There are times when I feel an intense gratitude for the variety of blessings that our Lord has granted us, Alhamdu lillah. We do not always understand how these blessings operate. I do not think we will ever understand how the generosity of our Lord, with regard to His Blessings, operates for us. It appears as if Allah (ﷻ) has hidden the nature of these matters from most of us. Occasionally, He grants to some of us a little bit of understanding or a “peep” into His Affairs. Those who have received this are of the intensely pious. For others, nothing is understood and nothing is seen or heard of the endless, multifarious operations of our Lord’s actions in His creation. Sometimes when little bits of understanding is given to us, our gratitude runs very deep. Some of us He has not only blessed with special stations, but He has

We tend to underestimate the role of what I call our spiritual hearts in our religious progress. We tend to see ourselves as the primary movers in our affairs, and so we use, the pronouns “I” and “me”, to indicate the centrality of our roles in our affairs. This is one of the factors that cause people to either stand still spiritually or to go backwards. We do not seem to understand the important connection that our Lord has with our hearts which, together with our actions, He examines all the time, and most probably inspires in different ways for different forms of worship. I sometimes think of how Allah (ﷻ), at the beginning of time, placed His Decisions, with regard to each one of us, on His (ﷻ) creation, and how He (ﷻ), “at that time”, plotted the direction of the lives of each one of us. We forget

One of the things that I think many of us regret is that we were not made aware in the past, when we were much younger, about the process of purification in Islam. To a large degree many of the forms of worship in our religion are ritualized. We prayed because we were told to pray. And so, under instruction by our parents usually, we performed ibadat. In many cases when we could dodge, we dodged, because we were never made aware of the almost unlimited spirituality in our religion. To many of us it was just one of those inconveniences in our lives, inconveniences which we had to perform. This is extremely sad because it drove large numbers of people away from Islam. They kept their so-called Muslim names but their practice of Islam was only an occasional thing. You might not believe this, but I can remember going

In our work in the Cause of Islam, of course, most of the things that we come across are not satisfactory. In fact if we want to be accurate then we have to say that as far as Islamic standards are concerned, almost all the things are not satisfactory. Mawlana Shaykh Nazim refers to this period of history as the second jahiliyah. What we have come across gives expression to his words in all kinds of ways. In many of the areas in which we are working, especially some of the isolated country towns, such as Darling, a number of Muslims have gone over to Christianity. There is nothing in the town that attracts them to Islam. There is no religious leadership or any structures with which they can operate as Muslims. And so they live from day to day with their only recognition of Islam being their names, and

We should all have a strong belief that Allah (ﷻ) shaped Nabi Adam (a.s.) and blew of His Spirit into him, and then later created for him a mate in the form of Sayyidatuna Hawa (a.s.), and that it was the Creator and the Fashioner at work. What He created and fashioned at the time was the first human being, the first one to be His khalifah on this planet. Both Nabi Adam (a.s.) and his wife had no physical or personality shortcomings, and neither did they have any disabilities. They were the first and also the best. Over the centuries, through man’s own activities, serious shortcomings in both personality and in body and major disabilities occurred in their offspring. What Allah (ﷻ) has created was one thing, but what that creation did to itself is another thing. And so, eventually, large numbers of people came to suffer from a

In the large variety of experiences that we have gone through in our work for Islam, amongst both Muslims and non-Muslims, perhaps one of the startling facts that stands out for me is the reluctance of Muslims to praise their Lord. I do not only find this surprising, because we come from a long line of history of such remembrance, but I also find it very disconcerting. The latter is because I cannot understand how a community that is defined in terms of Islam shows a major reluctance to celebrate the praises of Allah (ﷻ). In many mosques, when we are either starting the congregational dhikr, or when we are busy with it, most of the people who come to the mosque for the obligatory prayers, leave the mosque at the end of the prayers. Nabi Muhammad (ﷺ) had said: “When you pass by the Gardens of Paradise, participate in

If our lives were one steady line of contentment, life would be so easy. But that is not the way that Allah (ﷻ) decreed it for us. Many of us will speak of major periods of intense sadness for whatever the case might be, in our lives. Many people have been fortunate enough or perhaps they have been unfortunate enough, to have had in their lives moments of deep regret or disappointment or sadness. For many of us when we look back at the events of our lives we express our gratitude for these periods or moments when we fell or tumbled because of the sweep of events in our lives. At the time it happened, we said Alhamdu lillah, and we meant this. Today, which might be years later, there is a deep gratitude for the lessons we learnt at the time. Today also, when a murid experiences matters

On Sunday 17th April 2011, we attended a congregational dhikr in Burundi. The mosque consists of two containers, which we placed together and altered and upgraded. In fact, it looks very nice from the inside.  Midway through the dhikr, I was told that somebody wanted to recite Shahadah. So I stopped the dhikr, because the reciting of Shahadah to enter Islam takes precedence. A fairly young lady with two very young children came up and sat in front of me. One of our murids, Ebrahim Mavela, explained to her that to become Muslim she must reject her previous beliefs especially that Nabi Esa (a.s.) was the son of God. If one is a Muslim, one believes in the unity of God and that Nabi Muhammad (ﷺ) is the final Messenger. This was explained to her on my instruction. I then recited the Shahadah in English, and she repeated it after

A few days ago [2011] I heard something in our offices here, which disturbed me. On many previous occasions, I have heard about people talking about how they “diddled” SARS (South African Revenue Services), and I have also heard and seen how people divert electricity and water for their own use. I have always wondered or rather worried about the different ways we sometimes diddle government structures or other organizational structures. I do not know whether this is allowed in Islam, and many times I just listen to what my heart says. When my heart worries, I worry. When my heart is concerned, I am concerned. This is because of the massive sensitivity of the path on which we walk, and also because I do not wish any one of us to do anything that will cause damage, not to the organizations concerned, but to our spirituality. The path that

On the many occasions that I have listened to very pious people, the one matter that stands out for me is the extent to which the word “Allah (ﷻ)” is on their tongues. If one operates in a mainly secular environment, as is the case with many of us, then the word Allah (ﷻ) only comes on our tongues occasionally. Many of us have come to learn in Tasawwuf that we must break free of secular discourses and keep our tongues moist with the word “Allah (ﷻ)” and with other remembrances. In the case of many of us, secularism runs deep in our veins especially because of our education and the work we are involved in. Many people find it almost impossible to come away from a discourse in which Allah (ﷻ) is never or seldom mentioned. It is Allah’s (ﷻ) decision as to who He chooses to do this