Syed Ahmer

  Seek forgiveness from all your acquaintances   The next question is, who to seek forgiveness from? Who remembers how many people’s  Gheebat  we committed throughout our lives when we were completely neglectful about it? Should we draw up a list of all of them and ask all of them for forgiveness? Hadhrat Mufti Muhammad Shafi (may Allah have mercy on him) used to say that Paradise is not cheap. If you really want to go to Paradise then you will have to make some effort for it. Draw up a list of all your acquaintances, all your friends, all your relatives, and then seek forgiveness from all of them.

 

  “Remember Me, then, and I will remember you. And be thankful to Me, and be not ungrateful to Me.” (2:152)   Dhikr  ( ذکر ) literally means "Remembrance" which is a function of the mind, but in so far as words are an indicator of what is going on in a person’s mind, the oral recitation of Allah Ta’ala’s name or a verse of the Holy Qur'an is also described as  Dhikr.  In other words, oral  Dhikr  is really beneficial only when it is accompanied by the "remembrance" of the mind. However, one must bear in mind that even a  Dhikr  with tongue only, without the heart being engaged in it, is not altogether futile. It is related that the great Sufi Abu Uthman, hearing a man complain of such a situation, remarked that one should be grateful to Allah even for this favour of having drawn at least one organ of the body, the tongue, into His service.

  What do other people say about us   The other benefit of doing this is that one finds out what other, unrelated people say about you. People who are someone’s students or disciples always praise him. They do not say anything bad about him. That is why it is important for a person to also hear what people who are unrelated to him say about him, believe about him. This knowledge is also useful. If everyone around a person keeps praising him, sometimes the person develops ‘ Ujub ’ ( عجب ) (believing oneself to be superior to others) in his heart and he starts thinking that “as everyone is praising me so I must be someone special. That is why I have so many followers”.    The treatment of this  Ujub  is to try to learn what people who are not your followers say about you, what they really think about you. This reduces  Ujub . That is why whenever someone came to Hadhrat Thanvi RE to apologize for doing his  Gheebat  he always first asked, “I will forgive you but first tell me what you ha

 

  …Strive, then, to excel each other in good deeds. Wherever you are, Allah will bring you all together. Allah is certainly powerful over everything. (2:148)    The expression "strive to excel" indicates that one should hasten to perform a good deed (whether it be  Salah  (prayers),  Sawm  (fasting), the Hajj (pilgrimage) or  Zakah  (giving of alms), etc.) as soon as one gets the opportunity to do so. It has been said that the thought of a performing a good deed is like a guest. If you honour that guest by acting immediately on that thought, it will keep coming again and again. But if you do not honour that and just ignore it, it may stop coming altogether.