Nafsiya Reflections: What Will You Give Up for the Sake of Allah (swt)

Welcome to Nafsiya Reflection: What Will You Give Up for the Sake of Allah (swt)

I start off by making Duaa to Allah (swt) may He accept our righteous deeds during this Blessed month of Ramadan & may He make us achieve the desired goals we set out for in order to gain Allah’s Pleasure.

Patience and being steadfast is not easy and is one of the hardest actions one achieves. To have to push, everyday to make sure you achieve this patience and to keep your head up can feel like a lot of weight sometimes. We reach a point that it feels we are getting weaker by the day- but knowing that we must keep pushing in order to ignore the devil (shaytan). We are all human! These feelings creep in on all of us. This is why this is the perfect time to strengthen ourselves, our faith, our relationship with Allah (swt). This is the time that we have without the Whispers (wiswas) of the shaytan. It is an opportunity to cleanse ourselves from all the dark thoughts that lead us to dark actions, which lead us to a path of forgetting our purpose in this Dunya as Muslims. We at times can forget that we as Muslims are the best Ummah that came to mankind. We are not like any other Ummah. We put Allah (swt) as the reason we do all that we do; sacrificing for his sake. So when we get to this dark path, and lose sight of that relationship we must build with Allah (swt), we must build a plan and make goals to get ourselves together and get our focus back to the path we are meant to walk down.

Our actions are written down in our book that we will receive on the day of judgment. The book that we may get either in our right or left hand - may Allah make us of those who receive it in our right hand. Imagine on the Day of Judgment, after all the gossip, after all the complaining for years and years, to see pages and pages of all this zunub (sin). All of the bad deeds that have been done- without turning back and changing. (IstagfurAllah!!!) Repenting.

«يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ تُوبُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ فَإِنِّي أَتُوبُ إِلَيْهِ فِي الْيَوْمِ مائةَ مرِّةٍ» . رَوَاهُ مُسلم

He reported God’s messenger as saying, “Turn, you people, in repentance to God, for I turn in repentance to Him a hundred times a day " Muslim transmitted it

But on the other hand, it would be amazing to receive it in our right hand, knowing that we have sacrificed, all that we did, all that we said, pleased Allah (swt). Knowing that even when we made mistakes, fell into the traps of shaytan, we got back up, repented, and put our focus back on track.

عَنْ أَنَسٍ أَنَّ النَّبِيَّ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ قَالَ «كُلُّ ابْنِ آدَمَ خَطَّاءٌ وَخَيْرُ الْخَطَّائِينَ التَّوَّابُونَ»

The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “All of the children of Adam are sinners, and the best sinners are those who repent.”

But we must remember that when the shaytan plans to make us fall he starts with the basics of our faith. That's why during hardships and tribulations it is crucial to seek Allah (swt)’s help. We must keep striving for patience through prayer, in seeking refuge from Him (swt). Not allowing the shaytan to drag us down into helplessness and in being lost in hardship.

(وَمَنۡ اَوۡفٰى بِعَهۡدِهٖ مِنَ اللّٰهِ فَاسۡتَـبۡشِرُوۡا بِبَيۡعِكُمُ الَّذِىۡ بَايَعۡتُمۡ بِهٖ​ ؕ وَذٰ لِكَ هُوَ الۡفَوۡزُ الۡعَظِيۡمُ)

“...Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise” (Quran 9:111)

One of the main sources of hadith narrated is Abu Hurayrah, may Allah SWT be pleased with him, who once quoted as saying that, “my brothers the Ansar were busy with work/farming and didn’t have as much time to pick up the Hadith, and the brothers of the Muhajireen were busy with the market therefore little time to pick up hadith, but I was a poor man that stayed with the prophet peace and blessings be upon him, with only aim of eating – ‘If I found what I can eat in that day that would allow me to function, I would stay the whole time with the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him, and would be present when others were away and would remember when others wouldn’t. Such a profound example of the sacrifice of time and effort.

The nuance in the account of Abu Hurayrah resonates so deeply as we know the community at the time of Muhammad (saw) were the foremost yet it creates a glimpse in a moment of time to show that throughout time people will have been ‘busy’ with Dunya and the sacrifice it took even in that time to gain something of such value came at a price. We all struggle in different ways and degrees with regards to returning to Allah swt that which is provided to us from Allah swt to begin with! Allah swt of course knows this about His creation and therefore knows best how to guide us to loosen the grip that we have of Dunya.

Ramadhaan encapsulates this for us beautifully as we attempt to sacrifice our time, body and wealth purely for only a short period of time for that which is more enduring and everlasting. So the question remains, which of our worldly pursuits will we willingly forgo in order to raise Allah’s Deen to the highest and to achieve Allah’s pleasure?

عَبْدُ اللَّهِ إِنَّ أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابُ اللَّهِ، وَأَحْسَنَ الْهَدْىِ هَدْىُ مُحَمَّدٍ صلى الله عليه وسلم‏.‏

'Abdullah said, "The best talk is Allah's Book (Qur'an), and the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad."

We must never give up on calling Allah(swt) to guide us out of what we are in and to guide us to his path. For Allah (swt) does not leave us not even for a moment. And He (swt) answers all of our prayers and if he does not give us what we “want”- HE (swt) ALWAYS GIVES US SOMETHING BETTER!!! Allah (swt) is with us in everything we do, and sees all of what is happening in our inner and outer world. He (swt) knows all of that is in our hearts and knows that we call to Him (swt) while knowing He (swt) is the only one who can help us and he answers} every call.}

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