yet thankful that God had given me a buzzer so quickly to help me identify the feeling and try getting rid of it (Inshallah).


Absorbed in a serious discussion over lunch. ^_^
That's as good as my phone's 5MP camera can get.

Reading Affairs.

There is this world of happy thoughts and sweet words. Its so beautiful that you even fall in love with its dirt and ugliness. I wonder why, or how could i ever fall out of love with it? how did i leave all those novels midway?
Now that i am back to loving it, i feel like i wasn't being me all this time while away from it.

All it took was 5 pages of confusion from To Kill A Mocking Bird. Like i mentioned earlier, it did nothing to help cure the headache but it did make me consider if the headache was all i needed to get fixed.

That bookworm who thought sitting in the school ground during a cricket match, reading a novel will make you look cool not retarded, is resurfacing. I am SO excited to be that person again who dreams about squirrels and wakes up claiming to have had the best dream ever.

This post is turning out to be just enough of a blend of confusion and fun. Winter fun, when sighs are cold yet warm. haha!

I Love God for this and everything <3

Of Apples and I

Apples have gained a lot of popularity recently, and we all know whose those 3 famous apples are that everyone talks about.
If apples could speak, they would be cursing people for using them as a part of jokes and labels but still never being given enough importance for the fruit they are.
I love apples. Even though it started as an arranged relation, when the doctor informed my mother that i had iron deficiency and was supposed to have iron rich foods; apples.

I have my own Top #3 Apples list and trust me, they are way better than yours.

no.1 (because i don't like starting the top 3 count backwards. its just annoying)



Friends ♥
Joey ♥
Joey's apple Ѽ
how can other apples be loved more than that is beyond me.

no 2


Oh how much we owe to this apple. The apple which keeps the doctor away. i do, a lot. True story.


no. 3


THE APPLE. which tastes oh-so-awesome. Ok, actually i just had this apple the other day and it looked so beautiful i had to snap a few pics of it. Then the 5 minutes i spent attempting to make my phone's camera's product look a little better. It rightly deserves this position.

Class in 15 mins. dont have time to prepare breakfast now =/ Guess what im going to eat then?:)
Not an apple. ha.ha

Disclaimer: Resemblance of the last two apples to any other supposedly famous apple is purely coincidental. They would have not intended to copy my picture. Even if they did, I being the bigger person forgive them.

Another Friday evening.

Friday evenings are the best part of the week for me.
I have my Al huda class every Friday evening and on the way back as i look at the same old roads through the car's window, everything looks so beautiful, so much better. All the dirt that had been collecting in me since the last 7 days, it is blown away by the air blowing in through the window.
Today during the same journey back home from my 'Reality Touch' class, I took out my phone and started deleting stuff to make space so i could take pictures of the sky(Bad-phone-days). It looked ever so beautiful, i have never seen so many colours so well distinguished on it.. but then, that is what i always think while looking at Islamabad's evening sky.
I couldn't take the pictures because all my phone's camera lens could capture was blank dark nothing-ness, but it didn't really matter. In fact that wasn't even supposed to be a part of this post. Anyway, instead of going home, i was informed that we have to go to the market to do some stuff my brother needed done and i happily agreed thinking i would get myself a good cup of coffee from there.
The place where we were supposed to go to turned out to be right next to OPTP so i decided to have their fries instead. There were a bunch of guys standing on the counter when we reached and they were still there when we were going back, so i figured out the place was taking too long in making their food so it was better to just not order from there.. also those guys were kinda creepy.heh.
We couldn't get the work done which we had went for due to which moods had shifted a little towards the darker side and i couldn't ask to be taken anywhere to get anything, so i had to return home with unsatisfied hunger AND thirst.
In the end i had to make both; fries and coffee myself. While i was at it, i remembered how this seems so much better in winters.. how not getting a coffee burn on the tongue is a disappointment in winters whereas the same burns make one curse in the summer.
Winters are truly love and i cant wait to experience the Friday evenings of this one. =)



Here is to winters :D