Religious Burnout.

People often go through a phase of religiosity and piety, which is then followed by a burn out period. For example, for a couple of weeks - you found it incredibly easy to get up at night and pray Qiyam, but now you feel lazy to get out of bed. Don’t worry, this is natural & very common.

For the Prophet ﷺ said: “Verily, the iman of one of you will wear out within him, just as a shirt becomes worn out, so ask Allah to renew iman in your hearts.”, and someone asked, “O Messenger of Allah, how do we renew our iman?”

I've found that as I've gotten older that most virtues or wise principles are paradoxes. "When you give, don't expect anything return," I think is 100% a wise, virtuous principle, and yet another wise, virtuous principle is "good relationships are restoring, not draining." If your relationships are draining you, i.e., you're giving more to them than you're getting back, then they aren't good relationships to you. At best, those people are kind of unaware and self-centered. At worst, they are exploiting you.

A Good Ending
حُسن الخاتمة

Translated by
Abbas Abu Yahya

Shaykh Muhammad bin Salih al-Uthaymeen said:

‘The goal of having a good ending is not that you die whilst you are in the masjid, or while you are upon a prayer mat, or you die with a Qur’aan in your hands. Indeed the best of all creation died while he was on his bed.

His friend as-Siddiq Abu Bakr died while on his bed, and he was the best of the Companions.

Khalid bin Waleed died while he was on his bed, and he was given the title the unsheathed sword of Allaah,

How do you need to be spoken to? What do you need to take from people? What are you putting up with, or pretending to like, from duty or obligation? Consult your resentment. It’s a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology. It’s part of an evil triad: arrogance, deceit, and resentment. Nothing causes more harm than this underworld Trinity. But resentment always means one of two things. Either the resentful person is immature, in which case he or she should shut up, quit whining, and get on with it,

There is this one sin that we keep falling in again and again…and again. We keep on repenting and seeking forgiveness, but we fall into it again and again. You give up. You submit to doing more sins. You think you’re hopeless. You fill your heart and mind with dark/desperate/hopeless thoughts. You think you’re worthless. You drown in negativity and desperation. In the end, those with no or weak eemaan commit suicide. AstaghfirulLah.

If you fall in these categories of Muslims, then Stop This Now!

Our weakest moments show up the strength of our faith. When the storm hits, what do we do? Is the Almighty Allah the first One we turn to for help? Involve Him from the start. He’s the only One who will help you in your lowest moments. Don’t count on others. They’ll fail you miserably! Do you have scars to show? They are proof of inner strength. They show us that we’re all warriors really; even if we were gasping for air for a while. Scars show what we’ve been through & how strong we are for coming out of it

Get in the habit of consistently doing good deeds and Insha'Allah even when you're unable to fulfil them on a regular basis you will still get the reward for them. This could be something as simple as visiting a sick or elderly relative regularly, giving Sadaqah every week or setting time aside for Salawats or the Qur'an at a specific time daily.

QUESTION THREAD. (MUSLIMS ONLY)

Kindly answer and RT. 1. Your favourite Surah? Give reasons.

Seeking knowledge – which a Muslim needs to establish what is binding on him from the worship of his Lord – is an obligation that is compulsory on him.

You cannot truly implement the worship of ALLĀH unless you first seek the necessary knowledge required for you to properly put into effect this worship that ALLĀH has made obligatory on you, and for which purpose He created you.

The Messenger of ALLĀH (ﷺ) made seeking knowledge an obligation upon every Muslim,

Respected ones, we shouldn't address young men like kids!

Everything around them undermines their intellect and weakens their sense of responsibility; from their upbringing, to the "education" system which turns them into idle and dependent individuals - unable to make a living until they earn their bachelor's degree - to the media of mediocrity and nonsense...

Address him as: 'O' young man' or 'My son'...

But don't make him feel as if he is still a kid.

A - avoid negative people, habits and substances
B - believe in yourself religiously
C - control your mind
D - don’t give up, don’t give in
E - enjoy every single moment of life
F - Find repose within yourself
G - give more of what you want to receive
H - hang on to your dreams I - invest in yourself
J - just start it
K - keep trying
L - love yourself, love life
M - master your emotions
N - never succumb to depression, worry or anxiety
O - observe everything
P - practice till perfection
Q - quit your vices, not your vision
R - resist temptations

Reframing Risks and Embracing Calculated Vulnerabilities

The first step in understanding risk is to recognize it and accept it. You should approach risk realistically and ascertain just how much discomfort or fear you are willing to endure during the your journey in life. Certain ventures will be worth taking but others should be avoided in order to minimize losses. Avoiding risks simply because they seem intimidating is an ill-advised strategy, since there are potential benefits as well as pitfalls inherent in almost all endeavors in life.

REASON FOR LOSS OF BARAKAH FROM TIME

🎓Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Saalih al-‘Uthaymeen (رحمه الله) warned:

If you see your time pass by & your life go, & you have not produced anything worthwhile or beneficial and you do not find any blessing in your time then be wary that the statement of Allah has overcome you:
“And obey not him whose heart We have made heedless of Our Remembrance, one who follows his own lusts and whose affair (deeds) has been lost.” [Al-Kahf: 28]

Salaah is the most fundamental pillar of Islam; it is the hallmark of faith and the key to paradise. So, no one can exaggerate the importance of salaah in Islam. We read in the Qur'an: "On the Day of Judgment, those in hellfire will be asked, 'Why are you in hell?' They would answer because we were not among those who used to pray, nor were in the habit of feeding the poor. Rather, we were simply indulging with those who used to indulge and we used to deny the Day of Reckoning until death came upon us." (Qur'an 74: 43-47).

Relation of Husband and Wife.✔️

Ibn al Qayyim said:

If it (sex) is done wholeheartedly, in a friendly and loving manner, with full desire and with the intention of reward only than one can get complete pleasure which no other thing can give. It can only be attained by doing it in a best way. The sign of it is, after doing it every part of the body feels calm, eyes feel cool by seeing the beloved (wife), and the ears feels happiness by listening to her soft and beautiful voice,

No one can be a good person without integrating the capacity for aggression. That is because you cannot say "no" without the capacity for aggression. If you really say it, "no" means there is nothing you can do to me that will make me change my mind. Or conversely, it means I will play for higher stakes than you are willing to. Unless you have your aggression integrated, there is no chance you can say that, and if you did, no one would take you seriously because they would know it was just a show.

Parents, rely on Allah first and foremost, and then do your best in the realm of parental efforts. Nothing can replace your love and attention for your own. There is no good substitute for your genuine care about the details of your child's inner life, thoughts and feelings. There is no adequate replacement for the bond you should have with your children, where the kids know they can come to you with literally anything.

Have frank conversations about sensible topics even if you feel kind of uncomfortable.

When you stop and really think about it, conventional life advice—all the positive and happy self-help stuff we hear all the time—is actually fixating on what you lack. It lasers in on what you perceive your personal shortcomings and failures to already be, and then emphasizes them for you. Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations: Be happier. Be healthier. Be the best, better than the rest. Be smarter, faster, richer, sexier, more popular, more productive, more envied, and more admired.

Polygyny will not work in a system where people still believe in splitting bills with their wives. Your wife may not mind spending her wealth entirely on you, but she will most likely not spend a penny on your new wife directly or indirectly. Instead she may withdraw all the support you have been enjoying, leaving you naked to the public. Let's be frank, that's the likely natural human response.

So, before you start licking you lips at the thought of taking a second wife,

When a man’s priority is his worldly assets, then to compromise on his religion is not considered serious anymore! The increasing number of such opportunities is scary. For this reason, we find it has become so easy for people to say (or do) the wrong just to satisfy certain individuals, or merely to attain particular positions etc. We may not realise it, but this is actually a form of ‘selling one’s religion’.

Let It Go

🔖How else can we nurture contentment in our hearts? It is by letting go of disputes & disagreements and forgiving people. Allāh ﷻ says about the confrontation with enemies, 🔹“And if they incline to peace, then incline to it [also] and rely upon Allah,”
[Surah Anfal ,8: 61].

🔖Allāh ﷻ is asking us to make peace with the enemies if they give up fighting too. What do we learn by this?