Ideal Muslimah- week two
Me, myself and I
The topic of week two focused on our physical and mental well-being. As a muslimah we need to focus on all aspects of ourselves in a holistic way insha Allah. If we imagine a flower with the centre being the spirutual aspect and four petals around it being, emotion,physical, mental health and social. It is essential that we pay attention to all of these aspects in order to be a healthy and proactive individual and the most important aspect is the spirutual as it is the central point.
In the first part of the session we were split into small groups and informed that we had to come up with an advert promoting either emotion, mental health or social. The advert for emotion concentrated on a pill for different emotions, for example, happy, sad, surprised and the message to take away was that we all experience different emotions and we should express our emotions intead of bottling things up. The advert for mental health depicted a scene where a mother with four children was stuggling with the pressure of looking after very disruptive children and a husband who was not very helpful. He did not offer her any help seeing that she was stuggling. Their message emphasised that mental health can affect anyone and we should not bottle it up but speak to a trustworthy person or seek proffessional help especially because mental health issues are treated as a taboo subject in the asian communities. The advert for social focused on the importance of socialising from time to time. It emphasised that those sisters who are not allowed to socialise or meet up with their friends would end up feeling depressed, while those who did socialise were happier and more cheerful (this advert did not promote excessive socialing or without the permission of husband/parents!).
After watching the brilliant acting by the sisters we discussed the adverts and why it is important to pay attention to these aspects of our lives. In relation to emotion we were informed that there are certain foods which makes us feel better, it can have a sooting effect on us. There are certain 'happy foods' that can affect our emotion such as talbina (barley) which is used in soups. In relation to mental health we discussed that it is better to address our issues and seek help from patience and prayer also it is allowed for us to release it to those who can help. Talking to someone close and trustworthy may lighten the burden or an organisation that deals with these issues.. It is also important to have a good relationship with our spouses so that we are able to speak to them about our feelings. Imam ath-Thahabi said that "too much worry sickens the body". If we don't release our worries to a good person then it can make us sick and depressed. So it is essential that we keep our mental health in check and seek help when it is necessary insha Allah.
Often it is misunderstood that people who are practising should not have any fun or have a social life but to have a social life is important. It is good to recharge our batteries and break the routine, it helps to freshen our minds and reduces our worries. There is a hadith to illustrate this point. Abu Juhaifah (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Prophet (PBUH) made a bond of brotherhood between Salman and Abud-Darda'. Salman paid a visit to Abud-Darda' and found Umm Darda' (his wife) dressed in shabby clothes and asked her why she was in that state. She replied: "Your brother Abud-Darda' is not interested in (the luxuries of) this world. In the meantime Abud-Darda' came in and prepared a meal for Salman. Salman requested Abud-Darda' to eat (with him) but Abud-Darda' said: "I am fasting.'' Salman said: "I am not going to eat unless you eat.'' So, Abud-Darda' ate (with Salman). When it was night and (a part of the night passed), Abud-Darda' got up (to offer the night prayer) but Salman asked him to sleep and Abud-Darda' slept. After some time Abud-Darda' again got up but Salman asked him to sleep. When it was the last hours of the night, Salman asked him to get up and both of them offered (Tahajjud) prayer. Then Salman told Abud-Darda': "You owe a duty to your Rubb, you owe a duty to your body; you owe a duty to your family; so you should give to every one his due. Abud-Darda' came to the Prophet (PBUH) and reported the whole story. Prophet (PBUH) said, "Salman is right".
We were then presented with a story about a professor who took a mayonnaise jar filled with golf balls to his students. He asked the students "Is this jar full?". they answered "yes". The professor then put some pebbles in the jar and asked his students whether the jar was full. The students started giggling and answered "yes". the professor then added some sand and again aked the same question. By now the students are laughing out loud and answer "yes". Then the professor adds some coffee and asks for the final time whether the jar is full. The students are laughing even louder by now and answer in the affirmitive. Then the proffessor offers his explanation. He said that the golf balls represent all the important things in life for example belief in God, our health and family. The pebbles represent other things such as our careers, money, house and material posessions and any other remaining things are represented by sand. Therefore, we should spend more time on the more important things in life and fit the other things around it. If the professor had put the sand and pebbles in first then the golf balls would not have fit in the jar. Therefore we need to get our priorities right and give more time and exert more effort on the most importanct aspects of our lives. The students were all eager to find out what coffee represented so the proffessor replied "You should always make time to have coffee with a friend".
This was a non-muslim profefessor so it is even more relevant for us as muslimahs to dedicate more of our time to our Lord because this is the purpose of our creation. If we worship Allah correctly and put our trust in Him then the other things will become easy to achieve and if it isn't achieved in the dunya we will be assured that Allah has something far superior for us in jannah inshaAllah.
The second story was about a woman who had everything she could possibly want but was depressed. The psychologist suggested to the woman imagine yourself as an apple barrel constantly givining out apples. We need to always replenish our apples when we are giving them out otherwise the barrel will be empty. We should not be like a candle which is burnt out, giving light to everyone else.
We need to have moderation in Islam. There is a time for this and a time for that. The prophet (saw) was a balanced individual and there were times when he joked, for example when an elderly lady came to him and asked whether there will be any old people in jannah. The prophet (saw) said jannah is not a place for old people but everyone in jannah will be young. There is a hadeeth which states that people will enter Paradise “aged thirty-three years” (narrated by al-Tirmidhi, 2545.
In the second part of the session we had a presentation by two sisters who work as health advisors. In their presentation they offered advice about healthy eating and exercise. They talked about the different food groups and the amounts of food we should consume from each group (1-fruit and vegetables, 2-bread,cereal and potatoes, 3-meat, fish and alternative, 4-milk and dairy, 5-food containing fat and sugar). We should try to have five portions of fruits and vegetables each day, try to minimise our intake of fats and we are allowed to have 6 grams of salt each day. We also took part in an activity where we had to answer true or false questions about keeping healthy.
This session reinforeced the importance of having a healthy mind and body in order for us to be a balanced muslimah. Abu Hurayrah (radi Allahu ‘anh) reports that the Prophet (salalahu ‘alayhi wasalam) said: “The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer" (Sahih Muslim).
We need to keep well in all aspects, not over-emphasing on one and neglecting another. Being moderate and balanced is a sign of well-being. Islam teaches us to be moderate and by following this principle we can achieve success insha Allah.
Allah knows best
Friday, 17 February 2012
Monday, 30 January 2012
Ideal Muslimah week one
Ideal Muslimah (self-development)
The ideal muslimah course is a seven week course taught by umm Talha. The group is made up of around twenty sisters, most of us are married with children and of bangladeshi origin. We are from different educational backgrouds and professions alhamdulillah. In these seven weeks we will be covering the following topics insha Allah;
Relationship with our Lord
Me, myself and I
Family, parents. siblings
Marriage
Motherhood
Inlaws and extended family
Neighbourhood and community
Week one-Lord
As an introduction Umm Talha talked about how our relationship should be with our Lord. She mentioned to us a principle of Dr Sa'd Ash-Shethry who mentioned that we should realise that this life is temporary and our real home is jannah insha Allah. So we should live our lives according to this understanding. If we were informed that we only had a few months to live due to a teriminal illness then our outlook on life would change drastically, we would probably engage in extra ibaadah, seek Allah's forgiveness and not waste a single moment of our time. Shouldn't we be like this anyway because none of us know when we will depart from this world and meet Allah, what good deeds will we have to present to Him, will our scales be heavy or will it be empty?
As a muslimah we should be balanced and try to give time to every aspect of our lives insha Allah because Islam is about striking a balance. We may have come across certain muslimahs who are very spirutual but may be harsh towards their families or others who have excellent manners with strangers when correcting a mistake of theirs but when it comes to her own family she wiil snap "Don't you know this is bid'aah!".
We were then split into groups and were asked to list our daily routine, writing our ibaadah (worship) in one colour and our a'adah (chores) in another colour. From the list we had things such as eating, praying, reciting qur'aan, taking care of children/family, attending circles,socialising, doing nothing. As expected all the groups had more a'adah than ibaadah on the list. We discussed our daily routine and from each group certain word were abstracted by the teacher such as 'laze around', 'intentions','social', 'busy time'. We discussed that the word laze around suggested a negative trait, implying doing nothing and wasting time. However if we changed it to a positive word then it would have a completely different meaning, for example, resting, relaxing, recharging, reflecting and thinking. This illustrates that words can have an impact on our behaviour and by simply changing the word we can also change our attitude. So instead of thinking that we are being lazy we should change the wording and this would have a positive impact in our lives insha Allah.
From the second group. the word intentions was highlighted. In relation to that we discussed that we need to have obedience, intentions and legacy (OIL) when referring to our Lord. Intentions comes from the heart and is not just mere lip service as is with some people. we need to really dig deep and ask ourselves why we do certain things. Are we doing it to please Allah or is it just to please people and show off?. We should invest in one action with several intentions so that our rewards are multiplied insha Allah. If we have the correct intentions then looking after our children, serving our husbands and even doing the household chores can gain us so much good deeds insha Allah.
Regarding obedience, Ibn Taymiyyah said "Ibadaah is obedience to Allah by carrying out what He has commanded on the tongue of His messenger. Ibaadah is a reflective term for everything which Allah loves and is pleased with from the sayings and inward and outward actions". From this we can extract that a person becomes refined with obedience. Obedience to Allah comes first as the hadith of the prophet (sws) states "There is no obedience to any human being if it involves disobedience to Allah". Therefore if our parents or husbands demand us to do a haraam action then we are not obliged to listen to them. For example, if they ask us to remove our hijaab or to miss our salaah.
The last point of discussion was our legacy. What kind of legacy will we leave behind?. A legacy that will benefit us in the grave. We brainstormed different kinds of legacies we could leave behind, which will help us in the grave insha Allah. For example, teaching qur'aan/Islamic knowledge, writing books, ongoing charity, teaching our children good manners, being kind and helpful to others. If we all think for moment can we imagine what sort of a legacy we will leave behind and what will people say about us when we are no longer here? Will people speak about us in a positive way or will we be remembered as the one who never smiled, not very helpful to others or someone who helped others learn about Islam and was always pleasant to be around? One important point to consider here is that in order for us to give knowledge we must acquire that knowledge in our spare time insha Allah. We must also ponder over how we use our social time because we can leave a legacy if we use this time wisely. In social gatherings we can advise people with their troubles and be conscious of what type of impression we are leaving.
In conclusion, we all experience a time of day when we are the busiest, where we feel as though we are so rushed off our feet that we have no time to even think straight! This time may be early in the morning when we are getting the children ready for school or maybe after dhur or after school when the children and husband come home. Therefore, at that time planning to recite qur'aan or revising our notes would not be very suitable because we will not be able to do it. We should think about doing these things when we have free time or a time when we sit and do nothing. For a believer there should be no time to do absolutely nothing, we need to be proactive insha Allah. Time is extremely important because we will be asked about how we spent our time. Also we need to think of ways to change our a'adah into ibadah, which can be done by changing our intentons. The key message to take away from this session is to maximise performance ,which means to increase in good deeds through every opportunity we find our way.
Allah knows best.
The ideal muslimah course is a seven week course taught by umm Talha. The group is made up of around twenty sisters, most of us are married with children and of bangladeshi origin. We are from different educational backgrouds and professions alhamdulillah. In these seven weeks we will be covering the following topics insha Allah;
Relationship with our Lord
Me, myself and I
Family, parents. siblings
Marriage
Motherhood
Inlaws and extended family
Neighbourhood and community
Week one-Lord
As an introduction Umm Talha talked about how our relationship should be with our Lord. She mentioned to us a principle of Dr Sa'd Ash-Shethry who mentioned that we should realise that this life is temporary and our real home is jannah insha Allah. So we should live our lives according to this understanding. If we were informed that we only had a few months to live due to a teriminal illness then our outlook on life would change drastically, we would probably engage in extra ibaadah, seek Allah's forgiveness and not waste a single moment of our time. Shouldn't we be like this anyway because none of us know when we will depart from this world and meet Allah, what good deeds will we have to present to Him, will our scales be heavy or will it be empty?
As a muslimah we should be balanced and try to give time to every aspect of our lives insha Allah because Islam is about striking a balance. We may have come across certain muslimahs who are very spirutual but may be harsh towards their families or others who have excellent manners with strangers when correcting a mistake of theirs but when it comes to her own family she wiil snap "Don't you know this is bid'aah!".
We were then split into groups and were asked to list our daily routine, writing our ibaadah (worship) in one colour and our a'adah (chores) in another colour. From the list we had things such as eating, praying, reciting qur'aan, taking care of children/family, attending circles,socialising, doing nothing. As expected all the groups had more a'adah than ibaadah on the list. We discussed our daily routine and from each group certain word were abstracted by the teacher such as 'laze around', 'intentions','social', 'busy time'. We discussed that the word laze around suggested a negative trait, implying doing nothing and wasting time. However if we changed it to a positive word then it would have a completely different meaning, for example, resting, relaxing, recharging, reflecting and thinking. This illustrates that words can have an impact on our behaviour and by simply changing the word we can also change our attitude. So instead of thinking that we are being lazy we should change the wording and this would have a positive impact in our lives insha Allah.
From the second group. the word intentions was highlighted. In relation to that we discussed that we need to have obedience, intentions and legacy (OIL) when referring to our Lord. Intentions comes from the heart and is not just mere lip service as is with some people. we need to really dig deep and ask ourselves why we do certain things. Are we doing it to please Allah or is it just to please people and show off?. We should invest in one action with several intentions so that our rewards are multiplied insha Allah. If we have the correct intentions then looking after our children, serving our husbands and even doing the household chores can gain us so much good deeds insha Allah.
Regarding obedience, Ibn Taymiyyah said "Ibadaah is obedience to Allah by carrying out what He has commanded on the tongue of His messenger. Ibaadah is a reflective term for everything which Allah loves and is pleased with from the sayings and inward and outward actions". From this we can extract that a person becomes refined with obedience. Obedience to Allah comes first as the hadith of the prophet (sws) states "There is no obedience to any human being if it involves disobedience to Allah". Therefore if our parents or husbands demand us to do a haraam action then we are not obliged to listen to them. For example, if they ask us to remove our hijaab or to miss our salaah.
The last point of discussion was our legacy. What kind of legacy will we leave behind?. A legacy that will benefit us in the grave. We brainstormed different kinds of legacies we could leave behind, which will help us in the grave insha Allah. For example, teaching qur'aan/Islamic knowledge, writing books, ongoing charity, teaching our children good manners, being kind and helpful to others. If we all think for moment can we imagine what sort of a legacy we will leave behind and what will people say about us when we are no longer here? Will people speak about us in a positive way or will we be remembered as the one who never smiled, not very helpful to others or someone who helped others learn about Islam and was always pleasant to be around? One important point to consider here is that in order for us to give knowledge we must acquire that knowledge in our spare time insha Allah. We must also ponder over how we use our social time because we can leave a legacy if we use this time wisely. In social gatherings we can advise people with their troubles and be conscious of what type of impression we are leaving.
In conclusion, we all experience a time of day when we are the busiest, where we feel as though we are so rushed off our feet that we have no time to even think straight! This time may be early in the morning when we are getting the children ready for school or maybe after dhur or after school when the children and husband come home. Therefore, at that time planning to recite qur'aan or revising our notes would not be very suitable because we will not be able to do it. We should think about doing these things when we have free time or a time when we sit and do nothing. For a believer there should be no time to do absolutely nothing, we need to be proactive insha Allah. Time is extremely important because we will be asked about how we spent our time. Also we need to think of ways to change our a'adah into ibadah, which can be done by changing our intentons. The key message to take away from this session is to maximise performance ,which means to increase in good deeds through every opportunity we find our way.
Allah knows best.
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