From the traditions of Prophet Muhammad, we learn that “The best day in the sight of God is Friday, the day of congregation”. Congregational prayers (obligatory for men) are one of the most strongly emphasized duties in Islam. It is a time when Muslims come together to worship One God, and find strength and comfort by standing shoulder to shoulder and reaffirming their faith and devotion to Him.
All Muslims accept that God is al-Kareem (The Most Generous). Muslims learned in madrasa that the Omni-Benevolent God is the source of all generosity. But I never had an internally consistent satisfactory answer to my impasse over theodicy (the vindication of divine goodness and providence in
In pre-Islamic Arabia, alcohol use was widespread. To eradicate this evil, Allah in His mercy revealed the prohibition in stages. First, He made it clear to them that the harm of drinking alcohol is greater than its benefit, next He told the Muslims not to come to prayer while intoxicated and finally, He revealed a verse totally prohibiting alcohol.
A fish expends a large amount of energy while swimming. This is not because it swims fast for long times. Fish need considerable amounts of energy in order to reach high speeds from being stationary. It is vital for a fish to gain speed instantaneously because it needs to do so in order to escape from predators.
Scientists studying how bees inform each other of the places they find made a most astonishing discovery. Bees “describe” the location of a distant place by dancing. All the information that other bees need to find the food source—its distance from the hive, its direction, productivity—is encoded in this dance.
From time to time, there arise claims calling for rejecting the Sunnah and following the Qur'an alone as a sole fundamental source for the religion of Islam, a call not guiltless of bad intention or a hidden agenda. If we agree to reject the Sunnah and follow the Qur'an alone, we are then abolishing a tremendous amount of laws of Islam with their details and religious ethics called for by the never doubtful act of the Prophet and his frequent practice. To refute such destructive calls, we may just mention here what Muslims have unanimously agreed upon, from the time of the prophet
The Messenger of Allah defined the main goal of his mission when he said, “I was sent to perfect honorable morals”. It seems as if the mission which has paved its own course in the life history, and its owner exerted much effort in spreading it and gathering people around it, aspires to nothing other than enhancing people’s virtues, enlightening their perfection horizons before their eyes so that they may approach them with good insight.
No one denies the predominance of admonitory-ethical style on the early Islamic educational output due to his growing up in a jurisprudential environment… and the confinement of educational content on Islamic sciences. However, it is not fair to generalize this opinion, especially after Muslims’ openness to neighboring cultures, and the increased need for secular sciences that can serve the Islamic Renaissance Movement.
As both the language of Islam and a medium of culture and learning for five centuries, Arabic came into close contact with several other languages. Asian and African languages such as Urdu, Turkish, Farsi, and Hausa borrowed a large number of Arabic words dealing with various aspects of culture, particularly those related to Islam.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) sent Umm 'Umarah's son, Habib bin Zaid as his representative to Musaylamah Al-Kadthab, in order to bring him to the right path. Breaking all norms of diplomacy, this low down man captured Habib and tied him to a pillar. He then asked him, "Do you testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah?" When he answered in the affirmative, he asked him if he also testified that he, Musaylamah, was also the messenger of Allah. Habib replied that he was deaf and could not hear him. He kept on repeating the question again and again.
