Recharged after Hajj

Almost 2 months now since I left Mecca.. I remember after just 1 week of leaving the holy city, while I was spending some time with relatives in Malaysia, it felt like I had left the city for ages!
It was like coming back from a totally different world!
And come to think of it.. Yes! It was totally a different world...
Where else can you find people competing with each other to please Allah...
Sacrificing their wealth, time, energy, sleep and comfort in order to seek the Beloved?
Other than those people who spend time in the path of Allah... I don't think there's any other place where you can find such a large number of people striving to please their Lord in such a manner..
The zeal for performing amaals were overwhelming!
Just looking at the crowd near the hajarul aswad, people would risk even their lives there to kiss the black stone...
To pray 2 rakaat behind the maqam Ibrahim , people would risk their heads being stampeded by those performing tawaaf.. At the rowdah, for just 2 rakaat there, people would wait for hours for their
'turn' that's not yet guaranteed that is... For tahajjud at the holy mosque, you would be lucky if you can find a spot on the roof if you come 1 hour before fajr... And that's after a long, arduous journey through a sea of people!
But why? Why do we do this only in the holy cities?
When the whole world belongs to Allah.. And all our actions elsewhere is in the knowledge of Allah...
Why is it that we tend to be 'pious' in just these 2 cities?

The answer is, according to scholars... 3 things mainly...

1. Our weak environmental iman..
We have to admit that because of our weak iman, it is very much affected by the environment we are in...
naturally, its easier to cover our awrah appropriately when everyone does.. easier to pray more sunnah solat, wake up early, everyday for tahajjud when everyone else does so.. on the other hand, to dress up like how you did when in makkah when you live in Australia, is not easy at all!
 Like my mum always tell us last time, don't be like the weed or lalang in Malay, what do you call it in English?!.. , that long unwanted grass that can easily be blown to different directions by the wind..
We should be like the banzai tree, it can be growing at places where no other plants grow, and it stands firm..
Have you ever experienced that feeling you get after a motivational course at school, that you wanna be a better person etc, you're all pumped up, all recharged as you walk out the hall..
Then by the time you reach home....it's gone with the wind... Back to square 1...
It's just a sad reality of being a human being..
But Alhamdulillah, Allah knows what's best for us, and through His mercy, there is always a way of overcoming our many weaknesses, if only we turn to Him...and make some effort to deserve His Guidance..

and that brings us to the second factor..

2. sacrifice..
thats the word man! sacrifice!
we all know the value of a hajj package, unpaid leave, the fact that you have to leave your loved ones, leave your comfort zone, these are all sacrifices.. and we know in this world, naturally, everything that we get with more effort becomes more valuable in our eyes.. the more we use our wealth, energy and time for something, we would naturally appreciate it more...
its a great quality of man that Allah has given us, if only we know how to use it...
unfortunately most of us just use it for our worldly gain..
when, in reality, it will benefit us the most when its used to gain the only thing that will benefit us in the Hereafter..eternally... our IMAN!
nowadays, even to use the toilet we need to pay some amount of money, and yet we thought that we are gonna enter jannah for free... strange...

conclusion is.. reflect.. how much have we sacrificed for our desires and this temporary deceiving dunya, thus making it more valuable in our eyes..
and how much have we sacrificed for our iman and deen in an effort to make it valuable in our lives..
in reality, most of us are only willing to give away our extras for our deen..
extra time, extra money.. which.. unfortunately, with our ever unfulfilled desires, dont come often..

and giving away extras is definitely NOT a sacrifice.. agree?

3. knowledge of the virtues of amaal..
everyone knows how many times the reward of any deeds done in the holy cities will be multiplied...
so yeah. inshaallah.. with firm believe in these promises by Allah, naturally one would get the zeal to perform more amaals..
everyone knows the reward of a mabroor hajj.. but not many know the virtues of  other simple but yet very virtuous deeds for example the use of miswak before salat, the 4 rakaat nafl solat before zuhr, some simple zikr for the morning and evening and many more.. these are simple daily amaals that will make a lot of difference on the day of Judgement... imagine it is said the difference of just 1 subhanallah will make a lot of difference between a persons jannah and another who said it more in his lifetime..
 problem with us nowadays is that we know the value of $1000 but we fail to realize the value of 2 rakaat of sunnah solat. in fact our scholars say that we have to have this feeling of ihtisab, thats believeing in the promises of Allah, when worshipping Him, in order for our amaal to be accepted...
in the end, am not encouraging people to be businessmen here...expecting profit from everything..
by knowing the values of amal, it will give one a clue of how much Allah love that amaal.. and that should be our main aim... to please Him...

conclusion is... we need to return to Allah with the best state of iman, but not all of us can go for hajj everyear.. even if we can, with our everfluctuating  iman, its difficult if its possible at all, to maintain our level of iman from one years hajj to the next.. so how can we survive this battle?
how can we get the environment, make some sacrifice for deen so as to value it and really embrace it and be reminded of the virtues of amaal so as to increase our zeal to be constant in our amaals??
the answer is.. go out in the path of Allah.. take a time out off this dunya for a while and spend some time in an iman-friendly environment, with iman-boosting friends, you know what i mean?
i found that the tableeghi jemaah provide a perfect platform for those who wants to achieve this in as minimum as 2-3 days, as frequent as monthly to 3 monthly...
find out more about it in the mosque near you!
or you can ask me personally via email!

may Allah use us all for His deen and keep us all in His path till the day we shall return to Him... Ameen!

Mecca 2012

Baiti Jannati...

i remember when i was a child my mum always say she wants to name our house baiti jannati..
my house is my paradise.. i think that was the first time i came to know of this term..
but i never really thought deeply about it.. ie what it really means?
superficially i guess, people would say that its a house thats full of happiness and contentment..
but how do we achieve this.. how can we turn our houses into jannah  on earth?!
last time, as a child, one of the things that i like to draw was my dream house and usually..
my dream house will have 2 big pillars at the main entrance,and a roundabout in the front yard encircling a fountain.. talking about materialism , huh?!
anyhow, will these make our houses baiti jannati?
reality is.. how many times do we see families living in big houses but found no happiness in it..
in fact most of the time.. these houses are empty because most of the time the inhabitants would either be busy working outside to gain money to pay for it or having a fancy holiday elsewhere..
an overseas jemaah once passed by a high class residential area in Sydney, one of the man said, more or less.. It feels like passing by a graveyard... No one is here!
Reality is... Spiritual contentment can only be achieved through spiritual means...
Yeah, you cant deny that physical means can help sometimes but at the end of the day, you would find that the contentment brought by physical means, are very temporary cause nothing physical in this world is eternal... That's why we would find ourselves chasing after one thing and we thought we have got it..then after a while, we would be chasing another thing..and the cycle continues..

In a hadith, Anas ibn Malik Radiallahu'anhu narrates that the Prophet salallahu'alayhiwasallam said: when you pass the gardens of Paradise, graze to your heart's content. it was asked: what are the gardens of Paradise? He replied: the gatherings for performing th Dhikr of Allah. (Tirmidhi)

Alhamdulillah.. Truly the solution to all the problems that the ummat is facing today lies in our beautiful deen...
So let's turn our houses to a place that will remind us of Allah...
Looking at the houses nowadays, people say that, when entering them, instead of making the doa when entering a house, we should read the doa when entering a bazaar! The fancy decorations, booming sound of the cinema-like home theatre etc have turn our houses into a bazaar more than a house... Astaghfirullah... And i think the chances of dying in our own house nowadays is relatively more, since we don't get to go to the battlefield, even if we don't actually die in our houses, at least, usually in the funeral service, our bodies would first be brought back home .. Imagine dying in a bazaar?! A place where syaitan roams, and as we know,where there is syaitan, there can be no malaaikah... They can't be together in one place...
When our souls are gonna be taken away, and we are in need of the Kalimah..
no one but the syaitan would be there to 'help' us.. Na'udhubillah... At this point.. Your house is your hell on earth!.. O Allah protect us all!!! Ameen!
Think about it?!

As Muslims, we have ways of doing things.. Even in decorating our houses..
It might not be to our likings, but most of the time, what we don't like is what's best for us...
Let's aim to please.Allah in everything that we do...
Find out what are the things that will shun away the malaaikah and thus Allah's mercy from our houses..

 It was reported from Abu Sa’eed al-Khudri (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “The angels do not enter a house in which there are statues or pictures.” (Narrated by Imaam Ahmad; see also Saheeh al-Jaami’, 1961).

May Allah give us the strength to practise complete deen..
see.. some people might say, awhhh.. their just pictures.. big deal?!
am telling myself firstly.. there are so many doubtful or haraam things in deen that we still cant avoid
so whenever we can we should do it...

well, actually the thing that stimulate me to write this article is this picture i saw in a friends house..
this is what i call wise home deco!

a picture of the graveyard, man!
with a very thoughtful doa... we make doa for our exams, interviews, wedding day etc but we forget to make doa for our biggest day in this life... our last day!
a house deco that will remind us of our true destination..
a house that will help bring us to Jannah...  BAITI JANNATI!