Self-Improvement: Your Home is enough

     Assalamualaikum, readers (May the peace and mercy of Allah be upon you). In this entry of blog, I want to discuss about self-improvement and seclusion from the perspective of Islam. Even though I will write mostly on the benefits of being cloistered and in privacy; yet, Islam does not say that Muslims have to seclude their lives from the world. We also have to take part in the worldly matters like in business, education and dakwah (spreading Islamic teachings). What I mean when I talk about seclusion is about distancing ourselves from haram (forbidden) and syubhah (uncertain) matters, like I said, from the Islamic viewpoint.

     Sometimes, distancing ourselves from the world is not totally a bad option if the seclusion can bring more good than harm to us. In Islamic history, there were many cases reported showing that tons of new ideas, human progresses and knowledge developments took place while arduous Islamic scholars got imprisoned in cells and abandoned wells. There, they spent countless waking moments doing productive things in their lives which have been benefiting lives after theirs. Here is a short list of the people and their contributions to the human race:

•   Imam Ahmad Ibn Hambal - He was severely tortured and flogged and later became a great Imam of the Sunnah.
• Imam Ibn Taymiyah - He was imprisoned and when freed, became more accomplished.
•  Imam As-Sarakhsi – He was kept in an unused well where he produced 20 volumes of Islamic jurisprudence.  
• Imam Ibn Atheer – He was crippled. Yet with his ability, he wrote 2 famous books in the Science of Hadith
• Imam Ibn al-Jawzi - He was banished from Baghdad. Then he traveled and mastered 7 different recitations of the Quran. [mostly quoted from a book entitled “La Tahzan”]

     It is amazing how all those Imam names mentioned turned a lemon into a sweet, nice drink which later quenches thirsts of human beings for knowledge and guidance. MasyaAllah (Whatever Allah wills). These show there are no excuses for a person to fail in his/her life. So the choice is ours. From my point of view, failure is not an option!!! May Allah grant us more opportunities to learn knowledge, educate ourselves and spread it to the human race. InsyaAllah (With Allah’s Will).

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