Sufi and ibn Dunya

Sufi:  As salamu ‘alaykum my brother, tell me what ails ya?

ibn Dunya:  Wa ‘alaykum as salam Sufi Shaykh, I hope you have the words to heal me, but my sickness isn’t a physical one, it’s mental.

S:  Yes I did think when you came in, someone walking around in public with that haircut could not be of a sane frame of mind. Hehehehe (laughing to himself), I kid young man, please go on.

iD:  (laughs nervously) Yes erm that’s funny.  Actually my friend cut my hair.

S:  A friend?  What kind of friend would do that?  Shall I get him for you?  I am trained in Silat you know, hehehe (laughing on his own again) I kill me sometimes.

iD:  O Shaykh you are making fun of me but I’m really ill, I think I’m depressed.  Please I need you to cure me, I heard you have helped many people.

S:  No more joking my friend, sometimes a little laughter is the best cure for sadness.

By the will of Allah we will try to make you better, most physical and mental sicknesses are rooted in some sort of spiritual disease.  Didn’t our beloved Prophet, peace be upon him, say “No man fills a vessel worse than his stomach..?” And “an unbeliever eats and fills seven intestines whereas a believer uses only one” also that “Allah hates those who eat excessively.”  Yet we find people transgress and eat more than they need, and what is the root of this?  The spiritual disease of greed.

This advice should suffice if you grasp the apparent and hidden meaning behind them, if not tell me your problems.

iD:  Thank you for your advice but I actually have quite a healthy, balanced diet.  My problem is that I am unhappy with my life, I am not happy with the cards I have been dealt in my life.

S:  (Thinks to himself: “My first reply did answer him, only if he pondered more deeply)

iD: Am I an unbeliever for what I said O Shaykh?  I’m admitting I’m not happy with Allah’s will.

S: No my friend you certainly are not an unbeliever. The fact you have taken your time to come to see me, to ask for help, concerned you may be an unbeliever, proves you are a Mu’min with taqwa of Allah.  Now tell me what specifically are you unhappy with in your life?

iD:  Everything… My job - I wish I was earning more money, my body - I wish I was taller and slimmer, my house - I wish I had a bigger one, my friends - I wish I had more interesting ones, my personality - I wish I was more intelligent, more funny….

S:  Stop, stop.  Do you not see this is from the hunger of your nafs (lower self)?  It can never be satiated with more dunya.  Job - be grateful you have a job many don’t, body - be thankful you are not ill, house - you still have a house…

iD:  (interrupting the Shaykh)  I’m sorry Shaykh but I’ve heard all this before, look to those who have less than you and all that, but  all I see are people with more than me.  I meet people who are less capable than me but have better jobs, why did Allah make me smaller than others?  Why can’t I have a bigger house?  If I had these things I would be happier and more grateful to God. Please Shaykh that kind of advice may work for simple people but not for sophisticated people with complicated lives.

S:  (Silently prays: “God bless the simple folk) My friend, sophisticated person or not the problems are usually very simple and often the same.  This is love of dunya over the akhira.  Islam means to “submit”, to submit your affairs to Allah, to put your trust in Allah, your faith and hopes all in Allah.  You were not created for the dunya, you were created for the akhira, to be with Allah.

Your nafs is not a complicated thing; it only wants one thing - MORE.  You are a clever man you can see this want of the nafs will never be satiated, no matter if you give it more, it will still want.. yes you guessed it - more.  Even if you were given the whole Earth with everything in it, it would just want another planet!

iD:  Please go on Shaykh, my heart is listening to your words.

S:  My friend you need to change your world view, change it to an akhiri view!  Your purpose in this world is to know God, through worship.  Worship in prayer, your state with God, your relationships with people, your work, the way you treat the environment.  You work hard to make these things as best and beautiful as possible. 

After your hard work the condition you are placed in; your physical state, your wealth, your job all of those things are exactly what God wants you to have.  Be thankful for it and be patient during difficult predicaments.  Also know that these situations you face are all from the infinite wisdom of Allah so that you could know him.  These things are given in perfect measure for you, the best possible combination for you to know Him.  You may think you would be better off with a different job, different house, no!  This is your nafs talking again. This wisdom warrants repeating:

The share of the dunya apportioned to you is the perfect amount you need to fulfil your purpose in life.

Please ponder on this.  Whether religious or irreligious this benefits all.  If you internalise this wisdom and live by it you will find a priceless contentment in your life.  If you don’t, no matter how much dunya you amass you will never be satisfied.

iD:  Wow Shaykh, you have blown me away.  I will reflect on your words and pray my state changes to that which God will be pleased with me.

S:  Yes may Allah always guide you, and lastly get a decent haircut.

The Amazing Brain

One of my biggest vices from the “bad ol’ days” was music.  It was a large part of my everyday life since I was 9/10 years old, up to 21.  In those 10 years built up a collection of CD’s worth a small fortune.  I wonder sometimes if all that still has an effect on my state now? 

Something weird happened to me recently, I heard a song by Alicia Keys on TV; Teenage Love Affair, there is Motown sounding base sample used in the song and the instant it was played I recognised I had heard it before.  The sample was used on a Hip Hop album, I couldn’t remember the album or the group but for some odd reason I remembered it was an intermission type track on the album.  It bugged me for hours not being able to remember which album it was.

Then a few days later as I was waking up for work, still semi-conscious, the album name and group suddenly came to me!  It was from Muse-Sick-N-Hour-Message by Public Enemy, track: White Heaven/Black Hell.

This was truly freaky, kinda like my brain was working on retrieving the data stored somewhere in my long term memory all that time, then involuntarily gave me the answer, I didn’t even think about it since that day I first heard it.  And the last time I listened to that album was probably 12 years ago!  What an amazing organ the brain is.

I wish I used my time (and money!) on something more beneficial like memorising the Qur’an.  Memorising comes easy to me alhamdulillah, I can still remember many rhymes word for word.  Even now after listening to and singing some qasida’s I memorise it after a few days, maybe all that music and rhyming has improved my memorisation skills?  Still I would have loved to have the Qur’an memorised instead of all that music.

Allah knows best, I can’t change the past and there must be a divine wisdom behind my misspent youth.  Most obvious of all is that I should do tawba for all of that and thank Allah or changing my state.  No point crying over what I could have done instead, it was all meant to be.  Insha Allah I will try to make sure my kids don’t make the same mistakes. 

Teleportation? Invisibility?? Time Travel???

Teleportation and forcefields possible within decades, says Professor Michio Kaku

[The Abdal (people of the step) and other Awliya have achieved these things hundreds of years ago!!]

By Matthew Moore

Teleportation and forcefields could become scientific realities within decades, and time travel will also be possible in the future, according to one of the world’s leading physicists.

Professor Michio Kaku of City University in New York has studied a range of scientific “impossibilities” and concluded that most will almost certainly be achieved as our knowledge expands.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright Applying the rule that unless something breaks a law of physics “then it’s not only possible, it is sure to be built someday”, Prof Kaku has established a hierarchy of “impossibilities”, separating those phenomena that are sure to remain science fiction from those which are likely to become reality at some point in the future.
Teleportation, telepathy, forcefields and invisibility are Class 1 impossibilities, meaning they are likely to be realisable within a few decades or at most a century.Class II impossibilities may take centuries or millennia to perfect, while Class III impossibilities are truly impossible.

Class 1

Teleportation is likely to be achieved through “quantum entanglement”, a property that allows connections to be formed - and information transmitted - between particles many miles apart.
Applying the process to larger objects like people is just a scientific “engineering problem”, that is likely to be solved in time, Prof Kaku writes in his new book Physics of the Impossible.
Similarly, telepathy will be made possible by improved MRI machines that can effectively read minds, and electrodes that can then pass the information into the brains of other humans.

Invisibility will probably be achieved using a recently-built “metamaterial” capable of bending light rays, he argues. Alien life will most likely be discovered within decades as our ability to analyse the universe improves.

Class II

Time travel is a Class II impossibility because, while it need not break the laws of physics, science still has major knowledge gaps to cross to make it a reality, Prof Kaku believes.
“What makes them [Class II impossibilities] so difficult is that they generally require vast amounts of energy, and their underlying physics is not totally understood,” he writes in this week’s New Scientist magazine.
The research of Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and the physicist Kip Thorne has shown that time travel is theoretically possible, but no-one has yet found a way to produce the energy necessary to keep a “wormhole” open.
“This technology is only achievable for a civilisation significantly more advanced than ours,” Prof Kaku writes.
Parallel universes and travelling faster than the speed of light are also Class II impossibilities, he argues.

Class III
The only two science fiction phenomena which Prof Kaku believes are truly impossible - Class III impossibilities - are perpetual motion machines and telling the future (precognition), both of which break the fundamental laws of modern physics.
“In considering what the future may hold, then, we should keep an open mind to Class 1 and Class 2 impossibilities,” Prof Kaku writes.
“What is unthinkable today might not be forbidden in a few decades or centuries.”

Source

Rest In Peace Stephen

Stephen Lawrence 13 September 1974 - 22 April 1993

Master of the Self

“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still”

Lao Tzu

Social Evils

A report published by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation lists the top 10 social evils in UK society as: decline of community; individualism and selfishness; consumerism and greed, a decline of values, the decline of the family, young people as both victims and perpetrators, drugs and alcohol, poverty and inequality, immigration and responses to it, and crime and violence.

BBC article - Report lists new ’social evils’

It will be interesting to hear what solutions they come up with to tackle these social problems. Change in a society’s ethical values happens slowly and I can’t imagine it can be reversed quickly or easily. Especially if we don’t recognise what the root causes of each problem are. For example how do you deal with the problem of consumerism and greed? A commentator on the BBC website wrote:

“The egalitarian principles of liberty, brotherhood and justice have been consumed by social Darwinist greed”.

Food for thought…

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liverpool 4-2 Arsenal (agg 5-3)

SCOUSERS RULE THE WORLD!

Signs of People Detached from the Dunya

al-Kattani, the student of al-Junayd (may Allah be pleased with them), said there are two signs of a person who has successfully detached his heart from the dunya.

One, when he loses something from the dunya he rejoices (one less thing he would be held accountable for on the Day of Judgement) and secondly he puts up with other peoples annoyances with patience (realises they were sent by Allah to test him).

TV Dinners and Adab

“TV dinner ruin children manners” according to the Association of Schools and College Leaders.

Lack of a traditional family meal has produced a generation of kids with bad manners, head teachers have warned.
Since parents allow their children to eat while watching TV, the responsibility of teaching kids how to communicate with one another has come on the shoulders of schools.
Source

The Arabic word for manners or etiquette - “adab”, also means “feast” or “banquet”. It was traditionally understood that during meal times children learned manners and proper etiquette. How to behave with adults, elders, siblings, those younger than them. They also gained communication skills from the dinner table conversation.

People from societies closer to “fitra” find it strange that some people have meals on their own, and those even more closer to fitra find it weird people eat on separate plates!

On a holiday to Marrakesh me and my wife met an American family who have settled there (2nd generation converts i.e. their parents converted so they were born Muslim), one of the highlights of our trip was having sharing a meal with their family - one Tagine dish between 8 people, a couple and their two young kids and their grandparents. Sharing emphasised because this is one of the most important qualities you learn from this experience. It was Friday so it’s tradition to have meat, we had a delicious lamb tagine with couscous.

As we were the guests the people sitting next to us were breaking off the nice bits of the meat and placing it on our part of the bowl, doing it quite subtly as well that we didn’t always notice.

There is also more barakah in a shared meal, I didn’t think 1 tagine would be enough for 8 people but all of us ate until we were full and there were left over’s for the cats.

The Arabic language is filled with these beautiful insights, it is a miraculous language. It’s fascinating the ASC have found the link between manners and meals, while this understanding was built within the language of the Arabs since pre-Islamic times.

Leaked Pentagon Report: 2020 Britain will be like Siberia!

..Also nuclear war, drought, famine, riots and world anarchy.

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us