A Big Heart (a follow-up)

I once wrote about a sahaba who had a big heart. The Prophet (saw) thrice stated that this sahaba will be granted heaven, based on his bigheartedness. Big, meaning he was generous; not envious; carried no ill will; and was humble. Attempting to inculcate the same is a difficult battle, especially with our social media, consumer orientation and a complex (dog eat dog) society.

Strategically to achieve bigheartedness we need to excel in :-

A) putting total trust in Allah. Simply put, a huge test, because you will be called on to make self sacrifice. This literally means sacrificing time, money or personal space for others. That sacrifice eventually delivers positive results. The balance sheet actually comes out in the black.

  

B) not having an ego. Most of our actions in life are a function of ego. To counter that, it means thinking one is not superior to anyone. Once you get in that space, this inevitably leads to daily challenges. You have to hug and control yourself and behave humbly. It’s a daily battle, but it becomes easier with time and practice.  

C) not judging others. This is not quite ego. Rather, can be your own filters driving your biases. Let the judgement be at Allah’s door. Want a large unfettered heart, then become non-judgmental. As part of this effort, I totally disconnected from Twitter. That medium tends to be mean, aggressive and battles take place on it all the time. On Twitter, one would struggle to have a good view of mankind. Also, one could stop watching news channels, as they create negativity in themselves and fan the flame (news can be obtained online quite easily!). This judgmental drive will test you. You might fail on a daily basis, but you can at least at the end of the day, leave negativity behind and go cleansed into tomorrow.

D) anger and irritation. While this may also be a function of ego, but predominantly is driven by the frequency, speed and expectation of things nowadays. Stop expecting people to behave well, stop expecting people to deliver responsibly, stop expecting that you will get what you want. Generally, this is the easiest of the lot to achieve. And yes we all make mistakes, so when you lose your temper, go back to the concerned person and apologize. Do not become self righteous. A sincere apology now,  delivers wonders later.

E) handling real hurt and unfairness. There are such pains in life. The best one can do, is review ones own errors in life, apologize to others and use these same evaluations to forgive others who have wronged you in turn. Use First Ramadan every year for an evaluation. It should be a specific occasion and by name and event forgive those who might have dealt you a backhander. It is easier said than done....Through the rest of Ramadan, you should constantly remind yourself of the forgiveness given. By the end of Ramadan, generally, the forgiveness will be real and embedded.

The above is my personal formula to attempt a difficult and elusive gold basket. Needless to say, one is still striving to make it work, but it does lead to a lot of personal satisfaction and some element of clear conscience.


https://sarfarazar.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-big-heart.html

Maulana tackles Iblees

I heard a wonderful talk from Maulana Tariq Jameel today. It was an analysis of how to tackle Iblees, when he attacks us humans. And all the defence centres around the practice of fasting. 

Iblees attacks us from four directions. He will never attack from above, because   he is scared of Allah being above us humans. Nor will Iblees attack from below, because his pride does not allow him to be below us humans (the original sin still prevails in his mind). So, his attack comes from our front, back and from the left and right.

Front  

So what is in front? In front of us is the image of Qiyamah, of Jannah and Dozaq.

It is a travesty that a significant portion of the human race do not believe in the existence of the hereafter. Another significant portion of us, believe that in the hereafter they are going to be blessed, as Allah (swt) will excuse them and send them to Jannah. So we are left a smaller portion who realise that this life is a balance of good and bad. In the final analysis a weighing scale and a judgement will happen, for us humans. The rehmat of Allah (swt) might prevail after the judgement, nevertheless a judgement will occur.

This is the frontal attack from Iblees and he has succeeded in taking out a major portion of the human race.  

Back 

The next attack is from the back and that involves an exquisite image of the world. So much so, that we start equating the world and this life with Jannah. In this fabrication, we fall into a struggle.  Because we are built for focus, this diversion creates a loss of faith and breakdown of our purpose. We are lost in a diversion. We have taken an alternative route and the road not taken is the righteous one.  

Left

The third attack comes from the left side. The angels Raqib and Atid sit on our shoulders overviewing us and recording our actions. In their presence, Iblees entices us with evil. This is the attack where actions like murder, robbery, adultery, lying, cruelty etc happen. It is the easiest to understand and is most likely the lowest level of attack, as most humans who are involved, are those who have lost the front or back battles already.  

Right

So what is on the right? On the right is belief, faith and righteousness.

This is Iblees at his most insidious. He is using your very strength in faith and your goodness and converting that to evil. This is the evil whisperer who lets you feel knowledgeable, superior and critical of others actions. Unfortunately, we see many examples of this today. A scholar who feels above question. A scholar who thinks of ordinary humans as inferior. One who despises others actions based on a superiority complex etc. All of us see many examples of this arrogance. It is the route to a huge fall into an abyss.  

The shield.

In all the above we have our faith as our protection. But, only one of all our ritual allows us protection against a direct attack of Iblees, it is not namaaz, zakaat or Hajj which is a strong defence. No, it is fasting. It is the only time when a human voluntarily sacrifices on a personal basis and it pleases Allah and it simply kills Iblees. He keeps a distance. That is why in the month of Ramadan, we find it so much easier to do goodness. 

So from above, it is quite obvious why our fasting is good for us in a spiritual sense. This is leaving aside matters of health, where it has been shown that fasting for a month has huge positives for us in physical terms.

This article is simply paraphrasing and translating the words of Maulana Jameel. May Allah (swt) guide us and excuse me in case of any errors.

* picture is from Pinterest.com 

"Life's like that"

Such a common phrase. We hear it used often. "Life's like that". It explains much and most of us, who have lived long enough, understand it immediately. It does not need any further clarification.

There was a time in younger and more idealistic days, we would rant and rail when destiny went against us. A bad umpiring decision in cricket would bother us for days. I  remember the awful decisions against Pakistan during the 1982 England series (no neutral umpiring in those days). We were angry for days, as it meant not winning our first series in England. Alternatively, sometimes it was just about luck. A terrible FA Cup final in 1977. Liverpool would have done the treble that year, long before any other European team. But they missed out on the FA Cup, while winning the  League and European Cup.  In the FA Cup Final they    attacked Manchester United all the game, were parked in  their area and scored only one goal. ManU attacked twice during the whole game, and scored two goals. The second goal was a horrendous deflection of a ball going well out, but catching an errant foot and looping over Clemence into the goal. I was distraught for days. The reach of Allah had meant this to happen.  

You see plenty of lack of perfection and equity in life. And this discussion need not be about personal events. Infact, through the course of life, the personal blips are the least bothersome. Generally, a person feels that one has the capacity to get over personal setbacks, injustices or failures. It is the events which are uncontrollable and happen to others which bother the most. So one of the most bothersome was the gruesome Bosnian war in early 90s. Watching those horrible events on television was excruciating. But other than donate money there was not much we could do. Similar events in Syria, brought sadness and helplessness to the fore. Donating money is never  enough. The inner conscience requires action and in today's very structured world, one feels disenfranchised in such situations.

Eventually, through the course of this life, we actually do learn that Life has a mind of its own. I think of it as Allah's will, others will have different names. This world is not a perfect place called Jannah.  Life is about striving; the good, the bad and the ugly, all will be thrown at us. It's up to us how to handle them. Decades ago, the lyrics of Bob Dylan made much sense. His words about the perceived injustices of this world rankled and pained. We were always ready to take up a cause, however small. Then slowly, life taught us a lesson. Even Dylan stopped ranting and raving and became more mainline. He became a born again Christian, lost his revolutionary fervour and eventually the establishment gave him a Nobel Literature Prize!  

That unfortunately happens to us as we grow older. Experience, attrition and a declining ability, teaches us that 'Life's like that'. We grow to accept this and sadly go the way of all humans. Our destiny is that. This is life and not Jannah.

*the cover of Two doors Down.