If you’re a mother or about to become a mother or thinking of becoming one, at some point in your life, you may have thought,
How will I do this?
How do these mothers do it?
Heba AlShareef will be doing a webinar on mamagement techniques for mothers, titled
How Does She Do It?
on Feb 11, 2010, 6:00 pm EST
All you have to do is RSVP on Mum Loves Me.
Again, I will have to rely on the replay. Alhamdulillah for replays.
It’s really a matter of perspective. Subhanallah.
Warning: Video contains some strong visual contents in short flashes accompanied by blunt verbal content.
Hadith 95. Narrated Abu Hurairah (R) Messenger (S) said, “Allah the Exalted has said: ‘I will declare war against him who shows hostility to a Pious worshipper of Mine. And the most beloved thing with which My slave comes nearer to Me is what I have enjoined upon him; and My slave keeps on coming closer to Me through performing Nawafil (prayer or doing extra deeds besides what is obligatory) till I love him. When I love him I become his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes, and his leg with which he walks; and if he asks (something) from Me, I give him, and if he asks My Protection (refuge), I protect him.”‘ [Al-Bukhari]
I came across this hadith when reading through my Quran a few mornings ago, and I immediately thought of this video I had seen the night before.
I ended up racking in sobs with tears gushing down my face. My heart felt like it was shredded to pieces and put back together and cradled with love. I was a mess with my Quran half on the pillow on my lap and in my hands.
I do not like to delve into the fiqh aspect of this, as even the scholars are in disagreements over whether the niqab is fardh or mustah7aab. Nonetheless, if it’s not fardh, it’s musta7ahaab. I see it as a win-win. There are many ways to attain Allah’s pleasure. It doesn’t have to be the niqab. But if a sister chooses to wear it, why prevent her? She has the right to do this sunnah just as she has the right to get up at night at pray qiyaam or fast Mondays and Thursdays.
We all have different strengths and weaknesses. This can cross into areas of worships too. Out of His mercy, Allah has given us so many different ways to attain His pleasure. Because we are all unique, we also have different strengths and weaknesses that would make us more inclined to do a certain act of worship over another and excel at it, and by the way, I’m talking about extra deeds.
Some people are just born charitable. It’s easy for them to give in charity. Some people are born with a smile pasted on their faces. It’s easy for them to smile. This is not to say that we should only do deeds that are easy for us to do and neglect the others, but that those deeds that are easy for us to do, we should aim for more, just as we would in worldly attainments. A writer would not be satisfied with her current writing skills. She’d strive to learn more and sharpen it. A great baker would not want to remain knowing all that he knows. He’d want to try more recipes. A sister for whom covering up and keeping chastity is easy, would naturally then want to do more in terms of covering up. And that might be the niqab. The difficulty one faces in doing something for Allah also has a direct correlation with the reward. If it’s easy for a person to do, the reward might be less as compared to the person doing something that is harder for him. It’s only natural then to go up that ladder. Think video games. The goal is to move up the levels.
I agree that one’s appearance does not solely determine if a person will go to paradise for sure. Islam is a wholesome way of life. Your actions, appearance and thoughts should all be in conjunctions with Allah’s commands. A niqabi should not look down upon hijabis or non hijabis and vice versa. Taqwa is in the heart and it is only up to Allah to judge, though iman cannot be hidden. Iman will eventually by hook or by crook come out in actions. It’s like that beautiful tree, the fruits of iman eventually comes out, the branches of the tree reach upwards towards the sky, like our deeds reaching or aspiring to reach Jannah. A person cannot say he has iman and not have it show in his appearance and actions. We are also accountable for our thoughts, for even if we seem externally righteous, our internal state might not be completely pure and this will be taken into account on the day we will be questioned by our Creator. So you can’t really hope to score goals on one aspect and neglect the other aspects. Islam is a moderate, balanced religion, regardless of the negative propaganda out there.
So, while one has the right to go the extra mile because one has that natural inclination, one should also keep in mind that one cannot neglect the other aspects of living life as a Muslim. And also, most importantly, to do the extra deeds, one also needs to strive to perfect the obligatory deeds first. Priorities. Priorities and balance.
May Allah grant these sisters ease, strength, patience, an increase in taqwa and raise their status. Ameen.
AlMaghrib presents …
What: an ilminar (webinar) on Food and Clothing in Islam, a preview to the class Precious Provisions
Where : Online
How : RSVP to it
When: Jan 6, 2010, Wed, 7 pm EST
Cost: Free
My one gripe about this is:
Why do they always have the ilminars during my Taleem class ? Talk about bad timing.
I hope the recording will be available afterwards.
Oh, and too bad I don’t regularly take pictures of clothes…
Time Management. Too much time? Too little time? I know I grapple with the latter.
May Allah reward the ustaadh immensely. Ameen.
Muhammad AlShareef presents…
Time Traveller (Brit’sh spelling)
I look forward to the free webinar. Jump on the time capsule! Sign up!
Trust In You from I Am Sheba. The most recent blog post from one of my favorite inspirational Muslim women, Heba AlShareef.
Now I gotta get ‘Blink’. Been meaning to read it for months now.
This caught my attention this morning, as I flipped through the April 2008 issue of Reader’s Digest from the back.
It’s scary. May Allah protect us from the harms of it.
What is scary to me is the fact that doctors may not be aware of these and prescribe the drugs to their patients sincerely assuring them that the drugs are safe. Sloppy recordkeeping on the part of the FDA is also very troubling.
I think of Baby Z and all the medicines he was prescribed with recently. I cringe.
We are in an era (or maybe it has always been that way) where we jump for joy when a ‘cure’ has been discovered. We have many more new diseases cropping up, maybe also due to the gain we get in technological advances, and thus we require ‘cures’.
You really never know how your body will react to a drug that is proven to be ’safe’, and by this I mean one that has passed stringent tests. In emergency situations, I suppose you can’t do much, but when you have other options…
I have this habit of flipping over the paper that usually accompanies prescribed medicines, and yes, I even read the multiply folded inserts usually packed together with creams, ointment tubes.
Many a times I have ended up abandoning taking the prescribed medicines after reading the warnings. Baby Z’s allergist sense this hesitance in me and he addresses it outright. I am one to argue with him, because obviously he knows more about this matter than I do, but my gut feelings pervade my entire being with regard to this. At times I do think,
Arghh! I’m too eccentric. Other people are fine with this.
And I loosen my stance, but then when I do, I come across articles, news, findings that justify my original stance, my raw gut feelings.
I have this ridiculous phobia of sharks (after a visit to the Universal Studio at age 8), and I have nightmares about them. Not recurring ones, but let’s just say my imagination is still that of a child. When this movie came out about a shark who has intelligence and actually pursues human victims (no, not Jaws), i said,
“Aha! They made a movie of my nightmares!”
Unfortunately though, now, the sharks are in danger of extinction. We can probably thank Jaws for that, huh.
Thank God this dunya is just temporary.
Mum Loves Me, a non profit organization established to provide support for Muslim mothers and mothers-to-be is presenting, Fiqh of Pregnancy, a Q & A session with Sh Yaser Birjas.
Now, why wasn’t this available when I was pregnant?
“You should write a book about it.”
It hit me like a dense overbaked loaf bread. Or, okay, a tonne of bricks. It came after a small barrage of questions thrown my way, out of a sincere intention of wanting to know. The first of which was,
“Why do you wear the niqaab?”
The question is pretty simple. The answer? Ahh…it requires some soul searching.
I felt somewhat uncomfortable sharing this with two curious brothers, to be honest, but the question came at me all of a sudden, so I had to give an answer. Surprisingly, even though I faltered in the beginning (more so because I didn’t really want to spill out the contents of my heart), I think I managed to convey what was in my heart and head.
Ever since I started wearing it, I have had different reactions from people. When a friend asked me how people reacted to me wearing it, I told her,
“If they could see themselves reacting on camera, I think they’d be embarrassed at how crude they were.”
I definitely accumulated stares, rapid head turning, once, and a head turning the second time, which actually produced a bubble of chuckle up my throat. I have had a child smile at me, which rather surprised me, seeing as how she could’nt see my expression much less my smile. Another child came up to me and asked,
“Who are you?”
An elderly lady who got in the elevator with me, smiled at me and said,
“You look lovely. I’ve never seen this except in pictures.”
A man for reasons that are still unclear to me, extensively helped my daughter and I out at the library. He even waited for us until we got what we were looking for. Could it be the niqaab? I will never know.
Some people ceased smiling at me when dealing with me, which is understandable, as the face covering might seem to impart a serious or grim expression on my part. And yet some seem to be able to quickly adjust to my smiling eyes when talking to me.
So when a brother asked my husband if he could ask me about the niqaab, I had quite an interesting exchange about the niqaab. The very same day, I had a sister ask me outright,
“So you’re wearing a niqaab now?”
I hadn’t expected the question, because she had seen me with it on Eid, and hadn’t said anything, so I simply said, “Yes.”
Normally, I would have added something else, but sensing somewhat of a disapproval, I didn’t offer any more length to my answer. It was followed by silence and a quick scan of my attire, top to bottom.
The whole exchange was a little unnerving, even though my husband was there, but it ended rather amiably. They ended up talking about beards. How did that come up? Ahh…I redirected it back to them, unintentionally though. But after which, I was left alone.
The suggestion remained with me, embedded itself in my mind, tugged at me every now and then, and so I consulted fellow niqaabis, who have been at it longer than I have, mashaa Allah.
What I am thinking: an anthology of niqaabis, not really centering on the ruling of it, but more of the insider story. How one came to niqaab. The experiences associated with it. Reactions. Negative and positive. Inspirations.
It would be a more extensive presentation of what I did with the latest article I wrote for SISTERS: Mother of Many Share Their Secret, for which I interviewed about 10 mothers/siblings of large families. A magazine though, has strict word limits. A book, hmm…possibilities. Na’ima Robert’s From My Sisters’ Lips came to mind as I was mulling this over in my head.
So far, I have gotten 2 green lights from the niqaabis I consulted. I will wait for the rest to respond. Being a beginner, I am very afraid that this is not a wise move for reasons I may not yet come to realize. We’ll see, inshaallah.
 | Aalia on A Series of Sweet Indulgence … |
 | Dania on About Juli Herman |
| Dania on ‘Nuff Said |
 | hudhud on Going That Extra Mile |
 | Juli on Hard Hitting Mercy |
