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“Marriage in Islam is not about two people getting married to be happy,
it’s about two people getting married to make eachother happy” 😉
Assalamu alaykum
See the Ramadan message from Sh Tawfique
“Make this Ramadna special – Develop a habit of doing good!”
Dear student and friend,
Assalamualiakum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu,
I would like to take this opportunity to greet you, to congratulate you on the advent of blessed Ramadan, to make my sincere dua for you, to express my deepest friendship and love for you and my sincere care and support for you and your families. I make a sincere dua to Allah alone that He makes this month a means to ease your worries, that he replaces it with goodness and transforms your world into a Jannah in this life. May Allah give you what your heart desires and amaze you with His bounty and grace.
I wanted to share with you my answer to something that people ask every Ramadan, namely: How can I make this Ramadan special? The answer quite simply is: By developing good habits in this month.
We all have habits that we may not like or that which may not be liked by Allah. As a result of this, we feel its negative effect in our lives. By its nature, a habit is basically something ingrained and hardwired in our mind. The best way to get over it, is not to try to stop the habit straight away, rather by starting and working on a counter habit. If you want to lose some weight for example – don’t start by stopping to eat, rather start developing a habit of regular exercise and then slowly work on cutting down on the food. This is more effective, more lasting and will probably bring in the result you want. You see, it is difficult to overcome habits that are and have been long standing, but relatively easy to start new ones.
I wanted to share with you a process that I follow to work on starting a new habit that counters a bad habit that I have. It is the following 6 steps. These steps are essentially taken from the simple Islamic process of making repentance – firstly remembering the sin, regretting it by thinking about its implications, making a resolve to not repeat it, doing a good deed that will wipe out the sin, then surrounding yourself with ways of doing good and closing all doors to the bad and lastly being thankful to Allah for having guided you to the good and remembering that if you do the sin again, it is only going to be a new sin and not harm your previous repentance inshaAllah. In the context of habits, the steps are as follows:
1. Firstly, make yourself aware of that negative habit, when, where and how frequently do you happen to do it. How can you effectively make yourself aware of it? By telling others to spot it, by monitoring yourself as closely as possible, by jotting down every time that you remember that you did it. Example: Habit of missing the sunnah prayers.
2. Then, Ask yourself about what impact that habit has on yourself and on yours perception, personality and relationship with Allah. The more you focus on this, the more this becomes the lever of change. Example: Constantly missing the sunnah prayers makes a person a miser with his ibadah, not love the sunnah, legally removes his status as being just, removes the reward of having a new palace built for him/her in paradise daily – the more you focus on the problems of this bad habit, the more it will make you want to change it.
3. Next, focus on how willing and committed you are to making a change and on doing a counter habit. Think over the fence into the future – how it would be to not have the negative habit and to replace it with a positive one.
4. Then write a specific action that you will do to counter the habit and start the good habit. Be very specific and try to make it regular so that it actually becomes a habit. Remember – a habit is something that you do regularly! Example: specifically you will come to prayer 10mins early so you can do the sunnah prayer on time.
5. Next: Support yourself to develop that new good habit. How? Hang around good friends, put up reminders anywhere and everywhere, get your family and friends to support you by remind you about it.
6. Lastly: Reward yourself every time you do a good habit and don’t be too hard on yourself if you end up doing the bad habit here and there. Remember: Habit happens!
Remember that Allah loves those simple deeds that are done regularly rather than the major ones done irregularly. I invite you to use the above to remove a negative habit that you may have and then to develop a new good habit in this month. I am also adding here the link to the Ramadan Checklist that I had made last year to help you develop and stick to that good habit: http://www.alkauthar.org/downloads/Ramadanchecklist.pdf So make this Ramadan special by starting a new habit of making dhikr constantly; reciting surah ikhlas 30 times a day so you get the reward of reciting the whole Quran 10 times a day; helping one poor person with a daily meal; sponsoring an orphan; getting up for qiyamul layl in the last third of the night every night of Ramadan; making dua only for Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa salam etc. Whatever habit you work on, believe me, you will certainly find tremendous barakah and become truly beloved to Allah, if you focus on making it less adhoc and more regular and constant – a true good habit!
Lastly my friends, if there is anything at all that I can do to help you or to make Ramadan more enjoyable for you and more successful for you, then please do not deny me the honour of aiding you in it. Please don’t hesitate to email me if you wish, or use the forums for any non-personal issues and questions that you may have: http://forums.alkauthar.org I hope to see you again sometime soon inshaAllah.
Wassalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu
Tawfique Chowdhury
Director
Mercy Mission and AlKauthar Institute
I have the following advice for sisters who get married and may experience difficulty in keeping up with knowledge:
1. Keep your intentions pure and never give up. Your reward is with your intention. As long as you keep your intentions pure, you will receive the same Ajar if not more inshaAllah, if your circumstances end up preventing you from knowledge. So don’t be of those who say – khalas, I am married and I have a child and so knowledge is not for me any more, or of those who give up in a state of depression.
2. We live in the time of audio and recordings – Use tapes and audio as much as possible to counter the in ability to attend classes with teachers.
3. Rekindle the love for knowledge with your husband – Read a hadeeth a day and your husband a verse of the Quran and its tafsir every day before going to bed – keep the books by your bedside so you don’t forget and make it a habit so that you don’t forget.
4. Keep a particular book next to certain routine tasks that you do and make it a habit to read that book everytime you do that routine. Example: If you go out of the house to drop off the kids to school in the morning, ensure that you get out of the house 10 minutes early whilst hte car is warming up and make sure that you use this 10 minutes to read 1 page of tafsir – and keep the tafsir book in your car and put up a sign near the speedometer that says – have you read your tafsir for today? etc.. I used to do this and in this way I went through most of the Tafsir of the Quran from AshShawkani’s Tafsir – even though Tafsir was something that we didn’t give much priority to in our time in Medinah.
5. Keep a study partner – like a sister who also wants to study as bad as you – and ask her to study a part and summarize to you what she learnt whilst you study another part and summarize to her – in this way, you can gain more knowledge in less time.
InshaAllah if u do these few steps it will go a long way. The trick is to remain consistent. If you can remain consistent, then you will get there even if it takes longer.
There is something my Sheikh used to always tell me. He used to tell me:
Remember: EASING OF THE PATH TO JANNAH IS BASED UPON MAKING THE EFFORT, NOT UPON ACHIEVING THE RESULT!!
Assalamu alaykum
I’ve said it once, but I’ll say it again,
If you havent been to an Al Kauthar course, you have no idea what you are missing!
Recently Al Kauthar held the “World of the Unseen – Belief in the Last Day” by the amazing Sheikh Waleed Basyouni.
We went through many aspects from the grave to seeing Allah. Inshallah will put some of it up.
In the mean time why not cheak Al Kauthar out, you may be suprise at what lies in store!
Shaykh Waleed Basyouni has graduated with a Bachelors degree in Islamic Sciences from Al-Imam Muhammad University in Saudi Arabia, and then went on to complete a Masters in Islamic Theology, World Religions and Modern Religious Sect. He is currently working on his PhD Coursework in Theology.
Shaykh Waleed is involved in various organizations and projects; he is an instructor at the American Open University in Alexandria, USA and serves as the Imam of Clear Lake Islamic Center in Houston. He is a frequent guest speaker at Universities, Conventions, Radio Talk Shows, Television, Interfaith meetings, and community centres nationally and internationally. He is also a member of the North American Imam Federation (NAIF), Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America (AMJA)-Fatwa and Research Committee, Director of Texas Dawah Convention, and advisor to numerous Islamic societies/organisations around the United States.
Shaykh Waleed has Ijaazahs in reciting the Holy Quran and in several books of Hadeeth, awarded by various scholars. Shaykh Waleed has had the opportunity of studying under some of the notable Scholars of our time namely Shaykh Ibn Baaz, Shaykh Abdur-Razzaque Afify, Shaykh Ibn Jibreen, Shaykh Al-Barrak and many others. He has been involved in Da`wah for the last 15 years in Saudi Arabia, United States and Canada.
Yearningforallah 
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