Thursday, August 11, 2011

Ramadhan: An Academy


Allah created us in two distinct parts--a body made of soil, clay and dirt; and a ruh, which is blown into the body when we were in our mother's womb. The ruh, interestingly, was created way before our body is created. All of us, took a covenant with Allah, to obey Him, and acknowledge that He is Our Lord. 

And (remember) when your Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their seed (or from Adam's loin his offspring) and made them testify as to themselves (saying): "Am I not your Lord?" They said: "Yes! We testify," lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection: "Verily, we have been unaware of this." (7:172)

Yes! We testified!

Each and every one of us has indeed testified in front of Him, that He is Our Lord, Our Master, even before we were born. But why, when we take a look at our society today, it seems that most of us do not even believe that there is a God, let alone to obey one. We are already born with the belief of God, deep inside of us, we already have the light, because we took an oath, but, some of us forget that. We forget that Allah is Our Master, the Lord of the Heavens and the Earth, and we even forget that we have no ownership of our own body and soul, because they all belong to Him. 

We forget the most important thing of all. 

Everything that Allah creates, is dependent, and has its own needs. Only Allah has no needs, while all of His creations have needs, so as our body and ruh. The body needs food, nourishment, the desire for beautification. As the body is made of earth, everything that the body needs comes from the earth. The ruh is different. It comes from Allah, hence its needs must come from Allah as well. 

Unfortunately, man runs after fulfilling the needs of the body, fulfilling their desire while neglecting the ruh's needs. We are concerned of our own self indulgence, and we tend to forget that our ruh needs its food and nourishment too. We keep feeding our body, but our ruh is in hunger, starving, until it falls sick, and eventually dies. It's like having two children, we feed one child until he is obese, while leaving the other to starve to death. 

So what happens when our ruh is sick? Our iman (faith) gets thinner, lighter, until one day, we have no more faith towards Allah. We do not believe in Allah anymore, and fails to obey Him. Nauzubillah. The food for the ruh is the revelation from the Quran. Nothing is better than the Quran, which is the light itself. The light, which is Quran, will come in contact with the light already inside our ruh, when we made the agreement with Allah before we were born. Light upon Light. (24:35)

For 11 months, we strive to fulfil the needs of our body, thus the body and the ruh are in imbalance. Fasting, on the other hand, holds up the need of the body, weakening the body's needs, allowing some space to grow for the ruh. The body will be weakened, and the ruh could be strengthen in Ramadan. How? By giving it the light--the Quran. That's why Ramadan is the month of the Quran. 

Wonderful, isn't it? How Allah knows that man tends to neglect the ruh, hence Allah provides us a month, for us to train our body and ruh to be in balance. So we could not let this fantastic opportunity to be wasted, each second in Ramadan is priceless. Let's us make full use of our Ramadan, who knows, we might not come across another Ramadan again.

Salam Ramadan, 
Erni Bidin. 
Wonderful 11 Ramadhan 
Source: Nouman Ali Khan's speech on Youtube; Relationship between Fasting and Holy Quran in Ramadan.

1 comment:

farah eliza said...

salam erni sayang~

wahh, we did notes on the same video! ;) saya pun ade wat nota smbil dengar video tuu. dgr, pause, salin, dgr, pause salin. cam nak salin je sume die ckp sbb terms and analogi die sgt menarik n logik. 30 minit video, 3 m/s nota. mmg bermanfaat btul vdeo nouman. nnt sy share sy punye lak eh, wpun hampir sama je kte nyer. nevertheless, thanks for sharing! salam ramadhan :)