(Source: wafer-uhti, via fragilesearchingsoul)

pearlsofislam:

وبعد: فالإنسان ليس يشرف *** إلا بما يحفظه ويعرف
A person is not honoured or raised
Except by what he knows and has memorised

لذاك كان حاملو القرآن *** أشراف الأمة أولى الإحسان
For that reason the bearers of Qur’an
Are the nobles of this Ummah and its righteous

وإنهم في…

(Source: qawaariyyah.wordpress.com)

― Paulo Coelho

zuleikha:

“The best person is one who does not allow his Hereafter to preoccupy him from his worldly affair, nor does he allow his worldly affair to preoccupy him from his Hereafter.” — Imâm Al-Muhasibi (rahimahullah)

B.C. Forbes (via quote-book)

Imam Ali (as)

(Source: yaseeneducation)

hidayahmilikallah:

Then which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?

(Source: paradise-is-all-yours-wallah, via theslave)

mishalmoorebloggyblog:

As seen on Facebook. (posted by Homestead Survival)

A sweet lesson on patience. 

A NYC Taxi driver wrote:

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I honked again. Since this was going to be my last ride of my shift I thought about just driving away, but instead I put the car in park and walked up to the door and knocked.. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940’s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard
box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. ‘It’s nothing’, I told her.. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.’

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, ‘Could you drive
through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly..

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice..’The doctor says I don’t have very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired.Let’s go now’.
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move.
They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

‘How much do I owe you?’ She asked, reaching into her purse.

‘Nothing,’ I said

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.

‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug.She held onto me tightly.

‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light.. Behind me, a door shut.It was the sound of the closing of a life..

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day,I could hardly talk.What if that woman had gotten an angry driver,or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

(via farhaaan)

salsabeela:

What we wish and will and strive for
We pray high powers to grant.
For free man, you do not make yourself, and your own life
The eagle’s flight is always fast enclosed,
The Almighty bends our will, our strength,
As the wind bends the wheat.
Still lay the ground out,
Plan your castles,
Mark the way you wish to travel.
The earth is wide and beautiful,
Choose your fate and seek your way,
By your own light.
God watches all the while,
And guides your foot-steps unaware.

-Peter Augustus De Genestet

stayondeen:

How to Wake up for Fajr?

How do you wake up for fajr? And I don’t mean wake up for a day or two, but how do you keep waking up for fajr, constantly, everyday, without fail.

There’s loads & loads of websites online giving you tips and advice on how to wake up early. But our focus is not on worldly tips (which should be taken by all means, part of tying the camel ;)), our focus is on the spiritual means.

My dear brothers/sisters, every day when you read Surat Al-Fatiha, at least 17 times a day, you recite the verse “You Alone we Worship, and You Alone we Seek Help from”: You want to worship Allah? “Yes!” You need His help then. You want to wake up for Fajr? “Yes please!” Guess what, you need Allah. You cannot, I repeat, cannot, wake up for fajr without Allah’s help. Now ask yourself the question, what can I do to show Allah that I truly and utterly want to wake up for fajr?!

 

Have you ever had days when you’re about to go to sleep, and you have this deep feeling that you’ll definitely wake up for fajr? And have you ever had days when you know for certain that you’ll oversleep? Imagine the two scenarios, which I’m sure some of us have gone through:

Scenario 1:

You feel high with Eman, you’ve prayed your witr, read some Quran, and even though you’ve got 2 hours to sleep till fajr, you’re certain you’ll wake up because you’ve set your mind, heart and body to make sure you wake up. In fact, sometimes you keep on waking in the middle of the night thinking it’s fajr time out of fear that you’re going to miss it. If you haven’t experienced this, think of a time when you had to catch an early flight or a bus/train, and think of how your mind, heart and body were switched on, and it doesn’t matter what time you slept, you’ll wake up.

Scenario 2:

There are days when deep down you really don’t want to wake up, you hope that you “oversleep” so you feel less guilty about it, and Allah may have mercy upon you and still wake you up, and that’s when the battle with the snooze alarm starts and the classic shaytaan trick “just 5 more minutes…” begins.

How do we maintain scenario 1 everyday?

With these 2 scenarios, one details a feeling deep down inside that you’re definitely waking up, and another where you know you won’t wake up because deep down inside you don’t want to and you’re not ready to take the fight against shaytaan of waking up in the morning.

Below I detail some practical and spiritual tools, that will help you in achieving scenario 1 all the time inshaAllah:

SPIRITUAL TOOLS

• Know who Allah is: This is the key and number one tool to waking up for Fajr. If you know Who you’re worshipping, and you know that He requests that you get up in the morning and pray to Him, you’ll wake up. It’s our lack of understanding of who Allah is that makes us slump into scenario 2 all the time. Know your Lord, that’s key.
• Sincerity: Be sincere about waking up for fajr, don’t just say to yourself: “InshaAllah, it’ll be nice if I wake up for fajr” be sincere about it, and say: “I will wake up for fajr” I find it useful sometimes to talk to myself about it before going to sleep and say: “I will wake up for fajr, i don’t care how, but I definitely will!”
• Wudu before sleep: Ibn Abbas reported that Allah’s Messenger said: “Purify these bodies and Allah will purify you, for there is no slave who goes to sleep in a state of purity but an Angel spends the night with him, and every time he turns over, [the Angel] says, ‘O Allah! Forgive Your slave, for he went to bed in a state of purity.” Do you think that such a person would be left to oversleep and miss fajr?
• Witr Prayer + Dua: Make sure you don’t sleep before performing your witr prayer, and supplicate to Allah during your Witr prayer to help you wake up for Fajr, remember, “You Alone we Worship, and You Alone we Seek help from”
• Read some Quran: Ending the day with verses of the Noble Quran will sure put your focus straight on waking up for salaat. Prophet Muhammad used to recommend that we recite Surat Al-Sajdah, and Surat Al-Mulk (Chapters 32 and 67) before going to sleep.
• Remember Allah before you go to Sleep: This is part of the first point I made, and you can find all the supplications you need to recite before going to sleep here. You might need to print them off and read them off paper at first, but within a week or two you should be able to memorize them fully and just recite them before dozing off.
• Remember the rewards attached to Fajr Salaat: from being safe from being a hypocrite, to having light on the day of judgement, to being under Allah’s protection the whole day, to having laziness removed from us that day and being productive. Remember these rewards and you’ll sure wake up.

Other tools I use that help me a lot:

Ask a friend/family member to wake you up: This is the number one rule for me to wake up. Get a family, friend, spouse to wake up, and help each other, if you get up before them, don’t be selfish and make sure they are awake too.

• 1.5 hours sleep rule: Aaaah.. here’s a secret trick, there’s a theory in the Sleep science that says that every human being completes an entire sleep cycle in 1.5 hours, therefore, if you can wake up at the end of a multiple of 1.5 hours (e.g. 1.5 hours, or 3 hours, or 4.5 hours..etc) you’ll wake up fresh and rejuvenated. Otherwise, you’ll wake up lazy. So if fajr is at 5am, and you sleep at 12am, make sure you set your alarm at 4.30am, because that gives you 4.5 hours to sleep. (Of course, if you take 1/2 an hour to fall to sleep, you might need to add that into your calculation).
• Nap in the afternoon: Another lifehack, taken from the Sunnah and recommended by many, make sure you nap in the afternoon, for just 20 minutes! yup, just 20 minutes. Trust me, for the past 3 years, I’ve mastered the 20 min nap, and everytime it never fails to rejuvenate me. If you need to train yourself to nap for that long, I highly recommend www.pzizz.com, a wonderful software that trains you for these short naps, it’s what I used to train myself.
• Promise yourself a grand breakfast if you wake up for Fajr: I’m a breakfast guy, so if I wake up early, I sure like to have a big breakfast. Sometimes i look forward to my breakfast from the afternoon before, and just like a small reward, treat yourself to a massive breakfast in the morning. It’ll definitely set your day straight as well inshaAllah.

- Article From www.productivemuslim.com

(via hidayahmaribi)

(Source: islam-daily, via praise-allah)

inspiremediaproduction:

#Islam #islam12 #quran #muslim #muslim88 #dailyhadith #hadith (Taken with instagram)

Dr. Sayyed Ammar Nakshawani (via thebeautyofislam)

(Source: remorsecode, via thebeautyofislam)

khadimulquran:

When I pretend to be strong, no one sees my hidden tears except Allah.

When I’m sad and need a shoulder to cry on, no one supports me but Allah.

Pleasing a human is very difficult, pleasing Allah is the easiest.

People sometimes punish me for mistakes I have not done, Allah ignores and excuses the ones that I did.

This is Allah, The Greatest, The Most Almighty, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful, and all praise belongs to Him.

(via ftnamr)

pessimisticsazain:

-Someone asked him, “Do you pray
because it makes sense?”
He replied, “No I pray because my
life does not makes sense without
prayer!”

(via onthevergeoftearz)