musaafir-e dasht

From An-Noor : A Connection With Allah Cannot Be Established Merely From Books   Hazratwala (RA) mentioned:   Many things are are not acquired merely from books but rather they are acquired through listening.  For example, a mother teaches her infant the proper way of addressing its father by telling the child, “Say dad, say dad.”  Similarly when one sits with the Ahlullah, their ears secretly steal.  They listen to the nice things told to them and take it all in.  Then the ears of their soul hear and this enables their souls to proclaim the zikr of Allah by saying “Allah, Allah!”  The mother wants that her child learn to say “dad” quickly so that when the child lifts its small hands up and says “dad”, then that will stir up a great sense of mercy within the father.  Likewise, the Prophets (AS) and awliyaa’ desire that the servants of Allah quickly learn to say “Rabba” so that their Rabba enshrouds them with His mercy.  In a simil...

... give good tidings to the patient, who, when a suffering visits them, say: "We certainly belong to Allah, and to Him we are bound to return." Those are the ones upon whom there are blessings from their Lord, and mercy as well; and those are the ones who are on the right path. - Al-Baqarah , 156-157 Yesterday's sunset brought with it the grim news of the setting of yet another shining star of this Ummah.   A star - that's what his name in Urdu meant - indeed he was. Arif Billah Maulana Shah Hakeem Muhammad Akhtar Saheb passed away last night in Karachi. This insignificant is way too devastated to write anything about him at this moment. Last night, however, when I opened up Ruh ki biimaariyaa~ aur un ka ilaaj  - a classic manual for getting rid of spiritual maladies, which Hazratwala recommended to all of his disciples and anybody who had any kind of connection of with him - I came across this poignant poem penned down by Hazrat rahimahullah himself when his ...

گناہوں پر جسارت بھی بری ہے  مگر مایوسیاں کفر عیاں ہے  (مولانا حکیم محمّد اختر صاحب (دامت برکاتہم -   May Allah SWT bless Hazrat DB with complete and lasting shifa. aameen

An excellent elucidation of the matter by Shaykh al Islam, Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani (May Allah preserve him) posted at ashrafiya.com  - thought-provoking and clarifying many misconceptions regarding Sufism. I would warn the younger Muslim generation about the wrong interpretation of Sufism. It has been widely propagated in the Western world by non-Muslims. They coined the term Sufism. They praise Sufism. They preach sufism. They propagate Sufism. One may think that they do this in service to Islam. However, the reality is that the Sufism propagated by Western writers is quite contradictory to the Shariah. It is quite contradictory to the real essence of Tasawwuf and tariqat. A high ranking western offical visited the Darul Uloom, Karachi. After having a detailed tour observing the teaching activities he commented that he did not see anything about Sufism being taught. It was inquired that what did he mean by Sufism. He replied that Sufism is something relate...

  Posted at An Noor Once my Shaykh Hazrat Shah Abdul Ghani Phoolpuri (RA) said to me, “Hakeem Akhtar [DB], when you are able to cry during your supplication then realize that your prayers have been accepted.  These tears are a receipt of the acceptance of your prayers. It's such an amazing coincidence that I mentioned this very quote by Hakeem Akhtar Sahab da'mat barakaatuhum to someone yesterday only when I myself was feeling low about something. Seeing it posted on An-Noor today made me instantly say SubhaanAllah! Allah has His ways of reminding us of things we become heedless of. May Allah bless our akaabireen with the best of duniya and aakhirah.

From ashrafiya.com Sayyidi wa sanadi Shaikh Mufti Mohammad Taqi Usmani (Allah preserve him) said, ‘These days most of us are preoccupied by the past events or future apprehensions. In doing so we neglect the present.’ An individual inquired, ‘In our era due to technological advances every day chores are done relatively quickly. Hence we have extra time available to us. This usually results in preoccupation with useless involvements including those you mention. How can we utilize time more effectively?’ Sayyidi wa sanadi replied, ‘I repeatedly tell the people the same and ask them what are they doing with the time they save by using these new technologies. An individual has to develop the importance of value of time. Once this importance is developed then it will be impossible for him to waste a single second. Moreover, Allah will give barakah in his time and he will be able to do more work effectively in the same amount of time.’

This post at ashrafiya.com leaves me aggrieved for many personal reasons. May Allah increase Nawab Ishrat Ali Khan Qaisar Sahab in his stations in Jannah. aameen. Verily, we are from Allah and unto Him shall we return.

Just came across this post on the Thus Spake Hazrat Shaykh blog: Miskeen is the one with a broken heart. Today we have reduced this thing to a mere proverb.  (Sitting (Majlis) on Wednesday, July 6, 2011) The words of the pious mend hearts.

My imagination recreates the scene for me. Mawlana Ali Miyan Nadwi (Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, may Allah sanctify his secret) is invited to meet King Faisal (may Allah have mercy on him). The guards show Mawlana Ali Miyan in, and he enters the meeting area in the palace to meet the king. Mawlana looks around, not cursorily, but closely, as if in wonderment. The king inquires as to why he was looking around with such amazement. Mawlana answers, "We too once had a king who ruled over the (present) India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Nepal and other places, and out of the fifty-two years of his rule he spent twenty on the horseback. Muslims, in his time, enjoyed freedom and happiness. Life was easy for them. Yet, the king was such that he wore patched clothes. He scribed the Qur'an and knitted caps to earn his living, and used to stand crying before his Lord in night vigils. Those were the times when simplicity and poverty characterised the lives of the rulers, and content...

An inspiring account of Mawlana's daily management of his routine tasks. Excerpted from suhbate ba awliya - malfuzat e hazrat Shaykh ul Hadith Mawlana Zakariyya Kandhelvi (rahimahullah)  

Abbaji, my paternal grandfather, Hakeem Muhammad Idrees Khan, passed away on 24 Ziqa’ad, 1432 AH (October 23, 2011). He was 88 years old - the last grandparent I had. He studied at the famous Tibyya College , Delhi, and remained a practicing Hakeem throughout his life. Allah had blessed him with so much shifa in his medicine that people used to come from far away places to get themselves treated. He lived an extremely humble life in a small town, Kaloor Kot, situated at approximately 4-5 hours drive from Multan. He was a disciple of his father-in-law, who we all lovingly remember as nanaji – another pious friend of God, Hafiz Abdul Ghafoor rahimahullah, who was given the khilafat by Hazrat Shah Abdul Raheem Raipuri, Hazrat Shah Abdul Qadir Raipuri, and Hazrat Munshi Rahmat Ali Jaalandhari (May Allah have mercy on all of them). Towards the end of Abbaji’s life, we often used to ask him if he was also given the khilafat by his Shaykh ( nanaji ) and he always evaded the question… It w...

I had my research meeting with my supervisor today. While commenting on the writing I had submitted to him earlier on, he made a very point which, I hope, will stay with me forever. While asking me to remove certain generalised claims and statements I had made in my paper, he quoted Maulana Shah Abdul Qadir Raipuri (may Allah have mercy on him). Hazrat once said about tasawwuf that according to his knowledge , it was the way through which people have always been reaching Allah. He said he wondered what people think taswwuf was! It was simply a path that led to Allah SWT and His servants have always been treading it to find Him. He further said that he, at least, did not know of any other way that could help one reach Allah SWT. If there was one, he too would have wanted to know about it! The point my supervisor was trying to make was that one should learn humbleness form our elders – he didn’t say this explicitly; this is my understanding of his quoting Hazrat Raipuri’s example at ...

A friend of mine was generous enough to lend her ‘Islamic Studies’ reading pack, which she had got from her teacher who was a student of Shaykh Kamaluddin at LUMS a couple of years back. It is probably one of the best assortments of writings that I have ever laid my hands on. Feel blessed. Alhamdulillah. Here I wish to refer to an excerpt in that pack from Imam Al Haddad’s book Knowledge and Wisdom , translated by Mostafa al-Badawi, entitled, ‘Structuring Time’. This excerpt further refers to a very moving excerpt from Imam al Ghazzali’s Bidaayat al Hidaaya (The Beginning of Guidance), which I want to share with the readers of this blog. I personally found it to be an extremely useful reminder. Imam al Ghazzali rahimahullah says, You should not neglect your time or use it haphazardly; on the contrary, you should bring yourself to account, structure your litanies and other practices during each day and night, and assign to each period a fixed and specific function. This is how you...

It is in their noble deaths that Allah SWT proves the sincerity and truthfulness of our Ulama and Mashaaikh to those who doubt!

Another one of our dear akaabireen unites with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala . The news brought with an overwhelming sense of grief when it reached me through a text message this morning from someone who I call my 'khanqah friend' ... Although I never used to listen to Mawlana regularly (my own weakness and shortcomings kept me from doing so!), but yesterday only I was thinking of an incident that took place years ago... I was going through a trying period in life back then. On a hot afternoon while travelling to home from the university, I switched on my mp3 player and started listening to one of Mawlana Patel sb rahimahullah's bayaans. During the dua at the end of it, he prayed to Allah to delete all the files of our sins just as we delete files from our computer. I am rephrasing his thought here and not quoting them verbatim because I am unable to recall his exact words. This mere thought was so inspiring that it stuck to my memory even after the passage of so many ye...

I read about the following inspirational encounter between Mawlana Madni and Mawlana Ilyaas (rahimahumullah) in today's newspaper . It is so heartening to read about such incidents which reflect such purity of muhabbah  - love for Love's sake! subhaanAllah, indeed! SOURCE