GLORIOUS RAMADHAN

: Invitation this Ramadhan
Posted by: Ramadhan.Org Admin on Oct 16, 2003 - 11:28 PM


Ramadhan is a hive of great activity. Alongside our usual responsibilities, a great deal of others are added that take our time and energy. We welcome Ramadhan with hope and longing and seek to mould that vision throughout the month. Ramadhan is that friend that visits us after a long time, whose visit is both beneficial and enjoyable, despite the fact that it ends all too quickly. Despite all of this it is important to visualise what we seek from Ramadhan and the vision we must aspire to both individually and as an Ummah of which we are irreversibly a part of.


Ramadhan is significant for a number of reasons apart from those which are obvious. Apart from the important command to undertake the fasting, it is significant because of the mentality that accompanied the believers in the past to attain feats that we today remember with a sense of pride. We name our sons after the great commander Salahudden Ayyubi, who was reported to have liberated the land of Al-Quds (Palestine) in this month. We marvel at the great victory at Badr, outnumbered and comparatively ill equipped in relation to their enemy, yet they overcame the odds and delivered the forces of kufr a decisive blow. We remember how the Muslims were rejected by the Mushrikeen of Makkah, yet they managed to return back and liberate it in this glorious month. It is a month yearning to shine with victory, yet our reality today is one of defeat. The actions of Salahudden were undone in1948 , and the entire Muslim lands are analogous to one big prison camp, yet even prisoners are informed of the length of their sentence, we yearn to be freed from this rotten situation, yet we cannot envision the victory we so yearn.

We are told that we should leave the past in the past and deal with present day concerns, yet can we turn away from the guidance revealed to Humankind in this month? The past has died, but the vision Allah commanded the Muslims to apply, the vision which our forefathers fought to achieve, are still with us today. Ramadhan is as good a month as any to explore the causes for our weakness as Muslims, and the remedies we must seek in order to redress this balance.

We seek to provide the Islamic Ummah with the tools required to access the victory, to work to stand tall as witnesses unto mankind. We ask that you join us in this endeavour and then utilise Ramadhan to comprehend the steps needed for this Islamic Ummah to worship Allah in the truest sense, so that His orders comprehensively govern our lives.

The Messenger of Allah (saw) addressed his companions on the last day of Sha’ban saying: “Oh people! A great month has come over you; a blessed month; a month in which a night is better than a thousand months; a month in which Allah has made it compulsory upon you to fast by day, and voluntary to pray by night. Whoever draws nearer (to Allah) by performing any of the (optional) good deeds in (this month) shall receive the same reward as performing an obligatory deed at any other time, and whoever discharges an obligatory deed in (his month) shall receive the reward of performing seventy obligations at any other time. It is the month of patience, and the reward of patience is Paradise. It is the month of charity, and a month in which a believer’s sustenance is increased. Whoever gives food to a fasting person to break his fast, shall have his sins forgiven, and he will be saved from the fire of Hell, and he shall have the same reward as the fasting person, without his reward being diminished at all.”
The Sahaba asked: “Oh messenger of Allah nobody of us finds means wherewith to give food to a fasting man!”
He (saw) replied: “Allah will bestow this reward on one who gives food to a fasting man even if it is a sip of milk or a date or a sip of water. And whosoever gives satisfaction to a man, Allah will give him a drink from my fountain which will not make him thirsty till he will enter Paradise. And it is a month of which the beginning is mercy, the middle is forgiveness and the end is freedom from the fire. And whosoever makes light the (burden of) his covenanted slaves therein, Allah will forgive him, and He will make him free from the fire.”
(Reported by Salman al-Farsi, Miskat ul Masabih, Volume3 , Pg 516 hadith no.8)