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Today's Reminder

March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 19, 1445

Living The Quran

Terrestrial Body
Taha (Taha) - Chapter 20: Verse 55 (partial)

"From it We created you and to it We shall return you."

Know that the Adamite is two things: spirit and body. The spirit is from light, and light is celestial. The body is from dust, and dust is terrestrial. The spirit wants to go up because it is celestial. The body wants to go down because it is terrestrial. In the perfection of His power, the King bound the two together. The spirit was bound to the body, and the body was bound to the spirit, so both are in bonds. The spirit and the body settled down together.

On the day of death, when the life of the servant comes to an end and the moment of death arrives, the bonds are loosened, as when a bird comes out of its cage. The spirit rises up from the body and goes skyward to its nest. The body takes the road of the earth to its centre. The spirit is put into a lantern of light, which is hung from the tree of blessedness. The body is wrapped in a shroud and entrusted to the earth. This is why the Lord of the worlds says, "From it We created you and to it We shall return you."

It is as if the King is saying, "Once I make dust the cause of being, and then again I make it the cause of nonbeing. Thus the world's folk will know that I am perfectly powerful, and I give being to all that is."

O Chevalier! If you ever pass through a graveyard, be careful to look at that encampment with an eye to taking heed.

It is not dust that you see, it is the bodies of the dear ones, the flesh and skin of the young, the elegant stature of those nurtured in joy, the hair and beards of the old folk.

We have decayed, but the rising stars have not.

The mountains remain after us, and the artifacts.

Compiled From:
"Kashf al-Asrar wa Uddat al-Abrar" - Rashid al-Din Maybudi. pp. 314, 315

From Issue: 1023 [Read original issue]

Understanding The Prophet's Life

No Limit

During the siege of Madinah by the unbelievers, who raised a large army with the aim of annihilating the Muslim community, the Prophet (peace be upon him) ordered a dry moat to be dug at the entrance to Madinah to stop the attacking army's advance. The Prophet worked in the digging of the moat as an individual among the community. The Muslims were very poor at the time, and most of them were suffering from hunger. As a result of their hard work, their hunger was especially acute. Many people used the device of putting a stone against their bellies and wrapping it tightly to overcome the pangs of hunger. The Prophet himself had two stones wrapped against his belly. As he was working, one of his Companions, Jabir ibn Abdullah, was deeply affected by the sight and sought permission to absent himself temporarily. He went straight home to determine what food was there. His wife told him that she had a small quantity of barley and a small goat. He immediately slaughtered the goat and prepared it for cooking. His wife ground the barley and started to cook the goat in a large saucepan.

When the cooking and baking were nearly finished, Jabir went to the Prophet and said: "Messenger of God, I have some food at home. Would you like to be my guest with one or two of your Companions." The Prophet asked him how much food he had, and when he heard Jabir's reply he said: "This is good and plenty. Tell your wife not to take her saucepan off the fire, or her bread out of the oven until I come." Then he addressed his Companions and invited them to Jabir's dinner. All those digging the moat, from among the Muhajirun and the Ansar, went with him.

In Jabir's own account of the story, he says that he was exceedingly embarrassed because his little goat and a small amount of bread were very inadequate for that large number of people. When he arrived at Jabir's house, the Prophet said to his Companions: "Come inside, but do not push one another." The Prophet himself started to cut the bread, put it in dishes and put meat on top of it. Meanwhile, he kept the pot simmering and covered it as well as the oven, after taking some bread from it. He served dish after dish to his Companions until they had all eaten a full meal. Both the saucepan and the oven were still full of bread and meat when everyone had finished eating. The Prophet then said to Jabir's wife: "Eat of that and send presents to other people, for we have suffered something approaching a famine." She did so and sent large quantities of bread and meat during the rest of that day. [Bukhari]

There are several reports of this story. Some of these put the figure of those who shared in Jabir's dinner at 800. If everyone who was working on digging the moat accepted the Prophet's invitation to Jabir's house, the number would be even higher. These events are not surprising, not because of a little goat - or a large one, for that matter - was enough to feed such a large number of people, but because God blessed that repast and gave the Prophet such a privilege at that particular time.

There are many other stories like these that took place at one time or another. In all these examples, the common factor was that the Prophet would handle the situation himself and say a supplication that was not heard by those around him: witnesses only mention that they saw him saying a prayer or a supplication. When necessary, he would take over the action, as in the case of serving the food given by Jabir. Were these miracles? From our human perspective, they were no doubt supernatural happenings. However, they were not offered by the Prophet or anyone else as signs or proofs that Muhammad (peace be upon him) was God's Messenger. No one was asked to believe in Islam as a result of any such event. These events reassured the Prophet's Companions and gave them certainty that they were following the right path, but they were not presented as evidence of the truth of Islam. Rather, they showed two things. Firstly, they show that when God's blessings are given, a small amount of food suffices an army. It was God's blessing of Jabir's goat that gave hundreds of people two meals during their hard work in digging the moat to defend Islam. Secondly, they show that when God answers a prayer, there is no limit to how much He gives.

Compiled From:
"Muhammad: His Character and Conduct" - Adil Salahi

From Issue: 968 [Read original issue]

Blindspot!

Our Needy People

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) sent an envoy to a tribe that had converted to Islam, he asked the envoy to teach them the five pillars of Islam. Speaking about zakat, he told him to explain to them that it had to be deducted from the money of the rich among them and distributed to “their needy people” (‘ala fuqara’ihim). The scholars, in all the schools of law and through the ages have, thus, always insisted on the necessity of spending the zakat locally first, for the poor and the needy people of the place, the locality or the society within which it has been collected. It is only when the local needs have been satisfied, or in exceptional situations such as natural catastrophes or wars etc., that the spending of zakat abroad can be done.

Not only does the zakat shape the social conscience of the Muslim but it also directs him/her towards his/her immediate environment in order to build this conscience by facing up to the difficulties and dysfunctions of his/her society, its poor or/and marginalised people. Zakat, unlike the voluntary alms (sadaqa) is first intended for the Muslims and our faithfulness to its teaching demands of us to observe what is going on around us, within our nearest spiritual community. This "priority to proximity" is fundamental: it imposes a requirement to know one’s society, to care about the state of the Muslims in one’s area, town and country.

We are very far from living up to this teaching today. In the majority of the Western societies, in the United States, in Canada, in Britain, in France as in Australia, one finds women and men who give zakat to charitable organisations in the Third World or to their countries of origin. They care very little about the situation of those who live near them and they are convinced they are doing right since those from "over there" are poorer than those from "around here". The mistake consists in forgetting that the poor from around here have rights (haqun ma’lum) over the rich from around here. Nothing prevents the latter from sending voluntary alms (sadaqat) to the deprived people of the entire world or to their countries of origin but they have an established duty, from which they cannot escape, towards the needy people of their country of residence: once again it is, before God, the rights of "their poor people".

One can but be sad, and sometimes disgusted, when observing how the Muslims care so little about the local realities: obsessed by the international scene and the situation of the Muslims "from over there", they no longer see the reality of the education’s deficit, unemployment, social marginalisation, drugs, violence and prisons in their own society. Though the awareness of their brothers’ misfortune elsewhere is positive, per se, it has had the very negative consequence of making them very passive, neglectful and unaware of the appalling situation of brothers at their own doorsteps. This is a tragedy, an error and, in fact, a betrayal of the fundamental teaching of zakat.

The Muslim organisations have a great deal of responsibility in this failure since they have difficulty proposing programmes and priorities for the zakat's collection and distribution at the local level, in the towns and the regions. A correct understanding of this dimension of zakat would shape the individual’s spiritual and his/her citizen's conscience with which one understands that one has to be involved in one’s environment. This means one has to study it and to find the best, fairest and most coherent means to spend the purifying social tax in one’s own society, in Britain, France, the United States, Canada, Australia or elsewhere.

Compiled From:
"One day, our poor people will ask" – Tariq Ramadan

From Issue: 699 [Read original issue]