Inner Dimensions: The Prayer

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem

Salaam alaikum and Ramadan mubarak to all my amazing readers! I can’t believe this beautiful month is already here, and I am so grateful that you have decided to spend some of your precious Ramadan time here with me.

Today will be the first post in my Ramadan 2018 series, Inner Dimensions. This Ramadan, I really want to go back to basics and look at our worship not as an end in and of itself, but the means to the end of bringing ourselves closer to Allah swt.

And I want to start with one of the five pillars, and the foundation of our faith: the salah, or five times daily prayer.

The more sisters I talk to, the more I find that we tend to really struggle with our salah. We struggle to pray on time, to concentrate during our prayer, and even to feel anything when we pray. From my experience, many of these salah issues come from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of salah.

So often, we think of our salah as merely an obligation. It is a fard, an item that we must check off of our to-do lists five times every day, a ritual to be performed.

But the point of salah is not to be performed; it is to be experienced. 

Book Review: The Dua Journal

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem

While it has been great to have some time off for April, I decided to break my blogging silence to share something exciting with y’all.

Around a month or so ago, I got the extended version of The Dua Journal (pictured below), and after using it in for a while now, I wanted to share some of my experiences with you.

I’ve had my eye on The Dua Journal ever since it came out around a year ago, but because of the lack of decent postal system in Algeria, it ended up being relegated to my “someday” list. So, you can imagine how excited I was to finally be able to get not only The Dua Journal, but the extended green-cover version!

Don’t Let Them Dull your Sparkle

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If you have been following this blog for any amount of time, you have probably already seen this post in one iteration or another. But, in thinking about what I wanted to share today, I couldn’t help but pull this one back out, and after reading it again with a fresh perspective, I decided I would give it another go.

The first post I mention there was written at the very beginning of this blog, in July 2016. I wrote that post as the moment happened. This post that I am re-sharing however, was more of a reflective look back at that moment in time. It has now been nine months since I originally posted this (or perhaps re-posted, I can’t even remember how much I’ve shared it at this point!), and it is just so interesting for me to look back on my journey from the place I am in now.

Incorporating More Qur’an into Your Life

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I originally wrote this post just before Ramadan, in order to share some practical tips for kick-starting your relationship with the Qur’an in that holy month. But since this month’s general theme revolves around the Qur’an, I would like to share some of my relationship with the Qur’an and some of those tips again.

My personal relationship with the Qur’an started early, though I didn’t realize it then. As I returned from my semester abroad in June 2014, laden with books about Islam and relationships with real Muslims, I picked the dusty old English translation off my shelf that I had bought out of curiosity as a rebellious 13 year old. I quickly realized the translation was awful, and so I headed to Barnes and Noble to pick up a more reliable side-by-side Arabic and English version.

I began reading, and soon picked up the pace to a surah a night. I was so interested that even when I got to the shorter surahs I wouldn’t put it down until I had hit 30 or 40 pages of reading; needless to say I got through it pretty fast.

At the behest of my then-fiance, I waited around a month after I finished and then gave it another, slower read through. I only realise now how little I understood of it back then. I was uncomfortable with many of the verses about women and war, but something in my heart told me that there was a wisdom behind those things that didn’t sit well with me.

The rest, you could say, is history. I officially took my shahada later that year, and from there my journey with the Qur’an really began. 

On Forcing It

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Fake it ’till you make it. That’s the saying isn’t it? Though it has always been something that I’ve had a difficult time putting into practice in my life for some reason. That’s not to say I don’t put the work into my endeavors, but I have a very difficult time pretending I know what I am doing if I am really just making it up as I go.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with anything….Well, what got me started reflecting on this was the idea of iman lows, those dips that occur in our faith, where the excitement just isn’t there but we still have things to get done. They happen for a whole host of reasons, sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes it is just a natural lull.

A lot of the advice I read where it comes to iman lows is to just keep trudging on despite it. Keep praying your prayers, keep making personal duas, keep fasting, and so on. As you continue to do these things your iman will naturally go back up, and you will begin to feel more connected again. Essentially fake it ’till you make it.

I myself have been stuck in an iman rut for a little while now (though at the time this post is going out I feel I am on the mend alhamdulillah). I remember when I first converted I vehemently rejected the idea that my iman high was just because I was a new convert, I assumed it would last forever. And to some extent that new convert passion never did die. But like the mere mortal that I am, I have experienced some ups and downs in the strength of my faith since then. This recent low, however, has been the worst I have had yet.

I’ve been trying to take this oft repeated advice to just keep plodding on, keep going until the faith just comes back, and I have been going at it with all the brute force that I can muster. But it’s not helping.

Etiquettes of Making Dua

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So, when I first converted, and up until very recently, I thought making dua (personal prayers, supplications) was just a matter of substituting the old Christian hands-folded-head-down move for the Islamic hands upturned and raised, and then asking for whatever it is you need or want.

Which is partly true, I suppose, but quite recently I began to learn that there are actually some etiquettes that you can follow when you make dua to increase your chances of having that dua accepted. So I wanted to share some of those with you today, for new reverts who may not know about them, and for those who maybe did know, but could use a little refresher.

Firstly, as with anything in Islam, you need to make a sincere intention before you begin making dua. It always sounds like something small, but our actions are judged by the intentions. So even if you don’t get all of these etiquettes down right away, you can still keep that intention that you are trying to make dua in the most beautiful way possible and in shaa Allah get the reward of it!

One of the etiquettes of making dua that I actually really love is the next one: to invoke with the certainty that it will be accepted. So basically, if you want to have your dua accepted, you have to be certain that it will be accepted. This is like the hadith that mentions:

“Allah the Almighty said, ‘I am as my servant thinks (expects) I am. I am with him when he mentions Me. If he mentions Me to himself, I mention him to Myself; and if he mentions Me in an assembly, I mention him in an assembly greater than it. If he draws near to Me a hand’s length, I draw near to him an arm’s length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.’”
Narrated in Bukhari

On Trials

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem

I usually try to keep as much of my personal issues off of my blog as possible, but today I seem to be having an unusually hard time of things.

I feel like we have hit every roadblock and delay physically possible on this visa application, I am feeling homesick, missing family, and feeling trapped in a country with no infrastructure upon which to build any semblance of a life. The simplest things feel impossible to me; I can’t even keep up with one of my favorite hobbies—writing good ol’ snail mail—because the postal system here is so dysfunctional.

So yeah, I’m feeling a bit down.

Lately I have been just trying to remind myself that this is life. Allah swt tells us multiple times in the Qur’an that the believers will be tested with losses and hard times, and how often do we hear that the more Allah swt tests a servant, the more He loves him? The prophets, the most beloved people to Allah swt, went through unimaginable trials and tribulations.

But it feels so hard when you are in it. It feels like this one day is never going to end, let alone this whole life.

Concentration in Prayer

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem

I was just listening to a Friday sermon a couple of weeks back, all about our five times daily prayer. It seems like such a simple thing to talk about in times where there is so much that could be covered, but I found the deeper message so beautiful that I just had to share some of my reflections with you guys (plus it is super relevant to our last lovely guest post). In shaa Allah they will be of benefit!

The imam began by talking about the time in the Prophet’s (saws) life that we refer to today as the “year of sorrow.” During the span of a year, he experienced many personal tragedies, including the loss of his beloved wife and constant supporter Khadija (ra) as well as the loss of his protector and father figure, his uncle Abu Talib. On top of his uncle’s death, he (saws) was also dealing with the fact that his uncle never did utter the shahada before passing away, dying as a non-Muslim. The Muslims were still facing persecution in Mecca, and could not yet find anywhere to turn for help.

The imam then noted that it was also during this year, towards the end, that Allah swt gave the Prophet (saws) the amazing gift of the journey to Jerusalem and the ascension to the heavens. It was during this miraculous journey that what we now know as the five times daily prayer was made obligatory on the Muslims.

While this all seems like basic information for anyone who has studied a little bit of the Prophet’s (saws) life, the imam made a much deeper connection: the five times daily prayer was given to the Prophet (saws) only after one of the most difficult and tragic years of his life. Allah swt was giving him the means to cure his sorrow, to connect his heart to Allah swt, something to give him strength and energy to get through the difficult parts of life.

And that is what prayer is supposed be to us as well.

Guest Post: My Journey to Prayer

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem

So, if you follow Abigail over on her blog, you will have definitely already read the post that you are about to see here. I asked her to do a guest post for me, and she graciously agreed, but since I have bad connectivity over here, it ended up on her site before it did mine!

But at any rate, I still absolutely had to share it with you. I met Abigail through blogging way back in the day when I first converted, and she was still blogging as a Christian hijabi.

I am so glad to have made her acquaintance when I did, and we have both witnessed so much change and growth in the years that followed. I was honored to be one of the sisters to witness her official shahada when she converted to Islam.

She has always been an inspiration to me, ma shaa Allah, but one thing that I have always loved was her story with prayer. She struggled for a long time with it, and seeing her persistence and how much she loved it despite the difficulty, always makes me pause to think about how I treat my own five daily prayers.

I do hope you will enjoy her post, and for sure go follow her blog if you aren’t already! You can find the original article here.

 

For many years I was a very good Christian girl. I prayed and read my Bible and Bible commentary every morning before doing anything else. I always had words to pray, so many words. I also prayer journaled, which for those who don’t know is where you write out prayers to God in a notebook. When my massive spiritual crisis began in 2014, I was at a loss for words. I didn’t know what to say to God. I wasn’t angry at Him, just speechless. But I asked God to guide me. I began reading the Quran, and from the first time I read the Fatiha I began to pray it in English in the many moments that I seemingly had nothing to say to God.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say to God. I had so many feelings and thoughts bottled up inside that I wanted to let out in prayer, but when I bowed my head and closed my eyes I couldn’t seem to put those feelings into words. God seemed distant and deaf. I couldn’t help but wonder why He’d bother listening to me – or even if He would at all. Time and again, I turned to the Fatiha. It gave me the words I didn’t have. It summed up everything I wanted to ask of God. 

The Night Prayer

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem

Allah refers to people of paradise in the Qur’an 51:17-18 as those who, “They used to sleep but little of the night, and ere the dawning of each day would seek forgiveness…”

Praying an extra couple of rakat in the wee hours before fajr is something we have all heard of the benefit of, and it is something that I have been trying to get into the habit of pretty much forever. Maybe not that long, but it sure feels like it.

In case some of my newer readers haven’t actually heard of the night prayer, some of its benefits include being a time when duas are readily answered, gaining closeness to Allah swt, being forgiven your sins, and being counted among “the few” mentioned in the Qur’an as those who forsake their sleep to worship while the rest of the world slumbers away.

“It is upon you to perform the night prayer, because it was the practice of the righteous people before you. It is a means of obtaining closeness to Allah the Exalted, it erases sins, it prevents wrongdoings, and it drives away the sickness from the body.” Narrated in Ahmad and Tirmidhi