Last Ten Days of Ramadan: Some Reflections & Reminders
By Dr Muzammil H. Siddiqi
Chairman
The Fiqh Council of North America
Blessed is He Who made constellations in the skies and placed therein a Lamp and a shining Moon. And it is He Who made the Night and the Day to rotate for whosoever desires to reflect or desires to be thankful. (Al-Furqan 25:61-62)
By the time, indeed man is in loss, except those who believe and do the deeds of righteousness and exhort one another to truth and exhort one another to patience. (Al-'Asr 103)
Allah is the Creator of everything, visible and invisible. He is our Lord, the Lord of time and space as well as the Lord of life and death. He rotates the days and nights, months and years. He gives life and He gives death. Everything is in His hand. All praise and glory belong to Him. The real test of human beings is how they use their time of life. Do they use their time to thank Allah and do good deeds or do they waste their time and show no gratitude to their Lord?
We are in the last few days of Ramadan.
Ramadan is an amazing month. Normally, if you do some strenuous work for several weeks, you slow down, you feel tired and exhausted. Ramadan is different. In its last ten days it becomes more active. The believers want to hold on to Ramadan up to the last minute. We say farewell to Ramadan as we say to a dear guest. We pray and hope that Allah will give us more opportunities in our life to welcome Ramadan with good health and strong faith.
Let us take full advantage of the remaining few days of Ramadan. Let us increase our Ibadah, our nawafil, our tilawah of the Qur'an and our dhikr. Let us do more tawbah and istighfar and ask Allah to keep us on the path of goodness.
We should strive to seek the Night of Qadr, a night that is better than one thousand months. Those who pay Zakat in Ramadan, they should pay it as soon as possible if they have not done it already. You should give Zakatul Fitr before you go to Salatul Eid. It is obligatory (wajib) charity on those who have enough to live for themselves and their families. Those who have not contributed for your Masjid, please do so. The reward of everything is multiplied many times and specially in the last days and nights of Ramadan. Seek Allah's forgiveness and mercy before this month ends.
We pray to Allah to accept our fasts, our prayers and our charity. May He forgive any negligence, mistakes and shortcomings on our part. May He grant us more opportunities and will to do good deeds humbly and sincerely.
The Qur'an has described the feelings of true believers:
Those who do whatever they do while their hearts tremble, for they are returning to their Lord. They race to do good things and they are the first to do them. (Al-Mu'minun 23:60-61)
It is reported in a Hadith:
Prophet's wife Aishah asked the Prophet about this verse, 'Is this about a person who commits adultery, steals and drinks alcohol, but he also fears Allah?' The Prophet said, 'No, it is about the person who fasts, prays and gives charity and with all this he fears Allah.' (Hakim, Al-Mustadrak, 3486)
We do not rely on our good deeds. We rely only on the grace and mercy of Allah. We pray to Him to accept our humble efforts. Our hearts tremble but we are also very grateful that Allah gave the honor to serve Him.
The Prophet - peace be upon him - said:
Abu Umamah reported that a man asked the Prophet -peace be upon him - what is faith? He said, "If your good deeds make you happy and your bad deeds make you unhappy, then you are a person of faith." The man said, "What is sin, O Messenger of Allah? The Prophet said, "If something causes doubt inside you then leave it." (Musnad Ahmad, 21145)
This Hadith gives us the basic characteristic of Islamic faith. It also tells us how to nourish our faith and how to turn away from sin. Everybody likes to be happy. People strive for happiness in different ways; but the sign of faith is to be happy when you do good deeds. It is also the sign of faith to be disturbed and irritated by evil. The believer should never pursue evil. Islam does not say that everything that makes you happy is good. Islam says that good things should make you happy. Islam does not say that everything that makes you sad is bad. Islam says that as a believer you should feel sad when you do something bad or you see something bad.
We are happy that we fasted, prayed more often, did our deeds of charity and goodness during this month of Ramadan. However, we are also sad that during this month we are seeing an unusually increased suffering and loss of lives of thousands of people around the world due to coronavirus in addition to the people especially in Uyghur (China), Kashmir, India and Gaza. We should feel pain at the suffering of any human being, but when we see the suffering of our own brothers and sisters, we should feel more pain and we should be more concerned.
The Prophet - peace be upon him - said,
The example of believers in their mutual love, compassion and care is like a body. If one part of the body has pain the whole body collapses for it with sleeplessness and fever. (Al-Bukhari and Muslim)
