Welcome to muslim tea room 2.

[defuse]

Peace to you all

Ok, well here it is again...we have moved to room 2 now

Discuss whatever aspect of islam you like my lovely sisters - this is a place for muslims and non-muslims too, to share experiences, raising kids or just having your say!

The kettle is on.... We have loads of herbal teas, coffee and guava juice .... I like guava juice so welcome!

Thanks for the welcome. I used to be a Christian, so I understand some of the basics of 'faith'. I'm interested in the way Islam seems to cover every single aspect of life. It's almost like no stone is left unturned in terms of rules and guidance. That's fascinating to me. Personally I've long ago lost any 'awareness' of a supreme being, but I do miss it.

Salaam everyone,

Curious , when I was at uni and also for many years post-graduation, I too had lost awareness of Allah. Took me a long time to develop that awareness, and tbh it still falters and strengthens depending on the day of the week!

Your last sentence reminded me that Allah says:

"Take one step towards me, I will take ten steps towards you. Walk towards me, I will run towards you." [Hadith Qudsi]

I still cant explain fully, how I chose to try and practice - by that i mean just the 5pillars of islam - it just happened, but this hadith Qudsi rings so true, i did take a teeny step and then it just became easier and easier.

PS: definitely not trying to 'convert' you . Your last sentence just struck a chord and reminded me of this beautiful hadith and my own journey

Salams

Just wanted to say thank to you all for the kindness and prayers. It really does help to read your comments. Crescent those reminders are very useful. For me personally it has helped me to cope that this happened before the 40/120 day point as I think it would be harder for me to deal with the thought of losing a soul/life that was meant to be my child rather then the potential of a soul/life that could have been my child if that makes sense. I think different people make sense of these things in their own way. Alhamdulillah I am back to being a musaleen again so no need for fiqhi interventions anymore.

By the way did anyone attend or hear about that Al Maghrib Institute seminar in London: 'Complicated - A to Z of Women's modern fiqh (jurisprudence)'. I was dying to go but sadly I miscarried a few days before so had to cancel. There are so many things we don't know and it would have been fascinating to hear the different opinions on issues related to women. The problem I find is we always hear the conservative 'traditional roles' voice but that viewpoint is heavily coloured by cultural interpretations and patriarchal mentality. That is why it so important for women to educate ourselves so that we can develop our own understanding based on Islamic principles rather then cultural dogmas.

That's what I love about Islam. You are always encouraged to learn, to think.

The Prophet Muhammed PBUH said "Seeking knowledge is an obligation for every muslim male and female".

Also this hadith: 'The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “One who treads a path in search of knowledge has his path to Paradise made easy by God…”'

Also: 'The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "If anyone travels on a road in search of knowledge, God will cause him to travel on one of the roads of Paradise...The superiority of the learned over the devout is like that of the moon, on the night when it is full, over the rest of the stars. The learned are the heirs of the Prophets, and the Prophets leave (no monetary inheritance), they leave only knowledge, and he who takes it takes an abundant portion."

It must be strange to you Curious how Islam seems to legislate for all aspects of life but there is always a reason for why we believe or do things. Doing things blindly (i.e. without understanding) and blind faith is discouraged and instead we are encouraged to learn about why we do things and to back up our faith with knowledge.

I heard a talk once where the speaker quoted Imam Ibn al Qayyim ul Jawziyyah...

'Fitnah (trial and tribulation) is of two types: the fitnah of ‘shubuhaat’ (doubts and misunderstandings), this one being the greater fitnah of the two, and the fitnah of ‘shahawaat’ (desires). It is quite possible that (these two fitan) can be present in a person at the same time, or one of them may be within him to the exclusion of the other.

Regarding the fitnah of shubuhaat (doubts and misunderstandings), this is due to having a weak vision and a lack of knowledge.

As for the fitnah of shubuhaat (doubts), this is prevented and cured by possessing ‘al-yaqeen’ (certainty), and the fitnah of shahawaat (desires) can be fended off and remedied by ‘as-Sabr’ (patience). This is why Allaah made these two qualities a necessity for leadership, hence Allaah, the Mighty and Majestic says,

“And We made from among them leaders, giving guidance under Our Command, when they were patient and used to believe with certainty in Our Ayaat.” [Sooratus-Sajdah, 32:24]

Thus this indicates that by having patience and certainty one achieves leadership in this religion. Allaah has also aligned these two characteristics in Sooratul-‘Asr (the Time) wherein Allaah, the Exalted says,

“Except those who believe and do righteous good deeds, and recommend the truth to each other and recommend one another to patience.” [Sooratul-‘Asr, 103:3]'

Sorry for the long quote but as we were talking about having low emaan and how to counter that I know this helped me to realise that the more you increase in your knowledge and understanding of the religion the stronger your faith/emaan becomes.

Assalamualaikum,

I rather suspect if we all drove around motorcycles whilst observing niqab, we'd all get arrested!!! lol

I recently read an article by a hijabi sister who was basically saying enough already, I am tired of being discussed for what I wear, I am the sum of my achievements I am more than this cloth on my head and the ever present judging and discussing of this scrap of cloth.

I know how she feels, nobody cares about us as people its always straight to a discussion about what we're wearing, I'd like to start doing that, have endless discussions about the hairstyles of women without hijab, forget achievement, or seeing them as people, lets just talk over them and about them about their hairstyles, and how oppressed or liberated their ponytails or lack thereof make them.

Feeling slightly murderous today.

Need crazy mad duas please there's too much going on in my life right now Subhanallah.

I have to say, I rather like the Hijab, and the Niqab doesn't bother me - I find myself quite jealous of Niqabis (?) as they seem to have their own little protection against the world.

MashaAllah Fatima Jassem Al Zaabi. Such an inspiring woman. These are the kind of stories that you won't find about muslim women on the front pages in the british press.

I too hate that people have negative assumptions about the way I dress. I know someone who is always telling me that her husband tells her what she can and can't wear and she is not muslim, but when we are together people would assume that I am the one being told what to wear.

Fatima Jassem Al Zaabi - she plays basketball too. She rocks! I like basketball - no god at it though

I have heard that islamic bank of britain are considering offering the right to buy scheme with 5% deposit. I dont know whether to get excited by this or not! Will it still be unaffordable or not - i dont know! At the moment, it doesnt look likely that we will own a property anytime soon - but Allah provides from sources that we never even thought of - so i keep making dua.

Hi everyone in the tea room.
I'm not Muslim but I am interested in all religions. I've just signed up for this MOOC about Muslims in Britain - is anyone here doing it?
www.futurelearn.com/courses/muslims-in-britain

hi Crescent… nice to see you're still posting fascinating articles. I liked the article about the Powerpoint woman… she could teach me how to use it! (I struggle with all IT things)!
Take care all
X

Oh no, I think the scarves are so pretty and I love the way it frames the face and draws attention to that rather than anything else.

I find myself thinking about worship and what it means. Why does an almighty god require us to worship him? And how do we know we're doing it the right way?

He is our creator and our reverence is for him alone, we were created to worship him. But we have the choice to do so.

Think of anyone important and they expect pomp and ceremony. For me as a Muslim my devotion and gratefulness belongs to God alone and I show it through my worship. He does not need my worship I need to worship him, it is a source of succour and solace and joy for me. When I'm sad, when I'm unbelievably happy I need to turn to the one who created it and me.

We know we are doing it correctly as we were sent guidance thro the prophets who taught us.

Salaam all

Hope everyone is well.

curious your question about why Allah requires us to worship Him is a fantastic one. fuzzy has answered in a lovely and personal manner mashallah. May Allah accept all our worship.

I am just going to re-iterate what fuzzy said. Allah almighty doesnt need anything from us mere mortals. He has however, set 'guidelines' if you will, to show us what He would like for us to do. This includes what is known an good morals - honesty, integrity, kindness, generosity etc. It also includes an acknowledgment and acceptance and gratitude of all that Allah has given to us and our sheer dependence on Allah.

Allah says: 'And if you were to count Allah's favours, you would not be able to number them; most surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.' [S?rah al-Nahl: 18]

I once tried to count Allah's favours upon me for one minute and say thank you for each favour (i just thought i would try it out and see how far i get ) So i sat down in my room I was only counting those favours that Allah was doing for me at that precise time and not the ones that surrounded me. So i started counting...i thought, Allah has allowed me to breathe....there is a thank you for that. Then i counted that Allah has let my heart beat....there is another thank you....then I had to go back to thanking Allah for the next breath....as I had taken it and then had to say thank you for the next 2 heartbeats. And i kept going round in a loop without having time to thank Allah for anything else as He grants favour after favour upon me and I am unable to keep up with it. A simple excercise like that for one minute only and I couldnt keep up with the thank yous! I didnt even have the time to thank Allah for one favour, that the next favour would be done, let alone have time to thank Him for all the good in my life!

Allah asked His prophets (the people He loved) to show gratitude:

Allah says:

{Work, O family of David, in gratitude. And few of my servants are grateful} (Saba’ 34: 13).

{O descendants of those We carried [in the ship] with Noah. Indeed, he was a grateful (shakur) servant.} (Al-Isra’ 17: 3)

{And We had certainly given Luqman wisdom [and said], "Be grateful to Allah." And whoever is grateful is grateful for [the benefit of] himself.} (Luqman 31: 12)

This shows that showing gratitude is not only a good trait to have, it is of great benefit as it leads to strengthening other good traits such as humbleness, awareness, manners, and keeps bad traits under some degree of control such as the desires of the nafs.

Prophet Muhammed (saw) said: "Indeed, I was sent to perfect the honorable manners” (Ahmad).

Allah says:
{… and whoever is grateful, he is grateful only for his own soul, and whoever is ungrateful, then surely my Lord is Self-sufficient, Honored.} (An-Naml 27:40)

The next question is that if one cannot manage to say thank you to Allah for each of His favours, (as you would literally be there all day and still not have thanked Him for half the stuff) then how does one express gratitude:

Allah says:
“And I (Allaah) created not the jinn and mankind except that they should worship Me (Alone)” [al-Dhaariyaat 51:56]

The muslim prayers/salah 5 times a day is showing gratitude to Allah. Muslims abandon the chaos of daily life for those few minutes of prayer where the verses read during the prayer are full of giving thanks and showing gratitude and then asking some more from Allah and acknowledging and remembrance of Allah.

{So remember Me; I will remember you. And be grateful to Me and do not deny Me} (Al-Baqarah 2 : 152)

Apologies for the essay I have learned a lot from writing this myself

Wow some really great responses here to that question. Ive learned a lot too Defuse from yours and fuzzy's responses. Let me put my two cents in too.

I think worship is about strengthening your own personal relationship with God.

Now again I would re-iterate what fuzzy and Defuse said which is that God doesn't need our worship. In a hadith qudsi God says

"If all of you, were to worship like the most righteous amongst you, it would not increase the dominion of Allah in any way shape or form."
Our worship doesn't benefit God, but it benefits us.

As muslims we believe that this Earth we live in is not our permanent home but instead we are here for a short time to be tested and then we return to our permanent home in Paradise with God.

What God is testing us for is to see what we will do with this life He has given us and the unique gifts He has blessed us with. Are we going to use it to draw closer to God or are we going to use it to distance ourselves further away from God.

Worship has been established, fundamentally for the spiritual growth of human beings. When we worship God we are remembering Him. In the Quran God says

"Establish the prayer for My remembrance."

By remembering God often our consciousness or awareness of Him grows and that has an impact on our actions, which should hopefully be to cause us to choose to be more kind, charitable, honest, trustworthy, compassionate, just, considerate etc. If you know someone who has authority over you is watching you, that normally causes us to be more aware and careful of our actions.

Through our remembrance of God (via worship) spiritual growth takes place and that spiritual growth strengthens our personal relationship with God so that when we dieand return to God we are closer to Him.

I hope that makes sense.

Just wanted to add that some people may be confused as to why we would want to be closer to God especially if you come from an atheist viewpoint. Well I would compare it to asking why do you want to be close to your children, or your parents, or your husband, siblings or friends? What I am getting at is that it is part of human nature to seek closeness to those around us for different reasons but generally because it gives us comfort. In the same way drawing closer to God and having a close relationship with God also gives us comfort but more so then what you would get from a relationship with a human as God knows us and understands us more than anyone else even more than we know ourselves.

This has reminded me of one of my (other) favourite duas from the Quran.

???????? ??? ???????? ???? ???????? ??????????? ??????? ??????? ????????
(191:3)

(transliteration) Rabbana ma khalaqta hadha batila Subhanaka faqina 'adhaban-Naar'

O’ Lord! Thou hast not created (all) this in vain! Glory be to Thee! Save us then from the torment of the (hell) fire

Thanks for your considered and detailed responses. You've given me a lot to think about.

Salaam all.

crescent sis, it doesnt matter who wrote it, i dont deserve any credit fot it. the verses that i use are not generally something i have too much in depth knowledge of - i may have vague recollection of some verses and hadith and then i google them to get the proper word for word ayah or hadith. Thats what i did with this topic and i found the article on gratitude of prophets which i found so interesting that i posted those ayahs.

Speaking of gratitude, it has reminded me of the virtues of patience - something i really really need to work on personally! And that has reminded me f the patience of Ayub a.s

A truly inspirational story.

Salams

Im glad that we got that cleared up crescent. Defuse I promise I wasn't taking credit for your comment but just didn't find time to post to correct the mix up

I find it fascinating how we all look at worship in a different way. Its reminds me of the concept of worshipping God with love, hope and fear which we are taught to do as muslims.

"Call upon Him with fear and hope." [Al-Qur'an 7:56]

^Anas reported that the Prophet peace be upon him entered upon a young boy who was dying. The Prophet PBUH asked, "How are you?" The boy replied, "O Messenger of Allah, I am in between hoping in Allah and fearing for my sins." The Prophet PBUH said, "The like of these two qualities do not unite in the heart of a servant except that Allah gives him what he hopes for and protects him from what he feared."

In Islam, no worship is considered complete without the presence of all three qualities: love of Allah, hope in His Mercy and fear of His Punishment. Its almost as if we are manifesting different aspects of this in our descriptions of worship with Crescent veering towards the fear side and defuse more of the feeling of hope. I read a beautiful description of this once by the famous scholar Ibn ul Qayyim who said:

'“The heart, on its journey to God, is like a bird: love is its head, and fear and hope are its wings. When the head and wings are sound, the bird flies gracefully. If the head is cut, the bird dies. If the bird loses one of its wings, it then becomes a target for every hunter or predator.”

It emphasise the importance of keeping these three feelings balanced in your heart. If your fear is too great then you tend to despair in the Mercy of God and that may cause you to be very hard on yourself, going to extremes or conversely cause you to leave the religion (because what chance have you got). On the other hand if your hope is much greater then your fear then this causes you to become careless about committing sins. I know someone like this who horribly abuses others but then says that God will forgive them because they are at a good person at heart and there are worse people out there.

I always thought it was better to have more fear but I read this poem by Fudayl Ibn Iyaad (died 187 AH) who said:

"The love is better than the fear.

The fear checks us from sinning,

and the love makes us do what is prescribed with an open heart."

I love how in the Quran whenever you read a verse about punishment it is immediately followed up with one about mercy e.g.

"So whosoever does good equal to the weight of an atom, shall see it. And whosoever does evil equal to the weight of an atom shall see it." [Al-Qur'an 99:7-8]

I think this is why muslims have less problems dealing with the concept of suffering. If you believe God is only love it can seem contradictory and difficult to accept how a loving god can allow suffering. When I was doing my A levels we studied the poem [http://www.daypoems.net/poems/441.html 'The Tiger] by William Blake where he writes 'Did He who made the lamb make thee?'. I remember thinking it was so strange that this was presented as a contradiction. However if you have a more multi-faceted view of God it can be easier to accept that love and pain are not mutually exclusive. Found this lovely poem that illustrates that.

Pain by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.
And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. Much of your pain is self-chosen,
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen.

'The Tiger' My link didn't work. Gosh Im half asleep and rambling.

I have been thinking about something recently and wanted to ask you all. How do you think becoming a mother and getting married has effected your worship and/or emaan? I was weighing up overall whether I had become stronger or weaker as a result and I couldn't come up with a decisive answer. Im much better about sticking to the fundamentals now i.e. prayers on time, mainly due to the influence of DH who is really conscientious about these things and also always say my morning duas since I have had ds especially when going out with him, as a protection, and tend not to time waste as much as I did before. However I hardly ever go to islamic classes anymore which used to be a big emaan booster for me in the past and cant seem to find time to memorise Quran as I was able to when single and feel as if Im in a bit of a rut. Anyone else experienced similar or have a different experience?