Date: February 12, 2015
Umm Salihah Ahmed, a blog writer and a loving mother tells about a flexible reward chart on pleasurable parenting. The content of the blog can be read in an abridged format as follows: Children are the focus of our life and we are all on the way to parent them in the best lovable and pleasurable way. She is a compassionate devotee of Islam religion and believes that children are the blessings of Allah and thus we have to treat them in a divine way. Just wipe out the feelings of stress, worries, guilty and cruelty and to start dedicating our life to parent our children. We have to understand the faults of our children, so that we can correct them timely. At the same time we can celebrate their strengths, be gentle in the way we guide them and recognise when the right way to discipline requires a loving approach that tries to identify why a child might be rebelling rather than punishment. The best way to have a good parent is to agree with the qualities of our children first and to lead them to a positive approach to life. By accepting the continuous request from her kids, she has prepared a reward chart for them. The chart incorporated nine broad blogcategories of activity that could generate a reward (or merit) and each child had a different coloured dot to identify who did something good. She also added a bar across the top to show weeks from now to the end of the year.
"The best of what a man leaves behind are three: a righteous child who supplicates for him, ongoing charity the reward of which reaches him, and knowledge that is acted upon after him."
Sunan Ibn Mājah
"Every day two angels come down from Heaven and one of them says, 'O Allah! Compensate every person who spends in Your Cause,' and the other (angel) says, 'O Allah! Destroy every miser.'"
Sahih Bukhari
Prayer is the best time to see Allah. His followers should stand beautifully while taking the prayer for him. Beautify yourself when you take the prayer. Dress nicely when you stand in front of Allah. You beautify yourself with whatever you are able to from beautification in appreciation for the prayer and glorification of the position between yourself and your Lord.
Read MoreIn the name of God, the Merciful, the Beneficent _O Believers! Fasting is decreed for you as it was decreed for those before you, so that you may remain God-fearing. Fast for a certain number of days. But whoever of you is ill, or on a journey, shall fast, instead of the same number of days later on. Those who find fasting a strain too hard to bear may compensate for it by the feeding of a needy person. He who does good of his own account does himself good thereby, for to fast is to do yourselves good, if you but knew it._ (The Cow, “Al-Baqarah” 2: 183-4) Fasting is a manifestation of man&8217;s determined will and his relationship with his Lord which is based on total submission to Him. It is also a demonstration of man&8217;s deliberate disregard of all his physical needs in order to win Allah&8217;s pleasure. These are necessary elements in the training of the believers so that they are able to bear the hardships of the way they have chosen. On both sides of it, there are all sorts of pleasures and temptations which beckon its travellers, trying to force them off their course. Fasting has numerous advantages for health which continue to be discovered as time passes. It goes without saying that Allah takes into consideration the physical constitution of man. Allah relalizes that man requires help and motivation in order to respond to duty and fulfill it regardless of its benefits. It takes time for man to get used to a certain duty and to be convinced of its wisdom. Hence, the decree of fasting starts with the address made to the believers which reminds them of their essential quality, that is, they believe in Allah. They are then told that fasting has always been a duty required of the believers. Its principal aim is their education and training so that their hearts acquire a high standard of sensitivity and purity and that the fear of Allah is well established in them: “Believers, fasting is decreed for you as it was decreed for those before you, so that you may remain God-fearing.” Fear of Allah To fear Allah, then, is the great aim of fasting which looms large before our eyes. As the believers fulfill this duty, in total obedience of Allah and in pursuit of His pleasure, they feel the quality of fearing Allah to be a life within them. This is indeed the quality which guards their hearts against spoiling their fasting by indulging in sin, even if it is of the type which only passes through the mind. Those who are addressed by the Quran are fully aware of the value Allah attaches to this quality of fearing Allah and being conscious of Him. Its acquirement is something for which they yearn. Fasting is a tool with which it is achieved. Hence, the Quran raises it before them as a noble objective. Allah Wishes to Make Things Easy They are then told that fasting is prescribed only for a certain number of days. Exempted from it, however, are the sick until they have recovered, and the travellers until they have settled: “Fast a certain number of days. But whoever of you is sick, or on journey, shall fast instead the same number of days later on.” Taken at its face value, the statement concerning the exemption of the sick and the travellers is general, unrestricted. Hence any illness or journey is a good reason for exemption from fasting, provided that compensatory fasts are held when those reasons no longer obtain. The purpose of the exemption is that it is Allah&8217;s wish to make things easy, not hard, for man. We cannot claim to have full knowledge of the divine wisdom behind relating this exemption to sickness and travelling generally. There may be some hardships which may not immediately appear to us or we may tend to overlook. Since Allah has not attached this exemption to any particular reason, we refrain from making any judgment concerning it. We obey any statement Allah has made, even if its wisdom does not appear immediately to us. What is certain is that there is a wisdom behind it, whether we recognize it or not. Using the Concessions Some people may fear that such an opinion may cause people to neglect their worship for any reason indeed, this is what has prompted Islamic scholars to adopt a more strict attitude and to lay down conditions. Islam does not compel people to be obedient. Its method is to implant in them the consciousness of Allah so that they obey Him. The acquisition of the quality of fearing Allah is the particular aim of this worship. He who tries to use a certain concession made by Allah in order to evade fulfilling a duty is, in the first place, devoid of goodness. With such an attitude, the aim behind the religious duty cannot be fulfilled. We must not forget that Islam is a religion laid down by Allah. Allah knows best that this religion achieves a perfect balance between the relaxation of certain duties and strict adherence to duty. A certain concession may serve a certain interest which cannot be served otherwise. Indeed, this must be the case. Hence, the Prophet has ordered Muslims to make use of the concession Allah has allowed them. As for the exemption from fasting in cases of illness, it appears that the exemption applies to every case which may be reasonably described as illness, regardless of its nature or intensity. It is compulsory for anyone who makes use of exemption to compensate for the days of Ramadan for which he missed the fasting due to illness or travelling. Each day is compensated for by fasting one day any time during the year.
Read MoreSearch for any word, phrase, person, Hadith narrator, subject, or idea and acquire Islamic knowledge easily from the classical and most fundamental sources of Islamic knowledge. Coming soon: 1. Collaborative Editing, Comments, and Discussions on the Meaning of Al-Qur’an a. Comments feature with Alim online and facility of religious collaboration. b. Rating of authors and their works and online reputation building c. Ratings of comments and "most popular" type of rankings 2. Full Arabic Script Quran Recitation-Abdul Basit, English Recitation of Quran Translation, Surah Themes Arabic Recitation of Duas. 3. Questions & Answers: Q&A page called "Ask Alim.org" or something similar that allows questions to be posted and answered by anyone; people can rate questions and answers; similar to StackOverflow.com in ease of use and capabilities. 4. Enhanced Arabic Playhouse online. 5. Video Islam: A Closer Look Video How to Perform Hajj (90 min.) 3-D Animated Walk-through of Haram in Mecca.
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