Never losing the hope… – By Fareed Ahmed

The arabic word for sadness or grief is “Gham” – derived from the word “Ghaamama (the cloud) ” . Although there`s no apparent relationship between sadness and cloud, however there`s a hidden one. Just like a cloud blocks all the sun-shine coming down to earth, sadness or grief in a way or other also acts as a stumbling block for a man`s positive energy and performance.

It is very natural that when a person is happy and everything is going according to his whims and desires, his own wishful thinking, his performance is at it`s peak, but when he is tested or a calamity strikes him, he becomes pessimistic and isn`t able to give a good performance.
The real test lies in giving a good performance despite being in stress and crisis, despite failing in exams over and over again, despite having a fight with the fellow colleague or losing the beloved ones.

Click the link to continue…

Never losing the hope….

19 amazing fatherhood lessons for YOU!

As Muslims we often hear the virtues of being a mother and the benefits that kids bring to them. While discussing it, fatherhood is often ignored and motherhood is what is emphasized. So, I decided to compile a list of some lessons that I’ve learnt of fatherhood that children bring with them. All the fathers-to-be and new fathers will find it beneficial insha’Allah and should try to fill in the necessary gaps proactively for the better future of their children!

So once you’re a father, you’ll find the following things happenings:

1. Your love for your spouse has deepened
2. You have to take responsibility of not only your own action but also your family’s
3. You have to choose baby’s sleep time to get some rest. He is too small to follow your routine
4. Even if you start following your infant’s sleep cycle, you have to strive hard to get a better sleep 😛
5. Now you starts feeling older 
6. You have multiple jobs now. One that is outside your house, earning money for the family, and the other with your cute little angel at home
7. The unique feeling you get when your baby looks at you and smiles
8. You realize the hardship that your parents have gone through, skipped sleep, enjoyed cramps in their biceps carrying you at nights for sleep, declining all the fun with friends because they were busy with you.
9. Time passes too quickly. You angel’s birth feels moments ago
10. Technically, you have lesser time to spend with you spouse, but quality of that time is increased Alhamdulillah
11. Most of the time you’re busy in nurturing your kid, either physically, or spiritually by talking to your wife about his upbringing, values and character
12. You are future oriented. You think proactively
13. You are planning your child’s schooling according to Islamic values and planning for him to become a Hafiz and Qaari of Al-Furqan (the differentiator between the right and the wrong, another name of Qur’an)
14. You start seeing life as an opportunity to shape up a human being, to inspire a complete nation (through his progeny) to become Allah’s slave and you and your wife becoming the leaders of Muttaqoon yourself
15. You find it difficult to manage your relationship with your wife, why because now she has two babies to handle, you and your baby! She’s fragile so handle with care 😉
16. Your wife loves you even more, for helping her out in the baby chores, makes du’aa for you, and prays for you to stay with him till the end
17. All your childish, immature and irresponsible behavior is gone. You have to be a DAD now and you need to be responsible. Expect your kid to be exactly like you
18. You are more concerned about savings now, because living in an expensive era, its important when it comes to good education and Islamic nurturing of your kids
19. Now you‘re remembering Allah SWT and his commandments more. You have a journey to walk with you family. Your journey back to home, to Jannah!

Alhamdulillah I have found my experience to be life changing. Do you find yours? Please share more lessons with me so that I can learn even more 🙂

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The writer is a software engineer and can be contacted at zakiimtiaz1@gmail.com

Stop hurting yourself… start telling what you want…

Things that hurt us the most are the things that aren’t communicated on time. If you want to live your professional and personal life with mutual understanding with people, tell them what do you expect. Tell them what you want and how do you want it.

If you but want to succeed as a person…

…Then you should not only uplift your standard of living but also help others to do so. Try to remove the feeling of inferiority in others by loving them and by exhibiting good behavior towards them especially when they aren’t getting it from others.

You’ll not only form a good relation with them but win their hearts, open to your inspiration.

This is your key to public victory!

Why plans for great ventures doesn’t work often?

Thinking about opening a big company is not the problem. We see thousands of students every year, thinking awesome ideas and planning something great. On the way to achieve them, they loose working on their initial vision. Thats where your quality is compromised, your product is failed, your organization collapse.

Stick to your plan, learn from your mistakes and improve. Never compromise on your vision and deliver your best quality whatsoever!

Writing Wasiyah – A Forgotton Sunnah

“I have seen several families fighting over the issues of Virasat (inheritance) and Wasiyah (will) after the death of important people from among them. Wouldn’t it be great if people would follow the commandments of Allah in such affairs? There would be no fights if the wealth of the deceased was distributed according to the law of inheritance laid out in Islam. If the deceased left a will explaining each aspect in detail, there would be no dispute over family issues. There would be so much ease in fulfilling the missed obligations, promises and other commitments of the deceased by his surviving family.”

Click here to continue reading, Writing Wasiyah – A Forgotton Sunnah.

Why do I have to take Islamic obligations as “obligations”?

I say you don’t have to, at all; but only if you choose to. Only if you are a principle centered person. (Click here to read about principle centered people)

A human being, while growing up in any culture, extracts from it the basic moral foundations on which his life is based. This is vital for all societies to exist. This is the reason we have social sciences as a subject, that entirely deals with the society and their problems. Why do you think our youth is full of confusions? Why do you think our youth tend to follow every new trend, without evaluating whether it will bring good or bad consequences in their lives?  This is mainly because our youth lack the necessary moral foundations.

Islam brought the necessary moral foundations when it defined obligotory acts (both related to his Creator and his Creator’s creation), the benefits of which are as follows:

1. To identify the humans, the absolute essential acts which they must do in order to help them succeed in both this life and the next life.
2. To train the believers in submission to Allah, which is the foundations of rightiousness
3. To provide the basic framework of righteous deeds for the believer’s life.
   [Taken from Foundations of Islamic Studies 2 Diploma handbook, Islamic Online University]

All acts are divided into the category of Permissible (Halal) and Impermissible (Haram) in Islam. Out of Halal, some are categorized as obligotory (Fard). How do we know something is obligotory on us? Well, its pretty simple.

If you find any order from Allah or from the Prophet Salallahu alaihi wsallam without any exception, then this act is obligotory anyway.

Like,

“And they were not commanded except to worship Allah , [being] sincere to Him in religion, inclining to truth, and to establish prayer and to give zakah. And that is the correct religion.”

[Sahih International translation, Quran 98:5]

So according to the above verse of Quran, its obligotory that we:

1. Worship Allah
2. Worship Him alone
3. Establish prayer
4. Give obligotory charity [Zakat]

Workshiping Allah will make sure that you buy the best possible and most available wireless network for communication. Once you hold on to this rope, this is what will guide you. This is what will help you. This is what will guard you in every difficulty. In return, you get the best in this life as well as in the Hereafter. insha’Allah. And How evil it would be if we worship other then the Creator of Heavens and the earth.

Praying not only gives you a spiritual highness but also prevents you from shameful acts [29:45]. It teaches us the lesson of punctuality [4:103], to be active and enables the Muslims to create the mosque as their community centers. In this fast age, Allah has taken care that Muslims know each other by their faces through Salat. Salat, Connecting people. Moreover, its a thanksgiving to Allah for all the awesome things He has given us to use without even asking. Masha’Allah. [http://sunnah.com/bukhari/19#10]

Not everyone in the society gets equal opporutnity to earn. There are people in my area, who do not have basic necessities of life. You would also have come accross such people in your life. The obligotory charity is a lesson to Muslims to care for other fellow Muslims. Its builds a sign of trust, care and love towards the Muslim society. Verily Allah wishes to remove any difficulty that we face in this world and in the Hereafter.

 

So, the next time you see an obligotory act, try this paradigm shift. Its not what YOU don’t want to do, its something that WE (as a soceity, towards collective success) want to do.  🙂
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The writer is a Software Engineer by profession and writes at zakiimtiaz.wordpress.com. He can be contacted at zakiimtiaz1@gmail.com

 

Gaining Intelligence : Ofcourse With the Help of Qur’an.. by Nisaar Y. Nadiadwala

Many of us think that intelligence is directly propotional to our IQ in Maths, Language and Science.The higher marks you get the more intelligent you are taken as. But we observe a lot of foolishness and lack of intelligence even among those who are Toppers in Academics. An advocate can win any case by his brilliance in arguments and reasoning.  But he doesnt apply the same reasoning when he worships a ‘created god’. He doesnt argue with his own self. A doctor diognises sickness and identifies it but he cannot diaognise his own sickness when he watches obscene movies sitting his in drawing room along with his family!  An Architect designs a huge structure but he  doesnt acknowledge the administrator of the huge universe and its system, rather he seeks refuge in Astrology and Vastu shashtra. Theologically, either they are not intelligent  or they refuse to use their intelligence.

 The Qur’an also speaks about intelligence. Rather it teaches how to be intelligent. The verses are wll known to us and they have passed by our eyes many times but we did not use our intelligence to ponder into it. So let us revise the lesson. I am referring to Suratul An’am  , ch 6, verse 151. You have to open it to enjoy the verse and understand it.. I am just putting the translation below:

 Say ! I will rehearse what Allah has prohibited you from . Join not any partners with him

Be good to our parents

Kill not ( do not Abort) your children out of the fear of poverty, We provide you and them

Do not come near to shameful deed, whether open or secret

Do not kill , whom Allah has made sacred, except by the way of Justice and law

THUS HE COMMANDS YOU SO THAT YOU  MAY BECOME INTELLIGENT..lA’AL LAKUM T’AQILOON

These are six things mentioned in the above verses that are leads man to  intelligence. The purpose of the verse is in the last phraseof the verse : SO THAT YOU MAY BE INTELLIGENT.  The word ‘AQL’ is Arabic root word which also means to reason or to use intelligence.

  There are millions of advocates and lawyers across the world earning through their reasoning skills but they worship human gods or dont worship God at all. The main reason? They do not reason with their own self. They follow congectures, and imaginery things.

  Be good to your parents : This is another clause of intelligence. Our parents are the ones who has the most amount of obligations upon us. Our mother bears our load in her pregnancy and then till we are infant. Our father bears our expenditures till we earn. But we see that many of us respect our bosses and seniors more. Our boss pays us because we have worked for them. He is becoming richer via our hardwork. Our parents feed us for? A natural obligation upon us with no selfish expectation. That is why it is a natural intelligence that our parents deserve  ‘IHASN’  a beautiful conduct. That is intelligence.

  Do not kill your children out of a fear of poverty. We provide to you and to them. In this age of super education where every goverment has a target up 100% literacy we see killings of children in abundance. If you dont abort your child then you are intelligent. One may ask, where is the intelligence here? The result will be seen in future when yuo grow old and your only child is away in the US or other city and your only daughter is married and busy with her family and you are lonely. If your child is selfish he may not give your expenses too ! But ti wil be too late to realise  what the Qur’an said 1400 years ago is true even today : They are in loss who kill their children out of foolishness without knowledge. China, which practised one child per family is growing into a nation with a surplus of senior citizens. From where will the Government provide pensions to them. Can pensions provide them the comfort of  a companionship ? There is a concept of Rizq in the ayah. Your degrees and grades do not earn you wealth rather it is Allah who provides. This is intelligence.

   Do not go close to shameful deeds, whether open or secret. The Arabic word here is Fahisha..the word for sex outside marraige is zina. Fahisha is something that leads to zina. So it is intelligent not to fall prey to obscene movies, bad friends, peer pressure, indecent dressings and fashions, and vulagar lanaguage. All this is fahisha. Keep away.

  Do not take life which Allah has  made sacred , except  by the way of justice and law.  Thats it. In a broader sense or current scenario it meeans… do not attack nations and plunder their natural wealth , kiling their civilians. That is not intelligence.

  So these are the commands of Allah  SO THAT WE BECOME INTELLIGENT. Intelligence is not taught only in Havard and Cambridge but it is developed along with the spiritual upbringing, understanding the differnce between haram and halal and accepting it and observing it. Are we really intelligent?

Author Nisaar Nadiadwala  can be responded at mnisaar@gmail.com
http://www.facebook.com/notes/nisaar-y-nadiadwala/gaining-intelligence-ofcourse-with-the-help-of-quran/494575203933936

How To Motivate A Demotivated Team

Published at saudilife.net

“NO one responds seriously to my emails and phone calls. I am always trying to motivate them to do their work either by conducting presentations and workshops on topics such as ‘Organizational Professionalism’ and ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ or by taking them out on trips. But somehow things don’t seem to float smoothly. I feel if I won’t be in office, my team would only waste their time on Facebook or by gossiping about the latest mobile phone their friend bought. I seek a solution. Rather, I badly seek a solution. What do I do?”

Click here to read full article: How To Motivate A Demotivated Team.

To a Young man (ایک نوجوان کے نام)

Aik naujawan k naam – Bal-e-Jibrael

[Translation given below]

Your sofas are from Europe, your carpets from Iran;
This slothful opulence evokes my sigh of pity.

In vain if you possess Khusroe’s imperial pomp,
If you do not possess prowess or contentment.

Seek not thy joy or greatness in the glitter of Western life,
For in contentment lies a Muslim’s joy and greatness.

When an eagle’s spirit awakens in youthful hearts,
It sees its luminous goal beyond the starry heavens.

Despair not, for despair is the decline of knowledge and gnosis:
The Hope of a Believer is among the confidants of God.

Thy abode is not on the dome of a royal palace;
You are an eagle and should live on the rocks of mountains.

http://iqbalurdu.blogspot.com/2011/04/bal-e-jibril-139-aik-naujawan-ke-naam.html