There's something about what Musa once said to Al-Khidr that always amazes me to no end. Upon meeting the man said to know more than him, he doesn't simply say, "Teach me". Instead, he says,
{ "May I follow you on that you teach me from what you have been taught of sound judgement?" } (Qur'an, 18:66)
He not only wanted to know, but he wished to follow along.
You and I share the same earth, the same sky, the same humanity. The earth will fade,...
The path is defined not by its intrinsic qualities but rather by those who tread it.
Almost as if they are an intrinsic quality of the path.
Without them what would the path be? (Imagine the path to Allah without the Prophet SAS: the door of the path, and any path not the path of the Prophet SAS no matter how hard we struggle, worship, etc. it leads nowhere...
When an ayah is long, I sometimes wonder: Why is it long? Something is important here. It brings my attention to the topic of the ayah, it makes me wonder if I ever think about it as much, if I give it as much time as Allah ﷻ wants me to give.
Surat Al-Fatihah is so short! And Subhan Allah it is something we have to recite several times a day so it is a mercy that it is...
When I was younger, this verse was explained to me in a very simple way. It was translated as: “not of those who incurred Your anger i.e the Jews nor of those who went astray i.e the Christians.” At that age, the verse felt like it was speaking about other people, other communities, other histories.
But as I grew older and returned to the verse again and again, I realized that the verse was not pointing outward nearly as much as it was pointing ...
In order to avoid earning divine anger or going astray, it is vital to seek knowledge first about the ones who earned the anger of Allah and those who went astray because this cannot be done without knowing:
what earns the wrath of Allah, who earned it in the past? What were their traits, qualities, attributes, deeds and actions that we need to avoid? What were their personality, mindset, thought process, intentions and desires like?
2 years ago · Referencing Ayah 1:7, 14:7, 21:107, 31:1-3, 31:10, 39:6, 7:156
Surat Al Fatiha unlocks the keys to understanding the Quran’s main messages. It is known in various hadiths as the ‘Mother of the Quran’, the ‘healer’, the ‘7 oft repeated verses’, the ‘greatest surah in the Quran’ and a ‘light’. It is a form of prayer (supplication) to Allah where we ask and we are answered by His Grace.
Surat Al-Fatiha establishes our relationship with Allah and outlines the three main components of love, hope, and fear or re...
It's never been so important to be particularly requesting guidance AWAY from the path of those both earning His displeasure and those who go astray. Those are two separate categories of disbelief that, in surah Fatihah, we are imploring protection from. The first, displeasure of Allah, is sort of a textbook understanding of what it means to be a disbeliever. In this category, we're actively sinning and calling people to sin, especially major s...
2 weeks ago · Referencing Ayah 1:6-7, 7:188, 96:1-5
I've often heard people say that we trust Allah alone because the people will always betray you. Though I don't disagree, there's this concern I find where people will hone in more on the fear of betrayal than in Allah's authority.
To be fair, if we say that people will betray, we should also assume that people can benefit. At that point, it's worth reminding ourselves that,
{ Know that if the nation were to gather together to benefit you with ...
Something I won't ever forget is my time volunteering with a mental health service in the UK known as Samaritans. What makes this service unique is that they only intend to listen to someone's struggles: they don't judge nor give advice. It sounds so bad at first, until you realise that for so many people, they'd spent so much of their lives fighting against the opinions of others, they only began to clearly see right from wrong when someone gave...
Many us are familiar with the fact that Surah al-Fātiḥah is also known as Umm al-Qur'an ("The Mother of the Qur'an").
Just as a mother is the source from which life emerges, al-Fātiḥah contains the essential themes of the Qur'an, while every chapter that follows unfolds, develops, and brings those themes to life.
I came across a really nice description of this magnificent surah in the commentary of Shiekh Rashid Rida (RA), who comments: