“Don’t Sleep On Your Ibadah!”

So today was the all day intensive with Ustadh Usama Canon. Hamdulillah, I’m so glad I went, it really was such a blessing to be there and benefit from him. The turnout at first was a little sad, but slowly people came. People that knew about it and didn’t show up really missed out, he is so down to earth, funny, someone who can relate to us, knows where we are coming from and mashaAllah he is juss such an amazing speaker. May Allah reward all those who organized the event and everyone that came out and help us all act on what we learned. Actually, there were two brothers that came to the event that were from New Jersey, subhanAllah, may Allah reward them for their long journey to gain knowledge.

The intensive was supposed to cover some specific chapters from Imam al-Hadad’s Book of Assistance, we only covered one chapter but we were able to ask many questions which I thought was very beneficial and helped us all out because with that he also gave us many advices that will help us all inshaAllah. Below are my notes that I took, if you have time take a look maybe something will benefit you inshaAllah. (*Please note*If there are any mistakes in the notes below they are my own mistake and may Allah forgive me.)

He began with giving us juss some background information about Imam al-Hadad. Imam al-Hadad was born in Tarim, his grandfather was a descendant of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). The significance of the place of his birth, Tarim, is that Tarim is a very blessed place. I think it was Abu Bakr that made du’a for it to be a blessed place and to continuously have scholars come from here. His text is very concise and brief but very strong. He passed away in 1132, May Allah bless him for all he did.

We went over Chaper 2: Intentions (Niyyah). We talked about the famous hadith ad deen nun nasiha. He talked about how we need to improve our sincerity, our intentions. He told us that we need to think about what we are doing and think of how we can improve it. He asked us, what is a good deed? What is a sound deed? Simply, it is that which Allah told us to do and how Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) used to do it. He said that when a patient goes to their physician, the physician doesn’t diagnose him/her by juss looking at him/her, the physician has to examine the patient and determine what is wrong with him/her. Like wise, we can’t simply assume that our niyyah is pure, before we do anything we have to take a step back, examine the situation and what we will be doing. Will we be doing the right thing? Will it be for the sake of Allah? Will Allah be happy with us? We need to renew our intentions as often as we can. Intentions are like a foundation for the believer, if you take the foundation out of a building what will happen to the building? It will collapse, fall apart. Apply that same concept to the believer, if the niyyah is bad, if the foundation is bad, what will happen to us? We need to think to ourselves, what is it that you are doing and why are you doing it?

He also talked about the hadith, inna mal ‘amanu bin niyyah. Abu Dawud said that this hadith alone is half of Islam! Your will be judged by either what you do on the outside, your actions, or what you do on the inside, your niyyah. He told us a hadith that once the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) was sitting in the haram and a man entered the masjid. He was very well dressed, looked like he was a man of the deen etc… and when the Sahabah saw him they thought ‘Oh what a pious man.’ Then the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) asked the man if he thought he was better than others and the man said yes, and because he thought he was better than others this was a fault that was a sin. We should never think that we are better than others, we should al ways keep our intention pure, especially when we enter the house of Allah. He told us a hadith that was pretty much the opposite. There was a man who was standing outside the doors of the masjid, as if we was waiting for something. The sahabah were looking at him and thinking what is he waiting for? Finally they asked him what are you waiting for, why wont you juss enter the masjid? And the man said that I am waiting for someone [a believer] to go in before me, this is the house of my Lord, my Lord looks into my heart and I am ashamed. SubhanAllah, this hadith juss touched my heart and difference between the two men are quite obvious, which one of these two would you like to be amongst?

He talked about how today we say things, do things, make decisions all the time without even thinking about them. At first I was like huh? but then I realized what he meant and it made me said. He talked about how we talk talk talk talk all the time, but we never think, you know think before you speak, yeah we don’t do that. Think about it, today we say things all the time and sometimes we don’t even mean it. For example, the phrase ‘I love you’ or juss the word ‘love,’ has been thrown around so often, so overused that it really has lost its significance, its true meaning. Before we say things, before we do things we need to think how will this be helping me, will this be getting me closer to Allah? He mentioned the hadith that the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said that no one will enter jannah without the mercy of Allah, we need to stop calculating what we did for the day and guessing how much each deed we did is worth- what authority do we have to say how much each deed is worth or even if our deed is accepted?  But then we got into dedication, dedication to the deen. How dedicating oneself to the religion these days can often be thought that if you want to dedicate yourself to the religion, or if you want to learn to the religion then you have to quit school, or you have to live in the masjid 24/7 which is not right! You have to know about the deen and how to apply it to your daily life, know how to put it into practice accordingly to your everyday life.

We discussed the beauty of niyyah, how everything you do can have a niyyah that can change ordinary acts into acts of worship-everyday acts can become acts of ibadah. ex: eating, studying, etc… He told us to renew our intentions throughout the day as often as we can, and when you get to your campus you should think to yourself, “I am the ambassador of Sayyidinah Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).” This will be excellent dawah and he said that “you are either making Dawah or being dawah made to.”

He talked about the iman roller coaster-when you’re at a convention or conference you’re juss at the top of the roller coaster but then when its over you go down. He told us that we shouldn’t go through these up and down stages and that we should keep ourselves with other beleivers. He told us that the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said The actions most beloved to Allah after fulfilling obligations is making another Muslim happy! He also told us a beautiful hadith that whoever glances at their parents in a way that pleases them, Allah will write the reward of an accepted Hajj-and a companion asked what if you look at them one hundred times, and he (peace and blessings be upon him) said that Allah is great and pure therefore a hundred accepted Hajj’s will be accepted. SubhanAllah!

He went over the means of Rizq with us and they are: taqwa, tawaqqul, salah, sadaqa, istighfar, and taharuq. We should believe in Allah and all that he provides for us, and we should have trust in Allah for what he gives us. We need to pray, and not use excuses like I can’t pray at work, I’m scared of my boss, or my boss wont let me-and as he said if your boss wont let you then sue him and then hamdulillah you will get money We should give for Allah and remember that whatever you give for Allah, Allah will give back to you. We talked briefly about the economy and how when things like this happen we shouldn’t panic and be like oh my God my money is gone, my money is this, my money is that…. because everything belongs to Allah. We should make istighfaar because when you make istighfaar Allah will provide for you. And finally you should work, trust in Allah and make the effort.

He told us how if we see a haraam, we should act upon it. Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said whoever amongst you sees an evil then stop it with their hand, if not their hand then their tongue, and if not with the tongue then with the heart. But he said we should take the situation into thought, always give the benefit of the doubt, and act wisely.

We went on to knowledge, he reminded us that this is a deen that is preserved by knowledge. We should be thankful to Allah for the ability that he gave us to be able to acquire knowledge. Allah gave us the ability to gain knowledge so we should be thankful and go out and gain as much knowledge as we can which got us into being able to read the Qur’an but not being able to understand it. We should dedicate ourselves to trying to learn the language of the qur’an. He told us how people use the qur’an as “background music.” The qur’an should not juss simply be listened to, when we hear the qur’an we should listen to it, pay attention to it and try to understand it so Allah can bestow more knowledge upon us.

He told us “Put yourself in a situation where you must thank you Lord!” Eat with intention to bring shukr out. There are people that are hungry, starving to death! There are about 24,000 people that die everyday because of the lack of food! But the average American comes into contact with food about 16 times a day! Sometimes we walk around saying I’m starving when we juss ate! Think about it, 24,00 people dying everyday, and we have food 16 times a day-that’s 3 times more than we pray! We should try to do something to make a change, keep our niyyahs clean and the rest is in the hands of Allah. But we should also be careful because if we make bad niyyahs, it is as if we did that which we intended.>>>That is all we did from the book, the rest is juss questions//advice.

Someone asked, what should you do when someone comes up to you directing hatred towards Islam? He told us that Allah said, “Respond with a better respond.” We should take the situation in carefully, each situation is different, sometimes using logic helps, sometimes joking back works, sometimes you may have to use legal measures and we need to get out of our heads that the cops are the bad guys. But we need to remember that each situation is different and we need to be wise about what we chose to do.

He also said “Do not let people define you, you should define yourself.”

We also talked about labels, he told us that we shouldn’t use labels ourselves and not let others use them towards us. He reminded us that yes there should be unity, but unity does not mean that everyone must believe in the same thing. He told us that we shouldn’t claim to be anything but Muslim, Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said that Fitnah is worst than Katl! He told us that Zaytuna and Al-Maghrib instructors all spent a week together and they all signed a unity pact, the scholars are all cool with each other-so why is it that the students are making the problems with each other? Instead of bringing up and discussing real problems we are hung up on ideological problems. We shouldn’t be arguing or trying to convince to others what you believe to be right, rather we should be making daw’ah to non-Muslims and letting then know what Islam is about.

A sister asked how do we maintain that “hype” all the time? He said that if you have firm faith then it’ll never go away. But that we should also try to be with people who are active on the deen. He also advised us “Don’t marry someone that will distract you, marry someone that will assist you.” He said that there is usually something called the 80-20 rule meaning that in a group of people, only 20% of the people will be doing all of the work while the other 80% sits back and does nothing but criticize the ones who are actually working, he told us that you shouldn’t over work yourself because then you’ll be hurting yourself and the toher people will never learn or get anywhere. Another problem that faces us is that we are more critical of each other than supportive or each other and we tend to be “clicky.” We should leave the clicks behind and get everyone involved. Later on someone asked what you should do if you feel that you are “far from Allah” and he said that we should examine the situation, reflect and look at what you believe is causing you to be “far” from Allah.

We talked about hypersensitive Muslims, the reason why they are so sensitive is because it is about their religion and religion is something personal. So we should be nice to people, be sensitive and thoughtful of their emotions and we shouldn’t be harsh because we don’t want to drive anyone away from the deen. We shouldn’t press anything on someone or say something that will make someone offended or scare them way from Islam. And that if we ever want to correct someone we should do it in a nice matter, or in a creative matter. ex: Hassan (RA) and Hussain (RA) were the grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and one day they noticed an elderly man who was making wudhu wrong, so what they did was that one was making wudhu wrong and the other was correcting him and the elder man was watching them and when they were done the man said ‘Oh thank you I have been making wudhu wrong all this time, thank you for teaching me.’

The topic of gender interaction came up. He said that each MSA is different. He mentioned how this one MSA was having a BBQ one time and someone e-mailed the board asking if there will be a partition?!?! Honestly, how can you have a partition at a park? There was another MSA where at their E-board meetings they have a partition at the table, he mentioned how they might have class together, how they walk in through the same door but then they sit down and have a partition in front of each other. And then he said then there are juss some things that are either staright up wrong or sketch like an MSA that had co-ed Suhr-yeah that is deffinitely pretty sketch. He said that we need to be reasonable and we juss need to be normal with each other to try to avoid the awkwardness. Gender interaction is everywhere, we juss need to avoid the bad and pick out the good.There was actually a lot more discussed but the thing is this is a pretty wide topic and a bit confusing and I don’t want to confuse anyone or misinform anyone because I’m afraid that I might have misunderstood something and I don’t want to spread my confusion to anyone else.

He advised us to choose our companions wisely, we should seek out the elders in the community and learn from them. That we should seek out greatness, and that when you work hard, you succeed so you should work hard to achieve greatness.

He told us that whenever anything happens, good or bad, we should say la hawla wa la quwwata illa billa. If something bad ever happens we shouldn’t think why does this happen to me-sometimes I’m guilty of this too but sometimes it juss take a little reminder to get back on track. And when things seem rough we should remember the Prophets of Allah, how they were such pure people, examples for us but yet look at all the trials that they went through. And remember that Allah said, “With difficulty comes ease, with difficulty comes ease.” (Note how he said it twice too!) Think, reflect, and note how sometimes in life things look so horrendous and then they go back up and get better.

The two advice that he ended with was to either be in a state of tawbah, repentance, or be in a state of shukr, thankfulness.

And I’d like to end my notes with one of his quotes, “So if New York is indeed the cith that never sleeps then you shouldn’t be sleeping on your ibadah.”

Take care inshaAllah.

-radf

Allahumma sali ala sayyidina muhammadin an-Nabbiyil ummiyi Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim.

Confused? Didn’t understand something? Click here!

Ustadh Usama Canon in New York!

Hamdulillah, juss in time for an iman boost! This weekend Ustadh Usama Canon will be in New York! There will be an event Friday night at Stony Brook University from 7:00pm-10:00pm called “Islam in America: Participation in Our Communities in the Light of the Life of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)”-click here for the Facebook page. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend this one but I will be attending the all day intensive on Imam ‘Abdullah ibn Alawi al-Haddad’s The Book Assistance:A Practical Guide for the Path to Allah on Saturday October 25th! The intensive will be held at Masjid Darul Qur’an (Bayshore Masjid). You should go too, this will be an amazing opportunity! Some more information about the speaker:

Born and raised in California, Usama Canon embraced Islam in 1996.
Since then he has had the honor of studying various Islamic Sciences
both at home and abroad under some of today’s foremost scholars.
Currently, Usama serves as an instructor at Zaytuna Institute and as a
Muslim Chaplain for the State of California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation. Having established and directed an Outreach Program
at Zaytuna Institute, Usama maintains an active role in various facets
of Islamic outreach and education, concentrating on issues facing
Muslim youth, assisting converts, and developing support systems for
Muslim ex-offenders. He resides in the Bay Area with his wife and
children.

Schedule for the day:

10 AM- Doors Open
10-11 AM- Breakfast served
11 AM-12:45 PM- Session 1 (includes 15 minute Q&A)
12:45-1:30 PM- Salat-ul-Dhuhr/(Dhuhr at 1:10PM)
1:30-2:30 PM- Lunch
2:30-4:15 PM- Session 2 (includes 15 minute Q&A)
4:15-5PM- Salat-ul-’Asr/Break/(‘Asr at 4:30PM)
5-5:45PM- Concluding Lecture/Program Summary
5:45-6:15 PM- Salat-ul-Maghrib/(Maghrib at 6:05PM)

Click here for the facebook event page.

Click here for the flyer.

Click here to pre-register ($10 online, $15 at the door)

Take care inshaAllah and I will see you all there inshaAllah

-radf

Allahumma sali ala sayyidina muhammadin an-Nabbiyil ummiyi Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim.

Confused? Didn’t understand something? Click here!

Recap of Third Presidential Debate

Ok well this isn’t a real recap but it is pretty funny. If you have some time, or if you don’t have time juss make some time and let yourself enjoy a good laugh.

Also click here to see a little about Biden and click here to see a little about Palin.

Take care inshaAllah

-radf

Allahumma sali ala sayyidina muhammadin an-Nabbiyil ummiyi Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim.

Apologies

As salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullah,

I hope you all are in the best state of health and iman.

I appologize for not being active in my blog, but life has juss been so stressful and busy and I rarely have time to check up on my blog. So for those of you who e-mail me I’m sorry for the late responses but I do read them.

I have plans to add another page and change some stuff around but like I said I’ve juss had no time, please keep me in your du’as, I could really use some.

I’d like to start posting again soon but I need to find some more time, or maybe I juss need to sort out my priorities better, Allahu Alam.

But I leave you with this hadith:

“The most beloved acts to Allah are the consistent ones even if they be small.”

Sometimes that juss makes me feel better maybe it’ll do the same for you

Take care inshaAllah and please keep me and the entire Ummah, actually juss all of humanity in your du’as, we all need some du’as.

-radf

Allahumma sali ala sayyidina muhammadin an-Nabbiyil ummiyi Wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim.

Confused? Didn’t understand something? Click here!