Are we being deprived?

بِسْمِ الله الرَّحْمانِ الرَّحِيمِ

Alhamdulillah we are in the blessed days of Dhul Hijjah, the best days of the year!!! Many posts are published about what we could be doing, reminders about the takbirat are posted and forwarded yet some people don’t even know about these days and they are Muslims.

I was talking to some of my relatives who are Muslims yesterday and they didn’t know that we entered Dhul Hijjah. They also didn’t know that good deeds during this time were multiplied. It seems odd because on my FB feed, on my instagram feed, even on the statuses in whatsApp that is all I am seeing but off course these statuses and posts are also indicative of my interests.

If a person does not follow an Islamic page, does not have friends who are interested in the deen, then their wall will be very different and the reminders they will see will be very different. This made me think of the fact that I should not be taking for granted the surrounding that I have, the knowledge that Allah Azza Wajal is helping me to access. It is in fact a HUGE blessing!

Knowing that we are in the best days, striving to increase in good during these days, being able to open the Mushaf, recite and ponder over the book of Allah all of that is not given to everyone and we have to acknowledge it! We think it’s in our hands to read the Qur’an whenever we want to, but nope that is an illusion.

It is from His favours upon us that we were able to read today, recite His words and study them. Never take this blessing for granted. Just like we are supposed to say ‘Laa howla wala quwwata illa billah’ after the mu’adhin when he calls us to Salah, we should understand that the same applies with all acts of worship. This is why right after we say ‘iyyaka na’budu’ (You alone we worship/we enslave ourselves to) we say ‘wa iyyaaka nasta’in’ (and You Alone we seek help from!)

This is also why we say after Salah “Oh Allah aid me to remember You, to thank You and to worship You in the best manner.”

What is scary in this is when we don’t open the Qur’an and we think that it’s because we had such a busy week, day etc… we should instead realize that we were deprived, that we were denied the opportunity to do this very act of worship. This should humble us, push us to repent and push us to ask for His help so that tomorrow He favors us with salah, sadaqah, tilawah, tadabbur and any other good deed that will bring us closer to Him.

In my coaching program, I coach on the fact that the situation is not the reason for our actions, our actions come from the way we think. We think a thought which generates an emotion and that emotion drives us to act a certain way.

Let me explain, a person says she wants to attend a Qur’an class to get closer to Allah but she has thoughts that are unhealthy such as ‘I am too dumb, I am not worthy, I will be the worst student, others will make fun of me, I can’t do it’. These thoughts are stronger than her thought ‘I want to read to please Allah Azza Wajal’ and thus, she will not enroll, she will not give it a try and will spend years and years not reading the book of Allah. If you ask her why she didn’t enroll, she may say, I didn’t finish school, I am so busy with the kids right now, I will wait until things slow down, I am working long hours, the business is so demanding etc.. but deep down she is afraid to try because she lacks confidence. Her focus needs to be redirected to Allah Azza Wajal and away from herself. Once Allah is her main focus, she will think differently bi idhnillah and act accordingly in spite of the demanding business, the kids, the long hours at work, the lack of education etc..

I will in shaa Allah explain it further this month in our membership club as our theme this month is ‘curtailing distractions’.

This is part one of this topic in shaa Allah. I plan on sharing some of my Tadabbur/reflections on the word ‘busy’ in the Qur’an in the next post in shaa Allah because many of us say ‘we are so busy’ to justify our actions or lack of action. This thought of being so busy makes us feel good because we live in a society that praises ‘the busy life’ and therefore we stay in our comfort zone of ‘being too busy’ and are not motivated to change.

In the Qur’an, we see two types of busy people, one type is praiseworthy and the other one is blameworthy. For the blameworthy type, what if we reframe the thought “I am too busy” to ‘I have been deprived from the blessing of reading Qur’an today or this week’ for instance, how would we feel then?

Definitely not good right?!

Dear sister, if we are busy in things that do not bring us closer to Allah then we need to feel this feeling of remorse because that may lead us to repent and seek the aid of Allah. Tawbah is exactly what we need for the barakah to come back in the way we spend our time. More about that in the next post in sha Allah…

May Allah bless us and not deprive us. May He never replace us, may He bless us with more and more opportunities to get closer to Him and may we act upon these opportunities in the best manner.

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