Here in Toronto, we Muslims are spoiled. With several Islamic conferences held each year (I've counted at least five), alongside the AlMaghrib, AlKauthar, IlmPath &co. weekend seminars and the university-sponsored speakers on Islam, we really have a plethora of events and places to go to for inspiration and knowledge. In fact, many of these events are truly incredible: the technology employed is amazing, the speakers passionate, the content relevant. It is no wonder that at almost every conference we witness individuals pronouncing the shahadah and accepting Islam. 


Clearly, these events have a strong positive side: they bring new people to the religion, they inspire those who are already Muslim, they provide relevant reminders, and they expose us to the examples of prominent community leaders whom we can emulate. However, just like with most other things, there is such a thing as too much. The best analogy that comes to my mind is sleeping pills. When we get older, we have trouble sleeping, so we take a sleeping pill every night and for a while it helps. Yet with time, our body adjusts and we need more and more pills to go to sleep, so we end up in a situation where these pills are harming our body, but we cannot even attempt sleep without them. I believe that these Islamic events are a similar drug. Yes, they bring inspiration and remind us to follow our deen, but their imaan boosts are temporary. A temporary boost can be critical in maintaining a level of spirituality (after all, this is a part of what Jumu'ah has been made for), but at the end of the day it cannot become our permanent fuel. Unfortunately, I see more and more Muslims relying on these events to maintain their deen. Just like with the sleeping pills, their first try makes a big difference, but because they do not use any other means their overall level of imaan stays the same – or even falls. The conferences start to have little effect, but the heart becomes destroyed – killed by the constant injections of inspirational materials. Don't get me wrong, I think that there is great benefit in RIS and AlMaghrib. Just like a Friday sermon, they help us by boosting our imaan and perhaps giving us some new knowledge. However, they are not a replacement for a slow, steady practice of our religion. A weekend seminar cannot and will not replace a day-by-day, week-by-week study and reflection. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “The best actions are those which are small and consistent.” (Bukhari & Muslim) These small but consistent actions should be the permanent fuel of our imaan, not random events, conferences, or lectures. A page of Qur'an a day, every day, is much weightier than attending RIS. In reading the 40 hadith of Imam Nawawi, the best approach is not a three-day intensive crash course. It is a slow steady reading, taking one new hadith once a week or even once a month, and giving it the time to see it fully implemented in our lives. After all, there is no long term effect in studying all 40, never implementing any of them, but simply receiving a dose of inspiration. On the other hand, taking just one hadith and acting upon it for the rest of one's life would amount to a great reward from Allah the Most High and could make the difference between Hellfire and Paradise on the Day of Judgment. 


Especially with the month of Ramadan fast approaching, we all should take the time to think about this point. Yes, we should pray taraweeh, yes we should recite more Qur'an, yes we should hunt down for that golden opportunity that is Layatul-Qadr, but we must remember that Ramadan is also an excellent term for a long-term boost. So think of one or two daily habits that you want to implement in your life, such as always staying in wudu or reading Qur'an after fajr, and start them this Ramadan. This way, when the month ends, its legacy will not and you will continue to reap that reward in the years to come. How's that for reviving your Islamic spirit?

Anton is a 22 year old Russian-American convert to Islam. He has studied at the University of Toronto for the past two years, but will be returning home to America in September. He has been heavily involved both with interfaith and Muslim communities, serving as an exec at the University of Toronto St. George MSA over the past year. He occasionally writes for his own blog and has recently begun video blogs under the name of El Musafir (http://elmusafir.wordpress.com and http://www.facebook.com/pages/El-Musafir/124559040888113). His interests include learning about Islam, reading, and tea.

So it’s that time of year again! The local stores have sales on frozen samosas, the aunties are calling one another booking iftaar dates at their respective locations and KIH has their Ramadan countdown up. All of this means one thing, “Ramadan is coming people!”

All of the above mentioned are obvious signs that Ramadan is just around the corner, but we also need to keep in mind the true essence and importance of Ramadan. It is the month in which the Quran was revealed and it is the month that should ideally, recharge us as Muslims and strengthen our emaan. The gates of Jannah are wide open and shaitan is tied up. We need to remind ourselves that we are fortunate enough, inshAllah, to see yet another Ramadan.

Since Ramadan is approximately ten days away, we should start preparing ourselves for it right about now, if we have not already done so. Some useful tips are to set (realistic) goals for oneself. Realistic does not mean that it should not be challenging, realistic means that you should put on your plate only as much as you could achieve in a certain time period. Goals can range from things such as eating in moderation, finishing the Quran a certain number of times, going for tarawih each night or even starting to pray your five daily prayers on time.

Ramadan is also a month which conveniently brings the family together. Since we live in our own busy lives, many of us do not even get to eat a couple of meals a week with our families. Ramadan is such a time where during suhoor, everyone sits and eats together, and during iftaar, everyone joins the dinner table once again. This is amongst one of the many blessings that Ramadan brings, and I pray that inshAllah this Ramadan is beneficial for each and every one of us and that we achieve more in this month than we think we can, inshAllah.

 

Note: feel free to share Ramadan goals in the comments section of this article, inshAllah it will be beneficial for all of us if we can also take on those goals!

Two Muslim led groups disagree on what is the best way to help out Gaza. The Free Gaza Movement plans to fundraise money and send Canada’s first aid flotilla to the war stricken zone of Gaza by this fall. It has held fundraisers in Toronto and Montreal and plans to intensify its fundraising for the month of Ramadan. It claims it has the support of many activist groups, church groups and Middle Eastern groups.

Though, one party, the Montreal Muslim Council, has come out in disapproval of the idea. It claims Israel has already eased some of its tight blockade and that sending a flotilla would just create more tension rather than providing relief. It recommends another form of aid be sent to the Palestinians. 

When you’re about to begin to do something that you’ll be doing regularly, for a long period of time (possibly the rest of your life) it usually follows that you’ll need some lessons on how to do it. Take driving for example. No one would ever get behind a wheel and just go- no matter how many people they’ve seen drive. There are rules to be followed, and while much of your learning will happen on the road, you have to start off with a basic understanding of these rules first. Many people will also take driving classes.  

Similarly, when you get married, you intend to be married for the rest of your life, inshAllah. It’s not something you just do once and then live in bliss. Being married is a constant effort which, like driving, requires one to know the rules of the road and to obey those rules to the best of their ability. No one should jump into marriage thinking that having seen others who are married and how they live is sufficient.

Sunnipath.com, a website dedicated to making Islamic knowledge more widely available, offers a two-part course called The Successful Islamic Marriage. The first part of the course carries you through the most pressing concerns around marriage in the west today. Firstly, who should you marry and why? As the course progresses, students are taught their own rights in marriage(as the husband/wife), the rights of their spouses and how to deal with problems that commonly face married couples. The course teaches the fiqh of marriage in Islam, including important issues like separation and divorce.

It is taught online through a series of recorded lessons and live sessions for discussion purposes. The Ustadha, Hedaya Hartford, is also the author of books Initiating and Upholding an Islamic Marriage and Your Islamic Marriage Contract, which are included in the required readings for the class.

I highly recommend taking this course. Whether you’re already married, looking to get married or just interested in learning what an Islamic marriage should be made of, this course is a fun, interactive and easy way to start. May Allah SWT give you the tawfiq, ameen.

Does Islam need PR? Public Relations for corporations can do wonders; it can make a company that uses child labour the most popular brand; it can make you forget how much calories are in the food you eat. Make a slip and it’ll cover your tracks. But, does a religion need PR? The author of Love in a Headscarf, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, believes so. Something of this nature is happening in the UK; a campaign was launched with InspiredbyMuhammad.com which highlights the positive works of Muslims and the positive effects of the religion of Islam.

The campaign came in the wake of a YouGov poll administered in the UK by EIF which shows:

More than half the British population associate Islam with extremism (58%) and terrorism (50%)
Fewer than one in seven believe that it is a religion of peace (13%) and only one in 16 a religion of justice (6%).
Less than one in five Britons believe that Islam has a positive impact on British society (19%) with almost a third believing it is a violent religion (33%)
Two-thirds of people believe it encourages the repression of women (68%)
Only 16% of the British population believe that Islam promotes fairness and equality and just 6% believe it promotes active measures to protect the environment.
Most people get their information about Islam through the media such as newspapers (41%) and TV (57%) yet a third of people questioned they would be interested in finding out more about Islam (33%)

Sure campaigns and flashy messages can shed some light and open a few doors to those that are curious. And some great work is being done but, for how long and who will continue to do the PR job for a religion so big? Personally for a religion I believe following it sincerely is the best form of endorsement.  Adhere to the principals of the Sunnah and Quran and watch those stereotypes quickly wash away.

Want help starting? SMILE it’s Sunnah. 

When it comes to university, we all know how learning works. If we want to become a doctor, then we know that we must start with introductory biology and chemistry so that the year after we can take organic chemistry so that we can then move on to more complicated subjects. We know that we must first build a foundation of basic essentials and then slowly build upon this foundation, layer by layer, until we eventually reach an understanding of medicine that allows us to treat people. To help us along in this process, our university devises curricula so that when we make the decision to be a doctor, we know what courses to take. After all, how are we supposed to figure out, on our own, without any knowledge, what exactly a doctor must learn? In any course, the process is similar. When learning French, we start with the alphabet and pronunciation, then some basic words, then some bits of grammar, etc. We do not start with learning the conditional if we don't even understand the verb avoir. This is common sense. It would be ridiculous to attempt to learn medicine by simply going to a chemistry lecture one day and then a surgery training the next. We don't create our own curriculum about a subject we know almost nothing about.

Somehow, these principles disappear when we approach Islamic knowledge. How many of us actually went to a scholar well versed in Islam or to a reputable institution and asked, “I want to learn about my religion, what should I do?” How many of us actually follow a curriculum, not invented on our own, but actually recommended to us by someone who already has the knowledge we need? How many of us are laying a foundation before proceeding to more difficult subjects?

Instead, we follow the two shaykhs Google and YouTube. We watch a clip here, a clip there. Maybe we like Shaykh Hamza Yusuf or Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, so we listen to all their clips. We click on whatever lecture we see popping up in our news feed on facebook. Is it ever part of our curriculum? Or are we just clicking on whatever sounds good? We seem to devour any topic we find: tafsir, hadith, fiqh, aqeeda, without bothering to sort them all out. And soon we know the intricacies of the Arabic in the first ten verses of Al-Baqara, the fiqh of wiping over cotton socks in all four madhabs, the differences of Ash'ari and Athari aqeeda...

The result? A disjointed, incoherent, feeble understanding of our religion. We may know al-Baqara, but we have no idea of the tafsir of al-Fatiha, we know the fiqh of cotton socks, but not the fiqh of salah, we know the differences of aqeeda, but we don't know its required elements. We amass a great amount of knowledge, little of which is actually relevant. What's worse, we begin to see ourselves as intelligent and knowledgeable, because we spew random Islamic facts and people commend us for that. Yet our hearts are still black and all this knowledge is not doing anything to wash the dirt away.

On top of all of this, much of our knowledge is useless. Who cares about the difference between the Ash'aris and Atharis if we have no qualifications to consider their points? Yet this becomes our favorite point of debate at the table: Salafis versus Sufis, Hamza Yusuf versus Yusuf Estes. Let's be honest: what have those debates done for us that was of benefit? I can find nothing. Yet somehow we are dragged into this day after day. This is truly the Shaytan's doing: convincing us that we are gaining benefit when we are just wasting our time instead.

The revolution of information that the Internet age has brought is a wonder, but it is also a danger. We begin to think ourselves self-sufficient in learning religion, even though we would never consider doing the same with biochemistry. We forget that Islam, throughout its millennium-and-a-half long history, has always been taught through the apprentice model: with a teacher's guidance and explanation. Unlike today, knowledge was understanding, not the amassing of facts. That is why hearts were cleaner, souls were purer in the times of our predecessors. Despite the fact that they didn't have the same access to knowledge, they at least knew what to do with they knowledge they did have access to.

As a personal reflection, this is a reminder first and foremost to myself. I ask Allah the Exalted to grant us true knowledge of His religion, to help us be firm in it, and to protect us from that which has no benefit. Ameen.

Anton is a 22 year old Russian-American convert to Islam. He has studied at the University of Toronto for the past two years, but will be returning home to America in September. He has been heavily involved both with interfaith and Muslim communities, serving as an exec at the University of Toronto St. George MSA over the past year. He occasionally writes for his own blog and has recently begun video blogs under the name of El Musafir (http://elmusafir.wordpress.com and http://www.facebook.com/pages/El-Musafir/124559040888113). His interests include learning about Islam, reading, and tea.

This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the importance of reading and made some
book recommendations. For people not exactly willing to tackle 300 pages at a
time, leafing through a magazine is a solid alternative. While newsstands are
usually stocked with American or British publications, there are some impressive
Canadian magazines that don’t get their due share of the spotlight, perhaps
because of a shrinking industry.
Here, I’ll briefly review two publications that I think make for worthy reads.

The Walrus: In many ways, The Walrus is Canada’s highest quality magazine.
It provides the type of long-form, narrative journalism found in American
publications like The New Yorker and Harper’s, while still maintaining a balance
of Canadian sensibilities. It has a comfortable distribution of fact and fiction;
each issue contains at least a few short stories and poems. The topics discussed
are usually rather weighty and thoroughly researched. The only downside? It
publishes infrequently, only 10 issues per year. http://walrusmagazine.ca

This Magazine: A staple on the Canadian political scene, This Magazine has
proven to be an excellent breeding ground for up and coming young journalists.
The writing is simple and to the point, the stories are relevant and topical. It is
very clearly a left-leaning publication, but takes great pains to be representative
of the broader Canadian electorate, as its diverse roster of contributors suggests.

I was at work when I was approached by three handicap children in wheelchairs assisted by caretakers. These children were in a state of complete dependence; I glanced at them while I interacted with their caretakers and all I could say was Alhamdulilah (All Praise is to God) over and over again.

This is when the thought of, if I were to thank Allah for everything He has given me I would not be able to even if I spent all day and night for the rest of my life, entered my head.

I am a critic and I believe I constructively criticize in hope of seeing a better future. But, I and many of us who strive to improve the future should also stop and think of what we have and be grateful for it.

“But if you count the favours of Allah, never will you be able to number them.” [Sûrah Ibrâhîm: 34]

 

Forgive Me When I Whine - Zain Bhikha

Society in general has a tendency to kick people when they’re down. Throughout history, the weak and defenseless have been targets for abuse. This continues on today.  The young, the old, the poor, the orphans, those with little education and those with disabilities all qualify as victims of this abuse,  so that the very people who have nothing to lose become the people who also have nothing to gain.

Widows are one group of such people. In developing nations – particularly in South Asia and Africa- when a woman loses her husband, she herself pretty well dies, too. This “social death” involves verbal, emotional and physical abuse from the community as a whole as well as from her husband’s family. She can be subject to accusations that she killed her husband. She can be thrown into the street with no one to protect her. She can have her children stolen from her. She can even be set on fire. In some African cultures, a deceased spouse doesn’t end a marriage and a widow can be forced to marry her brother in-law or other male relative to carry on the relationship. This is called a "levirate” arrangement, whereby the children conceived are considered the children of the widow’s original husband. Actually, if the new “husband” doesn’t want kids, he can choose to throw his dead brother’s wife, now impregnated by him, out of the house. All of these horrendous acts of hate are either permissible by law or so culturally normal that the laws against them aren't upheld.

Setting aside the psychological damage this would have on a person; these women have literally nothing left once their partner dies. It's illegal for their husbands to leave them wealth or land. Even if they do get to keep their children, they often have to pull them out of school or have them work due to exceptional circumstances. One can imagine what kind of a mess this gets kids into. Child slavery and prostitution are often the result of a widowed mother.

The most tragic part about this whole ordeal is the heedlessness regarding the issue. There are no laws being enforced to protect a widow’s rights. In India, where in 1856 the law preventing widows from remarrying were abolished nationally, it was still left up to the various religious authorities in different parts of the country to decide what to do with these women. While efforts are being made by a few global organizations such as Empowering Widows in Development (EWD), it is said that no change can occur until these women bind together and call for change themselves. May Allah SWT give them the tawfiq, ameen.

It’s shameful to think that entire communities witness this treachery and yet there is still so little reported on it. Indeed, widows take up large proportions of the population of any country that is at war due to casualties, and there are plenty of those.  Yet there is seldom any statistical evidence to prove the extremeness of this point. One of the few times it has been reported is during Rwanda’s genocide (1994), where over 70% of adult women were widowed. How is this so easily overlooked in other nations?

I’d like to end by asking you to join me in making du’a for our fellow mothers, daughters and sisters. May Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem, soon relieve them of their distress; may He guide them and keep them firm in their iman; may Allah protect them from the evils of this life and the next; and may He ease them in their accountability on the Day of Judgment for the troubles they’ve seen in this dunya, ameen. O Allah send blessings upon our beloved Prophet SAW, who was a mercy to mankind and an example to be followed when dealing with the destitute.