بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Please benefit from and share the following Rabi’ al-Awwal advice recently delivered by Sayyidi Habib Umar and translated by Ustadh Amin Buxton (Allah preserve and increase him and his teachers).

May Allah Most High bless us with remembrance of Him and His Beloved (Allah bless him and grant him peace) in this noble month, make us amongst those who are mentioned in His Presence, and bless our hearts with noble intentions that raise us to the ranks of those beloved to Him.

Welcoming Rabi` al-Awwal
By Seeking the Pleasure of Allah and His Messenger

Sayyidi al-Habib Umar bin Hafiz (may Allah preserve him) said (Mawlid, Dar al-Mustafa, 3rd Rabi` al-Awwal/ 26th January 2012):

The new moon of Rabi` al-Awwal has appeared, the month in which Allah brought forth His best
and perfect slave, His Chosen One, His Beloved, The Most Noble of the First and the Last in the
sight of the Lord of the Worlds. His uncle `Abbas addressed him at the end of his life, on their
return from Tabuk, his last expedition, with the following verse:

When you were born the earth and the horizons were illuminated by your light
We remain bathed in that glow and it continues to light the path as we travel it

Every mawlid composed later is merely echoing what the Companions said to the Chosen One.
They were the first people to celebrate the mawlid.

Our Master `Isa will descend to the earth and you will see how he will be ennobled by following
Muhammad. Any of you that are with him at that time will see how he mentions the Master of
Creation. His heart and the hearts of those present will be filled with veneration when they
mention his name. He knows our Master Muhammad better than us, for  a Prophet knows a
Prophet. No member of this nation knows him in the way that the Spirit of Allah.

They said this openly: “All that we knew of the Messenger of Allah was his shadow.”

This is how the Master of the Followers, Uways al-Qarani, addressed the greatest of the
Companions, our Masters `Umar and `Ali, who knew the Beloved better than anyone. He said:
“All that you knew of the Messenger of Allah was his shadow.”

They said: “True, all that we knew of the Messenger of Allah was his shadow.”

Direct your hearts to attain His pleasure and a portion of His gifts. In every day and night there
are gifts, and in every month, and in this month in particular. You attain these gifts according to
your connection to the one who taught us, the unique one. Take a portion of his vast, noble,
priceless teachings, with sincere desire, to attain the reality of:

It is more fitting that they please Allah and His Messenger if they are truly believers. (Al-Tawbah, 9:62)

Strive in this noble month to please the Chosen One, seeking to please Allah. Please him with
your intentions, your ambitions, your words and deeds. Allah is pleased with those that praise
his Prophet, those that venerate His Prophet, those that support His Prophet. He is pleased with
that which pleases the Prophet.

It is more fitting that they please Allah and His Messenger if they are truly believers

You have spent so much of your time and thoughts seeking to please yourself, your family, your
relatives and your friends. This may have caused you to travel from one country to another.
Have you sought the pleasure of the Beloved? How much do you think about this? How much do
you worry about this? How far have you travelled seeking his pleasure? How much hardship
have you borne? How much have you sacrificed? There is nothing on the earth or in this life
whose pleasure is more worthy of seeking than Muhammad.

It is more fitting that they please Allah and His Messenger if they are truly believers

According to your faith you strive to please  Allah’s Beloved.  Seek his pleasure! When the
Companions saw that he was pleased, when his face shone with happiness, they said: “It was
more beloved to us than red camels.” Nothing was harder for them to bear than seeing him
angry, seeing the vein between his blessed eyes swell up.

Look for the true meaning of seeking his pleasure in this month. You won’t find it on the satellite
channels. Seek it from its source, connect to the light of his message. This will show you how to
seek his pleasure, in which is the pleasure of the Most High. If  you have in your heart an
attribute which does not please him, then strive to rid your heart of it. He is not pleased with
arrogance, so do not be content to show arrogance, even to inanimate objects, let alone animals
or humans, for the Lord of all things dislikes you doing this.

Seek it by giving life to the sunnah in your house in Rabi` al-Awwal! If your family are heedless of
Allah between Maghrib  and `Isha, joking or watching TV  then bring to life the sunnah of
venerating this time. Teach them at home at this time. If they are young teach them the Arabic
letters so that they are connected to the Qur’an. If they are older, go over with them the Qur’an
they have memorised.

If the sunnah of seeking forgiveness before Fajr is absent, bring it to life in Rabi` al-Awwal. Let
there be at least one person seeking forgiveness before Fajr in the house, one person saying to
the Oft-Forgiving “forgive me!” at the time which Allah loves for people to seek His forgiveness,
at the time when delegations came to the door of the Bestower.

If no-one in the house prays in congregation then teach your wife, your sister, your daughter to
only pray in congregation. Bring life to these sunnahs. Remove anything that displeases your
Lord from your house, anything that displeases your Prophet, audio or visual. Let the house be
filled in Rabi` with the remembrance of the Beloved, with the mention of his attributes, his life,
his birth. You will be enlightened and so will your family.

Allah bless the people of good who are striving in the East and West,  the people who are
remembering and reciting the mawlid, for they are the keys to removing tribulation. People
raising their voices with the remembrance of Allah and His Messenger in their houses, in the
mosques and in the streets causes hardships to be relieved. So many Muslim groups have lost
the way. They do not know how to rectify themselves or those around them. They do not seek it
from the door that Allah has opened:

Allah will not change what is in a people until they change what is in themselves. (Al-Ra`d, 13:11)

Let us change what is in our selves. Let us make our children feel that Rabi` al-Awwal has
entered, and that it is connected to the Beloved. Make them feel that their lives are founded
upon loving him, venerating him and following him. This is the foundation of the whole religion.
May Allah grant you strong ambition and high intentions! May the end of the month not come
before some of the rays of the Beloved’s light bring some relief to the suffering of the Muslims.

O Lord, bless us in this month. Bless us in our remembrance of You and Your Messenger. Make
us amongst those who are mentioned in Your presence, and amongst those who are mentioned
in his presence.  Bless our hearts with noble intentions that raise us to the ranks of those
beloved to You, so that we on the Day of Judgement we are with those that you mentioned:

The Day on which Allah will not humiliate the Prophet and those who believe with him.

Make us with him, and our families, our children, our friends, our neighbours, our students.

Their light will run before them and by their right hands, while they say: “O Lord, perfect our
light for us, and forgive us, for You have power over all things.” (Al-Tahrim,  66:8)

If anyone has anything in their heart that prevents them from seeking Your pleasure and Your
Messenger’s pleasure then remove it  so that they prefer You and Your Messenger over
everyone else.  So that when we sleep tonight nothing is more beloved to us than You and Your
Messenger. Increase us in love tomorrow and in the coming days until we meet You, O Most
Generous!

Complete Playlist (10 parts)

CMC Retreat organized by the Chicago Mawlid Committee in Chicago, IL in January 2012.

Imam Busiri said in his Burdat al-Madeeh:
It [the Quran] has meanings like the waves of the sea in perpetuity
And greater than the jewels of the sea in perfection and value.
Its wonders cannot be counted nor comprehended
And its oft-recitation cannot be described by boredom.
The eye of the reciter has cooled by its recitation so I said to him
You have succeeded by the means of the rope of Allah, so hold fast to it!

The Qur’an, being the revealed Word of God, and the final Divine Revelation to mankind, contains great wisdoms and insights. However, few Muslims ever seek to understand the Quranic message in its totality; in fact, most works of exegesis (tafsir) are word-for-word explanations. In the Pearls from the Infinite Sea, we aspire to understand the Quranic edict in its major themes and messages, by studying the Quran in its totality. Shaykh Samer Nass is an expert in Quranic exegesis and Quranic recitations, having attained mastery of the ten recognized methods of Quranic recitation, a feat that few in the world today have accomplished.

Biography:
Shaykh Samir al-Nass was born in Damascus, Syria, where he studied at the College of Medicine of the University of Damascus. He went on to study in the United States where he qualified in internal medicine.

The Shaykh has studied under some of the great ‘ulama of the Levant (Shaam) and the Arabian peninsula. He has a traditional license to teach (ijazah) in the ten styles of recitation of the narration of the Shatibiyyah and the Durra from Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar. He received an ijazah in the ten styles of recitation of the narration of Tayyibah from the Egyptian Shaykh Ahmad Mustafa in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, himself a student of Shaykh Abd al-Aziz al-Zayyat of Egypt. Shaykh Samir has a traditional license to teach (ijazah) in Islamic law (fiqh) and theology and creed (‘aqida) from the previous Mufti of Syria, Shaykh Abu Yusr Ibn `Abidin, Shaykh Lutfi al-Fayumi, and the late Hanafi Mufti, Shaykh Adib al-Kallas.

Shaykh Samir was honoured to study hadith in Mecca with the great Indonesian-Meccan Shaykh Yasin al-Fadani, and with Shaykh Nur ud-din `Itr of Syria. He also has an ijazah in Prophetic traditions (hadith) from the late Shaykh `Abd Allah Siraj al-Din of Aleppo, Syria.

Shaykh Samir is presently a teacher in the al-Fatih al-Islami University in Damascus, teaching the Hanafi fiqh manual Al-Hidayah in the department of Islamic Law (Shariah), and lecturer on the ten recitations of the Qur’an in the MA programme. The Shaykh teaches Qur’anic recitation (tajwid) after fajr prayers daily in the blessed mosque of Shaykh Ibn `Arabi, a post given to him by his Shaykh and father-in-law, one of the illustrious Shaykhs of Quran in the Levant (Sham), the late Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar. Shaykh Samir has been teaching at various Islamic studies intensive courses in England and North America since 2000.

More:

Chicago Mawlid

This video illustrates part of the introduction for a series of lectures by the brilliant Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf, entitled Purification of the Heart.

At the wonderful Reviving the Islamic Spirit (Canada 2011) conference, Habib Ali al-Jifri transmitted the hadith of love. This is a hadith transmitted contiguously with each narrator telling the one they’re narrating it to the same advice that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) gave to his companion, Mu`adh ibn Jabal:

Mu’adh (Allah be pleased with him) relates that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Mu`adh, by Allah I love you. I counsel you not to leave saying after each prayer: ’Allahumma a’inni ‘ala dhikrika wa shukrika, wa husni ‘ibadatik’ (O Allah, assist me in remembering You; in being thankful to You; and in worshipping You with excellence).” [Abu Dawud and Nasa'i]

وعن معاذ رضي الله عنه، أن رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم، أخذ بيده وقال‏:‏ ‏ “‏يا معاذ، والله إني لأحبك، ثم أوصيك يا معاذ لا تدعن في دبر كل صلاة تقول‏:‏ اللهم أعني على ذكرك وشكرك، وحسن عبادتك‏”‏‏.‏ حديث صحيح، ‏(‏‏(‏رواه أبو داود والنسائي

Transcribed by Sr. Shagufta Pasta

This is what living in breaths is about. It’s about being present in yourself, being present in the time that you are, in the place that you are. And not to live in another world of what I’m going to do this evening, what I’m going to do tomorrow, the things I want to do next year, or worrying about the past.

The ordinary human being is torn between all sorts of you could say, illusionary considerations. Feeling regret about things in the past, worrying about things in the past, living in the past, (reliving the glories of the past) or more frequently, we live in terms of the future, of things that we want to do, places that want to go.

The spiritual path is one of getting in the present moment, being where you are. Being aware of the situation you are in, being aware of yourself, your breaths and everything else about you. But also being aware of people that are with you, the needs of people with you. Being conscious of your breaths, that in every breath you take, there is a special destiny just in that breathing. You didn’t create that, God created that for you, you acquired it. So that has the spiritual effect of anchoring you in the present moment. Living in the present moment. Not living in your dreams, or your ideas or your fears or your expectations or anything else. That is really really important. That means also to be thankful for what you have now, instead of when I get this, when I go there, when this time is up, things will be so good. No. Where are you right now?

~Dr. Umar Abd-Allah On Spiritual Guidance: Commentary on Ibn Ata’illah’s Hikam – 03 Dec 2011, SeekersHub

A Humble Homage To Ad Dalaailul Khayraat: Part Two

***

By Novid Shaid, 2011

***

For Shaykh Ahmed Babikr and the Saturday Night Dalaail

***

In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Kind
Verily Allah and His Holy Angels on high
Send prayers upon our Prophet, most noble and divine
So invoke peace and blessings which forever multiply
O you who truly believe in His signs.

O Allah!
Send Your prayers and peace upon him
And upon his companions and kin,
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin,
By the number of vowels that were ever pronounced
Whether they were
Explaining Your Acts
Entreating Your Peace
Inviting Your Delight
Invoking Your Power
Musing upon Your Truths
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin,
By the number of letters that were ever typed or written
In ever alphabet of every language from the beginning
On palm leaves, palm tops, leaves of paper and on rocks
On every screen, scroll, sign, tablet, journal or box,
On every sheet of paper, cardboard, metal, whatever size,
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of people who ever walked and ate,
Of every racial hue, height, size and weight
Of every shape, figure, tribe and state
Of those densely crowded in sprawling cityscapes
And those dotted sparsely on country landscapes
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of every living species and things
By the numbers of fish gliding smoothly with their fins
By the number of birds that flock the sky
And the swarming insects in regions wet and dry
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the numbers of atoms fixed in our reality
Of every proton charging positively
And of every neutron, firing neutrally
By the number of every charging unit of electricity
And of every weight of force pulling magnetically
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of tears shed by grieving lovers
And the hungry cries of babies for their mothers
By the number of embraces between brothers
In the number of confiding words between sisters
And the smiles of rejoicing new fathers
In the number of sweets offered by grandfathers
And the doting glances of grandmothers
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of tears that Abu Bakr ever shed
By the number of wise words Umar ever said
And the number of coins Uthman ever spent
And the number of shields Ali’s sword ever shred
And the number of children Khadijah bred
And the number of narrations Aisha ever read
And the number of wives the Prophet ever wed
And the number of Nabi Muhammad’s noble friends,
From the day You made this life,
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of blessed steps Ibrahim ever took
By the number of prayers Maryam ever invoked
By the number of words with God Musa ever spoke
By the number of sinners Isa ever purified
By the number of Jinn Suleyman ever organised
By the number of years Nuh lived before his passage way on high
By the number of seconds, in the whale, Yunus spent inside
By the number of children Adam and Hawa ever spread
And all the Prophets, one hundred thousand!
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of every verse of the Quran
Read with fear, love, hope and to avert harm
By the number of hadith which are bona fide
The true accounts of Nabi Muhammad’s blessed life
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of every glorious sunrise in the east
And the number of every haunting sunset in the west
By the number of clouds that ever covered the sky
And the number of stars that ever twinkled in the night sky
Of every drop of rain, snow or sleet the sun ever dried.
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of salawaat that were ever sent
Upon Nabi Muhammad, the Leader of men,
By the number of tawbahs that were ever made
By weeping Momins before the rise of day
By the number of people who ever expressed
The pure shahadah and felt nearness
By the number of times our hands were ever raised
Asking for our needs and hoping for Your Grace
By the number of people who ever sinned
Then turned back to You and made amends
By the number of people who heard whispers from Shaytan
And averted his influence by asking for Your safeguards
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

O Allah!
Send Your peace and prayers upon him
And upon his companions and kin
By the number of times that You command “Kun”
And things come into being and fruition
By the number of times You end life with death
And raise people in their graves for their inquest
By the number of times You make manifest
Your Divine Names through Your actions and behests.
From the day You made this life
To the end when we arise
Every day a thousand times!

Oh Allah, send Your prayers and unrelenting salaam
upon the Master of the Messengers, the Seer of Islam,
and through this blessing, instil us with patience and calm
and deliver us and our families from harm.
And finally we pray, Allah Almighty,
bless the spirit of our inspirer Al Jazuli,
for reciting his Dalail, make us worthy,
through it, bless us with health and security.

I donate the reward of writing this to my parents and late grand parents, may Allah bless them and have mercy on them.

Note:

May Allah Most High bless, protect and shower His blessings upon Shaykh Ahmed Babikr and brothers who gather at Cricklewood mosque on Saturday nights to recite the Dalaail. It is from regularly attending these gathering, which Shaykh Babikr leads, that many of us in the UK have experienced some of the true spirit of the Dalaail, in the way it is recited in the Muslim world. My inspiration for writing this poem was gained from hearing the Dalaail sung with love and joy by the Shaykh and other brothers in the traditional Sudanese style. Jazak Allahu Kheiran Shaykh Babikr!

www.novid.co.uk

This is Imam Afroz’s talk from the session, on “Servant-Leadership”.

Written by Sister Shagufta Pasta

In one of our sessions with Shaykh Faraz at the University of Toronto studying Imam Haddad’s Poem of Counsel, we were recommended to read Syed Muhammad al-Attas’s book “Islam and Secularism.” The pdf I had was a little difficult to read, but during the break my brother showed me how easy it is to read on the iPad, and alhamidullah, that has helped me start the text. And subhanAllah, it’s a gorgeous read! Yesterday I was reading a section of the book where the author speaks about the different meanings of the word deen, and though the section needs to be read in its entirety, there are a few passages I wanted to keep handy that I’ve included below. (Note: the capitalization and italics are from the original text).

On the connection between deen and madinah.

“It is I think extremely important to discern both the intimate and profoundly significant connection between the concept of din and that of madinah which derives from it, and the role of the Believers individually in relation to the former, and collectively in relation to the latter.

Considerable relevance must be seen in the significance of the change of name of the town once known as Yathrib to al-Madinah: the City – or more precisely Madinatu’l-Nabiy: the City of the Prophet – which occurred soon after the Holy Prophet (may God bless and give him Peace!) made his historic Flight (hijrah) and settled there. The first Community of Believers was formed there at the time, and it was that Flight that marked the New Era in the history of mankind. We must see the fact that al-Madinah was so called and named because it was there that true din became realized for mankind. There the Believers enslaved themselves under the authority and jurisdiction of the Holy Prophet (may God bless and give him Peace!), its dayyan*, there the realization of the debt to God took definite form and the approved manner and method of its repayment began to unfold. The City of the Prophet became the Place where true din was enacted under his authority and jurisdiction. We may further see that the City became, for the Community, the epitome of the socio-political order of Islam; and for the individual Believer it became by analogy, the symbol of the Believer’s body and physical being in which the rational soul, in emulation of him who may God bless and grant Peace!, exercises authority and just government.

*dayyan: judge, ruler, governor

~Syed Muhammed al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, p.53, footnote 42

On the meaning of being in a state of debt

The nature of the debt of creation and existence is so tremendously total that man, the moment he is created and given existence, is already in a state of utter loss, for he possesses really nothing himself, seeking that everything about him and in him and from him is what the Creator owns Who owns everything. And this is the purport of the words in the Holy Quran:

Verily, man is in loss (khusrin). (103:2)

Seeing that he owns absolutely nothing to ‘repay’ his debt except his own consciousness of the fact that he is himself the very substance of the debt, so must he ‘repay’ with himself, so must he ‘return’ himself to Him Who owns him absolutely. He is himself the debt to be returned to the Owner, and ‘returning the debt’ means to give himself up in service or khidmahto his Lord and Master; to abase himself before Him – and so the rightly guided man sincerely and consciously enslaves himself for the sake of God in order to fulfill his Commands and Prohibitions and Ordinances and thus to live out the dictates of His Law. The concept of ‘return’ alluded to above is also evident in the conceptual structure of din, for it can and does mean, as I will elaborate in due course, a ‘return to man’s inherent nature’, the concept ‘nature’ referring to the spiritual and not altogether the physical aspect of man’s being. It must also be pointed out that in the words of the Holy Qu’ran:

‘By the heaven that hath rain’ (86:2)

the word interpreted as ‘rain’ is raj which means literally ‘return’. It is interpreted as rain because God returns it time and again, and it refers to good return in the sense of benefit, profit and gain. Raj is therefore used synonymously in this sense with rabah, meaning gain, which is the opposite of khusr, loss to which reference has already been made above. Now it is appropriate to mention here that one of the basic meanings ofdin which has not been explained above is recurrent rain, rain that returns again and again; and hence we perceive that din here, like such a rain, alludes to benefit and gain (rabah). When we say that in order to ‘repay’ his debt man must ‘return’ himself to God, his Owner, his ‘returning himself’ is like the returning rain, a gain onto him. And this is the meaning of the saying:

He who enslaves himself gains (rabiha whose infinitive noun is: rabah)

The expression ‘enslaves himself’ (dana nafsahu) means ‘gives himself up’ (in service) and hence also ‘returns himself’ (to his Owner) as explained. The same meaning is expressed in the words of the Holy Prophet may God bless him and grant him Peace!:

“The intelligent one is he who enslaves himself (dana nafsahu) and works for that which will be after death.

p.56-59, Islam and Secularism.

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