Open the door of the heart

Shaykh Sa'adi Shirazi writes in his famous book "Gulistan" that in his child hood he developed a love for worship and used to offer prayers during the night. One night, he was praying with his father and other people in the house were enjoying sleep. He said to his father, "Why don't these people wake up and offer two rak'ats nafil prayer instead of laying there like dead people?" His father said, "My son, it would have been better for you to sleep all night than this worship that you are doing, because you are involving yourself in backbiting.

Moral: "The humorist sees himself with his own eyes and thinks very highly of himself , open the door of the heart and you will find yourself lowest of all."

We see that even great scholars never hesitate to introspect and correct themselves and ask for forgiveness from Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala but nowadays! We see a majority of people who boast about their worship and consider others low for not worshipping as they do. Actually they do not inspire others for worship, rather they offend others and send them away from worship due to their arrogance. Such people appreciate themselves and keep on depreciating others and their apparent piety fails to spread dignity at all. You know, such attitude shows that we are caught by the paws of desires and do not think about any others but ourselves. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala save us from the crippling cage of desires. Ameen.

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To Judge or not to Judge!

To Judge or Not to Judge
Salma Remani

One night there was a woman at the airport who had to wait for several hours before catching her next flight. While she waited she bought a book and a pack of biscuits to spend the time. She looked for a place to sit and waited.

She was deep into her book, when suddenly she realized that there was a young man sitting next to her who was stretching his hand, with no concern whatsoever, and grabbing the pack of cookies lying between them. He started to eat them one by one.

Not wanting to make a fuss about it she decided to ignore him. The woman, slightly bothered, ate the cookies and watched the clock, while the young and shameless thief of biscuits was also finishing them. The woman started to get really angry at this point and thought "If I wasn't such a good and educated person, I would have given this daring man a black eye by now."

Every time she ate a biscuit, he had one too. The dialogue between their eyes continued and when only one biscuit was left, she wondered what was he going to do. Softly and with a nervous smile, the young man grabbed the last biscuit and broke it in two. He offered one half to the woman while he ate the other half.

Briskly she took the biscuit and thought, "What an insolent man! How uneducated! He didn't even thank me!" She had never met anybody so fresh and sighed relieved to hear her flight announced. She grabbed her bags and went towards the boarding gate refusing to look back to where that insolent thief was seated.

After boarding the plane and nicely seated, she looked for her book which was nearly finished by now. While looking into her bag she was totally surprised to find her pack of biscuits nearly intact. "If my biscuits are here", she thought feeling terribly, "those others were his and he tried to share them with me." Too late to apologize to the young man, she realized with pain, that it was her who had been insolent, uneducated and a thief, and not him.

How many times in our lives, had we know with certainty that something happened in a certain way, only to discover later that it wasn't true?

No matter how great a man's evil, in his heart there is a seed of goodness. If only we can reach it and make it grow, it will bear fruit.

How many times has our lack of trust within us made us judge other people unfairly with our conceited ideas, often far away from reality?