Eid Greetings

Eid is for those who have offered ibadat and fasted throughout the month completing the count of Shehre Ramadan. Eid is for those who have obeyed Allah and His Wali Imamuz Zaman by obeying thier Dai Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS). The sight of the glowing chehra-e-anwar of Moula (TUS), the luminous moon that reflects the elahi noor of Imamuz Zaman and Panjatan is the true EID for us Mumineen. May Allah bless him with all the health and a long long life. Our life span be sacrificed on him.

 

Eid عيد is sounded and pronounced when the Arabic letter "Ain" preceeds the Arabic word "Yad". A Mumin's true Eid is the day when his EYE (Ain in Arabic) is placed on the heavenly and blessed hand (yad in Arabic) of MOULA (TUS).

 

May Allah bless us with the auspicious day as beautiful as Eid, when we are blessed with the deedar and qadambosi of Aqamola (TUS) Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS).

 

Wishing you a very Happy Eid al-Fitr.

Does your boss feed you?

Happens to us all the time. Everybody who is employed by another human being often sees to his boss as the provider of livlihood. Imam Ali Zainul Abideen (AS) in his dua for seeking rizq has stated that we often seek rizq from those who are themselves marzooq, in other words fed by Allah. This is very true for those who are business owners as well who rely on the customers for their bread rather then having faith on Allah.

I I do not want to divert my dialogue to the business category for which I might write someday but I do want to clear what I think about employment and the employer. For me my employer or lets say my boss is merely a medium of my income and not the source. At times the employer feels that he is doing great favours on the employee by underminig his mistakes and so does the employee as he feels that if the boss would have fired him he would have been begging for bread.

I feel this attitude is the point where productivity of the employee decreases at a corporate level and increases to the personal boss (employer) level. Keep him happy.

What would you say if your boss over-looked your mistakes just for the sake of keeping your bread rolling in or just to think within himself that he was doing a favour on you. Let me be more precise, you had a fight with your boss and he took the matters to a higher authority and turned down their offer to take action against you just to later tell your collegues that he had a chance of taking action but he didn't. I would leave the decision on you but what I think is that your boss thinks he is the provider of rizq to you.

My reasoning might not be correct but I have a few points to share,
1. If he were so rationale he would not have complained to your superiors at all. Which landing your career in a jeopardy and your past efforts baseless.
2. He let go the opportunity to fire you for being a nice boy to his superiors.
3. If he were so nice he would not have spoken of his generosity to your collegues which did make him a hero.
4. His attitude of doing a favour on you is the most important factor to prove that there is no favour at all but to feed the self ego.

I might be a pessimist and therefore evalution of the situation are welcomed. The only base of my argument is that no human feeds another. It is Allah who graces people by his blessings and bounties. I would never be tied to the favours of my boss if he thought he was doing a favour on me. This is but a thought that my rationality teaches me though I also do fear loosing my job all the time. The insecurity in the lives of salaried people is often the reason why they lack behind in religion. Religion teaches that the provider of all life and its support is none but the lord.

May Allah bless Aqamoula (TUS) a long life. Ameen

The eminence of a Mumin - Riwayat of Abban.

The dignity of a Mumin.

Sadiq Imam once said to Abban: “When one of you, Mumineen, pass away his two (guardian) Angels will accompany his soul to the heavens after his dafn (burial).

They will then plead Allah that we have returned to paradise with the soul of this Mumin after burying him. Henceforth, we intend to worship you in the heavens and pray to you. The nobility of the Mumin is such that Allah will tell the Angels that “I need not your worship but you shall return to Earth and provide refuge and company to this Mumin from the fright and grief of the grave, bringing happiness to his heart.

The Imam then said: “O Abban, this is the distinction of a Mumin. Such is his dignity and eminence.”

All gratitude to Allah, and then for the Imam who showed us the importance of making a Mumin happy. Allah blesses those who keep a Mumin happy, and the sawab of pleasing the Panjatan, Imamuz Zaman and his Dai is surely in its multiples.

May Allah grant us the will to do deeds that would keep our Moula happy with us, and may He grant the bounty and blessing of Taqwa and vigilance to Mumineen.

Riwayat in Lisan al-Dawat

Translated from the Kalemaat of al-Dail Fatimi Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS).

If you are a parent

Put aside all your work and spend just few minutes...It will be an investment for your child's future....

By Azim H. Premji, Chairman Wipro Ltd.

If you are a parent, you have many aspirations for your child that may include him or her becoming a doctor, an engineer, scientist or another kind of successful professional. I believe these aspirations are driven by your thinking about your child's future, and her centrality in your life.

Since good education is often the passport to a good future, I presume it leads you to getting your child admitted to a good school. Then you encourage your child to study hard and do well in school exams. To bolster this, you send him or her for tuition classes. This would have primed your child for board exams and entrance exams, thereby leading to admission into a good professional course. Doing well at college increases the probability of landing a good job. And a good job means the child's future is ensured.

I am neither a psychologist nor an educationist, and what I will now state may seem counter-intuitive. I think that these aspirations and actions might be doing more harm than good to your child. To understand why, we need to re-examine some of our fundamental assumptions.

In the first place, I have seen time and again that living for some distant future goal also means you do not live in the present. The distant goal will always translate into an external measure of success, such as exams. And most exam-focused children start forgetting what it means to be a child - to be curious, mischievous, exploring, falling gettin g up, relating, discovering, inventing, doing, playing.

Childhood is very precious; precious enough not be wasted by the artificial pressures of contrived competition, by too many hours of bookish study, and by school report cards that simplistically wrap up an entire human being in numbers.

The second assumption is that education is merely a ticket to socio-economic success. Given the state of our country, this reality cannot be ignored. But restricting education to only this aspect is , I think, a very limiting notion of the aim of good education. The primary purpose of a school is to guide the child in her discovery of herself and her world, and to identify and nurture the child's talents Just as every seed contains the future tree; each child is born with infinite potential. Imagine a school which sees children as seeds to be nurtured - here the teacher is a gardener who helps to bring out the potential already present in the child.

This is very different from the current view which sees the child as clay to be moulded - where the teacher and parents are potters deciding what shape the clay should take. There is an old (and forgotten) Chinese saying " Give a seed to a potter, and you will get a bonsai".

Even in a commercial organization, to make profits we do not have to chase profits. Rather, we need to build an institution that gives every employee an opportunity to do meaningful and fulfilling work.

Create an organization driven by values of innovation, integrity, customer centricity and care. And as you practice these values everyday and moment, you will see that the profits take care of themselves.

Similarly, dear parent, this is my request to you. Do not give up your child's present to secure his or her future. Give your child the freedom to truly explore life with abandon. In doing this, you will see your child flower into a creative and sensitive human being. And when this happens, everything else - money, social success, security - will fall into place automatically.

Gibat (Backbitting)

I've been wondering lately about why we human beings like to gossip so much. I'm referring here to that whole family of actions that go by such names as gossip, slander, backbite, whisper, talk behind someone's back, criticize and so on. I realize each term is slightly different from the other, but I'm concerned here with their over-arching commonality. Please try to feel this with me for a moment.

 

You're sitting with a person, perhaps a casual friend whom you're hoping will become a close friend. You're both laughing, actively listening, affirming each other in the dozens of subtle, non-verbal ways that friends do, consciously or not. In the midst of your enjoyable conversation (you can almost feel the strengthening bond that's growing between you), Abid's name comes up. Your friend exclaims, "Oh, Abid! He's kind of odd, isn't he? He's quite a talker. And you know he struggles a little with needing to be the center of attention." Now, I think the world of Abid. I really do like him. But…….. At that very moment, a certain warm, delicious rush just shoots through your body. You lean closer. There's something inexplicably enjoyable about your new friend's having suddenly taken you into his confidence. You feel special somehow. A new, more intimate bond is developing between you two. It's not that you hate Abid - it's just that you want to keep moving forward with your new friend. "Yeah, I know what you mean," you reply. "I was with him last week, and he said . . ." And away you go.

So Why Do We Do It? Why is it that we enjoy (come on, admit it) talking about others behind their backs - and why do we enjoy listening to others who do it with us?  I think we enjoy backbiting so much because it makes us feel superior. If you and I feel a bit insecure with our friendship to start with, a false intimacy can quickly arise when we both identify a common inferior. For a brief moment we feel better about ourselves as you and I look down together on someone else. In a rather perverse sense, it's one way we go about being accepted by each other.

The Trust Factor -- I can't tell you how very, very secure this made me feel around Arwa. How much respect I had for her! Often I'd see her chatting with a friend, huddling close together and laughing. And I knew, with 100% certainty, that they were not talking negatively about me. Have you ever wondered to yourself, Gosh, if this person finds it so easy to drop little negative comments to me about others, I wonder what she's saying to others about me when I'm not around? I have wondered several times. It takes a little bit of the zing out of enjoying a session of backbiting, knowing that this present momentary thrill of intimacy will most likely be eclipsed by a betrayal in the near future.

I think our great fear about not joining in when gossip starts is that our friend will like us less, will pull back, and will now refrain from sharing other intimate things with us. But that's wrong thinking. In the very short term, it may seem so.  But in the long run, if over time we have developed a reputation as people who keep confidences and never backbite, we will find our friendships increasing and deepening.

Think of all the friends you have right now. Who are the ones you feel quite certain do not gossip about you? Who are the ones who wouldn't surprise you if they did talk about you behind your back? Whom do you respect more? Wouldn't it be great if Mumineen had the reputation (at work, at school, with neighbors) of not speaking negatively behind others' backs? We should be more like Arwa. Such a pledge may mean gently changing the topic when we sense backbiting is coming on, or even confronting someone about his or her loose tongue. But most of all we should want to develop the kind of character that takes a secret delight in saying positive things about another person - someone who can trust us to guard our tongue.

If you are unable to do three things, then you must do three (other) things: if you cannot do good, then stop doing evil; if you cannot benefit people, then do not harm them; if you cannot fast, then do not eat the flesh of the people. Remember What Maula who is Quran-e-Natiq quotes from the Quran that a person who does Gibat  is like a person who eats the flesh from his brother's dead body.

There are many methods and guises that are employed when one mentions another in a negative way:

Under the pretense of being informative, one could say that it is not one's habit to mention others, except for the sake of relating another's condition to someone. Or one could state that by Allah, indeed so-and-so is one to be pitied, thereby showing superiority over one who is to be rejected. Another method might be to say that so-and-so is a good person; however, he has such and such qualities. Again, one is justified in revealing another's faults. One could also simply state that we should forget so-and-so, and make supplication for their forgiveness as well as our own, intending only to belittle the one that was mentioned. There are some who are jealous about someone and hence backbite- just to criticize and defame him in the company of others.

Some people also backbite for the sake of humor, playfulness and lightheartedness. A person finds a certain amount of satisfaction from being appreciated for his story-telling abilities; speaking ill of someone in a humorous fashion adds flavor to a tale.

Others engage in backbiting by showing surprise and amazement at another's actions: "'How is it that someone could do such a thing?"

Another form of backbiting is relating someone's misfortune to their enemies, so that they, too, may find pleasure in putting them down.

In reality, all these tactics are designed to try to deceive Allah (the Exalted) and to please the creation; and in reality, the many that follow these methods only serve to deceive themselves.

From these examples, one can surmise that backbiting pertains to a disease of the mind... But you can get rid of it through Nuero Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is a science which deals with behaviour modification. It deals with your unconscious. Permanent  behavior modification can only take place when we reach our unconscious mind. Vows and pledges may help temporary change as this is done at the conscious level. I am an NLP practitioner and offer my khidmat  to help whoever wants to bring about any change in behaviour may it be backbiting or any behaviour which maybe against shariat..

 May Allah save us from this most evil of actions and protect us from its temptations.

Amte Syedna(TUS)
Nisreen Sh Abbas Merchant
Mumbai

Are we dis-respecting the Holy Book

The Holy Quran is respected by billions of people around the globe. Ask a muslim and he will tell you that the place for the Quran al-Majid is the highest in his heart and he does have a very special place to keep it in his home, somewhere high from the ground.

 

It is sad that no one has ever thought of how we are disrespecting this holiest revelation by printing it's verses in newspapers, palmplets, magazines and other such publications that are often thrown away in the garbage or are found lying on the floor with people often stepping on it or even wrapping stuff, which could be a thing that is not halal even.

 

The Quran al-Kareem is not supposed to be touched by non-muslims, more-over polytheists but what does happen when its published in wide spread publications. Though this is an altogether different subject but it does matter.

 

I noticed this fact when I saw Quranic Ayats published in condolence messages. I see that the newsboy had thrown the paper on our doorstep as usual in the morning as I had just finished the Quranic recital and it striked me that we are doing something not supposed to be. As today I saw these pages in garbage and it moved my soul. With due respect I would like to bring this to the notice of the ministry of information and the mass publications as well. Something must be done about this saddening situation.

Don't say "YES"when you want to say "NO".

Tell me if this sounds familiar -- someone asks you to do something that you really don't want to do or you honestly don't have time for. It might be a request or an unreasonable request from a friend, a neighbour, a close relative, a familty member, your office colleague or your boss for just working late. But you feel like you will let the other person down if you say no. You feel GUILTY already, and you haven't even responded yet! So you say, "Sure," even though doing so is going to put you under tremendous stress and PRESSURE. You know that you will probably end up resenting this activity, and maybe even ducking some of your responsibilities because your heart's just not in it, but you go ahead and agree anyway.

Why are we so afraid to tell people "NO"? For some reason, we have been taught that "no" is DISRESPECTFUL -- and even insulting. We seem to value other people's time more than our own -- feeling that we need to bend over backward to accommodate others, even if it inconveniences us. I know we're atoning for the "me" 1980's, but let's be reasonable! "No" is actually one of the healthiest words that can come out of your mouth. When you tell someone "no," you are really saying that you understand and accept your own LIMITS, and don't want to do a shoddy job by overwhelming yourself. That you value your time and priorities and aren't willing to take away from the truly important things in your life. A little selfishness is necessary, if you want to maintain a balanced and sane life!

So how do you say "NO" without insulting the other person, feeling consumed with guilt, or hurting your own credibility? We need to find a way to say "no" without dragging up all of those HIDDEN FEARS -- they'll think I'm lazy or selfish, that I have no career drive, that I'm not ambitious, that I have no concern for other people. And it's time to give up all of those roles you're so proud of -- supermom, martyr, hero -- but are keeping you from finding true peace. Once you've accepted that you have the right (and often responsibility) to turn someone down, you can do it in a way that doesn't seem like a REJECTION. Let me show you how:

Here are 20 ways to say "NO" without hurting others

"I CAN'T RIGHT NOW, BUT I CAN DO IT LATER"
"I'M REALLY NOT THE MOST QUALIFIED PERSON FOR THE JOB"
"I JUST DON'T HAVE ANY ROOM IN MY CALENDAR RIGHT NOW"
"I CAN'T, BUT LET ME GIVE YOU THE NAME OF SOMEONE WHO CAN"
"I HAVE ANOTHER COMMITMENT"
"I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF SEVERAL PROJECTS AND CAN'T SPARE THE TIME"
"I'VE HAD A FEW THINGS COME UP AND I NEED TO DEAL WITH THOSE FIRST"
"I WOULD RATHER DECLINE THAN END UP DOING A MEDIOCRE JOB"
"I'M REALLY FOCUSING MORE ON MY PERSONAL AND FAMILY LIFE RIGHT NOW"
"I'M REALLY FOCUSING MORE ON MY CAREER RIGHT NOW"
"I REALLY DON'T ENJOY THAT KIND OF WORK"
"I CAN'T, BUT I'M HAPPY TO HELP OUT WITH ANOTHER TASK"
"I'VE LEARNED IN THE PAST THAT THIS REALLY ISN'T MY STRONG SUIT"
"I'M SURE YOU WILL DO A WONDERFUL JOB ON YOUR OWN"
"I DON'T HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE WITH THAT, SO I CAN'T HELP YOU"
"I'M NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THAT"
"I HATE TO SPLIT MY ATTENTION AMONG TOO MANY PROJECTS"
"I'M COMMITTED TO LEAVING SOME TIME FOR MYSELF IN MY SCHEDULE"
"I'M NOT TAKING ON ANY NEW PROJECTS RIGHT NOW"
or a simple, straight, direct "NO"

Contact for In-House Training on Assertiviness Skills.

With Kind Regards
Shabbar Suterwala
Corporate Trainer & Psychological Counsellor
Ph: +91 989 222 5864
ShabbarSuterwala @ Hotmail.Com