As-Salamu Alykum. It is May 19th, the date that Malcolm X (Malik El Shabazz) was born. He would have been 81 if he was still alive (I'd highly recommend anyone and everyone to read his biography, by Alex Haley). May Allah grant Jannatul Fir Daous to this Awliyah and Shahid of our time and may Allah give us all the courage of Malik El Shabazz. May Allah also give us the ability to be a tireless advocate for the oppressed (and also the oppressor - remember the Hadith of the Rasul, sallal lahu alyhi wa sallam, when he said to help the oppressed and the oppressor?) and give us the will and power to learn and to change and embrace the truth - even in the most difficult circumstances. Fatiha for Malik El Shabazz SELECTED QUOTES BY MALCOLM X "My alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity." "Stumbling is not falling." "There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time." "If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary." "I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation." "Without education, you're not going anywhere in this world." "You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being." "I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color." "I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America -- then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine."

What We Should Be Teaching Our Children By Imam Zaid Shakir When we talk about Islamic education and our children, the discussion usually revolves around strictly academic issues related to technical aspects of curriculum development, testing standards and methodologies, balancing between secular and religious education, and similar concerns. Sometimes we miss the greater objective of an Islamic education. That objective, in terms of what is necessary for the immediate success of our children in this world, and their ultimate success in the next, is nurturing balanced, wholesome, honest human beings who live lives based on principle and who exemplify good character in their dealings with other people. The basis for the obtainment of this objective is captured in the following prophetic tradition, “Be mindful of God wherever you are, and follow up any misdeed you might do with a good deed that will wipe it out (being weightier in the scale). And deal with people on the basis of good character.†I will endeavor to expound on some of the relevant lessons from this tradition in the balance of this article. This tradition mentions three very important things that should be fundamental to our educational endeavor. The first is endeavoring to instill a healthy fear of God in the child. Part of that endeavor lies in imparting to our children some of the aspects of what Americans refer to as “that old-time religion.†Many aspects of what actually constitutes that old-time religion are sometimes viewed as prudish or unfashionable in today’s society. However, they involve religious themes that have been instrumental in guiding people for millennia. One of the bases of “that old-time religion†is a healthy fear of God. That fear, which has to be balanced by hope for God’s mercy, revolves around the awareness that God’s punishment is real. Hell and its torments are real. The retribution of those who have behaved wrongfully in the world is real. Sometimes we can become so engrossed with intellectualized discussions of our religion, so steeped in philosophical discourse, that we forget, at the end of the day, the hard realities mentioned above. If as adults we are heedless concerning these things, it is difficult for us to realize their importance for our children, especially during their formative years. Cultivating a healthy fear of God is rooted in mindfulness of Him. Mindfulness is a prerequisite for fear. For this reason, one of the initial goals of the spiritual path is cultivating fear of God. This is the initial thrust that propels the aspirant through subsequent stages of true human development. As one wise man once mentioned, “The fountainhead of all wisdom is the fear of God.†It is mentioned in the Qur’an, Rather it is His righteous servants who fear God. {Al-Qur’an 35:28] This fear is one of the keys to Paradise. God says, As for one who fears the station of his Lord, and guards his soul against the things it inclines towards, Paradise will be his refuge. [Al-Qur’an 79:40-41] Hence, the fear of God is something we should endeavor to instill in our children. One way to do that is to remind them that transgression incurs punishment. That punishment can occur in ways great and small. For example, we might tell our children “Don't touch that stove! You're going to burn your hand.†Despite this warning they touch it. We follow up, "See? You disobeyed me, and you burned your hand." We can then suggest, “One day, if we disobey God in this world, we're going to burn our entire body.†They might not understand this latter warning, but as they grow, the message will increasingly resonate. Someone might consider such a warning harsh or inappropriate. However, this is one of the essential messages of the Qur’an. Namely, disobedience can have painful consequences. If we do not try to instill that message into our children at a young age, we may inadvertently be depriving them of the conceptual basis to subsequently understand one of the most critical messages of the Qur’an. Of course such messages have to be presented with gentleness and wisdom. Our intention should never be to overwhelm our children. However, we should take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves in everyday life. While every responsible parent endeavors to keep their children’s hopes and dreams alive, we have to also let them know that there is something to aspire towards beyond this world. Just as our life in a real sense, did not begin with our physical emergence from our mother’s womb, it does not stop with our entrance into the grave. When we journey to the next life, we will suffer or enjoy the negative or positive consequences of the actions we did in this world. By using situations we find everyday, we can emphasize, according to our experience and our children's cognitive abilities, this message. The second point emphasized by the tradition we are discussing is encouraging a spirit of repentance in our children. As we mentioned, sins and transgression involve consequences. With sincere repentance those consequences can be eradicated. Emphasizing this point and further emphasizing other manifestations of God’s mercy provide a balance that mitigates the harshness that might accrue by focusing on the reality of divine retribution and punishment. God is most willing to accept repentance. He is most merciful. Again, we can take advantage of situations occurring in our everyday lives to cultivate a repentant spirit in our children. If they tell a lie, we can mention how inappropriate and harmful lies are. We can then add, “You are going to have to ask God to forgive you.†Not only do situations such as this introduce the child to the idea of repentance, they also encourage them to get in the habit of communicating with God. One of the things missing from many of our Muslim homes is active communion with God. Many of us who have converted to Islam from Christianity remember how we were in the habit of saying our nightly prayers. Such devotional acts provided sweetness to our faith. Although we may have found a superior creed when we adopted Islam, in some cases we find that the sweetness to be found in intimate discourses with God gradually leaves our lives. Prayerful repentance is one way we can begin to recapture that sweetness, and to encourage it in our children’s lives. Another advantage to be found in using everyday situations to convey meaningful lessons to our children is that they allow us opportunities for informal lessons. We can teach without stopping everything to sit down for a formal “lesson.†If we tell our children when they tell a lie, for example, “We are going to sit down and have a little lesson on repentance. First of all, you have to immediately stop your sins. Secondly, you have to vow to never repeat the sinful act. Thirdly, you have to express remorse for having committed the sin. And fourthly, if the sin is associated with the right of another human being, you have to restore that right.†Children generally dislike being lectured to, and the lesson probably will not be too effective. It would probably be more effective to emphasize, informally, how bad lying is, the need to ask God’s forgiveness, and conveying a firm threat to wash out the child’s mouth with soap if they tell another lie. Of course, such threats have to be credible. They might not involve soap, but they should involve something that will be remembered by the child, without being harmful. What is important is conveying the gravity and seriousness of lying or other negative speech or behavior. Repentance is a desirable at both the individual and at the communal level. God says in the Qur’an, So turn in repentance altogether, you believers, in order that you be successful. [Al-Qur’an 24:31] Hence, this particular point is relevant for all of us, not just the children. Repentance is very important and has to be constantly encouraged in order to become a natural action for a developing child. In addition to reminding our children to repent and asking God’s forgiveness when they slip, we should also encourage them to ask His forgiveness when they say their nightly prayers. This brings up another very important point. We should try to get our children in the habit of saying nightly prayers. As they become older, they can be taught the prophetic supplications and invocations to be said at night and before retiring. However, at younger ages cultivating a free and open communion with God is a very powerful practice. Sleep itself is our lesser death. Our children reminding themselves that God alone can bring them safely through the night; that He alone restores their consciousness after sleep; that He alone has the power to take our soul whenever He chooses, are all messages that cultivate a healthy god-consciousness. Another very important part of our children’s Islamic upbringing, something we generally neglect as a community, involves their participation in “fun†activities that involve a cross section of the community. One such activity is hiking. Hikes are accommodating to the young and old. Hence, children and adults can get involved together. Furthermore, while outdoor activities such as hiking are not religious activities per say, something appreciated by the older children who may be struggling with their Islamic identity, they provide great settings to involve the children in group devotional activities such prayer, Qur’an reading, Dhikr, or testimonials. Such activities also provide a setting where children can interact with community elders in an informal, nonreligious setting. Many children may not appreciate the fact that the local Imam has studied Islam for twenty years and is a master of Arabic rhetoric. However, when they see that the elderly gentleman can climb a hill much faster than they can, or jump over a stream unscathed while their boots are filled with water, they have an accessible basis for respecting the Imam. This opens up doors for a deeper personal relationship that will facilitate their subsequent willingness to benefit from his religious knowledge and experience. Such activities are very positive because they also allow children to see that they have an Islamic identity group that is larger than their individual and possibly isolated family. They are with fifty Muslims trekking through the woods, calling cadences, singing songs, telling stories, stopping in a meadow for a football or soccer game, and the food is pretty good also. Such activities can leave an indelible positive mark on a child’s life. The third point raised by this prophetic tradition is to treat people with good character. We should constantly emphasize this. Our Prophet, peace upon him, has said, “I have only been sent to perfect good character.†Muslims have historically been people known for their upstanding character. One of the greatest threats to Islamic character and manners is our contemporary youth culture, and one of the most destructive means conveying that culture is television. One of the greatest things we can do for our children in terms of trying to instill good character in them is to get them away from the television. To be effective, we have to also endeavor to keep them away from children who watch television. This may seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, when they are younger and their universe is smaller and more controllable, this may not be as challenging as it appears. However, it is a communal task that requires a tremendous commitment on the part of many families. Parents should encourage one another to form television-free communities. Islamic schools should consider an enrollment policy that requires homes to be television free for children to be admitted. This is very important, for if your child is going to an Islamic school and does not watch television, while his or her classmates are constantly reminding him or her what Brittney Spears is up to, or how great the Rolling Stones were during halftime at the Super Bowl, much of what you are trying to accomplish will be readily and easily undermined. Saying this, I am not advocating an absolute ban on viewing motion pictures. Families can promise their children a weekly movie if they do well in school. They can gather their children to watch documentaries, nature shows, and other commercial-free fare that is controlled by the adults. Having some televised entertainment and education help to prevent the deep longing for the medium that can develop in children that are totally cut off from it. The main thing to avoid is commercialized network television. The overt and subliminal messages involving everything from the glorification of criminality, to the belittling disrespect of elders, crass sexual exploitation, blatant inducements to become involved in a destructive consumer culture, and the irreverent denigration of religious themes, make viewing commercial television arguably questionable from a religious perspective. Many programs clearly have hidden agendas involving normalizing practices that Muslims hold forbidden, such as witchcraft or homosexuality. I would argue that any parent who allows their children to watch network television is derelict in their parental duties. As we mention above, we can provide alternatives to network television. We can gather our children for a weekly movie with their friends, complete with the popcorn. We can select wholesome films whose content we have previewed. Hence, we are not talking about draconian measures that leave the concerned parent with no viable options for their children. One of the most destructive effects of television is that it reinforces the false idea that between childhood and adulthood there is an increasingly longer adolescent phase, during which what are functionally adults are permitted to continue to act like children. When we travel to visit the Muslim world, we are amazed to see that in the villages and other areas not deeply affected by modernity, there is no adolescent phase. Older children are working the fields, selling in the marketplace, and taking care of younger siblings just like little adults. The silliness, giddiness, and irresponsibility we see even amongst many college students here in the West is totally absent. That used to be the case here in America. Marriages between thirteen and fourteen year olds were once common. Thomas Edison was a self-made millionaire before he was fifteen years old. George Washington was an accomplished social and political thinker at the age of fifteen. Grammar schools equipped children with the tools to engage in the formation of mature thoughts before completing grade six. Now many university graduates have absolutely no exposure to logic, nor any of the other basics of a classical education. We should also understand that America became great on the basis of significant and tangible characteristics and principles. If the generality of people in this country abandon those characteristics, as a community, we should try to retain them. These include a sound work ethic, willingness to sacrifice, hard work, thriftiness, respect for authority, courtesy, etiquettes, sound manners, empathy for the weak, and many other traits. Not only are these principles being undermined by many aspects of popular youth culture, in many instances the exact opposite values are being encouraged. We have to constantly encourage good character and manners in our children. “Did you say please?†“You didn’t say thank you.†“You should have held the door for the lady coming into the store after you.†Such urgings have to be constantly repeated until the desired traits become ingrained in our children. Repetition in many situations is a great pedagogical tool. It goes without saying that constantly repeated instructions also have to be diligently reinforced by adult example. Again, is important to emphasize that this type of training should be carried out in a pleasant manner. We should try to avoid raising our voices and nagging. We should convey messages such as those mentioned above in a subtle, gentle way that almost sneaks up on our children. However, we should not avoid being firm in situations that demand firmness. God-willing we will be able to raise a generation that acts on the basis of good character. The three points emphasized by this prophetic tradition should clearly be goals in our child rearing and education programs. A fourth thing that is also extremely important is to teach our children the love of the Prophet, peace upon him. We should start by taking the time to remind them who the Prophet, peace upon him, was, and what he looked like. We should inform them what his height was, how he kept his hair, what color his hair was, what his build was, what color of his eyes was, how his complexion was, etc. By educating them about his physical characteristics, he becomes more than an abstraction. We must endeavor to make him real for them. Many of our Muslim children can tell you how tall LeBron James is, how much he weighs, what color his eyes are, where he went to high school, and how much his sneakers contract is worth. But they cannot mention a single attribute of their Prophet, peace upon him. This is an unacceptable situation we should strive to remedy. Perhaps we could develop cards about the Prophet and the companions, just as we have baseball, and basketball cards featuring sports figures. Valuable information about our important personages could be conveyed in this way. Who was the tallest companion? Who lived the longest among them? They could trade these cards among themselves. Again, this would be an informal way of conveying information that we usually limit to formal settings. Familiarization is a key ingredient in the cultivation of love. It is difficult to love someone you do not know. We should also praise our children when they display prophetic character. That praise should be directly linked to the Prophet, peace upon him. For example, “The prophet will love what you did for that cat because he taught us to be kind and merciful to all creatures.†Perhaps your child will come one day and relate an incident like he following: “The kids found a bird at school today, it could not fly. Everyone was throwing rocks at it, but I didn’t throw any rocks. I tried to stop them.†We should enthusiastically respond, “That was so great! God and His Prophet, peace upon him, will really love you for that. God will show you mercy one day for your mercy to that bird.†Now they not only feel good because they did something pleasing to you, they feel good because they did something pleasing to God and His Prophet, peace upon him. Once again, these are practical lessons that occur in the context of our everyday life, and not formal lessons, abstracted from any meaningful context. If we merely related to them in a classroom, the Prophet, peace upon him, did this, or said that, we deny them any agency in their education. The former, more informal approach emphasizing that they themselves did this or that in a manner consistent with prophetic teaching, allows them to take agency in their religious life. This is empowering for them and can go a long way towards fostering a healthy Islamic identity. Another bit of beneficial advice, culled from the prophetic teachings, is avoiding feeding our children the very best of food all the time. This teaching is a reflection of the fact that the way of the Prophets, peace upon them, is moderation. For example, we should avoid constantly giving them ice cream, pizzas, and other types of food they find particularly enjoyable. We should try to give them ordinary food as much as possible. Then, when we do periodically give them something they really like, it is so much more enjoyable for them. This is one way to get them to appreciate the blessings of God. If we constantly give them the best of food and constantly give them the food they like, they’ll take the blessings of God for granted. That is something that can make their hearts become hard or cold. Similarly, we should not give our kids the best of clothes even if we can afford to do so. Doing so could also lead to them taking the blessings of God for granted, and it might cause them to arrogate themselves over poorer children. Dressing them in the very best and finest of clothes might also make poorer children jealous of them and then make fun of them to attempt to belittle them because they see them as being better than themselves. On the other hand, one should try to avoid dressing them shabbily as that might lower their self-esteem. We should try to maintain the balance that is characteristic of our religion. This balance will help them avoid developing arrogant, condescending, or insecure personalities. We should get them accustomed to manual work. I recently asked a group of Muslims if anyone of them had ever changed a flat tire. No one in the entire assembly answered affirmatively. These are the sort of things every child should learn how to do. At Islamic schools we can have local mechanics come in to give short courses on the basics of automobile maintenance. When our male children reach their teenage years we can arrange for apprenticeships for them at a local Muslim mechanics shop during summer vacations. We can make arrangements to pay for the child’s “salary†ourselves. Gardening is a great activity for both boys and the girls. Our children should learn to get their hands dirty. We might also consider sending our high school and college age youth to work in Muslim refugee camps. This is a great way to help develop a healthy social consciousness in them. It also gets them close to the earth. Children who have visited such areas generally become a lot more appreciative of the blessings they enjoy here. Our Prophet, peace upon him, knew the value of work. He was a shepherd; and he guided caravans across the desert. These activities were integral in shaping his character. We should start training our children in the martial arts at an early age. If they grow up practicing a particular art it will become easy and natural for them. If a child started a particular martial art at six or seven years old, when he or she is twenty-one, they would have studied that art for fifteen years and would be an absolute master. Studying the martial arts is not to enable them to bully other children. It is a means for them to have healthy self-esteem. That makes it easier for them to be Muslim in a sometimes hostile environment. If they know they can defend themselves, it makes it easier to deal with the pressure and potential intimidation that comes from being different. That is something that is very important for our children. A person who is confident in himself would never start a fight. The best martial artist is the one you would never suspect, not the one beating on his chest, flexing his muscles and elbowing people. This is something that is very important in the healthy development of our boys and girls. In conclusion, we should try to make the space for the children to be children, to enjoy their childhood years. However, we must let them know that these years are preparation for adult life, and that adulthood is very serious. That coming seriousness though should not be used as a justification to overwhelm them. Moderation provides a golden means. Respecting that means helps us to avoid the extreme of an overindulgent childhood followed by a period of perpetual adolescence, just as it helps us to avoid stultifying, rigid, overbearing child rearing practices that can effectively rob our children of a rich childhood . Hopefully we can remain balanced, giving our young generation the space to be children, but letting them know that they’re preparing for a serious life.

Originally posted by Abraar: Ali al-jifri (I have heard so much about him but I have yet to see him live). Salam. You can check < http://www.guidancemedia.com/articlesd.php?s=2 > for audios, videos and article by Shaykh Habib Ali Jifri.

RECOVERING SENSATION By Sidi Hakim Archuletta These exercises make use of the Felt Sense to awaken, or put more accurately, to recover, the natural ability to be "present in the body." Recovery of sensation enhances our feeling and experience of being present in the world. Sensation in our bodies is a vast and complex spectrum that is the counterpart of the mechanisms driven by our nervous systems so acutely relevant to both our bodily function on all levels and the quality of our experience of being alive. Reflection, awareness and attention to what we are experiencing in our body with all its qualities while moving through the world is like being aware of the smells, colors and beauty of a forest as we travel through it. This can awaken or bring to life our actual feelings of "hamd" (praise) and "shukr" (thankfulness), to experience life less in a realm of abstract thought or ideas and more as an experiential reality. Grounding our experiences and ourselves in the world by sensation enables us to automatically carry an awareness of how and where we actually are at all times in relation to all things around us. We then unconsciously carry with us a sense of the actual boundry of where we end and the rest of the world begins. To always have this awareness can bring more to our lives than we may realize. Allah subhana wa ta'ala has placed us in our bodies and in this physical world, and while we may be aware of the world to come and live with that in our hearts and minds, we also accept that we do this, by Allah subhana wa ta'ala's design, while being present in the world around us. While we live with the knowledge of the world to come we also accept being in this world and the actions that will determine our place to follow. This is the zone of action and we do not accept monkery or withdrawl from it, rather we realize that all of our actions in this world will determine our reality as we move to the realm where the meanings of action becomes manifest. Being present in our bodies was more natural when we were children, and for most of us this "being present" was gradually programmed out of our consciousness or shut down by trauma, feelings that were overwhelming, or by a lifestyle in which we learned to live outside of ourselves altogether. Placing a three year old in front of a TV, finding something that will "occupy" her so that mom can get on with all the work she has to do, or so she can find a moment to talk with her friends, is an example of the kind of foundational training that teaches us to live outside ourselves. Success with occupying a child in this way is a prime way to teach her to avoid personal, live contact or action in the world in favor of abstract and seemingly "real" distraction. Most children will feel some sense of loss or separation in this reoriented focus, but they will eventually learn to "live" in this artificial world rather than the actual one. At the same time, many children object strongly to this and begin to act out their displeasure at being left alone. Abandonment to television becomes one of the most compelling foundations for behavior in our world today, the hypnotic trance-like state, the pain and false pleasure embedded in it helps account for much of the energy that drives the industry itself. From these kinds of foundations, we begin to learn and develop more elaborate systems of distraction derived from feelings of separation, and become addicted to their use when facing overwhelming events, or even the very simple events of everyday life. In the case of most men, as a result of their particular training and upbringing, distraction is used as a strategy for avoidance and survival in the face of any feeling at all. Our addiction to distraction and avoidance takes us from the act of fully experiencing pleasure or pain and eventually from the real experience of life itself. For those people who have experienced or are experiencing severe trauma, abuse and more obvious neglect these needs of distraction are even more compelling. The abstraction from experiencing life on a feeling level takes us further and further from the ability to know what our actual needs are. We become lost in superficial experience and lost in superficial remedies as well. Western and American culture and society is rife with many more such examples. Our modern age from the turn of the 20th century onward is marked by an enormous proliferation of images and the development of a plethora of abstract experiences outside ourselves. Photo albums have replaced the extended family, movies and TV have replaced adventure and friendship. All this has created a narcissistic culture in which we live in the space of an image of how we are supposed to live and not how we actually feel. All of this entails being divorced from sensation and feeling. Eventually whole parts and layers of our being become senseless and abstracted until we no longer really able to care about things very much at all. We continue to go through the motions and postures of "caring," since we think and believe this is our responsibility, yet somewhere inside us we know how things really are, even if we are no longer able to embody this in our lives. This creates a terrible disconnect and feeds the sense of hopelessness. All this in turn impacts our physical emotional and spiritual well being. These widespread needs to be distracted from being fully present are no more dramatically represented than they are by the largest growth industry in the world, illicit drugs, and the other enormous industries that supply prescription mind-and-emotion altering drugs, as well as the legal drug world of alcohol and tobacco. TV, of course, fulfills this same need on a massive and profound scale. The list goes on and on of popular distractions that enable us to feel we can survive in a state of separation from our feelings, but just surviving means not living our lives to their fullest. The irony of this is that our need for connection, the loss of which drives us to, and is assuaged by distraction, uses a strategy that ends up creating even more separation. This is the folly and the tragedy of addiction of any kind; it also echoes so well the classic description of the dunya that remains ever out of reach. There are countless ways to explore and awaken the felt sense, and there are many that we can discover directly for ourselves. Remember, these are exercises to recover that which is innate within us by Allah subhana wa ta'ala's design at the inception of our creation, and something that was at one time more easily and naturally available to us-something original in us that was intact and fully operative. The ability to shut down feelings when things are too much for us to handle emotionally is also a Mercy from God to us, enabling us to continue functioning even if it maybe on a less conscious level, nevertheless, our ability to wake up and go beyond this is intimately connected with genuine growth and knowledge. THE EXERCISES (If you have difficulty with any of these exercises and find them to be too much, consider finding a well informed somatic therapist for additional work and support. These kinds of exercises, if practiced regularly and explored in various ways, eventually become natural and do not have to be done as exercises at all. Your body is a complex whole system that has memory on many levels. By reprogramming your system towards its natural state, your nervous system will gradually begin to remember and the experience of feeling grounded in your sensations will naturally increase.) There's a lot here so take your time with each one, one at a time. 1. Recall the last time you felt a strong emotion. Was it anger, joy, sorrow? How did you know you were angry or sad? We don't think sadness or anger, we feel sad or angry. We feel with our body, a simple truth often overlooked. Recall the experience of that strong emotion and pay attention to your felt sense, to what you feel in your body. Can you recall where in your body you felt angry or sad? What was the sensation that you interpreted as sad or angry? What do you feel now in your body? 2. Using both hands, begin slapping your skin, alternating each hand using a rhythm as in clapping hands, right, left, right, left. Moving from neck to legs, cover as much of your body as you can. Slap hard enough to elicit some warmth and even some tingling without it being painful. Do this for about three minutes. Cover as much of the surface of your body as you can. Stop slapping and pay attention to the overall sensations and experience what you are feeling. Take some time in simply observing. See what you can discover. Doing this daily can bring about surprising results. 3. When in the shower, pay attention to the sensation of the water as it strikes your body. Focus on the physical sensations you experience. Examine them closely. Do the same in the wind, rain. Eventually you might notice carefully the feeling of different cloth materials on your body as you move. Try walking barefoot and observing what your feet are experiencing on different surfaces. 4. Observe your sensations in different settings. When you enter a room or step into the outdoors, when you are in traffic, in a crowd or alone, or in the forest, overlooking a vast landscape or any other environment, closely observe differences in the sensations of your body. Compare the differences in relation to the different settings. Notice where the sensations are mostly taking place: chest, arms, head, neck, etc. Observe and explore the quality of your sensations. If the sensations are pleasant, see if you can identify specifically what it is you are actually physically feeling that enables you to consider it "pleasant." If unpleasant, do the same. Make note of the two kinds of sensations if you can. Then, compare them and recognize that these different sensations all occur in YOUR BODY with specific physical qualities. Recognize that these sensations occur as physical experiences, with specific qualities, although they may also be associated with a judgment, memory, analysis or thought. Simply doing this is a big step toward grounding our experiences in bodily sensation. 5. Look at some old photos, one at a time. Spend some time to see if your body experiences differing sensations from different photos from different times and of different people. Observe what the sensations are, where they occur and what the qualities of the sensations are. 6. When you are passing time such as waiting, observe what sensations are present in your body. Experiment with shifting attention to various parts of your body and observe the differences and how the part you are attending to may come into and out of focus. Note the strength of the sensory experience. 7. After some practice with the above, try observing your sensations in various circumstances, meeting an old friend, dealing with a difficult person or an old problem, when some good news comes to you. Notice if paying attention to the physical experience makes it any easier to manage a difficult experience or to make a pleasant experience more so. With some practice you will find that chronically difficult exchanges or experiences are almost always made easier by being "grounded in your body." This grounding will make it easier to have a choice in how you react in different circumstances. Source: http://www.hakimarchuletta.com/exercises.html

Originally posted by hodman: I am very ineterested in learning more about spiritual and intellectual health and illnesses so could you guys share more about this. Salam. I'd recommend you to check Sidi Hakim Archuletta's materials. He is awesome!

Qouting from the article: "If you sleep before midnight (meaning halfway between Maghrib and Fajr), after ‘Isha, then that sleep is worth up to twice as much as the sleep that occurs after midnight. The Sunnah of the Prophet is to go to bed right after ‘Isha, and sleeping after Fajr, before sunrise (shuruq), is considered negative sleep. So, if you slept for two hours it is as if you were deprived of two hours of sleep. It is negative sleep. If you sleep before Zuhr or before ‘Asr, then that is positive sleep and it is worth twice in terms of the rejuvenation of the body. According to Imam As-Suyuti in Tibb An-Nabawi, “Whoever sleeps after ‘Asr and wakes up mad let him blame only himself.†The Prophet (peace be upon him) used to sleep after Zuhr and he said: “Take an afternoon sleep (qaylula) because Shaitan does not take one.†This practice helps you get up at night for the night prayer (tahajjud). When you take the afternoon rest it literally brings you back to the freshness of the morning. It is like starting the day all over again." A brilliant piece that was. I divided the article up into various sections by “To Do Listâ€, things that I'd carry out and put into practice. First, I tackled the sleep part. I usually tend to sleep right after Fajr for few hours and never really knew why I always felt drained out after those sleeps! I’d always be yawning after waking up! And I in fact always felt vibrated and alive and alert in those days when I never got to sleep after Fajr. Now I have the answer! The article mentions not to sleep after Asr, which I don’t do anyway. The article also mentions the benefit of sleeping before Zuhur or Asr. I, when I have the time, do sleep after Zuhr and it is always nice! Anyhow, today I slept for an hour around 11am and I tell you, it was nice! So now, I have taken a personal vow to try my best not to sleep after Fajr and Asr and will reward myself, whenever I can, to get a short power-nap before Zuhur or before Asr. And also promising myself that I’d try my level best to get to bed by 11pm, or earlier depending on suitability, if I can!

The Sunnah and Health By Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson [This following article is based on a lecture given by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson in London, England. It was previously published in the Muslim Word—a monthly newsletter in Toronto—in the May, 1998 issue. This current version includes a new introduction, several additions, and has been edited.] “We raised them up from their sleep so that they might question one another. A speaker from among them said, ‘How long have you tarried?’ They said, ‘We have tarried a day or part of a day.’ Another said, ‘Your Lord best knoweth what you have tarried.’ Now send one of you with this sliver coin into the city, and let him see (yanzuru) what food (ta’aama) is purest (azkaa) and bring you nourishment (rizq) from it. And let him be courteous in order not to inform others about his presence†(Qur’an 18:19). Food is the foundation of our material existence. During our life in the womb we were sustained materially by our mother’s nourishment through the umbilicus. We left the wombs and the umbilicus was severed to begin another stage of nourishment, the breast. Upon being weaned, we began to eat foods of various textures and tastes, acquiring lifelong preferences during this stage, some good, and others bad. There is a relationship between food and language that is quite revealing. Our metaphors are often derived from our necessary relationship with food. We talk about sweet talk and bitter words, being hungry for love and thirsty for knowledge, of the “milk of human kindness†and “one man’s meat being another’s poison.†When speaking of the need for change, we say things like, “I need to wean myself from this,†or “I’m going to abstain from vain talk.†All of our metaphors that relate to food and drink, hunger and satiety, indicate the central role that food plays in our lives and how profound its experience is to us. Few people think of the relationship that food has to their health. Before we speak about food, let us ask the question “what is health?†Most people believe that health is an overall state of well-being, the absence of pain, and the relative vitality of the body. A physician will give a person a “clean bill of health,†with almost no understanding of the overall state of the person as a spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical being. Each of these dimensions has a healthy status and an unhealthy one. For most people, spiritual health is given almost no consideration. If one goes to Church every Sunday, or the Synagogue on Saturday or the Mosque on Friday, given the respective faith, he or she may consider themselves spiritually well. Little attention is paid to the spiritual heart’s diseases such as greed, covetousness, pride, envy, vanity, arrogance and anxiety. All of these are symptoms of pronounced spiritual disease. When mental health is considered, people tend to focus on emotional health and not intellectual health. However, can we call a man who spends his days developing more sophisticated ways of killing people for the government, healthy? If a man develops napalm with his intellectual gifts and finds out that Vietcong villagers are building lakes so that when the napalm is dropped and their skin begins to burn from the assault they can flee to the lake and submerge themselves in the water thus preventing serious burns, which causes that same man to enhance his napalm by making it insoluble in water so that people can no longer find relief from the pain by immersing themselves in water. Is that man healthy intellectually? When people consider their emotional states they rarely see subtleties in their overall emotional health. If they are not depressed or grief-stricken and their overall mood is balanced they feel emotionally healthy. They might be surprised at the idea of lack of concern for others less fortunate than they are being an emotional disease resulting from a lack of compassion; or that excessive love of money, not greed but actual emotional attachment to one’s wealth, whereby if the stock market goes down, I have an emotional downturn also, is a sign of serious emotional disease. People often believe that because they are fine at a given moment they think that they are generally well. But we must realize that when disease is dormant, and the right circumstances can cause a flare-up, one is still considered suffering from a disease, chronic and dormant perhaps, but still disease. There are those also who believe their bodies are physically well in the absence of pain and yet hypertension, which is often undetectable without medical tests, is one of the major causes of midlife mortality in America. What then is health? When is a person healthy? The Latin word for health is Sanitas, which is where we get our word sanity, i.e. well-being of the mind. The Romans had a phrase sans mensus; sans corpus: a healthy mind in a healthy body. The Arabs call health sihhat from a root meaning “to be sound or strong, a sahih hadith is a healthy hadith that has no ‘ilal or diseases, as is known from the Islamic science of prophetic traditions. A “healthy†hadith had to have five qualities before it was determined to be sound by the doctors of the hadith science. If any were lacking then the hadith was determined to be “sick.†Depending upon the number of criteria missing, the hadith was: very weak, weak, or in “good health†but not excellent. If we look to the human, what criteria would we use to determine the health of that person? In Islam, health is actually not seen to be of the body, but rather the state of the heart. There is a hadith in which the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, “There is a lump of flesh in the body, if it is sound the whole body is sound. Is it indeed the heart.†He was not talking primarily of the physical body or the physical heart but of the spiritual body and the spiritual heart. A man can be suffering from a terrible disease and considered to be in excellent health in Islam, while another can be in perfect bodily health but determined to be sick according to the Qur’an. In fact, a hallmark of hypocrites is the excellent appearance of their bodies, “Their outward forms are pleasing to you.†But the Qur’an says of them, “In their hearts is a disease.†True health is the state of one’s heart with God. The heart is healthy when it is filled with trust, love, charity, compassion, lack of material desire, patience, hope, awe of God, and most importantly, gratitude. It is diseased when filled with suspicion, envy, hatred, anger, pride, anxiety, hopelessness, and ingratitude. But the health of the body is also important and Islam prohibits its neglect for many reasons, the least of which is one does not function well in the world when handicapped by ill health. What is the role of food in our basic well-being, in the state of the spirit, intellect, emotions and body? Is food only related to the state of ones body and is there a connection between the body and the other integral elements of man? There has been a concern about food from the very early period of Islam. Al-Qushayri in his Risalah says that the Companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) were more concerned about their food than about the night prayer (qiyaamul-layl). The reason being, because if they were eating food that was not good or lawful, there wouldn’t be any night prayer! One of the early generations (salaf) said, “I heard a word of backbiting and as a result of it I was denied the night prayer (tahajjud) for 40 days.†In relation to food, whenever the Qur’an mentions the word halal, which indicates what is permissible, it mentions tayyib, which means pure, immediately after it. What is meant by permissible and pure is that the food is not simply good to eat but it is a morally sound food, its source was ethically sound. It also has the meaning in the Arabic language of “lawfulâ€, “pure,†“esteemed.†A person who is cheery and of good disposition is called Tayyib. Something that is pure and innocent is also Tayyib. The Prophet’s son, peace be upon them, was known as both Tayyib and Tahir, both meaning pure. Thus, the Qur’an commands us to eat “pure and permissible food.†Until recently, the majority of food was pure at its most primary level by nature because there was very little that people could do to food to contaminate it. With the resources available today, people change the chemical structures of food, and the study of Dietary Science is a burgeoning field of increasingly serious implications concerning the health of our planet. Allah warns us not to change His creation but to leave it in its natural state. That’s what fitra means. There is a beautiful hadith in Sahih Muslim in which the Prophet (peace be upon him) passed by a group of people who were pollinating and he thought it was a strange, unnatural practice. The Ansar stopped doing it after the Prophet questioned it and they had a bad crop that year. So they complained to the Prophet (peace be upon him) and he said that they knew better about their worldly matters than he did, for his remark about the pollination, was not based on revelation and was never meant to be. While it was not wahy, his comment is indicative of how he viewed the world, peace and blessings be upon him. We are all electro-magnetic resonances at the most basic level. We are vibrating at a certain resonance. Food has a resonance and when you eat it, it either nourishes or harms, although the food itself is neutral. If you eat in its right proportions, and if you eat good food, then it is going to be beneficial to the body. The opposite is also true. The worst thing you can do is to completely fill the body with food. In a sahih hadith the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The worst vessel that the son of Adam can fill is his stomach.†And he also said: “It is enough for the son of Adam to have just morsels (of food) to keep his back upright. But if you have to eat more than that [and everybody thinks this is part of the Sunnah] then one third for food, one third for water, and one third for air.†The Sunnah is to consume enough morsels to keep our backs straight, while filling one third of the stomach with food, one third air and one third with water, is the dispensation (rukhsa) given to us by the Prophet (peace be upon him). At the same time, we know that the Prophet (peace be upon him) did not encourage asceticism and he did not like going to extremes. Imam Busayri said, in this regard, “it may be that too little food is worse than too much food.†This is because the nature of the nafs is such that the excessive extreme is safer than the deficient extreme. A diabetic is not in danger when his sugar levels get high, but he is when it falls precipitously low. An overeater can go on for a long time but someone who under eats can eat into serious health problems very quickly. So Imam Busayri is saying that those of excessive zuhd (doing-without) are worse than people who are indulgent, because the former can end up killing themselves. The Prophet (peace be upon him) never liked pointing out people’s mistakes publicly but there are a few examples when he did. There is a very interesting hadith where the Prophet said to a man with a large stomach: “Had this been on somebody else it would have been better for you.†Meaning that the food you are wasting by overeating would be better if someone else was eating it. In the Kitab Al-Raqaa’iq of Ibn Mubarak, Sayyiduna ‘Umar sees Yazid making tawaf around the Ka’bah and his stomach was coming out over his loin cloth (izaar), so he took his stick and lifted his devotional cover (ihram) saying: “Is this the stomach of a little kafir?†‘Umar was making a reference to the well-known sahih hadith, which says that the kafir eats from seven intestines and the believer eats from one. The circumstance of the hadith is that a man came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) to learn about Islam, so the Companions brought him some milk and he drank seven bowls. The next day he came and took shahadah and the Prophet offered him milk again and this time he only drank one bowl. The Prophet (peace be upon him) then asked him if he wanted more and he said that he was now full. The meaning of this is that the kafir’s appetite for the dunya is more than the true mu’min. Food is our essential connection with the world. One of the early pious Muslims said that he would prefer to stop eating before he became satiated so that he would be able to perform the night prayer. Prophet and his message, he stayed at the sanctuary of the Ka’bah for one month and he used to only drink the water of zamzam, and he said that he gained weight in that month. If you look at the diet of the Prophet (peace be upon him) in the Shama’il of Imam At-Tirmidhi, it says that he used to eat barley (sha’eer), which has proven to be the most nutritious of all the grains. He also used to eat dates. However, they did not drink cow’s milk, but rather goat, sheep, and camel’s milk. They also made a type of yogurt, as well as butter (zubda), from it. He liked pumpkin, cucumber, grapes, which came from Ta’if, and he also liked melons. The Arabs would also bring dried fruits from Syria such as apricots, but they were expensive and thus only affordable for the well-to-do. MEAT Meat was rarely eaten in the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him). In the language of the age we now live in, the Companions would be considered semi-vegetarian. In those days you had to personally sacrifice an animal before you had meat and so meat was usually only eaten when people were invited somewhere as guests. Meat is a ‘na’eem’ or a “luxury†food. The Arabs call somebody who loves meat or is carnivorous a ‘qarim.’ Once ‘Umar saw a man buying meat everyday in the market and asked him why. He replied that he was so ‘Umar told him that he was afraid that he would become like those who lose all of their good deeds in this world by taking too much na’eem from the dunya. ‘Umar, during his khilafah, prohibited the eating of meat everyday. This is permissible for the Khalifah to do because it is only mubah (permissible) to eat meat everyday. With this said, it is mentioned that al-Hasan Al-Basri, in his time, used to eat a small amount of meat everyday. But no one has considered this to affect his status as a zahid (one who does without the excesses of dunya). The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Meat is the master of food.†It is like the aristocrat of food. Imam Malik has a chapter called Bab Al-Lahm (The Chapter about Meat) in his collection of hadith entitled the Muwatta. The following are two hadith from this chapter and they are both warnings about eating meat: 1. “Beware of meat because it has an addiction like the addiction of wine.†To this day, in some parts of Yemen, they call meat “khamr al-mu’mineen†(the wine of the believers). People who eat meat constantly must have meat in their food because they get addicted to its taste or flavor. In many places in the Muslim world, meat was not readily available, and for most, extremely expensive. Do to its cost, most Muslims rarely ate meat and one of the benefits of the Feast of the Sacrifice after Hajj is that poor people get to eat meat for a day. Another aspect that has changed is refrigeration. In the past, people ate meat that was freshly slaughtered and thus the decomposition was minimal. Now, meat is kept for days, weeks, and even months. Meat consumption is much higher today than it was in the past. Also there is a danger in the unnatural growth hormones and estrogen [a female hormone] used in modern meat production as well as in the dairy industry. Immigrant parents who are of average height are now finding that their children are much taller than them or anyone in their families. Many think it is a good thing and attribute their children’s size to the “good food†they are eating (as if they didn’t get good food back where they came from). Wherever American beef has gone there has been an increase in the size of the people. This has happened in Japan and in Asian countries such as the Philippines. The average height of an average person is five feet, eight inches. In the Muslim world that’s the average height. If you are six feet and you go on Hajj you will tower over everyone else. The other hadith in the Muwatta is: 2. ‘Umar used to see someone who buys meat all the time, so he said: “It would be better if you tucked your stomach in a little bit and let other people eat.†This is a very profound insight from the Second Caliph, ‘Umar, may Allah be pleased with him. Starvation is very real and one of the tragedies of modern food shortages is directly related to meat production in general and cattle consumption in particular. It takes several pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat and reducing one’s meat consumption is in fact a political act that, if done on large scales, would have excellent benefits for both the environment and the less fortunate. In the Muslim world today, lamb, rather than beef, is the dominant meat eaten. Lamb was the traditional meat eaten by the Prophet (peace be upon him), although he did sacrifice a cow on the Hajj, which was for his women folk. There is a sahih hadith that says: “The meat of the cow is a disease and its milk is a cure.†Today we are seeing evidence that cow’s meat is the number one reason for cardio-vascular disease. Saturated fats found in animals are the main cause for one’s arteries becoming sclerotic, which leads to strokes and heart attacks. We see that bypass operations are very common for people who have a habit of eating a lot of cow meat. It is tragic because if people would just follow the Sunnah, they would rarely need such common and preventable operations. Allah says, “Eat and drink but not to excess, Allah does not love those who are excessive.†The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The best of my Ummah are my generation, then the second generation, then the third generation, then they start getting plump.†In most cases, it is our own appetite (nafs) that leads to heart conditions and we should really only blame ourselves. The body is designed to live over 120 years. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said that the ages of his Ummah would be between 60–70 years. The Prophet passed away when he was 63 and it is said that his stomach was completely flat, that he had only 17 grey hairs in his beard and that he had the strength of 40 men. The body has rights over us. The right of the body is that it has to be fed properly and it has to be given exercise and rest. The great Imam Al-Ghazali said that the maximum amount of sleep that the body must be given is eight hours. Sleep is nourishment; it is food for the ruh (spirit). SLEEP Protein, carbohydrates, and lipids feed the body, while the ruh is fed by the remembrance of Allah (dhikr) and sleep (nawm). Another thing that is notable is that the more dhikr you do the less sleep you need. If you sleep before midnight (meaning halfway between Maghrib and Fajr), after ‘Isha, then that sleep is worth up to twice as much as the sleep that occurs after midnight. The Sunnah of the Prophet is to go to bed right after ‘Isha, and sleeping after Fajr, before sunrise (shuruq), is considered negative sleep. So, if you slept for two hours it is as if you were deprived of two hours of sleep. It is negative sleep. If you sleep before Zuhr or before ‘Asr, then that is positive sleep and it is worth twice in terms of the rejuvenation of the body. According to Imam As-Suyuti in Tibb An-Nabawi, “Whoever sleeps after ‘Asr and wakes up mad let him blame only himself.†The Prophet (peace be upon him) used to sleep after Zuhr and he said: “Take an afternoon sleep (qaylula) because Shaitan does not take one.†This practice helps you get up at night for the night prayer (tahajjud). When you take the afternoon rest it literally brings you back to the freshness of the morning. It is like starting the day all over again. Sickness is not a bad thing because it is a form of taharah for the members of this great Ummah; it is purification. You get sick when your immune system deteriorates. This happens when you don’t give the body its right. You should not consume too much sugar because it will compromise your immune system. Drinking all these sugared drinks is bad for your health. The Prophet did not drink with meals. If you drink a sugared liquid with a meal then it creates a type of fermentation inside your stomach, especially if you’ve eaten carbohydrates and meat. By drinking a cold fluid you weaken the digestion and put out its “fire.†It is better to drink a warm fluid after your meals. The Prophet, peace be upon him, taught us how to eat, sleep, and worship. He reminded us that our bodies have a right over us. Only recently have scientists discovered that one’s health in later years is enhanced by a lifelong commitment to certain basic principles including moderation in food, drink, rest, and exercise. Western scientists have also clearly found that people who are in healthy marriages and practice prayer on a regular basis have longer and healthier lives. Islam provides immense guidance in the area of health and hygiene and this is an area sorely neglected among many Muslims today. We should all commit to healthier lifestyles including changing our diets to be more consistent with our beliefs and closer to our beloved Prophet’s practice.

The Coming End of the Legal Interregnum in Dar-al-Islam By Shaykh Abdal Qadir as-Sufi It is in the nature of this present world hegemony that its underlying structure could be defined as inter-link. It is a vast and amorphous entity which in its totality is identifiable as nothing. Yet it makes a whole. Yet its furthest part is linked to its most central part. It is like an enormous Lego system designed by a lunatic using every piece of Lego in the factory in order to make something total which signifies absolutely nothing. Its most intriguing and outrageous aspect is that the whole moral and political ethos, which it claims it was brought into action in order to defend, it has in fact abolished. It has instituted, as Amir Tareq Ali demonstrated, a totalitarian system of repression using almost identical terms and clauses inside every National State. Only the State of Israel is free from the contingencies and restrictions imposed on all the rest of that amorphous entity, the World Community. The World Community seems to move in a haze of absolute unity and without dissent, yet it is devoid of personnel, of leadership, of constitution, of philosophy, indeed of identity. It is certainly not the United Nations Organisation, which is ignored in every serious affair, and in any event is owed a fortune by the USA, which is, after all, one of the few psychic medium States that seems to be in communication with the ectoplasmic entity, the World Community. The university system has been globalised for some decades. A student in Peking or Kabul desiring a PhD has to apply the same methodology of critical analysis used in Cambridge and Stanford. Currencies are an absolute inter-link system, only some Nation States are punished either because of poverty or refusal to assure market access by the super-powers, their punishment being that their currencies, while they may be valued, cannot be traded. The whole banking system is on inter-link. It is a many-tiered system and goes from small private banks, to national banks, all the way up to the super-banks which govern the great projects of commodity extraction and repossession. There is a particular class of banks which is simply inaccessible to public scrutiny, neither its personnel nor its capital holdings being available even to sophisticated journalistic enquiry. Nation-State political representation is also clicked in to a variety of supra-national organisations which pretend either to a cultural purpose, a trading purpose, or for the purpose of mutual legal re-alignment. Interpol, the Old-World police model, is already resentful that new and more secret security systems are taking over the world police system, leaving them free to nab the occasional inter-continental smuggler. The motor-force which is now giving energy to the ultimate transformation of the old liberal political order into the new slave system of financial power, is the doctrine of Terrorism. This is the most audacious and, alas, the most successful trick in the book of these world adventurers. Instituting a World Terror, playing at the world level what the French Revolution accomplished at a national level, they turn the situation completely upside down. The New World Order is the Terror machine. The Arab militants, the Afghan people, the Pakistani people, the Darfur refugees, the denizens of the Brazilian Favelas - all these un-defined millions stand accused as Terrorists or potential Terrorists. Amir Tareq Ali has warned us that a capacity to commit a crime against them has now been re-defined as being itself an act against them. I stood amazed for a long time at how no-one seemed to be objecting to the simply appalling and quite ruthless enslavement of whole peoples, and how the impoverishment of rich countries was met by a seeming indifference. In the 19th century and throughout the 20th, great writers, poets and musicians railed against the growing tyranny and enslavement of corporation capitalism. Why had the human peoples so passively and submissively withdrawn into their houses? It was only as I examined it that I saw that this was not the case. All the resisters, all the fighters, all the ferocious, unforgiving and vengeful Arabs, Afghans, Irish, Basque, Corsicans, Assami, Burmese, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and the heroic Uygurs, fighting on a daily basis the murder and torture of their men and the surgical removal of the wombs of their women - all of these are fighting the same enemy. The girl university student fighting to save the whale is indissolubly one with the Palestinian who once struggled for a worthless little nation, but now, desperately, for sheer survival. Read the whole article from http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/articles/Art060_04052006.html

May Allah make it easy for the sister and also for the brother.

Salam, Just wanted to do a recommendation. Do a Google on "Hakim Archuletta" and check his materials out. Hakim Archuletta is a globally renowned speaker on natural healing and Islam. He got some brilliant stuff.

Salam Bro. Nah, I am not South African. But I am a big fan of Nelson Mandela.

The Value of Parents A little boy came up to his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was fixing supper, and he handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. After his mom dried her hands on an apron, she read it, and this is what it said: For cutting the grass: $5.00 For cleaning up my room this week: $1.00 For going to the store for you: .50 Babysitting my kid brother while you went shopping: .25 Taking out the garbage: $1.00 For getting a good report card: $5.00 For cleaning up and raking the yard: $2.00 Total owed: $14.75 Well, his mother looked at him standing there, the boy could see the memories flashing through her mind. She picked up the pen, turned over the paper he'd written on, and this is what she wrote: For 9 months I carried you while you were growing inside me: No Charge. For all the nights that I've sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you: No Charge. For all the trying times, and all the tears that you've caused through the years: No Charge. For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead: No Charge. For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose: No Charge, Son, When you add it up, the cost of my love is: No Charge. When the boy finished reading what his mother had written, there were big tears in his eyes, and he looked straight at his mother and said, "Mum, I sure do love you". And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: "PAID IN FULL" "Your Lord has decreed that you should worship nothing except Him, and show) kindness to your parents, whether one or both of them attain old age (while they are) still with you, never say to them 'Shame! nor scold either of them. Speak to them in a generous fashion. Protect them carefully and say: 'My Lord, show them mercy, just as they cared for me as a little child'" [surah 17:23-24].

Just checked the link. No, not related. You must be a Muslim to practice Tasawwuf and there has to be a proper barrier between the men and women when it comes to Tasawwuf lessons. My own shaykh would have some kind of barrier or curtain put on between the men and women and all women must wear the Niqab to sit in front of him or they must sit behind the curtain.

Has anyone listened to any of the lectures? At least the one by Shaykh Abdal Qadir as-Sufi? Specially the ones running around sufi-bashing?

It is not an "ism". Darqawiyya is branch of Shadhili Tariqa. Named after the reviver and a teacher of the Tariqa, Mawlay ad-Darqawi of Morocco. Mawlay ad-Darqawi used to send letters to his students and it has been translated. Few of these letters can be viewed from http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ABewley/Darqawi.html

AUDIO: Redefining Muslim Families in the Modern Times By: Imam Zaid Shakir MP3: http://www.zaytuna.org/audio/Redefining%20Muslim%20Families%20in%20the%20Modern%20Times.mp3

Salam. Please see: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ABewley/Darqawi.html It has selections from "The Letters of Shaykh ad-Darqawi", translated by Aisha Bewley.

All of the above lectures are available online from http://www.islamicyouthconference.com/main/streaming.html

Flight From the Masjid By Imam Zaid Shakir One of the noblest and most beneficial institutions in the history of humanity has been the Masjid (Mosque). It was in the Masjid that the great scholars of Islam were first shaped: linguists, jurists, theologians, saints, and countless devout worshippers. The Masjid has produced men and women who have left an indelible mark on the world. It was around the Masjid that the great universities, hospitals, observatories, hostels, and the other institutions that became the hallmarks of the great Islamic civilizational enterprise appeared. The Masjid has always been the heart of the Islamic community, serving as a house of worship, an educational center, a center for the dispensing of valuable social services, a meeting place, and a place of solace and refuge. Unfortunately, today in America, we find many Muslims who have either left, or were never fully involved in the life of the Masjid. There are many reasons for this regrettable situation. The purpose of this article is to examine some of those reasons, and to suggest some measures that may prove beneficial in overcoming them. One of the greatest causes of the flight from the Masjid is ignorance. This ignorance begins with a lack of knowledge concerning the very word itself. If asked, how many Muslims would be able to define “Masjid,†linguistically and legally? This may seem a trivial point, however, the meaning of the word is intrinsically associated with its principal function. If we were all more cognizant of the primary function of the Masjid, we would possibly be more careful to avoid some of the questionable practices, which commonly occur in them. Many of those practices, as we will seek to explain in this article, are instrumental in the flight from the Masjid. Read the whole article from http://www.zaytuna.org/articleDetails.asp?articleID=24

A Cup of Water A famous sufi Sheikh once visited the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, and when he entered his presence the caliph asked him if he wanted anything. The Sheikh said that he only desired a simple cup of water. When the cup of water was given to the sheikh he asked the Caliph, “what would you give if no water was available to you and you are forced to trade for this one cup of water?†Harun al-Rashid replied, “I most certainly would give at the very least half of my kingdom†The Sheikh then said, “and what would you give if you were not able to release the waste of that water from your body unless you traded something for it?†The Caliph said, “I would certainly give the other half of my kingdom†The Sheikh smiled and told the Caliph, “It is God that controls both these things, so what is the worth of all your kingdom if it can be so easily traded for a simple cup of waterâ€. Source: http://qisas.com/stories/125

I must also mention the blessed land of Sudan. It was the home of traditional Islam. It had brilliant minds and scholars. It had a glorious traditional past. But recently, with the petro-dollar pumping, the wahhabies have done much propagation and have been sadly successful to an extend in getting the people into wahhabism. But still, there is hope. There is always hope. There are still people of real Islamic knowledge and understanding and it is only a matter of time that they revive - as the petro-pumping dollars from saudi arabia continues to dry out.

Nah, it's okay. I am in no need to study or even learn anything from Abdal Wahhab, of Najd. Islamic history have produced many many tremendous scholars who have not left any rocks uncovered. They have spoken about Tawhid, shikr, kufr, bidah and you name the rest. And those scholars were brilliant and they did not first call the Muslims kaffir and then killed them. But the people of Abdal Wahhab of Najd, they massed killed Muslims after Muslims cause they claimed that those Muslims were kaffir. They killed so many Hajjis who came to perform Hajj. So give me a break. Enough damage has been done by this obscure tribal ideology that had originated from Najd. As I said, the high-time of wahhabism is over. The beast is on its death bed, about to die.

Oh, please, give me a break. I was going to post a massive article, but I am sure you can get them from Google. But anyhow, alhamdulliah, things are changing. Wahhabism thrived and survived only by the sustanence they received from saudi petro-dollar industry and by the back-up of the royal saudi family. Things are changing. The current kind, he is pro traditional Islam and so far from the interviews and the comments he has made, it is very clear that he is not fond of wahhabism. MashAllah. And given the terror the wahhabies have caused among the Muslims and non-Muslims, people are becoming more and more careful and various governments are preventing the money supply to sustain wahhabi activities, so money is drying out as well. Another 10-20 years and wahhabism will be a thing of the past, inshAllah,

Wahhabism By Sidi Abdassamad Clarke To see things clearly, with focus and in perspective one needs two eyes. Then things appear in three dimensions. We have been looking at the matter of terrorism with one eye. That is why our actions are ineffective. The first eye must look on the history of Islam, and in this case the history of wahhabism. The second eye must look on something in Europe, because we have been here before. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth we had an almost identical phenomenon. That was clearly identified by European intellectuals, Dostoyevsky and others, as nihilism, but the nihilism of the parents' generation acted out by the young people who in effect say to them, "If you don't believe in anything, why not?" First, before we approach the story of wahhabism, we must locate it within Islam itself. As it has reached us, Islam comprises three distinct dimensions. First, outward practice such as both the acts of worship and ordinary transactions, i.e. law, covering all aspects, commercial, civil and criminal, etc. This is the Shari’ah which has been transmitted by the four accepted legal schools. Second, a rational science which encompasses what is necessarily true about the Divine, what is inconceivable for Him and what conceivable, and similarly for the prophets, the angels, etc. This is transmitted by two acceptable schools. Third, the spiritual path which is generally known as Sufism, which is transmitted by a number of different tariqas. All three of these dimensions with their different schools were universally agreed upon. All of this exists under the umbrella of governance by a known contract. That contract has clauses for muslim subjects and non-muslim subjects. All of this is sustained by a very necessary scholarship involving deep knowledge of Arabic, Qur’anic commentary and exposition of legal cases. Wahhabism was originally an eighteenth century movement among desert Arabs who rose in insurrection against the Ottomans. Their teaching was characterised by being: simplistic and literalist, i.e. it rejected all the above three dimensions and their schools in favour of directly deriving theology and law from a literalist understanding of the Qur’an and books of traditions, insurrectionary; they overthrew legitimate governance and began an insurgency movement against the Ottomans who were forced to stamp them out, fanatical; I use this word advisedly, but intend by it their declaration of Muslims who disagreed with them beyond the pale of Islam. In our time, this is evidenced by the fact that huge numbers of the victims of suicide bombers are Muslims. The first phase of wahhabism ended with their containment as a movement to the eastern area of the Najd. We pick up the thread again, when in the early twentieth century, an inheritor of the ruling wahhabi clan, ‘Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa’ud, a remarkably talented and adventurous man, embarked on the exploit of restoring his family’s fortunes. Along the way to that he met the remnants of the wahhabi sect, and saw the advantage their steely ruthless fanaticism gave him in his fight. He set in process the conversion of the desert tribes to their creed. None of that might have made any enduring impact on history if it had not happened when it did, when the eyes of European foreign policy makers were glued on the fortunes of the Ottomans. I pass no judgement on this, but simply want to tell it as factually as possible. Thus, Ibn Sa’ud, who was a wily and worldly-aware man, understood what none of his rather simple followers did, that on the international stage he would have to be under the patronage of one of the great world powers. It was initially the British. They fostered him. Although undecided for some period between him and Sharif Hussain of Mecca, in the end his undoubted intrepidness won the day and he became the undisputed ruler of the Arabian peninsula. Saudi oil came to prominence. British influence wained. The patronage of the now Saudi Arabia passed to the USA, at the time of Roosevelt who personally met Ibn Sa’ud. Built into the new state, however, was Ibn Sa’ud’s courtship of the wahhabis and the manner in which he transformed the desert Arabs into wahhabis and then used them as the force to underpin his kingdom, as he and his family and their doctrine were not widely liked in Arabia. Given the centrality to Muslims of Mecca and Medina, and the astonishing oil wealth after the price hikes of the seventies, Muslims from all over the world went to Saudi Arabia to find donations for all the worthy projects they had, most importantly the building of mosques. The donations they received had an implicit price: sing the wahhabi tune in your countries and in your mosques, which many did. The great majority of British mosques, however, are from small Pakistani communities often hostile to wahhabism and funding their mosques from their own hard-earned cash. The second matter that affected us here in Britain were the graduates of Medina university who returned as propagandists for wahhabism. The result was that both a strong and a dilute form of wahhabism spread, based on a primitive fundamentalist idea, in a christian sense, that anyone could take the divinely revealed book and make judgements from it and from traditions by reading them literally, although now with non-Arabs this interpretation was dependent on translations, which were often atrociously bad. Within this new form, the dissatisfactions of some of the youth were vented by their fighting in Afghanistan, and later Chechnya and Bosnia, or by their going to Medina to get a programming in a more erudite kind of wahhabism. The Afghanistan fighting entered into the arena of modern geopolitics. The Mujahidun leaders went to Washington and then the CIA reciprocated and trained fighters, like Bin Laden, who would later turn out to be the core of the new threat. It did not stop in Afghanistan. There was Chechnya, another land on the frontier between different geo-political interests. When the Bosnian crisis erupted, brigades of these young fighters were recruited by the Americans for Bosnia, thus cementing their sense of identity as an international movement. When the geopolitical winds changed, they of course, found themselves on the outside. In many cases they either went on as lone volunteers to new conflicts or returned disgruntled to their own countries or to other lands. An international culture had been created, whose fruits we see today. However, that movement ought better to be seen as an expression of the natural idealism of young people and their frustration with the political processes of the age. Every society and every generation is confronted with that, and it is a measure of the wisdom of a society how it deals with it. To return to our other theme. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries young Europeans tied dynamite to themselves and blew themselves up in crowded public places. Our greatest intellectuals looked closely at this phenomenon, and diagnosed it clearly as nihilism. They saw nihilism as the result of a high idealism, so high as to be unattainable. The idealist despises other people for not having and striving for ideals, and in the end comes to despise himself for not attaining his own. Thus, the suicide bomber can blow up men, women and children, and he can also blow himself up. Wahhabi idealism is marked theologically by the elevation of God literally high above the seven heavens, a creed which, if believed literally and physically, removes them from the community of Islam. However, it is important for us to recognise that this phenomenon is as much and perhaps more a product of our late capitalist society as it is of a particular sect. Understood within the context of societal breakdown in terms of our mounting criminal statistics – wife-beatings, rapes, murders, child abuse and more – then it is a part of a complete symptom picture of the nihilism of our age. As a sect it has to be seen that a rather weak signal from an extremely peripheral movement was greatly amplified first by oil wealth, and then later by its usefulness to geo-political considerations of other powers. Otherwise, we might have seen it die away of its own accord long ago. This strange seed found some soil in which to sprout in our society. Thus seen, it is for the Muslims to deal with by restoring that picture of Islam which I outlined at the beginning. That deprives this sect of its oxygen. The process is both a restoration of Islamic learning and of Islamic social mores and key aspects of shari'ah such as zakat, the charitable tax. Undoubtedly police activities to find and prevent terrorist activities must proceed. These people are merely criminals and Muslims must help the authorities to detain them and prevent them. In that the terrorist is no different from a murderer, rapist or robber. But possibly the gravest danger of the terrorist threat is that it distract us from the genuinely deep crisis of the chronic nihilism of modern society, which extends a great deal further than the activities of a few madmen. It is the nihilism of our age at all levels of our society that is the matter facing us, and it has disturbing consequences. In that we rely on Dostoyevsky's key insight: that the destructiveness of the anarchists of his time was their expression of the nihilism of the previous generation. In that, the suicide bomber is also a symptom of a deeper malaise of British society. In these circumstances, perhaps the Muslim community might render a deeper service to Britain, and certainly stand ready to do so.

The execution of al-Hallaj was accomplished by the signature on the death warrant of the great Imam of the Sufis, Imam Junayd, who wrote: “In the eyes of the Shariah he is guilty. In the eyes of the Haqiqat, only Allah knows.†Don’t bag around about what the people of the past have done for you don’t really know your own final end, your own final fate and how you will die.