Reconciling to Reality

The Prophet SAW said,

"Islam began as an alien thing,
and it will return to being an alien thing,
so blessed are the alienated ones.."

The world is an alienating place, and we're all gonna be dead soon.

In an airplane, I sat next to Muhamed, a TV reporter.
The stewardess came, and she had a nametag named Aisya on her
She didn't have her hijab on.

He asked her, "Did you pray on the plane?"
and she said, "Yes."

He asked again, "Can I ask you a question?"
and she said, "Yes."

He asked, "How do you feel about serving wine on the plane?"
She said, "It's REALLY hard.. but I always use my left hand."

I was so moved by that attempt for such an incredibly difficult circumstance
to be as true as she could to what she believed was right
because muslims do deal with filthy things with the left hand.

People are still struggling out there.
May God bless.

by Shaikh Hamza Yusuf

Why Do Bad Things Happen? -by Nouman Ali Khan

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

Sometimes we say to other people about bad things,
and sometimes we made other people hurtful.
We might have some normal conversations,
like, "oh our grandmother? She died already."
It may have been normal to us,
but without our consent we hurt other people's feelings.
We didn't realise that ALLAH is mad at us.

Like other examples of conversations,
some parents said to their children like this,
"You know why you fell down the stairs?
Coz you didn't listen to me to finish your homework,
and ALLAH is punishing you.
This is why bad things happen to you."

Bad things not by means of big things.
Bad things include small things, anything
that is as small as a particle,
from individual problems to society problems.
I heard this one person once told me,
"I was in a bad mood today, i woke up late today
and had to go through the traffic in the morning,
maybe Allah is mad at me today."
This is totally wrong.

Why accusing ALLAH SWT for the bad thing happened to us?
We were the one got up late,
we were the one that took up the wrong highway and went to traffic,
we were the one who didnt listen to the news report about traffic in that highway,
and then we blamed ALLAH. Why so?

In Al-Quran, the word 'musibah' is repeated many times.
It comes from the ancient Arabic word of 'asabah'.
And 'asabah' targets correctly right to 'every bad things'
The 'ta marbutah' is inserted at the end of the word,
so we didn't call it as 'musib', we call it as 'musibah',
means 'every single issue' of bad things.
For example,
first we get late to work because the traffic was bad.
Then the next, we get mad by the boss because we get let to work.
Then the as a result, we got fired by the boss.
Then the as a result, we got divorced because we got fired.
Then as a result, then as a result, then as a result etc.
So we see all this tied up problems caused-of-an-effect
because of just the first one problem.
However, ALLAH did not mean the first caused-of-an-effect.
What ALLAH truely means is EVERY SINGLE problem,
is all under ALLAH's allowance.

In Surah Al-Baqarah, there is one ayat,

"wa basyyiris sabirin.."

"and congratulate to those who are patient.."

It seems to be weird,
for some bad thing happen someone congratulate us.
We lose jobs and got divorced and all that, someone congratulate you.
Commonly people will congratulate to those who succeeded,
those who get good grades and good jobs.
But look at the language of ALLAH SWT,
to congratulate to those who are patient.
so we can see the aim for the bad things to happen to us,
is for us to be patient.
Because if we can have patience, we deserve HIS congratulations!

What we think is that,
our goal is to meet good grades,
our goal is to get good jobs,
but for ALLAH, the real goal is for us to get PATIENCE,
the bigger goal than anything else. Subhanallah.
And most of all, we deserve to congratulate to ourselves.
The real value that ALLAH sees is not the good grades, great jobs,
but the value of patience in our hearts.

And after that congratulations,

"...qaalu innalillahi wainna ilaihi raji'un.."

When any musibah happens, immediately say innalillahi wainna ilaihi rajiun.
It is not after moments later, but immediate response.
No doubt about it, we belong to ALLAH.
And no doubt about it, we are only going to return to HIM.
Meaning that we are going to return to our OWNER.
There is a hikmah for these sentence,
InsyaAllah, we will be upon them who Rasulullah SAW congratulates,
who had receive inner patience after any musibah.
And the feeling, of course. Subhanallah.

Like example, we blame our car that broke suddenly,
we blame the car coz it's ours.
but think again, we actually own nothing.
We even don;t own ourselves.
We belong to ALLAH. ALLAH owns us.
ALLAH owns everything.
So just say innalillahi wainna ilaihi raji'un.
Everything is belong to ALLAH.

And there is bigger solution for the sentence.
Whatever problem that we had is NOT PERMANENT.
Everything isn't permanent. Why?
Because even you and I are not permanent.
If we are not permanent, how come our problems can become permanent?
Even we ourselves are going to return to HIM.
Things are put in perspective.
Understand the bigger problem.
Like the analogy of someone standing in a building that's on fire,
and he was arguing what colour should the building be painted.
The argument for painting the building isn't the problem.
The real problem is the building is on fire.
He should have looking for some water.
Seeing this, instead of looking at the problem we faced through,
we should see the bigger perspective,
the bigger problem, is that actually HE is reminding us.
HE is reminding us that to HIM we shall return.
Just so ALLAH want our hearts to say
innalillahi wainna ilaihi raji'un.
Just so ALLAH wants to remind us that we belong to ALLAH.

For all the things that happened to us,
every single bad or good things, or musibahs,
it is all already written in the Qada' and Qadr.
Everything is already decided by ALLAH.
So everything will not happen except in permission of ALLAH.

Another word of advice,
we shall say that the bad thing is our fault.
And the bad thing is also not ALLAH's fault.
There are things happen to you because of our own actions.
But some things that happen beyond our control,
that is ALLAH's decision.
For example, we get disease even we took care of our health,
we cannot blame ourselves for that,
the disease is under ALLAH's decision and there is hikmah behind the disease,
maybe could get a rest from all hard works and all.
However, if we get disease because of smoking and eat bad things,
we cannot blame ALLAH for that.
We must understand how to take responsibility to ourselves.

Steps when we faced bad things :
1) Train our tongue to say innalillahi wainna ilaihi raji'un for every musibah.
2) Don't say people why bad things happen is because of ALLAH.
3) Take responsibility of ourselves as long as it is in our control.