Syed Ahmer

  There are many other ways of helping people with one’s words. For example, if a person is looking for a job and you tell them about a suitable job you know of, if someone is looking for a specific specialist and you put them in touch with the right person, if someone needs some information and you find that information for them, if you see someone who is lost and you help them find their way, there are numerous situations like this when we can do things for people which do not cost us anything but may make a great difference to their lives.

THE DIFFERENT WAYS OF HELPING PEOPLE    Sometimes you hear people say, “I have no purpose in life.” I reply to them, “one of the greatest purposes in life that I know of is helping other people.” To this they reply, “but I have no money. How can I help other people?” This is a major misconception. There are at least three main ways in which we can help other people, two of which do not involve any money at all.   The first way of helping other people is through our words. Many of us underestimate how greatly our words affect other people, both positively and negatively. If one starts thinking of ways in which we can help other people with our words, the first and foremost is listening to them kindly. Again, many of us do not realize how much difference it makes to other people, and how much it helps unburden their hearts, if, upon seeing someone looked distressed and troubled, we ask them, “are you okay? Is everything alright?”, and then if they want to talk about it, jus...

 STEP 3: DO GOOD TO EVERYONE   In my younger days (once upon a time in history) I used to have all these big fantasies that one day I will become a great person, with lots of money and power, and then I will change the world and help so many people and change their lives for the better. I guess many young people these days have the same fantasies. That is why I thought I will share some lessons I learnt on the way which may be useful for them too.   CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME   I was very fortunate to find a very wise mentor early in life who taught me that there is no greater good in this world than helping your mother do her chores so that she feels a little less tired at the end of the day!   We crave greatness by doing great things so that we will become famous, everyone would know our name, sing our praises, write about how we changed the world. Doing the dishes at home, helping clean the house, helping with the laundry, seem like menial tasks which are for les...

THE CORRECT INTENTION ( NIYYAH) Hazrat Thanvi RE said that when it is pointed out to people that they have caused harm to or hurt someone, often their response is “I did not mean to hurt them.” Hazrat Thanvi said that NOT HAVING an intention to harm someone is not enough. It is important to HAVE an active intention of not harming others, meaning that one should always be mindful that whatever they are about to say or do will not end up harming or hurting someone.   The last but most important point in this series is that a person can convert their everyday acts into  Ibadah  (acts of worship) by adopting the correct intention ( Niyyah ). For example, if you are angry and feel like screaming or yelling at someone, or want to say something bad about them in their absence, reflect on it for a moment and then think “even though I feel very angry with this person but I am not going to shout at them or say anything bad about them because not doing so will greatly please Allah T...

  RIGHTS WE OWE IN OUR JOBS To recap, in general the closer our relationship is to someone, the closer we physically are to someone, and the more time we spend with someone, the greater the rights we owe to them. That is why so much emphasis has been placed on rights of family and neighbours. However, if we think about it, those of us who work full-time spend more waking hours at work than at home on a working day. And yet some people are not aware of the full extent of the rights we owe to our jobs. The first right we owe is that of ‘time’. When we sign a job contract, we sell a certain amount of our time per day or per week in return for a certain amount of remuneration. After that business transaction is agreed, it is not permissible to use the time we have sold, outside of designated breaks, for personal, leisure, family use. In early days of Darul Uloom Deoband, teachers used to keep a record of how many hours they had spent per month on personal chores or socializing, and got...

  THE BEST JUDGE OF CHARACTER Hazrat Thanvi RE used to say that “the best judge of whether a person is a good human being or not, is his wife. If a wife confirms it, only then we should believe that that person has become a better human being as a result of going through the process of Tazkiyah (purification of inner self)”. On another occasion, Hazrat Thanvi had said that if you really want to know what a person’s true character is like, ask their wife and their household servant (who still exist in some countries). The philosophy behind these statements is that we all show our true colours, when we are with people we feel we don’t HAVE to be nice with. Then we are who we really are. And that is why for people on the path of self-improvement, it is one of the first steps to critically evaluate how we treat people who are nearest and dearest to us; our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our children. If we are polite and gentle with them all the time, or at least most of the time,...

  A NEW PAIR OF SHOES Bought a new pair of shoes yesterday. After I had said a few times that I really liked the new shoes because Alhamdulillah I had found exactly the kind of shoes I was looking for, my daughter asked me, "Daddy, you really must like your new shoes. You have said it kind of ten times now." I just smiled in reply. It is kind of difficult to explain to your child that every happy moment in life, everything good that happens, every time something makes us happy, is an opportunity to remember how truly blessed we are, compared to the billions of other people in this world, and to thank God for it. We have a roof over our heads, we do not have to worry about where the next day's food will come from, we have loving families around us and all over the world who would do absolutely anything for us, we have wonderful friends all over the world who would do the same, I still have a job while so many others have lost it unfortunately, and the list goes on and on. ...