Dont Be Sad: Allah [Alone] is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs [for us]

{Allah [Alone] is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs [for us].} (Qur’an 3: 173)

By leaving your affairs to Allah, by depending upon Him, by trusting in His promise, by being pleased with His decree, by thinking favorably of Him, and by waiting patiently for His help, you reap some of the greater fruits of faith and display the more prominent characteristics of the believer. When you incorporate these qualities into your character, you will be at peace concerning the future, because you will depend on your Lord for everything. As a result, you will find care, help, protection, and victory.

When Prophet Ibraheem (Abraham) was placed in the fire, he said, “Allah (Alone) is Sufficient for us, and he is the Best Disposer of affairs (for us).” Thereupon, Allah made the fire to be cool, safe, and peaceful for Ibraheem. When the Prophet Muhammad (bpuh) and his Companions were threatened by the impending attack of the enemy, they said words that are related in the first part of this verse:

{“Allah [Alone] is Sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of affairs [for us]. “So they returned with Grace and Bounty from Allah. No harm touched them; and they followed the good Pleasure of Allah. And Allah is the Owner of Great Bounty.}

(Qur’an 3: 173-74)

No person by himself is capable of fighting against the current of misfortune, nor can he fend off the blows of disaster when they strike. This is because man was created weak and fragile. However, when in times of difficulty, the believer places his dependency and trust with his Lord; he knows that all difficulties can be overcome.

{And put your trust in Allah if you are believers indeed.}

(Qur’an 5: 23)

O’ you who wish to be sincere to yourselves: depend upon the All-Mighty, the All-Rich to save you from calamity and disaster. Live your lives according to this precept: Allah Alone is sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of our affairs. If you have meager means, if you are deep in debt, or if you are in any kind of worldly difficulty, call out: “Allah Alone is sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of our affairs.”

If you face your enemy and are alarmed, or if you fear the misdeeds of the oppressor, say aloud: “Allah Alone is sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of our affairs.”

{But Sufficient is your Lord as a Guide and Helper.}

(Qur’an 25: 31)

Source: Don't Be Sad - By Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

Terry Holdbrooks: Guantanamo guard who found Islam

Terry Holdbrooks arrived at Guantánamo detention camp in the summer of 2003 as a godless 19-year-old with a love of drinking, hard rock music and tattoos. By the time he left Cuba the following year, he had alienated his army colleagues, won the respect of the detainees and, most astonishingly, converted to Islam in a midnight ceremony in the presence of one of the detainees, who had become his mentor.

When I meet Holdbrooks, now 26 and named Mustafa Abdullah, he is wearing a black Muslim cap, a thick beard and long-sleeved traditional robes that almost obscure the tattoo on his right arm that reads "by demons be driven".

Holdbrooks grew up in Arizona, the only son of junkie parents who split up when he was seven years old. He was raised by his ex-hippie grandparents. Tired of being poor, determined not to follow in his parents' footsteps and keen to see the world, Holdbrooks signed up for the military. He was stationed with the 253rd Military Police Company, mostly doing administrative support work, when he was told he was to be deployed to Guantánamo.

During a two-week training course, the new guards took it in turns to act as detainees, and were also taken to Ground Zero. "We were not taught anything about Islam," he says. "We were shown videos of 11 September and all we kept being told was that the detainees were the worst of the worst – they were Bin Laden's drivers, Bin Laden's cooks, and these people will kill you the first chance they get."

Holdbrooks skims over the words, as if he is quoting from his forthcoming memoir, Traitor? "I was questioning things from day one," he says. "The first thing I saw was a kid who is all of 16 who had never seen the ocean, didn't know the world was round. I am sitting there thinking, what can he possibly know about the war on terror, what could he possibly know?"

Holdbrooks' duties at Guantánamo including cleaning, collecting rubbish, walking up and down the block to ensure detainees weren't passing anything between cells and ferrying them to and from interrogations. There were plenty of opportunities for communication. Holdbrooks's friendliness towards the detainees – they called him "the nice guard" – earned him unwelcome attention from his fellow guards.

"I didn't have a very high impression of my colleagues," he says. Many of them were "ridiculous Budweiser-drinking, cornbread-fed, tobacco-chewing drunks, racists and bigots" who blindly followed orders, and within months he had stopped talking to them altogether. There were frequent physical altercations: "One time one of them said to me, 'Hey, Holdbrooks, you know what we are going to do today? We are going to skull-fuck the Taliban out of you – you're a sympathiser and we don't like that." That led to another fist fight."

While the guards indulged in alcohol, porn and sports, Holdbrooks says he needed to learn how the detainees could endure abuse and still smile, while he was utterly miserable.

"I knew nothing about Islam prior to Guantánamo," he says, "so this was a complete culture shock to me. I wanted to learn as much I could, so I started talking to the detainees about politics, ethics and morals, and about their lives and cultural differences – we would talk all the time." What began as curiosity turned to disciplined study, with Holdbrooks spending at least an hour a day learning about Islam and talking in chatrooms online. Among those he talked to were the Tipton trio of British Muslims who featured in Michael Winterbottom's docudrama, The Road to Guantánamo; another was a man the other detainees referred to as the General – Moroccan-born Ahmed Errachidi, who had lived in Britain for 18 years, working as a chef, and spent five and a half years in Guantánamo accused of attending al-Qaida training camps. (He was later released and cleared of any wrongdoing.)

"We'd talk for hours and hours," Holdbrooks says. "We'd talk about books, about music, about philosophy: we would stay up all night and talk about religion."

Finally, six months into his time at Guantánamo, Holdbrooks was ready. On 29 December 2003, in the presence of Errachidi, he repeated the shahada, the statement of faith that is the sole requirement for converting to Islam: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet". The Guantánamo guard was now a Muslim.

He stopped drinking and even gave up music, because his interpretation of Islam suggested that this, too, was unacceptable. "It was not easy praying five times a day without my colleagues finding out," he says. "I told them I had to go the bathroom a lot."

Converting to Islam made Holdbrooks even more unhappy about his work – he felt he was worse off than the detainees. "They were having a lot more fun than I was. The Tipton trio were always playing tricks on the guards and the interrogators. The detainees had a lot of freedom in their confinement: I had all the freedoms they didn't have, but I was a slave to what the army wanted me to do."

This claim sounds implausible, but Holdbrooks says he is referring to their freedom of thought: he was impressed by the independence he saw in the detainees, compared to his fellow guards. This still seems a rather self-pitying analysis, particularly when he goes on to describe how he had seen detainees being tortured. "It was my job to take prisoners to interrogations, so sometimes I would sit and watch," he says. "I would see detainees who would be locked up for hours in horrible positions – for hours upon hours upon hours, in a room that might be 50 degrees or 60 degrees.

"There was one man who had defecated on himself and this ogre of an interrogator would douse water on him and then ask him if he was going to talk, and he would say he had nothing to talk about, and I remember thinking, what good is this going to accomplish? You cannot abuse and torture people and expect to get results that are accurate and credible."

In the summer of 2004, Holdbrooks left Guantánamo and was later discharged from the army on the grounds of a "general personality disorder". The alcohol problem that had plagued him before enlisting returned, and when his marriage dissolved, he sought solace in the old comforts of drinking, casual sex and music. "I was having nightmares about my time in Guantánamo," he says, "and I spent the best part of three years just trying to drink Guantánamo out of my mind."

Today, Holdbrooks is a practising Muslim again, but he does not seem to be at peace. There is a blankness in his gaze that hints at the scars his childhood and Guantánamo have left on him.

Why had this hard-living Arizona boy embraced Islam? The question needles me throughout our conversation. It is only when, towards the end, Holdbrooks reveals that his favourite words are "structure", "order" and "discipline" that the pieces fall into place. Holdbrooks's life had been a search for order: the regimentation of army life had appeared to offer structure, and when it let him down, he turned to religion.

Holdbrooks has more in common with his former colleagues than he realises: their allegiance to the army is matched by his adherence to faith. "Islam is a very disciplined, regimented faith and it requires a great deal of effort and conviction," he says. "I've had an unbelievable fascination with structure and order for as long as I can remember: structure, order and discipline – I just love them."

Tony Blair, "War Criminal"

Tony Blair was branded a "war criminal" today by the father of a soldier killed in the Iraq war after a memorial service to honour the dead at which the Archbishop of Canterbury criticised "policy makers" for failing to consider the cost of the conflict.

Rowan Williams, who has previously described the decisions that led to the war as "flawed", praised the "patient and consistent" efforts of troops on the ground.

Read complete article here.

Dont Be Sad: Accept life as it

The pleasures of life are short-lived, and more often than not, they are followed by sorrow. Life means responsibility, a journey wherein change is constant and difficulties are relentless in their onslaught.

You will not find a father, a wife, or a friend who is free from problems. Allah has willed for this world to be filled with two opposites: good and evil, righteousness and corruption, happiness and misery. Thus goodness, uprightness, and happiness are for Paradise; evil, corruption, and misery are for the Fire. The Prophet (bpuh) said:

“This world is cursed along with all that is in it, except for these: the remembrance of Allah, what follows it (i.e. good deeds and whatever Allah loves), the scholar, and the student.

So live according to your reality without always envisioning the ideal life, one that is free from worry and toil. Accept life as it is and adapt accordingly to all circumstances. You will not find in this world such things as the flawless companion or the perfect situation, because flawlessness and perfection are qualities that are foreign to this life. It is necessary for us to make amends; to take what is easy and leave what is difficult; and very frequently, to overlook the faults and mistakes of others.

Source: Don't Be Sad - By Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

Burqa Ban: Italy and elsewhere

Plans by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s allies to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa, a loose outfit covering the whole body from head to toe, is infuriating the political establishment in the southern European country.

"A ban (on the burqa) would be xenophobic and discriminatory,” Mario Scialoja, the chair of the Islamic Culture Center of Italy, told Reuters late Thursday, October 8.

“The existing law should be enforced."

The far-right Northern League is pressing to amend a 1975 law to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa.

The law slaps hefty fines and up to two years in jail on people covering their faces with anything preventing their identification by police.

But the Northern League is now proposing to amend the law to ban “garments worn for reasons of religious affiliation”.

The far-right party also wants to remove from the law the expression “justified cause”, which has prompted courts to allow burqa on religious grounds.

Scialoja warned that a burqa ban would stigmatise Muslims, calling on Italian authorities to treat Muslim women with respect.

"We say no to a new law."

The burqa has been a hot issue in many European countries.

Last month, the Italian spa resort town of Montegrotto Terme banned the burqa.

A French MP has also proposed a ban on the wearing, sparking outcry among the Muslim minority and across the Muslim world.

Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.2 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to unofficial estimates.

France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe's largest Islamic minority, banned Muslim headscarves in state schools in 2004 and a recent proposal for a burqa ban has sparked outcry in the Muslim world.

Verily, we live in an age of miracles; thus, none other than Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, the leading religious figure of Al-Azhar, was, just the other day, “reportedly angered” when he toured a school in Cairo and saw a girl wearing “niqab” which means that her face was masked or possibly that she was wearing a full head, face, and body covering.

“Sheikh Tantawi, regarded by many as Egypt’s Imam and Sunni Islam’s foremost spiritual authority, asked the teenage girl to remove her veil saying: “The niqab is a tradition, it has no connection with religion.” The imam instructed the girl, a pupil at a secondary school in Cairo’s Madinet Nasr suburb, never to wear the niqab again and promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against its use in schools. The ruling will not affect use of the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn by most Muslim women in Egypt.

Following the imam’s lead, Egypt’s minister of higher education is to ban female undergraduates from wearing the niqab from the country’s public universities, Cairo’s Al-Masri Al-Yom newspaper reported. “

Again, don’t rejoice too soon.

Even the very influential Sheikh Tantawi has his fundamentalist detractors who have excoriated him for supporting France’s ban on hijab in public schools and for shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres. And, clearly, the Egyptian government is unhappy about the gathering forces of Islamic fundamentalism which consistently manipulate women and women’s clothing as symbolic political statements. Some have even called for more severe Islamic clothing for women in which only one eye (Algerian style) can show. The Egyptian government understands that it is at risk vis a vis Islamic fundamentalists.

Now, some European politicians understand this too.

1/4th of the world's population is now Muslim

Islam may be most closely associated with the Middle East, where it emerged in Arabia in the seventh century, but today the region is home to only one in five of the world's Muslims, according to a study of the religion's global distribution.

The world's Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly one in four people practise Islam, according to the US Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which published the survey. This compares to 2.25 billion Christians.

The top five Muslim countries in the world include only one in the Middle East ‑ Egypt ‑ behind Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, in that order. Russia, the survey shows, has more Muslims than the populations of Libya and Jordan combined. Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon. China has a bigger Muslim population than Syria.

The work, the largest of its kind, was the result of three years of research examining data from 232 countries and territories.

The reality, as described by Mapping the Global Muslim Population, is that two out of three Muslims are Asians, while the 38 million Muslims in Europe, if treated as a separate group, would be the ninth largest in the world, behind Turkey, with a population of 71 million, and ahead of Algeria, with 34 million.

Pew Forum, in consultation with nearly 50 demographers and social scientists at universities and research centres around the world, analysed about 1,500 sources, including census reports, demographic studies and general population surveys, to arrive at their figures.

The research is the first step in projecting growth trends in the world's Muslim population, and a similar survey is planned by the Pew Forum on the distribution of Christians.

"This whole idea that Muslims are Arabs and Arabs are Muslims is really just obliterated by this report," said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University.

"There are these countries that we don't think of as Muslim at all, and yet they have very sizeable numbers of Muslims," said Alan Cooperman, associate director of research for the Pew Forum, naming India, Russia and China.

Islam had a huge geographic reach ‑ from the Atlantic coast to central Asia ‑ within a century of the prophet Muhammad's death, but until now its modern global profile was based on rough estimates.

The Pew Forum study depicts the world's second largest religion as complex and nuanced, challenging the notion that its trajectory is defined by a minority of Islamists.

Significantly, one in five of Muslims now lives in a country where they are represented as a religious minority, with three-quarters of that number concentrated in five countries: India (161 million), Ethiopia (28 million), China (22 million), Russia (16 million) and Tanzania (13 million).

The survey also attempted to quantify the relative sizes of the two main branches of Islam - Sunni and Shia - but came up against the difficulty that many national demographers did not distinguish between the two. It ended up suggesting that Shias, concentrated largely in four countries including Iran and Pakistan, probably made up between 10 and 13% of Muslims.

In summary:

• India, a majority-Hindu country, has more Muslims than any country except for Indonesia and Pakistan, and more than twice as many as Egypt.
• China has more Muslims than Syria.
• Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon.

• And Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya put together.

• Nearly two out of three of the world's Muslims are in Asia, stretching from Turkey to Indonesia.

• The Middle East and north Africa, which together are home to about one in five of the world's Muslims, trail a very distant second.

• There are about 1.57 billion Muslims in the world
• One in five of the world's Muslims lives in a country where Muslims are a minority.
• Russia, Albania, Kosovo, those places -- Muslims are an indigenous population
• Roughly nine out of 10 Muslims worldwide are Sunni, and about one in 10 is Shiite

• One in three of the world's Shiite Muslims lives in Iran, which is one of only four countries with a Shiite majority, he said. The others are Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain.

You can see complete map of the Muslim World here.

Dont Be Sad: Find consolation by remembering the afflicted

Look around you, to the right and to the left. Do you not see the afflicted and the unfortunate? In every house there is mourning and upon every cheek run tears.

How many tribulations and how many people persevere with patience? You are not alone in your troubles, which are few compared to those of others. How many sick people remain bedridden for years while suffering from unspeakable pain?

How many have not seen the light of the sun for years due to their imprisonment, having knowledge of nothing but the four corners of their cell?

How many men and women have lost their dear children in the prime of youth?

How many people are troubled or tormented?

Find consolation with those that are worse off than you; know that this life is like a prison for the believer, an abode of grief and sadness. In the morning castles are bustling with inhabitants; then in an instant, disaster occurs, and they are empty and desolate. Life can be peaceful, the body in good health, wealth abundant, and children healthy; and yet in only a matter of days, poverty, death, separation, and sickness can all take their place.

{And you dwelt in the dwellings of men who wronged themselves, and it was clear to you how We had dealt with them. And We put forth [many] parables for you.} (Qur’an 14. 45)

You must adapt like the experienced camel, which manages, when necessary, to kneel upon a rock. You must also compare your difficulties with the difficulties of those around you, and with those that have come before you: you should realize that you are in good shape relative to them, and that you have merely been pricked by tiny difficulties. So praise Allah for His kindness, be thankful for what He has left for you, seek recompense from Him for what He has taken, and seek consolation with those that are afflicted.

You have a perfect example in the Prophet (bpuh). The entrails of a camel were placed upon his head; his feet bled; his face was fractured; he was besieged in a mountain pass until he was forced to eat tree leaves; he was driven out of Makkah; his front tooth was broken in battle; his innocent wife was accused of wrongdoing; seventy of his Companions were killed; he was bereaved of his son and of most of his daughters; he would tie a stone around his stomach to lessen the pangs of hunger; and he was accused of being a poet, a magician, a soothsayer, a madman, and a liar — all at the same time. Yet Allah protected him throughout these severe trials and tribulations. Prophet Zakariyah (Zacharia) was killed, Prophet Yahya (John) was slaughtered, Prophet Moosa (Moses) was afflicted with great trials, Prophet Ibraheem (Abraham) was thrown in the fire, (may peace be upon them all), and the Imams of righteousness followed them upon this path. ‘Umar was assassinated, as was ‘Uthmaan and ‘Ali (may Allah be pleased with them all). Many scholars of the past have been flogged, imprisoned, or tortured.

{Or think you that you will enter Paradise without such [finals] as came to those who passed away before you? They were afflicted with severe poverty ailments and were shaken.} (Qur’an 2: 214)

Source: Don't Be Sad - By Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

Dont Be Sad: The prayer ... the prayer

{O’ you who believe! Seek help in patience and the Prayer.}

(Qur’an 2:153)

If you are beset with fear and anxieties, stand up right now and pray: your soul will find comfort and solace. The prayer — as long as you perform it sincerely with a wakeful heart — is guaranteed to have this effect for you.

Whenever the Prophet (bpuh) was afflicted with hardship, he would say:

“O’ Bilal! Give us comfort and call for the prayer.”

Theprayer was his joy and pleasure; it was the delight of his eye. I have read biographies of many righteous people, who would always turn to prayer when they were surrounded by difficulties and hardship, people who would pray until their strength, will, and resolution returned to them.

The Prayer of Fear (which is performed during battle) was prescribed in situations wherein limbs are severed, skulls fly, and souls depart from their bodies — a time when strength and resolution can only be derived from heartfelt prayer.

This generation, which is consumed by psychological sicknesses, must return to the Mosque, going there to perform prostration and to seek Allah’s pleasure. If we do not do this, tears will bum our eyes and grief will destroy our nerves.

By earnestly performing the five daily prayers, we achieve the greatest of blessings: atonement for our sins and an increase in rank with our Lord. Prayer is also a potent remedy for our sicknesses, for it instills faith in our souls. As for those that keep away from the Mosque and away from prayer, for them are unhappiness, wretchedness, and an embittered life.

{For them is destruction, and Allah will make their deeds vain.}

(Qur’an 47: 8)

Source: Don't Be Sad - By Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

Image Source: Baltimore Sun.

A Palestinian Muslim girl looks on while praying with her mother during the first Friday prayers of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, Aug. 28, 2009. Muslims throughout the world are celebrating the holy month of Ramadan, where observants fast from dawn till dusk.

Dont Be Sad: Or do they envy men for what Allah has given them of His Bounty

Or do they envy men for what Allah has given them of His Bounty?} (Qur’an 4: 54)

Jealousy is a disease that wreaks havoc not only on the mind, but also on the body. It is said that there is no repose for the jealous one and that he is an enemy wearing the garb of a friend. In doing justice to the disease of jealousy, one can say that it is a fair one, for it begins with its bearer, killing him first.

I forbid both you and myself from jealousy, because before we can show mercy to others we must first show it to ourselves. By being jealous of others, we are feeding misery with our flesh and blood and we are giving our sound sleep to others.

The jealous person lights a fire and then jumps into it. Jealousy begets grief, pain, and suffering, thus destroying what was once a calm and virtuous life.

The curse of the jealous one is that he contests fate and contends that his Creator is unjust.

How like a disease is jealousy, yet unlike other diseases — the one afflicted by it receives no reward in the Hereafter. The jealous person shall remain in fury until the day he dies, or until the good fortune of others departs from them. Everyone can be reconciled except the jealous one, because reconciliation with him requires that the blessings of Allah are removed from you or that you give up your talents and good qualities. If you were to do this, then perhaps he would become happy despite himself. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of the jealous one, a person who becomes like a black poisonous snake, finding no repose until it releases its venom into an innocent body.

So stay far away from jealousy and seek refuge in Allah from the jealous person, because he is constantly watching you.

Source: Don't Be Sad - By Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

How Greece Welcomes Its Female Muslims

Islam Online has an interview with Anna Stamou, A Greek Revert sister who is also a board member of Muslim Association of Greece.

For those who are interested, can read the interview here.

The Muslim Association of Greece website in English here.

From the website:

There are an estimated 830 000 – 1 000 000 Muslims in Greece.

The Muslim community in Greece is made up of people from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and national origins.

In Thrace, North East of Greece, a Muslim community of about 120 000 Muslims is based. More specifically, 50 percent of Thrace’s Muslims are of Turkish origin, 35 percent are Pomaks, and 15 percent are Roma people. Each has its own language and traditions. They have their own imams, mosques, cemeteries, schools, etc. but they are all united as this population was exempted from applying the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne VI, 1923; a treaty which aimed at applying an obligatory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey following World War I.

The majority of Muslims in Greece comprises of immigrants who had settled in Greece during the last 40 years coming mainly from Arab countries and partly from other Muslim lands, like Pakistan. These Muslims, who are approximately 700 000 living all over Greece, have a variety of occupations, not only as low-profession workers who are estimated at 90 percent of the total immigrant percentage. Some of these immigrants have better opportunities and work in high-professions, so there are doctors, scientists, professors, entrepreneurs, businessmen, and importers.

And then there are Greeks who embraced Islam after studying it, or after getting married to Muslims whereby they had the chance to meet Muslims and interact with them. Islam is one of the fastest growing religions around the world.