DHUL-HIJJAH

Dhul Hijjah is the final month of the Islamic calendar. Hazrat Abu Sa’eed Khudri (RA) relates that Rasool Allah (SAW) said: “The month of all the months is Ramadan and the month with the most honors is Dhul-Hijjah.
The month gets its name from the fact that the blessed pilgrimage of Hajj occurs in this month and because the Hijjah (Islamic word for year) ends with this month as well. The fifth pillar of Islam, Hajj, is performed in this sacred month.

Significance of First 10 Days of Dhul Hijjah
Allah Ta’ala says in the Holy Quran: Wal Fajar. Wa Layaalin ‘ashr. Suratul Fajr, Verses 1 and 2 translation: By the dawn; By the ten nights (i.e. the first ten days of the month of Dhul-Hîjjah).
Hazrat Abu Huraira (RA) narrates that Rasoolullah (sallahu alayhi wassalaam) said:
“On no days is the worship of Allah desired more than in the first ten days of Dhul Hijjah. The fast of each of these days is equal to the fast of a whole year, and the Ibaadat of each of these nights is equal to the Ibaadat of Laylatul Qadr.”(Tirmidhi and Ibn-e- Maajah)

Day of Arafat (9th Day of Dhul Hijjah)
Sayyiduna Qatada (radhiyallahu anhu) reports from Rasoolullah (sallallahu alayhi wassalaam):
“A person that fasts on the Day of Arafat, Rasoolullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam) says he has great hope that this would be a compensation for the person’s past and future sins.” (Muslim)
By past and future sins are meant minor sins. Therefore, it is extremely important that one fast on this day.
Rasoolullah (sallahu alayhi wasallam) has said: “The most acceptable dua is that which is made on the day of Arafat, and the best dua which the Prophets before me and I have said is:
لا الہ الا اللہ وحدہ لا شریک لہ لہ الملک و لہ الحمد و ہو علی کل شئی قدیر

Increase the Rememberance (Zikr) of Allah (SWT) During First 10 days of Dhul Hijjah
Sayyidina Ibn Abbas (radhiyallahu anhu) relates fromRasoolullah (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam):
There are no greater days of Ibaadat and actions besides the 10 days of Dhul-Hijjah according to Allah Ta’ala. Therefore engage yourself during these days with remembering Allah by doing
tasbeeh, tahleel, takbeer and tahmeed.
So increase the recitation of these 4 things:
Tasbeeh: سبحان اللہ Tahleel: لا إله إلا الله Takbeer: الله أكبر Tahmeed: الحمد لله

The Days of Tashreek
9th of Dhul Hijjah (Fajr time) until 13th of Dhul Hijjah (Asr time)

اللھ اکبراللھ اکبر لا الھ الا اللھ و اللھ اکبر اللھ اکبر و للھ الحمد
The above takbeer is known as Takbiraat of Tashreek.
It is waajib for every adult Muslim (male and female) to recite the Takbiraaat of Tashreek after every fardh salaah during this period. Males should recite it loudly and females should recite it softly.

Sunnats of Eid-ul-Adha
• Wake up earlier than usual
• Brush the teeth with miswaak
• Have a Ghusal (bath)
• Be well dressed in an Islamic manner
• Dress in one’s best clothes, not necessarily new
• Use Itr
• Avoid eating before Eid Salaat — it is best on Eid ul Adha that the first thing eaten should be the animal that the person has slaughtered. However, if slaughtering is not being done at home, then one should just wait until after the Eid Salaah to eat anything in order to get the reward of the Sunnah Insha Allah.
• Perform Eid Salaat at the Eidgaah (men)
• Go to the place of Salaat early
• Walk to the place of Eid salaat (if possible)
• Recite the Takbeeraat (of Tashreeq) aloud on the way to the place of Eid Salaat
• Use different routes to and from the place of Eid Salaat

~*~*~ On a side note we would like to add that once the moon is sighted for the month of Dhul Hijjah until the sacrifice is done of the animal (whether that be on the 10th, 11th or 12th) it is MAKROOH for the one on whom it is obligatory to sacrifice an animal to either cut nails or hair — by any means. So girls this means manicures, pedicures, waxing, shaving, plucking etc. And for the men it includes cutting nails, shaving etc. It comes in a Hadith of Saheeh Muslim narrated by Umme Salmah (RA) that the Messenger of Allah (SAW) has said: “When the 1st – 10th days of Dhul Hijjah start, one who intends to offer a sacrifice (of an animal) should not have his/ her hair/ nails trimmed until he/ she has offered his/ her sacrifice”…

And Allah knows best! 

note to self:

“If we can just let go and trust in the process of our advancement, we can appreciate the miracle of the flow of life. If, during our turbulent periods, we keep ourselves dynamically balanced like a skilled surfer, the waves of our experience will guide us smoothly to the shore. We may fear that the waves will drown us, but it is actually the waves that move us.”

Paradox of life...

You can close your eyes to things you do not want to see, but you can’t close your heart to things you do not want to feel…

Isn't it really ironic…when you’re a kid you can’t wait to grow up and be an adult, and when you’re grown up, you wish you were a kid again. How is it that life seems to throw increasingly painful moments at you? Why is it that the more happiness and joy you expect from your supposedly independent and autonomous life, the more disappointed you become? And when can you sit back and relax without forging a fake smile on your face?
Oh wait…

“Did ye think that you would enter Heaven without Allah testing those of you who strive hard and remained steadfast?” (3: 142)

Jummah Mubarak everyone.

Love of Dunya...

I was one to get attached.

Ever since I was a child, this temperament was clear. While other children that were baby-sat could easily recover once their parents left, I could not. My tears, once set in motion, did not stop easily. As a result, my dad used to have me sleep in his car while he worked. As I grew up, I learned to become attached to everything around me. From the time I was in first grade, I needed a best friend. As I got older, any fall-out with a friend shattered me. I couldn’t let go of anything. People, places, events, photographs, moments—even outcomes became objects of strong attachment. If things didn’t work out the way I wanted or imagined they should, I was devastated. And disappointment for me wasn’t an ordinary emotion. It was catastrophic. Once let down, I never fully recovered. I could never forget, and the break never mended. Like a glass vase that you place on the edge of a table, once broken, the pieces never quite fit again.

But the problem wasn’t with the vase. Or even that the vases kept breaking. The problem was that I kept putting them on the edge of tables. Through my attachments, I was dependent on my relationships to fulfill my needs. I allowed those relationships to define my happiness or my sadness, my fulfillment or my emptiness, my security, and even my self-worth. And so, like the vase placed where it will inevitably fall, through those dependencies I set myself up for disappointment. I set myself up to be broken. And that’s exactly what I found: one disappointment, one break after another.

But the people who broke me were not to blame any more than gravity can be blamed for breaking the vase. We can’t blame the laws of physics when a twig snaps because we leaned on it for support. The twig was never created to carry us.

Our weight was only meant to be carried by Allah. We are told in the Quran: “…whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy handhold, that never breaks. And Allah hears and knows all things.” (Qur’an 2: 256)

There is a crucial lesson in this verse: that there is only one handhold that never breaks. There is only one place where we can lay our dependencies. There is only one relationship that should define our self-worth and only one source from which to seek our ultimate happiness, fulfillment, and security. That place is Allah.

But this world is all about seeking those things everywhere else. Some of us seek it in our careers, some seek it in wealth, some in status. Some, like me, seek it in our relationships. In her book, Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert describes her own quest for happiness. She describes moving in and out of relationships, and even traveling the globe in search of this fulfillment. She seeks that fulfillment—unsuccessfully—in her relationships, in meditation, even in food.

And that’s exactly where I spent much of my own life: seeking a way to fill my inner void. It was a question about loss, about disappointment. It was a question about being let down. A question about seeking something and coming back empty handed. It was about what happens when you try to dig in concrete with your bare hands: not only do you come back with nothing—you break your fingers in the process. And I learned this not by reading it, not by hearing it from a wise sage. I learned it by trying it again, and again, and again.

Ultimately, the question was about the nature of the dunya as a place of fleeting moments and temporary attachments. As a place where people are with you today, and leave or die tomorrow. But this reality hurts our very being because it goes against our nature. We, as humans, are made to seek, love, and strive for what is perfect and what is permanent. We are made to seek what’s eternal. We seek this because we were not made for this life. Our first and true home was Paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here. And so we create ageless creams and cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to hold on—in an attempt to mold this world into what it is not, and will never be.

And that’s why if we live in dunya with our hearts, it breaks us. That’s why this dunya hurts. It is because the definition of dunya, as something temporary and imperfect, goes against everything we are made to yearn for. Allah put a yearning in us that can only be fulfilled by what is eternal and perfect. By trying to find fulfillment in what is fleeting, we are running after a hologram…a mirage. We are digging into concrete with our bare hands. Seeking to turn what is by its very nature temporary into something eternal is like trying to extract from fire, water. You just get burned. Only when we stop putting our hopes in dunya, only when we stop trying to make the dunya into what it is not—and was never meant to be (jannah)—will this life finally stop breaking our hearts.

We must also realize that nothing happens without a purpose. Nothing. Not even broken hearts. Not even pain. That broken heart and that pain are lessons and signs for us. They are warnings that something is wrong. They are warnings that we need to make a change. Just like the pain of being burned is what warns us to remove our hand from the fire, emotional pain warns us that we need to make an internal change. That we need to detach. Pain is a form of forced detachment. Like the loved one who hurts you again and again and again, the more dunya hurts us, the more we inevitably detach from it. The more we inevitably stop loving it.

And pain is a pointer to our attachments. That which makes us cry, that which causes us most pain is where our false attachments lie. And it is those things which we are attached to as we should only be attached to Allah which become barriers on our path to our Rabb. But the pain itself is what makes the false attachment evident. The pain creates a condition in our life that we seek to change, and if there is anything about our condition that we don’t like, there is a divine formula to change it. Allah says: “Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.” (Qur’an, 13:11)

After years of falling into the same pattern of disappointments and heartbreak, I finally began to realize something profound. I had always thought that love of dunya meant being attached to material things. And I was not attached to material things. I was attached to people. I was attached to moments. I was attached to emotions. So I thought that the love of dunya just did not apply to me. What I didn’t realize was that people, moments, emotions are all a part of dunya. What I didn’t realize is that all the pain I had experienced in life was due to one thing, and one thing only: love of dunya.

As soon as I began to have that realization (not too long ago), a veil was lifted from my eyes. I started to see what my problem was. I was expecting this life to be what it is not, and was never meant to be: perfect. And being the “idealist” that I am, I was struggling with every cell in my body to make it so. It had to be perfect. And I would not stop until it was. I gave my blood, sweat, and tears to this endeavor: making the dunya into jannah. This meant expecting people around me to be perfect. Expecting my relationships to be perfect. Expecting so much from those around me and from this life. Expectations. Expectations. Expectations. And if there is one recipe for unhappiness it is that: expectations. But herein lay my fatal mistake. My mistake was not in having expectations; as humans, we should never lose hope. The problem was in *where* I was placing those expectations and that hope. At the end of the day, my hope and expectations were not being placed in Allah. My hope and expectations were in people, relationships, other means. Ultimately, my hope was in this dunya rather than Allah.

And so I came to realize a very deep Truth. An ayah began to cross my mind. It was an ayah I had heard before, but for the first time I realized that it was actually describing me: “Those who rest not their hope on their meeting with Us, but are pleased and satisfied with the life of the present, and those who heed not Our Signs.” (Qur’an, 10:7)

By thinking that I can have everything here, my hope was not in my meeting with Allah. My hope was in dunya. But what does it mean to place your hope in dunya? How can this be avoided? It means when you have friends, don’t expect your friends to fill your emptiness. When you get married, don’t expect your spouse to fulfill your every need. When you’re an activist, don’t put your hope in the results. When you’re in trouble don’t depend on yourself. Don’t depend on people. Depend on Allah.

Seek the help of people—but realize that it is not the people (or even your own self) that can save you. Only Allah can do these things. The people are only tools, a means used by God. But they are not the source of help, aid, or salvation of any kind. Only Allah is. The people cannot even create the wing of a fly (22:73). And so, even while you interact with people externally, turn your heart towards Allah. Face Him alone, as Prophet Ibrahim (Alahisalaam) said so beautifully: “For me, I have set my face, firmly and truly, towards Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and never shall I give partners to Allah.” (Qur’an, 6:79)

But how does Prophet Ibrahim (AS) describe his journey to that point? He studies the moon, the sun and the stars and realizes that they are not perfect. They set.

They let us down.

So Prophet Ibrahim (AS) was thereby led to face Allah alone. Like him, we need to put our full hope, trust, and dependency on Allah. And Allah alone. And if we do that, we will learn what it means to finally find peace and stability of heart. Only then will the roller coaster that once defined our lives finally come to an end. That is because if our inner state is dependent on something that is by definition inconstant, that inner state will also be inconstant. If our inner state is dependent on something changing and temporary, that inner state will be in a constant state of instability, agitation, and unrest. This means that one moment we’re happy, but as soon as that which our happiness depended upon changes, our happiness also changes. And we become sad. We remain always swinging from one extreme to another and not realizing why.

We experience this emotional roller coaster because we can never find stability and lasting peace until our attachment and dependency is on what is stable and lasting. How can we hope to find constancy if what we hold on to is inconstant and perishing? In the statement of Abu Bakr (RadiAllahu 'Anh) is a deep illustration of this truth. After the Prophet Muhammad (Salallahu Alayhi Wasallam) passed away, the people went into shock and could not handle the news. But although no one loved the Prophet (Salallahu Alayhi Wasallam) like Abu Bakr (RA), Abu Bakr (RA) understood well the only place where one’s dependency should lie. He said: “If you worshipped Muhammad, know that Muhammad is dead. But if you worshipped Allah, know that Allah never dies.”

To attain that state, don’t let your source of fulfillment be anything other than your relationship with God. Don’t let your definition of success, failure, or self-worth be anything other than your position with Him (Qur’an, 49:13). And if you do this, you become unbreakable, because your handhold is unbreakable. You become unconquerable, because your supporter can never be conquered. And you will never become empty, because your source of fulfillment is unending and never diminishes.

Yasmin Mogahed, my emotional twin sister