Date: June 18, 2015
Fasting is a holy act of prayer and sacrifice for the sake of Allah and your sins will be forgiven by Allah. During the holy month of Ramadan, an Islam must abstain from food, drinks, life pleasures, intercourse, smoking and other sins. Islam must abstain from food and drinks before the break of the dawn till sunset. During Ramadan month, every sane and able Muslim should fast. In addition, for getting eligibility for fasting he or she must attain the age of puberty and maturity. Fasting should start by taking the sahri. Sahri is the food or drink you take in anticipation of the next day’s fasting. So you must take sahri before the Subah Sadiq. If you missed the sahri, you must skip fasting for the day. As soon as the sun set in the evening, you must break the fast by having dates and water. You should break the fasting before the Magrib prayers. Things that break fasting * Eating and drinking during the fasting time. * Smoking. * Pouring oil into ears. * Swallowing pebble, stone, paper etc. * Saliva mingled with blood. * Applying medicine drops in nostrils. * Masturbation. * Sexual intercourse. Things that do not break fasting * Smell perfume, using surma in the eyes and applying oil to the hair. * Inhaling a fly without one’s intention. * To swallow saliva. * Undergoing for a blood test. * To take bath during fasting time. * To pour water into ear unknowingly.
"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
The Arabic word Hijra means migration. It marks the beginning of the new year in the Islamic calendar and refers to the migration of Muhammad (SAW) and his companions, from Mecca to Madina. The Hijra was a great historical event marking a significant change in Islamic history. The early Muslims gained a position of strength and authority following the Hijra. The Hijri calendar was adopted during the Khilafah (successorship) of Umar Ibn-Khathab (RA). Umar (RA) rejected many other suggestions to start the Islamic calendar, including the birth and death of the Muhammad (SAW). He stated, "The Hijra has separated truth from falsehood, therefore, let it become the Epoch of the Era" (Fath Al-Bari, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani). Muhammad (SAW) publicly preached Islam in Mecca for more than a decade when the opposition was at its peak. The believers were harassed, abused and even cruelly tortured. Afraid for their safety, Muhammad (SAW) sent a group of Muslims to Abyssinia (now known as Ethiopia) where the Christian ruler extended protection to the Sahabahs. Shortly after that, Muhammad (SAW) sent seventy others to Yathrib (later re-named Madina) with the hope of establishing a new beginning for Islam. When Muhammad (SAW) set off for Yathrib with his closest friend, Abu-Bakr as-Siddique (RA), the leaders of Mecca decided to have him killed. They put a bounty on his head and sent people in pursuit. Muhammad (SAW) and Abu Bakr (RA) hid in a cave where Allah protected them from their assassins. Allah says,�"_It does not matter if you believers do not support him, for Allah did in fact support him when the disbelievers drove him out of Mecca, and he was only one of two. While they both were in the cave, he reassured his companion,�'Do not worry; Allah is certainly with us'. So, Allah sent down His serenity upon the Prophet, supported him with forces you believers did not see, and made the word of the disbelievers lowest, while the Word of Allah is supreme. And Allah is Almighty, All-Wise."_ (Quran, 9:40) The early Muslims made great sacrifices to move to Madina (Hijra) to begin the first ever Islamic community. Allah says,_"As for those who emigrated in the cause of Allah after being persecuted, We will surely bless them with a good home in this world. But the reward of the Hereafter is far better, if only they knew."_ (Quran, 16:41) Muhammad (SAW) and his followers were joyously welcomed by the people of Madina (the Ansar or "helpers"). Muhammad (SAW) established a concept of brotherhood among the Muslims and unity with the non-Muslim communities, including the Jewish tribes. The Hijra from Mecca to Madina marked the Muslims' transition from one stage to another on several different levels. They went from a position of weakness to one of strength. In Mecca, they were humiliated and abused at the hands of Quraysh, in Medina they were the ones with power. They went from spreading Islam individually in Mecca, to converting whole nations at a time in Medina. From implementing Islam individually in Mecca, to implementing a full, comprehensive, political, and economic system that governed a nation in every aspect of life. From being a small group of believers in Mecca to, becoming the heart of an Islamic nation encompassing Muslims in multiple countries. The Alim Foundation: NPS / NH; September 29, 2020
Read MoreIbtihaj Muhammad, bagged a bronze medal in the Women’s Sabre World Cup and qualified to participate in the 2016 Rio Olympics to represent United States fencing team. She will be the first Muslim American to compete at the Olympics in a hijab. She said that she needs to prove that nothing should hinder anyone from reaching their goals such as religion, gender or race. Ibtihaj is a native of New Jersey occupies herself running Louella, an online clothing boutique she founded that sells modest and fashionable apparels.
Read MorePart I Salah (Prayer) is one of the Five Pillars in the faith of Islam and an obligatory religious duty for every Muslim. It is a physical, mental, and spiritual act of devotion that is to be performed five times every day at prescribed times. In this ritual, the believer starts stand-up, bows, prostrates themselves, and completes while sitting in the prayer platform. At the time of each posture, the believer delivers or recites certain sections, phrases and prayers. The term salah is generally translated as "prayer" but this definition is little unclear. Muslims use the words "dua" or "prayer" when mentioning to the common description of prayers which is "reverent requests made to God". Many scientific studies are done on belief and worshiping approaches. A team of scholars from Malaysia recently answered this query by learning how Muslim prayer affects alpha waves in the brain, and their results show a profound connection between mind and body. The study was completed using brain scanning technology, such as magnetic-resonance imaging and electroencephalograms (EEG), to know how the brain responds to spiritual or divine practice. Islamic prayer, or salat, needs the believer to go through more than a few distinct bodily postures while performing specific supplications. The sequence of positions is fixed, and it’s repeated many times for each act of prayer. Believers start out standing, then bow at the waist till their upper bodies are corresponding with the ground, with their hands pressed against the knees. Then, they come back to a standing posture before bowing down to the fully prostrate posture and touching the foreheads on to the ground. After bowing, believers sit up on their knees temporarily before coming back to a final bowing position. The same cycle will start again. Each of the stage in this prayer cycle will last for a few seconds, and the total prayer cycle lasts around 30 seconds and a full minute. During the study, the researchers studied brain waves at variety of postures with and without vocal prayers. To learn more into this and understand how these different postures mark brain waves, they fitted the helpers with EEG monitors around the frontal, central, temporal, parietal, and occipital regions and told the volunteers to complete a series of prayer cycle. Consequently, they found substantial increases in alpha movement in volunteers’ parietal and occipital but, amazingly, only during the bowing stage of the salat. In contrast, alpha wave stages didn’t vary much at all amid inactive state and prayer in the standing, bowing, or kneeling positions. This following study dig through the effect of Islamic prayer (salat) on a relative power (RPα) of electroencephalography (EEG) and autonomic nervous movement and the connection between them by means of spectral scrutiny of EEG and heart rate variability (HRV). !(/img/equation.png) where fmax=95 Hz, fl=8 Hz, fh=13 H During the prayer salat, a remarkable increase (p
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