My Mother Died While She Was Angry with Me

Question: My mother died about six years ago during Ramadhan. When I was young, I was always arguing with her and talking back to her. When she died, she was angry with me. I became older and more mature and now I am remorseful about what happened between me and her. I cannot do anything now except ask for forgiveness and repent to Allah and pray for mercy for her and forgiveness. Is this sufficient to have Allah forgive my sin and have mercy on me for that deed on the Day that we meet?

Second, we do not fast on her behalf.1 Are we being sinful? Is it allowed for us to fast on her behalf afterwards even though we were not aware of that matter except recently?

Response: Perhaps during the lifetime of your mother you were very young and, at the same time, ignorant and childish. You are excused for what you did during that time. Furthermore, since you are full of remorse after you have become more mature and you have repented to Allah and sought His forgiveness for that sin, Allah willing, that has erased what has occurred. Repentance wipes away what preceded it. Also, the acts of praying for her, asking for mercy and forgiveness for her, charity on her behalf and so forth all are means by which Allah wipes away sins. As for the fasting that she did not do and her breaking of her fast during the days of her illness, she is excused due to her illness that she was suffering and she did not have the ability to make up those days later.

Shaikh ibn Jibreen

"Allah Came Knocking At My Heart"

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there has been a surge in conversions to Islam since September 11, especially among affluent young white Britons.

Six months ago Elizabeth L. — a graduate in political science, the daughter of affluent white British parents, an opponent of terrorism in all its forms — climbed Mount Sinai at night to watch the desert sunrise from its summit.

“It was the stillest, most peaceful place I’ve ever been,” she says. “I could hear my feelings come up from within me, and in one surreal moment it all seemed to come together.”

Last Friday, at 4.45pm, Elizabeth went to Regent’s Park Mosque in Central London and converted to Islam.

It wasn’t hard. She didn’t even have to wear a scarf. Witnessed by two Muslim men and nine other friends squeezed into the imam’s office, she pronounced, in Arabic learnt from a tape the night before, the words she will repeat like a mantra five times a day for the rest of her life: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” Afterwards there was a modest celebration at Al-Dar on the Edgware Road. Elizabeth and her well-wishers sipped mint tea and smoked apple-flavoured tobacco from a hookah. There was no booze, but she never drank much anyway.

Why has she done this? “I know it sounds clichéd, but Allah came knocking at my heart. That’s really how it feels. In many ways it is beyond articulating, rather like falling in love.”

It was, in other words, intensely personal. As she read the Koran and prepared for her conversion, the September attacks came and went and failed to derail her spiritual journey, despite their proven link to a fundamentalist Islamist terror network. In as far as they featured in her thinking, they even elicited some sympathy. All terrorism is cowardly, she says. “But I can see why people get fed up with the West. Capitalism is enormously oppressive.”

Elizabeth is not a freak, and she is certainly not alone. There is compelling anecdotal evidence of a surge in conversions to Islam since September 11, not just in Britain, but across Europe and America. One Dutch Islamic centre claims a tenfold increase, while the New Muslims Project, based in Leicester and run by a former Irish Roman Catholic housewife, reports a “steady stream” of new converts.

This fits a pattern set by recent history. Similar surges followed the outbreak of the Gulf War, the Bosnian conflict and the declaration of a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Some of the newcomers doubtless do not share David Blunkett’s enthusiasm for overt espousals of Britishness. They may even have been caught on police videos flag-waving for the Taleban. But most will speak our language and support our football teams with roughly average fervour, and some — by all accounts a rapidly expanding minority — are white, more educated and more middle-class than the Home Secretary himself.

These are some of Islam’s more surprising converts. They have chosen their new creed over the world’s other great religions having had the privilege of choice, often confounding their own and their families’ prejudices in the process. They are highly articulate and tolerant to a degree. They’re People Like Us, only they’re not. They’re Muslims. They pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan and hope to go to Mecca before they die. They answer their mobiles with “salaam alaikum”.

Unlike Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber of American Airlines Flight 63, Britain’s pukka Muslim converts, as the label implies, tend to be over-privileged, not under. Unlike James McLintock, the Scots lecturer’s son being held in a Peshawar jail, the fighting in Afghanistan has dismayed rather than attracted them.

They are people like Elizabeth (who asked for her name to be changed because she has not told her parents yet); like Lucy Bushill-Matthews, a 30-year-old graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, who flirted with Islam as a student in order to dismiss it, but found it “so simple and logical I couldn’t push it away”; like “Yahya”, whose father is a pillar of the Anglo Establishment and who feels that Islam “fits right into British tradition”; and like Joe Ahmed-Dobson, a son of the former Labour Minister Frank Dobson who believes that Islam transformed his spiritual life — and helped him to get a first at university.

If there is something familiar about these people’s startling choices, there should be. We have been here before, or at least Imperial Britain’s adventuring classes and their moneyed gap-year successors have.

T. E. Lawrence fell hard for the romance and otherness of Islam and came to embody them for succeeding generations even though he never converted. Gai Eaton, a former British diplomat now in his seventies, did convert. His influential work Islam and the Destiny of Man has become required reading for bright young Anglo-Saxons turning to his adopted faith, often as an expression of dissatisfaction with a Western culture that appeared to have offered them everything.

Matthew Wilkinson made headlines when he converted and changed his name to Tariq in 1993; he was a former Eton head boy. He and Nicholas Brandt, another Etonian and the son of an investment banker, swapped their destinies as scions of the Establishment for a Slough semi shared with four other Muslims.

Lord Birt’s son, Jonathan, forsook a fast track into the ranks of the great and the good by converting in 1997 and starting a PhD on British Islam. So did a son and a daughter of Lord Justice Scott, the scourge of Tory sleaze and the chairman of the Arms to Iraq inquiry.

And so did Jemima Khan. “My decision . . . was entirely my own choice and in no way hurried,” the 21-year-old daughter of the billionaire James Goldsmith declared angrily after suggestions that she had converted to marry Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain. She noted accurately that the Koran allowed Imran to marry any Muslim, Jew or Christian (even though it bars Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men). She pointed out that Imran’s sisters, far from being oppressed by his brothers-in-law, were all educated professionals, and she insisted that she found the tunic and trousers she would henceforth have to wear “far more elegant and feminine than anything in my wardrobe”.

Her plea seemed hard to credit in the circumstances, but it is a common one from educated British women trying to persuade baffled non-Muslims that conversion did not mean surrendering their independence or their critical faculties.

For Lucy Bushill-Matthews, it meant the reverse. “When I went to Cambridge I joined the Christian and Islamic societies and all three political parties,” she says. “I wanted to explore all the possibilities in order to dismiss them.”

She thinks of herself as pragmatic and not all that spiritual, and as such she found Islam irresistible. “It made sense of all the world’s faiths. It was a clear, simple way to believe in God.” She claims that it has even helped her to land good jobs by marking her out as a free thinker. Her husband is a Muslim of English and Iranian descent whom she married after converting.

Yahya, too, chose Islam from the broadest possible religious gamut. He was raised in a high-profile London family that, because of his father’s position, could not be seen to favour one faith over another. He then took a degree in comparative religion — the theological equivalent of a blind wine tasting — and Islam, quite simply, won.

“It’s pure monotheism,” he says. “It has a clear moral system and an intact tradition of religious scholarship. No scripture expresses its message of the oneness of God as clearly as the Koran. It also has a remarkably rich mysticism, which may be what appeals to middle-class white Brits like me.”

Yahya converted five years ago. Now 33, he is at Oxford writing a PhD on British Islam and is dismayed not just by last September’s attacks, but also by the mauling he says his religion has suffered since in the media, even — or especially — at the hands of would-be sympathisers. “It’s very painful for all of us to be associated with such sickening barbarism (of the attacks),” he says. “That’s not what we signed up for. And now we can’t portray our religion in undiluted form. It’s always mediated by someone else. It’s incredibly frustrating to have Polly Toynbee trying to save you from yourself.”

So does this wry and thoughtful soul share the credo of al-Qaeda? Of course not. But the belief system in which he and the terrorists co-exist has a serious and often lethal public relations problem. The parallel that comes to mind is with the environmental movement, boasting tens of millions of members paying dues to the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Sierra Club, and a handful bent on burning down ski lodges in the Rockies.

Well before September 11, well-heeled defectors from Anglicanism to Islam proved so unsettling to traditionalists that the Cold War author and journalist Philip Knightley branded them “the new Philbys”. They were running from privilege, he suggested, driven as much by a sense of guilt at what they had as wonder at the mysteries of Islam. The fact that Kim Philby’s father happens to have converted to Islam was taken to support the accusation. Levelled at Joe Ahmed-Dobson, it quickly seems ridiculous. The son of the former Health Secretary is a child of new Labour and the opposite of a rebel. He works on inner city regeneration, finds spiritual satisfaction in Islam’s “constant impetus to do the right thing”, and credits his first-class degree to the structure his faith has brought to his life.

All those I spoke to agreed that Christianity claims to answer the same yearnings for meaning and guidance. All had rejected it on intellectual grounds. Why grapple with mental puzzles such as the Holy Trinity and Original Sin, they asked, when the alternative, asserting neither, proved to them so much more satisfying?It was this clarity that won over Batool Al-Toma, the former Catholic who offers guidance to converts at the New Muslims Project. She tells them they need not change their names, advises women to dress modestly but not alienate their families with radical wardrobe changes and checks they have converted freely. Islam is not generally a missionary faith, she says. At one billion and counting, history shows it doesn’t need to be.

Source: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,7-200...2010026,00.html

Mum, I've decided I want to follow Allah

Western women are turning to Islam in rapidly increasing numbers. KAY JARDINE discovers why they are so keen to become Muslims

Bullying, depression, and insomnia made Kimberley McCrindle's teenage years particularly difficult. Taunts from classmates about her weight and how she looked left the 19-year-old student feeling like she didn't really fit in, and always searching for something that would make her feel happy, that would make her feel she belonged.

McCrindle, from a family of atheists, did not encounter religion until she began religious studies at high school in Penicuik, when her new interest prompted her to start going to her local church on Sundays. But the peace and happiness McCrindle was looking for eluded her until she started college in Edinburgh, where she made friends with some Muslim people and discovered Islam.

"I was looking for peace," she says. "I'd had a rough past. My teenage years weren't great: I was bullied at school, people called me fat and ugly, and I was looking for something to make me happy. I tried to go to church once a week but I wouldn't class myself a Christian; I was just interested. But it wasn't for me, I didn't feel in place there.

"When you walk into a mosque you feel really peaceful. Praying five times a day is really focused. It gives you a purpose in your life. The Koran is like a guide to help you: when you read it, it makes you feel better."

McCrindle became a Muslim three years ago and is now known by her married Arabic name, Tasnim Salih. She is one of a rapidly increasing number of British women turning to Islam, thought to be the fastest growing religion in the world. Although there are no official figures on the subject, there is no doubt that the number of converts is on the rise and the majority are women, according to Nicole Bourque, a senior lecturer in social anthropology at Glasgow University and an expert in conversion to Islam in Britain.

"There are people converting all the time," she says. "I would estimate that there are probably around 200 converts to Islam in Glasgow alone, but that's just a rough estimate. The data is difficult to acquire." Other estimates put the Glasgow figure closer to 500.

Mohammad Faroghul-Quadri, imam at the Khazra mosque in Glasgow, says that whichever religion people choose to reach God, whether it's Christianity or Islam or something else, the important thing is that they are getting peace of mind and heart, and proper guidance from God.[1]

The appeal of Islam to liberated western women is difficult for many to understand, largely because of the widespread perception in the west that it treats women badly. A forthcoming documentary, Mum I'm a Muslim, addresses this very issue by talking to converts in Sheffield about their experiences. At a preview in Glasgow, I asked a group of converts from Glasgow and Edinburgh what motivated them to change every aspect of their lives, including their names, to become Muslim.

For 27-year-old Bahiya Malik, or Lucy Norris to her parents, it's difficult to explain. Bahiya, who lives in Edinburgh, her twin sister, Victoria, and their brother, Matthew, grew up as practising Christians in a rural area in the West Midlands, where they attended Sunday school in the little church at the top of their road. As they got older, the three stopped going to church and seven years ago, at the age of 20, both Bahiya and her sister converted to Islam - six months after their brother.

"Maybe all through our teenage years we hadn't been that happy. I can't really say what it was. I don't know if we felt there was something missing or that we didn't fit in. We were a little bit shy and we weren't really outgoing sort of people," she says. At the time, Bahiya was two years into a media and television course in Edinburgh but was feeling uninspired. After around six months of learning about Islam, Bahiya realised that living her life according to the rules of Islam was what would make her happy and, during an emotional visit to a mosque in London, made her declaration of faith.

"I think it's something you feel in your heart, this pull," she says. "You can't really put it into words. It's like your heart speaking, something you feel inside and you know it's for you. Allah has chosen this for you, it's out of your power."

Women who turn to Islam are aware of the widespread western perception that they are oppressed and discriminated against, but insist that the depiction is a false image. For many it is a spiritual journey, which, far from repressing them, improves their social status and gives them new rights.

"You seem to be really looked after," says Tasnim. "As a Muslim woman, Muslim men really respect you; they do everything for you. You're highly thought of and protected." Bahiya says: "I feel that because you cover yourself up you're not seen as a sex symbol, and because people can't judge you on your appearance, they have to judge you as a human being. That's quite liberating."

As an act of modesty, many Muslim women don't wear make up outside the home and it is often a part of their old life that new female converts are happy to discard because of the liberating feeling that comes from knowing their appearance doesn't matter. They resist being shown as they were before their conversion.

Hafsa Hashmi, who lives in Glasgow, converted to Islam 24 years ago and felt life outside Islam was like having to "keep up with the Joneses". Under Islam, however, she says: "Your aim is not for this life, your aim is for the afterlife. To some people that sounds pretty horrific: they can't think about death, but in Islam belief in the afterlife is one of its main features, because you know if you're doing the right thing you've got a better life to come. So why go for all the material things?"

Converting to Islam usually means a complete change of lifestyle for those who take the plunge, including a different diet, often a new Arabic name, and your time revolving around the five daily Islamic prayers. In the workplace, some people organise with their employer a room where they can have some peace and quiet to pray. Wherever they are in the world, all Muslims face in the direction of the Kab'aa, or the Holy House in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during prayer.

For female converts, the experience can also involve a quite dramatic change in appearance. Muslim law provides that women must dress modestly. The hijab, or the head scarf, is a particular focal point and can be a tricky area for new Muslim women to deal with. Dr Bourque suggests this is because it is such a visible symbol of the faith. Tasnim wore the hijab straight away, although she found wearing it in public scary at first because she felt people were looking at her. She was then forced to take it off when she was out because of some of the comments directed at her.

"People would shout, 'Go back home to your own country'. I had someone spit at me once when I was standing at the bus stop at college."

Now, though, she wears it all the time and says: "People don't say anything to me now and I feel more confident about wearing it." Bahiya was happy wearing the hijab from the beginning, but her parents found it quite difficult. She says her sister, her brother, and herself were lucky because their parents were "quite good" about their conversion. For others, however, families are not always so accepting, often because they know little about the religion and why their loved ones want to follow it. For Tasnim, telling her parents, who are atheist, was nerve-wracking. "They thought I was going through a phase at first but they realised when I started wearing the hijab that I was serious. They started getting angry when I began to talk about getting married. They weren't too pleased that I'd met someone older than me, who was Muslim as well, and a different nationality."

While Tasnim and her mother are still close and enjoy a good relationship, they tend not to talk about her faith much. She and her father no longer speak. For Hafsa, telling her parents 24 years ago was perhaps even more difficult because converting to Islam then was anything but a common occurrence. The reactions of her parents were totally opposite. "I think my mother felt that I was only becoming a Muslim because of who I was marrying, but that wasn't the case because I had been introduced to Islam about four years previously although I didn't convert until I got married. It took her practically her whole life to get over it. When we got married, my mum said, 'If you're happy, I'm happy', but obviously she wasn't. My dad said it and he meant it, that was the difference between them."

Tasnim has been married to Sabir, who is Sudanese, for two years, and says she has never been happier. "I met my husband at college and it seemed like the right thing to do. I was teaching him English and he was talking to me about Islam, and we just fell in love," she says. Bahiya's husband, Sharafuddin, is also is also a convert, formerly known as Cameron. They have two children, aged two and four.

For Tasnim, Bahiya, and Hafsa, life revolves around the five daily prayers, they cannot eat certain foods, or drink alcohol. But the women say they miss nothing from the days before they converted to Islam. "Islam is enough for me," says Bahiya. "You don't need anything else once you've found it."

Becoming Muslim has provided Tasnim with the happiness and belonging she was looking for. "It's a complete change in your attitude, behaviour, and the way you think," she says. "I'm now more confident, happy and satisfied. I've achieved the fulfilment I was looking for."

Source: http://www.theherald.co.uk/perspective/arc...02-21-6-52.html

Notes

[1] This is a a false statement. The only religion acceptable to Allah - the one which leads to true guidance and peace, is Islam: "Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted from him and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers" [Qur'an 3:85]

The Prophet (SAW) said:

"O Allah! i seek refuge with You from worry and greif, from incapacity and laziness, from cowardice and miserliness, from being heavily in debt and from being overpowered by (other) men" (shahih Bukhari 8.380)

"By Him in whose hand Muhammad's soul is, if a man were to be killed in Allah's path then come to life, and be killed once more in Allah's path then come to life owing debt, he would not enter paradise until his debt is paid" (Al Tirmidhi 2929)

"A believer's soul is attached to his debt till it is paid." (Al Tirmidhi 2915)

Asalamualaykum, hello good morning, evening or afternoon! Hope you guys are all well and in good faith. Just signed up to the forum and roaming around, reading all sorts of threads, some are great yes! I think I will benefit too.... don't expect loads and loads of info from me, cause I'm pretty new to Islam ... eeh not really.. its been two years.. but I'm pretty dumb... So I hope I learn new things here... :-) take care guys.. God bless you all.... seeyah:)

by the way, I was wondering if anyone had any information on Imams and stuff? Apparently there is like 5 imams in Islam... I really dont know anything about that... Is it really important to know? have a nice day buhbyee salams

As Salam Alykom

Today I was discussing with someone about hiking fares for Umra, in light of the increased rate of SR, it has become very costly to go for OMra. Alhamdulelah Allah allowed me several times, plus Haj Alhamdulelah.

Did anybody here perform Haj and Omra? What I am asking is could we all share our feelings when we come close to Ka`aba and try to get an analysis for the feeling? I think this will be very interesting.

What do u think?????

<b>In the valleys I grow</b>

Sometimes life seems hard to bear,

Full of sorrow, trouble and woe

It's then I have to remember

That it's in the valleys I grow.

If I always stayed on the mountain top

And never experienced pain,

I would never appreciate Allah's love

And would be living in vain.

I have so much to learn

And my growth is very slow,

Sometimes I need the mountain tops,

But it's in the valleys I grow.

I do not always understand

Why things happen as they do,

But I am very sure of one thing.

My Allah will see me through.

My little valleys are nothing

When I picture My bros' & Sis

The valleys of death Which they go through

In Countries such Palestine etc...

Forgive me Allah, for complaining

When I'm feeling so very low.

Just give me a gentle reminder

That it's in the valleys I grow.

Continue to strengthen me, Allah

And use my life each day

To share your love with others

And help them find their way.

Thank you for valleys, Allah

For this one thing I know

The mountain tops are glorious

But it's in the valleys I grow!

REMEMBER...

The shortest distance between a problem and a solution

is the distance between your knees and the floor.

The one who kneels to the Allah,

can stand up to anything.

Insha'Allah

<b>Passing phase </b>

what happened to those days when my faith was strong?

when i wouldn't dare think of doing anything wrong

when my yaqeen in Allah would lead me through the good and bad,

the old and new

what happened to those days when my du'aa` was sincere?

when there was absolutely nothing on earth that i would fear

when i was certain that Allah was really near

and would run to Him and leave all that is dear

what happened to those days when i could read and recite well?

when i bought al-Jannah and this dunya i would sell

when my heart was pure and all full of light

when my qiyaam was my only source of strength and might

what's wrong, my nafs ... why did you fall?

don't you know that Allah knows and hears your call?

a little test like this one shouldn't beat you so

it shouldn't pull you down to a level so low

don't you know that Allah chooses what is best

and that this is all a previously planned test

don't you know that He hears your soul .. He hears your cry

He sees you fall .. He sees you sigh

Allah is Great .. Allah is Al-Hakeem

His ways are just no matter how dark it may seem

hold on, my nafs, to the fireball in your palm

hold on to it and when it burns, act calm

whenever it falls, bend down and restart

let those tears fall and wipe that heart

remember my nafs, the beauty of the promised Firdaws

you know it's your dream to build there a house

get back on your feet and go back to those days

i know this only a passing phase

~ anonymous

<b>I AM A MUSLIM, BUT ONLY BY NAME </b>

I am a Muslim, but only by name

When it comes to practicing, what a shame!

I go to friends and relatives in suit and tie

It's alright if I occasionally lie

Yes I practice, BUT when it suits me

Or more to the point, when it pleases society.

If I show my ankles, they'll point and laugh

They'll think it's too short and reckon I'm daft.

If I trim my moustache and grow the beard

They'll reckon I'm a fanatic or something weird.

If I wear the sunnah I'll get great reward

But the Kuffaar will look down on me, that I can't afford.

Yes I'm a Muslim, but only by name

I make excuses which I admit are rather lame.

Yes I'm a sane man and I'm on the right track

Who am I kidding, I feel like a right jack!

To hide my inferiority complex I protest it's unimportant

Though my heart screams to tell me I'm a blatant fraudulent

The best thing is no-one can hear what's going on inside

People think I've got it made and with my life I'm satisfied.

But I'm afraid this is a fable and it's a pure deception

I have no peace of mind but this I daren't even mention.

If I remain ignorant it's OK, 'cos then I don't have to practice

Yes I'm conniving and these are baseless evil tactics.

But I read the Kalima and I think I have Imaan

I can't help my attitude - I was placed in a Kufrstaan.

Yes I'm a Muslim, but only by name

And with my precious life I'm playing a foolish disastrous game!

<b>I Wonder... </b>


(Author Unknown)

If Prophet Muhammad visited you

Just for a day or two,

If he came unexpectedly,

I wonder what you'd do.

Oh, I know you'd give your nicest room,

To such an honored guest,

And all the food you'd serve him,

Would be the very best,

And you would keep assuring him,

You're glad to have him there,

That serving him in your home,

Is joy beyond compare.

But.....when you saw him coming,

Would you meet him at the door,

With arms outstreched in welcome,

To your visitor?

Or....would you have to change your clothes

Before you let him in?

Or hide some magazines and put,

The Quran where they had been?

Would you still watch X-rated movies,

On your T.V. set?

Or would you switch it off,

Before he gets upset?

Would you turn off the radio,

And hope he hadn't heard?

And wish you hadn't uttered the last loud hasty word?

Would you hide your worldy music,

And instead take Hadith books out?

Could you let him walk right in,

Or would you rush about?

And, I wonder.....if the Prophet spent

A day or two with you,

Would you go right on doing the things,

You always do?

Would you go right on saying the things

You always say?

Would life for you continue,

As it does from day to day?

Would your family conversating,

Keep up its usual pace,

And Would you find it hard each meal,

To say a table grace?

Would you keep up each and every prayer?

Without putting on a frown?

And would you always jump up early,

For prayer at dawn?

Would you sing the songs you always sing,

And read the books you read?

And let him know the things on which,

Your mind and spirit feed?

Would you take Prophet with you,

Everywhere you plan to go?

Or, would you maybe change your plans,

Just for a day or so?

Would you be glad to have him meet,

Your very closest friends?

Or, would you hope they stay away,

Until his visit ends?

Would you be glad to have him stay,

Forever on and on?

Or would you sigh with great relief,

When he at last was gone?

It might be interesting to know,

The things that you would do.

If Prophet Muhammad, in person,

came, to spend some time with you.