Monday, May 23, 2011

Our Life Plan: Allah is the Best Planner

Assalamualaikum, readers (May the peace and mercy of Allah be upon you). Alhamdulillah (All praise be to Allah) for His endless mercy that He bestows upon me so that I can still enjoy every passing breath that I take. Normally, we always take for granted some of the things that seem so small but actually very important for us. Many of us often spend time everyday complaining over some tiny bumps we have in everyday life. Yet we, most of the time, forget to be grateful with what we already have right before our eyes. That’s what happened to me.

Lately, I have been experiencing a lot of life challenges (especially at school and lab). Things didn’t work out the exact way I wanted. Of course as a human being, complaints sometimes came out from my mouth and disillusionment shadowed my judgment. Then all other silly thoughts started to creep in my mind. Obviously I was defeated by those evil tricks and they got the better of me.

As time went by, I started to realize that all these events happened for a reason. Allah has been trying to teach me lessons of life in a mysterious way. He lets me experience hardships for me to learn comforts. He lets me experience sadness for me to learn happiness. He lets me experience poverty for me to learn affluence. He lets me experience loneliness for me to learn friendship. And he lets me experience hatred for me to learn love. All these humanly feelings are like dots in my life. I cannot understand them if I want to see them forward (look into the future). Yet they make all the sense in the world if I see them backward (walk down the memory lane). Everything just falls into its right place. That’s how I learn the lessons.

As the chosen creatures created by Allah, we must believe that everything that we own, experience and get will have significant effects later down the road. Allah has already planned everything for us. We just need to have faith in Him. The best thing to do is to supplicate invocations to Him, asking for help and guidance. Remember when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. By doing so, we can change something that used to be sour (in life) to something that can quench thirst on a hot day (in your difficult times). Lastly, we plan and Allah also plans; And He is the Best Planner.

"It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness." - Eleanor Roosevelt


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Friday, May 13, 2011

Spreading Peace: Not Everything is a Competition.

Assalamualaikum, readers (May the peace and mercy of Allah be upon you). Alhamdulillah (All praise be to Allah) for this free time and useful energy that are bestowed upon me. I hope I can take this chance to write a piece of my thoughts. Most of the time in life, we have to make some tough choices and painful sacrifices to make sure people around us not hurt and sometimes safe from dangers caused from external forces and occasionally themselves.

In life, there will be a situation when people try to put themselves in a bad position and we are the only ones that know how to help them. To make the situation worse, those people don’t let us help them and insist to be in that difficult position which in no time turns into a nightmare.  The situation may be a lot harder when those people are people who we care for dearly. This kind of dilemma is not strange to people who deal with broken families and damaged friendship.

When two parties are quarreling, we should ask help from Allah and then look for a third party to mitigate the problem. We have to pray invocations to Allah asking for His help and guidance. The third party should take action and jump into the situation discretely using his/her wisdom. Trying to agree on a side is not going to help making the situation better. What a third party should do is intelligently suggest that both parties are looking for a common ground that is too far to see from the current position. Controlling and conquering the flaming anger is actually learnable art. The third party also must find words that include both parties of interest and at the same time confirming that they are on the right track to reach the ultimate goal that they may perceive different yet identical in the end.

By abolishing the anger, the establishment of rationale and agreements cannot be much nearer than that. The third party may propose a series of sound and convincing solutions to the raised problem. This probably takes leadership and a set of skills. Giving the disputing parties just a rigid solution may not be a good idea since they may think they are cornered and betrayed. By giving multiple solutions which in the end result in same outcomes provide them more room to breathe. Complimenting the parties several times along the way in the discussion-making process makes them feel heard and important.

I hope we can take more active roles in our society in order to spread great Islamic values in humans’ heart. May Allah grant us wisdom and wiseness in our lives to do so. Insyaallah (With Allah’s will)



"Indeed the faithful are brothers (to each other). Therefore make peace between your brothers and be wary of Allah (SWT), so that you may receive His mercy."
(Al Quran: Al-Hujurat – The Rooms ||49:10)



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