Islam – Metropolitan Muslimah

I Relay: 5 June 2022

In the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.

It has been more than a month since I blogged here! I have been pretty busy. It was always a case of either no energy or no time!

However, I am trying to get back on track. Life is financially hard right now and the only stresses in my life right now is money and my self-growth. Otherwise, I am pretty happy.

Anyway, I will share my bullet journal setup in a separate post. For today, I want to share the following video and my thoughts on it.

I am surprised by people’s genuine interest in Islam. Given the negative portrayals of Islam, you would think that people in general would not even want to entertain even a shadow of a thought about it. Instead, there are people who are keen to have their questions addressed and curiosity satiated.

People clearly struggle with the knowledge of the beauty of Islam and the knowledge of malpractice and misdeeds that happened supposedly in the name of Islam.

This sort of internal conflict in one’s mind actually makes it easier to open up the person to exploring the discourse of the conflicting ideas. If this discourse occurs without the specialty or proper guidance of an expert, it can easily sway the person to misconstrue ideas based only on what they believe or understand.

A key takeaway for me from the video is about how an act of kindness is considered as worship. It acts as a great reminder for me. I think I kept looking at worship as something that I do not have any choice in. It became somewhat a burden. That was never supposed to be the case. I am supposed to be — and this was mentioned in the video — in remembrance of God. In whatever I do and however I live my life, I should always do everything in remembrance of God.

Easier said than done, yeah? Such is our fallacy of human beings. We seek His help when we are in need and when we do not, we tend to forget Him. We keep thinking that our achievements are ours. That whatever comes to us is the result of our hard work. What we do not understand is that nothing will happen if it is not for His will and permission. If He does not allow us to have a good life, we will never have it. Some evil people seem to have the good life but we forget that this life is merely temporary and a test. He chose to give them a good life temporarily, keeping the doors of repentance open because He loves his servants. However, once their doors of repentance are closed, those evil people will not have a good Afterlife, which is permanent.

I hope this video is helpful to those who have the same questions as those in the video. Trust me, even Muslims have the same questions as non-Muslims. It is not about the lack of faith but more so the lack of education and accessibility to such resources due to lack of time, money, and lack of home support, etcetera.

Let us keep learning and keep growing as healthy intellectual individuals.

And Allah is Al-Khabeer, the All-Aware. – MM

Hello, Ramadan; I Ramble: 2 April 2022

In the name of Allah, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful.

Aaaand just like that it is Ramadan again! Woohoo!

I must say I have not started out very well but managed to pull myself back together to have a more decent go at this year’s Ramadan.

I decided not to do a Ramadan vlog series like I have done previously. Instead, I will just be posting daily on my Instagram feed. I have already started with a Hello Ramadan kinda post.

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I think it will be good for me to get back to my prayer tree tracker. I want to see whether the change in my job/lifestyle has produced better results for me.

The red leaves are daily prayers, orange for terawih, and yellow for witr. I have until tomorrow’s Asar prayers to add on more red leaves for 1 Ramadan.

Yes, I know, my Ramadan efforts are pathetic. More power to you if you are able to establish eight terawih raka’ats and three witr raka’ats at least daily! My Ramadan starts are always weak admittedly. My next Ramadan goal is to start strong at eight raka’ats for terawih. But for this Ramadan, my intention is to slowly build up my stamina. I could not even pray five times a day religiously, what more carry out the sunnah prayers before/after the mandatory daily prayers. Naturally, I am spiritually weak and my heart is pretty dead. Ergo, I do not share the same drive as other Muslims in welcoming Ramadan.

But of course, I do not want to let my heart remain dead and my spirit weak forever. I have to start somewhere. So I figured, possible public humiliation and bewilderment through this post might give me the nudge I need to make myself a better Muslim.

I definitely want to do better in life and the Afterlife. In order to do that, I need to hold myself accountable.

Ya Rabb, please give me the strength to be a better person and Muslimah. Amin.

And Allah is Al-Mu’izz, The Honourer, The Bestower. – MM

About Islam by CrashCourse; I Relay: 17 March 2022

In the name of Allah, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful.

I have just watched a great video that explains Islam in a nutshell. Trust me, it is very hard to explain what a faith is about in just under 15 minutes. CrashCourse did so well in not only explaining what the religion is about but also how the religion came about. The video even explained an aspect of Islam that I personally find difficult to explain to non-Muslims, in terms of how we accept or reject scriptures by examining the chain of narrations. Seriously, have a watch if you have not. It takes less than 15 minutes.

And Allah is Al-‘Aleem, The All-Knowing. – MM

Laylatul Qadr; I Note: 4 May 2021

In the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.

Now that Ramadan is coming to a close, you will notice more panda-looking Muslims around. Muslims believe that on one of the odd nights in the last ten nights of Ramadan, is a special blessed night. On that night, a single good deed bears rewards multiple times more than when it was carried out during any other times.

There is a chapter in the Quran that talks about that blessed night: Al-Qadr. It is a very short chapter. It consists of only five verses. It addressed our question as to what exactly is Laylatul Qadr, also known as The Night of Glory, The Night of Power, or The Night of Decree. The Night of Decree seems to be the most apt as the angels and the spirits descend many times with God’s permission to fulfil their task. Throughout that night, there is peace until the dawn breaks. That night is explicitly expressed in the Quran as being better than a thousand months. However, I personally like to call it the Night of Power as it is the night where you have the highest chances of having your prayers answered, which subsequently allows you to be empowered by your prayers. It’s like one of the best chances you can get to be close to the King of the dominions so you definitely want to offer the best worship you can muster to Him.

This is my form of worship for tonight; seeking and sharing knowledge. Worship is not necessarily ritualistic. It takes on many forms but the intention is the same: everything is done in the name of Allah and to solely please Him. Lillahi ta’ala. So even if a surgeon is performing a surgery while his Muslim brother and sisters are performing acts of worship on the prayer mat, his good deed of helping his patient for Allah’s sake is also considered an act of worship, only that it’s done on the operating table instead.

So I hope that those who find themselves in a situation where they can’t perform the usual prayers or touch the Quran, such as a woman in menstruation, will still strive to worship in a different manner such as giving praises to Allah or reading the translation of the Quran.

May Allah accept our deeds and may we get to experience the blessings of Laylatul Qadr.

And Allah is Ar-Rahim, The Most Merciful. -MM

I Relay: 22 April 2021

In the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.

I am not very sure if the Ka’abah was an ancient temple built to worship God. That sentence somehow doesn’t sit right with me but unfortunately my knowledge on the Ka’abah is shallow. I will need to look it up and figure out what exactly was Abraham instructed to built: a place of worship or just a marker to indicate the direction for prayer.

Otherwise, the content of this video was very well done. It really surmises the history of Islam succinctly and chronologically. I also like the explanations on why there are no images of Muhammad and Allah at the end.

The one thing I realised from the video is actually the concept of having a best friend. It has been about a decade since I read anything about Islamic history. So when the video mentioned Muhammad’s best friend, Abu Bakr, and how they evaded enemies together, it made me realised that even a prophet needs a best friend to help him through tough times. That realisation jolts me because I have never thought about that back when I was studying Islam.

And Allah is Ar-Rahman, The Most Gracious. – MM

I Relay: 11 April 2021

In the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.

It’s Sunday! And that means another round of watching a video on Islam.

I wouldn’t particularly recommend the following video to people who would like to be introduced to Islam because I still feel it’s a little complex. I wish it could have been clearer on the six pillars of faith in Islam. However, the big positive of the video is that it clarifies what a belief system is about and that it consequentially leads to externalising the belief through deeds and actions.

Notes:

1) Belief in Arabic is ‘Iman’. The six pillars of faith is also called the six pillars of Iman.

2) The six pillars of faith are derived from the Quran and succinctly packaged by scholars into a creed. This is where it can be tricky if one decides to look into the various scholars and schools of thought in Islam.

3) Deeds are expressions of faith.

4) Can faith increase or decrease? There are two views on this:

i) You are either entirely have faith or not.

ii) Faith can increase with the increase in deeds that brings one closer to God, improved relationship with God, and vice versa.

5) What was not expressedly shared in the video is what exactly are the six pillars of faith:

i) Belief in Allah

ii) Belief in His Angels

iii) Belief in His Revelations, namely the Torah (revealed through Prophet Moses), the Psalm (revealed through Prophet David), the Gospel (revealed through Prophet Jesus) and the Quran (revealed through Prophet Muhammad).

iv) Belief in His messengers/prophets, namely the 25 prophets from Prophet Adam to Prophet Muhammad.

v) Belief in the Day of Judgment

vi) Belief in predestination

I think this video is prompting me to learn more about the 25 prophets and their stories. Maybe I’ll do that in the next post since it requires a bit of research.

And Allah is Al-Malik, The King. – MM