Revert story

This is a story of a friend who reverted which i posted on another site:

I had a Hindu friend who I had known him since i was about 14 yrs old, because we went to the same school as each other, but we didn't share the same classes - only used to play football together.

When we moved onto college, we picked the same subjects and ended up in the same class as each other. This is around the time when i started practising, so as with all things that you've got a new interest in, i was talking about Islam all the time. And my friend would sit down with me and the brothers in the cafeteria in between lessons. At the time, alot was being made of the scientific proofs in the Qur'an, and since we were studying science subjects this was the avenue through which the brothers gave him da'wah. He became more and more interested in Islam, and would ask us intelligent questions to which we were able to respond alhumdulillah. I even remember that we would invite him to jumu'ah and he would sit at the back of the room on a chair listening to the khateeb looking over the heads of all the brothers seated on the floor, listening to the khutba.

He became more and more interested in Islam until one day, as we were walking into biology class he said "I want to become a Muslim!" Alhumdulillah, i thought!

However, we became separated in the class and he ended up sitting next to another Muslim brother in the class. I don't know what the conversation was that went on between them during those two hours but at the end of it, he had changed his mind, he didn't want to become Muslim anymore :|

We didn't stop giving him da'wah though, and we spoke often about Islam though he didn't again say that he wanted to become a Muslim. At the very least he told me he had given up on Hinduism after our discussions on tawheed vs idol-worship. I believed that because now he would eat beef-burgers with us during lunch hahaha

Then we finished college and ended up going to the same university but doing different courses. Occasionally, we would bump into each other and we would talk, and he would sit in on jumu'ah, and attend a few talks. I always got the feeling that he was on the verge of becoming a Muslim, but he just needed a little nudge. At the same time, he told me he had spoken to his parents about Islam and had received a harsh reaction from them.

Then, about 2 years into uni, we had our Annual Dinner and i was able to hook him up with one of the invited speakers for two hours. I'm sure he benefitted from that.

A year later I finished uni, and he stayed on because he had 2 yrs remaining in his course, and we fell out of touch. I didn't have his email address or a contact number. And i used to pray to Allah that i could find him again.

One day, a couple of years later, after work as i exited the train station, i heard a soft voice saying "Kash, is that you?"

It was my friend. He told me he had become a Muslim in secret. Recited the shahada by himself, reading from a book.

Masha'Allah Alhumdulillah

However, he kept his conversion a secret from his family, and this was difficult on him.

He would later tell me that he would sometimes question his own sincerity in becoming Muslim. Then he would remember that he would wake up in the early hours all alone, and silently make wudu and pray Fajr, and he would find comfort against the whisperings of shaitaan in this because it was a testament to his sincerity. Why else would he be waking up at 4 o clock in the morning and praying secretly except out of sincerity?

Qadrullah wa ma sha'a fa'al. We fell out of touch again.

But i soon met him again, and now he told me that his family knew he was a Muslim because he was giving da'wah to his sister and she blurted it out in front of them. They were very resistant at the beginning but very slowly accepted his decision. But now he faced two dilemmas.

Number one was that his parents wanted him to marry a Hindu girl from India; they would not even entertain the idea that he marry a Muslima! He knew that marriage to a Hindu was expressly forbidden in Islam. But check this out... he said to his parents, i will not marry a Hindu girl because its haraam. However, in Islam marriage isn't Fard, but obeying parents is, so i will remain unmarried to please you and out of obedience to you!

Masha'Allah. May Allah reward him.

Allah softened his parents hearts until they said to him that he can talk to one of his (Hindu) cousins and if she is willing to convert they are happy to see him marry her.

.....

Do you remember that i said he faced two dilemmmas? Well, the second was that alhumdulillah, his younger sister went ahead and converted too. The problem was that his parents didn't know about this at all, and they wanted her to marry another Hindu cousin. The marriage was planned for a few weeks time. So my friend discussed the situation with his sister and they agreed that he would speak to her husband-to-be about Islam. If he accepted, great, and if he didn't, then she would announce her conversion publically and refuse to marry him.

To cut a long story short, my friend and his sister with their families went to India for the marriages, and my friend converted his wife-to-be, converted his sister's husband-to-be and converted another relative.

As far as i know, they're living happily ever after here in the UK, alhumdulillah. Only problem is that i lost his number last month when my phone broke!

Providing Alternatives

I adapted the following piece from a paragraph in Ibn al-Uthaimeen's explanation of Kitab at-Tawheed. Its quite obvious and sr. jannah has been saying it for a long time...

An important quality of the one who calls to Islam is not to go around solely labelling everything as haram or bid’ah, because this is not a teaching method that the shari’ah came with. If the caller to Allah finds people engaging in something wrong, not only should he tell them to refrain from doing so, but he should provide them with an alternative to their previous practice.

There are examples of this found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. In the pre-Islamic days for example, one of the customs of the people was to seek protection from harm with the Jinn. When Islam came it forbade seeking protection with the Jinn and gave the people a better alternative, and that was to recite the du’a “I seek protection in Allah’s perfect Words from the evil which He created.”

Similarly, the Prophet found people engaging in types of business transactions which possessed an element of interest (riba) in them. So he forbade them from doing such and then explained other types of transactions which were halal until the people were satisfied.

To use a modern-day example, we often find that people practice lots of bid’ahs following the death of a Muslim hoping that the deceased will benefit from them. Instead of only advising such people to abandon these practices, the caller to Allah should also explain what really can benefit the dead according to the true traditions of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.

Structural poverty (kind of...)

My connection to the net was finally terminated last Friday afternoon. The feeling of being at home and not having the net handy was at first like having a long-staying guest leave the house.

But now that i've got over it (without suffering severe withdrawal symptoms), i think good-riddance. I was able to get so much done over the weekend. Much more reading and study which i've been wanting to do for a while. I think i crammed into the two days what it would probably take two weeks to get through.

I don't really miss the net so far and hope i won't be tempted to get connected again.

In other news, i heard that Qibla Cola went broke. Bit of a disaster - but not unexpected. I don't understand why Muslim companies aim their products at the Muslim community only. I mean in a country in which Muslims make up only 5% of the population, why on Earth would you deliberately exclude the other 95% of the population in your marketing?

There is another company called Ummah foods which i hope doesn't go the same way. But you have to fear the worst because how far can you go by advertising your food is 100% halal? And that annoys me too - are you implying that Pepsi isn't halal? Or a bar of Dairy Milk has a minute piece of swine in it?

I think these guys need to take a leaf out of Shami Ahmed's book. He's the founder of the Joe Blogg's line of clothes. Remember how popular that was? Back in the days everyone was wearing Joe Bloggs jeans. That company is now worth £50 million!

Another reason why Muslim companies need to attract investment and the money of our non-Muslim neighbours is to avoid a kind of structural poverty. That is, when some Ali or Zaid in the Muslim community earns a quid, more likely than not, he'll spend it at some non-Muslim shop - which is fine, because there is no problem with that - but that quid that came in goes straight out of the community, and could have been spent at some Muslim's business and eventually wind up in the kitty to build a new Mosque or youth centre, or fund a counsellor, or arrange a footie competition for the kids, etc.

If that one pound passes through five Muslim hands, it is worth £5 to the community, not one.

The Oath

I finished reading "The Oath" by Khassan Baiev last night. It is the first book that i've read in years that i didn't want to put down. The book is the tale of a Chechen Doctor's experiences growing up in Chechnya and then through the two Chechen wars.

The name of the book "The Oath" refers to the oath that the Doctor took after graduation in which he swears he will treat any wounded, whether friend or foe. And true to his word he describes how through the years of conflict he would treat Russian soldiers injured by the fighting, how he would be kidnapped by the rebels to treat their Field Commanders including Shamil Basayev, and also the innocent civilians caught up in the war.

The book shows both the extreme of evil to which humanity can sink (mostly through descriptions of how the Russian army would attack refugees, and their torture methods) and also the opposite in terms of kindness, expressed first and foremost by Dr. Baiev and then also by ordinary Chechens who helped him through the years of the conflict.

It was partly in response to reading this book that i wrote my previous post on oppression. Woe upon us (as they used to say in the olden days) that the ummah doesn't stand up in the face of all this injustice. Wherever you look these days, there is injustice. Its happening to Muslim and non-Muslim alike. We, Muslims aren't really standing up as friends and protectors, and as a result what is happening is exactly as mentioned in the Qur'an "... there would be tumult and oppression on earth, and great mischief." [Qur'an 8:73]

This book also opened my eyes to Chechen culture. I was really happy to hear how traditional Islamic values like modesty and respect for elders had become so deep-rooted within their culture.

Dr. Baiev experienced in his one life extraordinary events that perhaps ten ordinary people wouldn't in their combined lives, and i feel really gutted that i was too lazy to go to RPM and see him in person earlier this month when he was visiting for the "Save Chechnya campaign".

Mansur, i know you're looking for a book to read at the moment and i really do recommend this one to you.

Oppression

There is so much injustice going on in the world today. I'm reading Dr. Khassan Baiev's book "The Oath" (which i'll review on completion insha'Allah) in which he describes his work during Russia's two wars against Chechnya, and subhanallah, you wouldn't believe that people (the Russians) could be so cruel. It really is unbelievable.

Also check out this story in today's Guardian.

Can you imagine how complete and perfect justice would be if we flipped the scales and all the injustice turned to Justice?

The Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said "Even if only a day remains for Qiyamah to come, yet Allah will surely send a man from my family who will fill this world with such justice and fairness, just as it initially was filled with oppression." [Abu Dawood]

Mosques attacked

In the last few weeks two of my local mosques have been attacked and damaged. The one i go to most regularly had some sort of petrol bomb thrown through the window which burnt a 2 metre-quare portion of the masjid and the adjoining wall. In the second attack someone tried to set the shoe-racks on fire.

The suspicion isn't that its a white non-Muslim, the suspicion is that it is a darkish-skinned person who may even be sporting a beard! And this suspicion seems well-founded given that a few days ago the Imam of a third mosque in our area found some guy matching the above description in his quarters on the top-floor of the mosque. But the guy got away.

The second look

Someone i know was describing something which we should really class as a trick of shaytan. It applies only to brothers. He asked have you ever experienced that you might be walking down the street and you see some girl and then following Muslim adab you look away. But then your mind starts filling with thoughts like "hey wasn't that girl pretty? Wasn't she attractive? Isn't she worth taking a second look at?"

So then you take the second look and you realise actually she's quite average looking. And then you realise its a bit too late, because you disobeyed Allah's Messenger by taking that second look.

Shaitan beautifies disobedience of Allah & His Messenger.

Being a stranger

The media onslaught against 'political islam' is in full gear & those who oppose the separation between state and religion are being made out to be extremists.

What Muslims forget though is that the heyday of Islam came during the days when the Muslim governments incorporated Islam within their own structures.

These days i remember the hadith "Islam began as something strange and will revert to being strange as it began, so give glad tidings to the strangers".

JIMAS

All summer i've witnessed some stunning sunsets as i drove westbound over the A406, and today's one was beautiful. The sun was huge and orange this evening as i raced to a friend's wedding, it looked beautiful. I'm going to ask a mate to stick his head out of the sunroof to take some pics for me :)

I went to JIMAS last weekend. Alhumdulillah it was quite good. I got the opportunity to meet Tariq Ramadan - very briefly though. His talk was good, and he focussed on the importance of UK Muslims contributing to UK society. He ended his lecture with a short discussion about the call for a moratorium on the punishments prescribed by Islamic law. I still don't agree with him though.

I also finally got round to uploading the recitation of an imam i had the blessing to pray behind. His recitation is awesome - but you have to excuse the guy who blew his nose loudly in the first fatiha :D Its about 7 Mb and you can download it by right-clicking and saving here.