Hearts Greater than Mountains

Looking at these 2 verses together creates a very interesting notion:

Verse 1:

لَوْ أَنزَلْنَا هَٰذَا الْقُرْآنَ عَلَىٰ جَبَلٍ لَّرَأَيْتَهُ خَاشِعًا مُّتَصَدِّعًا مِّنْ خَشْيَةِ اللَّهِ وَتِلْكَ الْأَمْثَالُ نَضْرِبُهَا لِلنَّاسِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ

"Had We sent down this Quran on a mountain, you would certainly have seen it falling down, splitting into pieces because of the fear of Allah, and We set forth these parables to men that they may reflect." (Surah 59, verse 21). 

Verse 2:

...فَإِنَّهُ نَزَّلَهُ عَلَىٰ قَلْبِكَ بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ مُصَدِّقًا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ وَهُدًى وَبُشْرَىٰ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ

"...for surely he revealed it(the Quran) to your heart by Allah's command, verifying that which is before it and guidance and good news for the believers."(Surah 2: verse 97). 

In the first verse, the Quran is being sent down to a mountain, the mountain that symbolizes strength, might, and durability. This mountain that we perceive as unshakable is crumbling upon receiving the words of God. It's an unimaginable sight. 

In the second verse on the other hand, the Quran is being sent to our beloved Prophet, but not just to him but directly to his heart. The heart we perceive as fragile and small is grasping the meaning of the Quran entirely, and through that providing guidance for the rest of mankind. 

Today, you and I can read the Quran. We can grasp it. It can touch our hearts and effect us in ways that give us the strength to move on with our lives peacefully after hardship. Compare your heart to a mountain. The mountain would crumble upon receiving the Quran, but your tiny fragile heart absorbs it fully and is able to grasp it's beautiful meanings. The Quran was meant for your heart. Humans are honored to be created with hearts that can understand God's words without crumbling, unlike vast mountains. Your heart is a home for the Quran. Welcome it with open arms and don't let it feel abandoned. Remember, your heart is greater than a mountain. 

Yusuf- an amazing character

The story of prophet Yusuf(Joseph) is amazing. He gets abandoned and thrown in a well by his own brothers as a child. He's found by strangers who sell him as slave for cheap. He is bought by the king, where soon after the king's wife tries to seduce him. She fails so she puts him in prison, where he stays for years! When he's finally out and his innocence is known, and his brothers come to know who he is at the end of story, he tells the same brothers who caused all of this and threw him in the well to begin with: 

" لَا تَثْرِيبَ عَلَيْكُمُ الْيَوْمَ يَغْفِرُ اللَّهُ لَكُمْ وَهُوَ أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ

"There is no blame on you this day, may Allah forgive you, and He is the Most Merciful of those who show mercy!"

Seriously! After all they did. "There is no blame on you". Wow. What a character and prophetic role model!

Mary and Moses: shaking a tree and striking a sea

What was said to Maryam after experiencing the excruciating pains of childbirth and giving birth to a baby in isolation never ceases to amaze me. Allah(swt) tells her in Surah Maryam: "And shake the trunk of the palm-tree towards you, and fresh ripe dates will drop upon you." Keep in mind Maryam just went through labor. She's all alone. She's exhausted and scared. Now God is ordering her to shake a tree. Why? Can't He provide her with food miraculously as He did before when Prophet Zakariah came to check up on her earlier in the story? (Surah 3, verse 37). Why did she have to shake a tree for dates to fall, when Allah could have made the dates come to her without any effort from her side? Something about this scenario is quite striking. 

But then there is the story of Prophet Moses, who God also orders to strike the sea with a stick in order for it to split and save him and his people from the tyrannic Pharoah. Why did Moses have to strike the sea with his stick when God could have opened it for him miraculously without any effort from Moses himself? The scenario here is no different than Mary shaking the date-tree. 

Perhaps Allah is teaching us a valuable lesson in these two famous stories of honorable people. No matter who you are to God, you have to do your own labor in order to receive the fruit. You have to give up something from your own self in order to see the change ahead. We cannot rely on "God's magic" when we have not put our own effort in that which we want. 

We see communities that need change and ask for a miracle to occur. What can one person do? Not much, but it may be that little effort from one that brings change and brings God's help, as Maryam's shake and Moses's strike brought God's help from above. 

A prime example in today's society is Deah Barakat, may Allah have mercy on him, his wife and sister in law. Deah was a dental student that knew of the disheartening situation in Syria, just as we all know of it. We all know it hurts to be in the place of these refugees who have very little and who have lost so much. Yet what do we physically do about it? Deah was one person. What could he do for these refugees? He did what he could. One person wanted to give from what he could, his dental experience. It was a rather small gesture, yet how far has it stretched today? Deah didn't wait for the miracle to come from God. He shook the tree. He struck the sea. And now we see the fruit. His simple goal of $20,000 has now surpassed half a million dollars! Mashallah. This is what it means to put your own effort rather than idly wait for intervention. Put your own sweat into it, and God will be there with you till the end of the journey. 

We as Muslims are taught to be the change we want to see around us. God says repeatedly in the Quran that He will not change a nation until the individuals themselves change on the inside. We cannot sit on the sideline waiting. We need to plant the seed in order to see the harvest. 

Belief is important. Yet what follows belief is action, which is just as necessary. In the Quran, Allah numerously pairs the verbs "believe" and "do good actions" together as one. We cannot believe in God's assistance without trying to physically assist the situation ourselves. Believing is doing. 

There are so many lessons that can be derived from the orders Allah gave Maryam and Prophet Musa. Yet the question is, how are these lessons being reflected in our own lives? May Allah give us the ability to shake the tree in order for us to see the fruit ahead. Ameen.  

God will never give you more than you can handle

After a long, tiresome, and stressful day, there is no better way to unwind than reading the last verse of chapter 2, Albaqara, in the Quran. 

God starts off this verse by reminding us that He will never place a burden on a human being more than he/she can handle. 

لَا يُكَلِّفُ اللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِلَّا وُسْعَهَا 

"God does not burden any human being with more than he is well able to bear". 

Never. We all have different thresholds, and no one knows them better than our Creator. And here, He assures us that every trial, test, or affliction that comes our way is indeed within the capacity that we can handle. This statement alone lifts every worry off my chest. It tells me that nothing I go through is done in vain. Rather, everything has its purpose and we simply trust Him to do what's ultimately best for us in the long run, although we cannot always see that instantly. Yet knowing that God knows the capacity of what we can handle gives us comfort in that which we are going through. 

As the verse continues:

 لَهَا مَا كَسَبَتْ وَعَلَيْهَا مَا اكْتَسَبَتْ

"In his favor shall be whatever good he does, and against him whatever bad he does". 

Anything good you do is for yourself, to your benefit, and for your advantage in the hereafter. And anything bad you do will weigh you down on the day of judgement. God gave us options: to do good and strive for the best for ourselves, our families and surroundings, or to aim low and do wrong, which ultimately affects us in ways that we will later regret. It's up to us to use what God gave us, our senses and the many blessings, for us or against us. 

The rest of the verse is followed by a beautiful Dua (supplication). I feel like this supplication is God's gift for you and I. He who knows us knows what we need, and here He gives us the perfect words to ask for just that. 

رَبَّنَا لَا تُؤَاخِذْنَا إِن نَّسِينَا أَوْ أَخْطَأْنَا

"Our Lord and Sustainer, do not punish us if we forget or make mistakes"

At the end of the day, no matter how pious and good we strive to be, we will fall in error, make mistakes, and forget what's best for us. And God knows it too. That's why He gave us this prayer. No human is perfect. We will make mistakes. Yet the best of us are those who will recognize those mistakes and do something to fix them. What a beautiful supplication to give us to put ease in our hearts and lift our spirits. 

 رَبَّنَا وَلَا تَحْمِلْ عَلَيْنَا إِصْرًا كَمَا حَمَلْتَهُ عَلَى الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِنَا

"Our Lord and Sustainer! Lay not upon us a burden as You lay upon those who lived before us"

God, we know that people in the past have gone through punishments, trials, and tribulations. They may have had the capacity to endure such, yet we cannot. We are fragile and weak without You. Give us that faith to handle what we can handle and nothing more. 

 رَبَّنَا وَلَا تُحَمِّلْنَا مَا لَا طَاقَةَ لَنَا بِهِ

"Our Lord and Sustainer, do not let us bear burdens which we have no strength to bear"

Although God already started this verse attesting this, He still gives us the prayer to ask for it. He already told us that no human will be given more than what he/she can handle, yet again He gives us a prayer for it. Why? Perhaps to reassure us and provide us with even greater comfort in this premise. Going through a rough wave? Don't worry, you can handle it. 

 وَاعْفُ عَنَّا وَاغْفِرْ لَنَا وَارْحَمْنَا 

"And erase our sins, and grant us forgiveness, and bestow Your mercy upon us"

This part of the verse is one of my favorites. So many beautiful commands in one statement. Here, we are begging God to forgive us, wipe out our sins and have mercy on us. We will fall into error, so please forgive our shortcomings and erase the many sins we have gathered. And most importantly, envelope us with Your endless mercy, in our life and in our death, and on the day we stand before You. 

أَنتَ مَوْلَانَا فَانصُرْنَا عَلَى الْقَوْمِ الْكَافِرِينَ

"You are our Lord Supreme, our Protector and Master, so help us against people who deny the truth"

How many times in this verse do we call upon God as our Lord and Sustainer? Several, which shows us that all affairs go back to Him. Everything goes back to Him, including ourselves. We put our full trust and reliance on Him alone. He is our protector. So what do we ask in the final statement of this supplication? To help us deal with those who reject us and our faith and our belief in Him. Prophets of God came with a clear message and signs from God, yet there were still those who rejected the truth and plotted against it. Today, we see people who hate believers simply because they believe. Our job is to return hate with peace, and what else? Turn back to God and ask Him for His help against those who oppress us for what we believe. He will aid us when humanity fails us, and that's all we need. 

This entire verse is such a blessing. It's God's gift for me every night as I end my day reciting it. Embody it, dissect it, memorize it, and let it be your refuge at the end of a long day as it has been mine. 

The Best Gift My Mom Ever Gave Me

Until this very day, I cannot ride in the same car as my mom without her asking me to listen to her reciting Quran to perfect her memorization. Since I was little, I always remember seeing my mom with her green Quran that she carried everywhere, and I mean everywhere. It was a book conveniently divided into 10 different sections. So whenever she was reviewing a particular chapter, she would take that section of her Quran and slip it into her purse. Commuting from place to place, waiting for our food at a restaurant, getting to the mosque before the call to prayer, and getting stuck in traffic all had one thing in common: they forced my mom to pull out her Quran and read. 

As a little girl, I was always curious to know what it was in that green book that made my mother so attached to it. Was it the way it sounded, or the meaning of its words, or the feeling it put the reader in that grasped my mom's attention so much? I was eager to find out. 

As humans, we are all preoccupied with something in our lives, whether it be our work, children, phones, books, or the likes. Yet as mothers and parents, what preoccupies us no longer affects us alone, but our children as well. Children look up to their parents growing up, and what they see their parents doing will open their curiosity, as it did with me. 

I wanted to know what was so special about the Quran my mom always held and frequently spoke of. So I explored. I read. I asked. I questioned. And I found the answer. And until today, I am still finding new answers. This book is like a hidden treasure that has no end. The amount of pearls are infinite. You just keep digging, and you will keep finding. 

Looking back at my life today and everything my mother ever did for my siblings and me, the one thing I appreciate the most by far from my mother is her time with the Quran. She fulfilled our needs, but always showed us that the Book of God has a priority of its own. In turn, this has, by God's grace, reflected in my upbringing, as well as my siblings'. Had it not been for my mother's physical, mental, and emotional attachment to this book, I may have never even thought of exploring it. I may have never turned to it with my doubts, and may have never found that ultimate companionship in it. 

So as advice to myself and mothers and mothers-to-be: preoccupy yourself with that which you will want your children to be preoccupied with in the future. Children follow your footsteps. Give them a gift that has no price-tag. Helping them build a strong relationship with God's book will mean more to them than anything you ever did for them. And take it from someone who's been there. 

YOU have paradise eternally

It's interesting that in Chapter 43 of the Quran (Alzukhruf/ The Ornaments), God talks about Paradise addressing the reader as if it is for him directly. The word used more than once that makes it seem that way is أنتم, meaning "you". YOU are in heaven eternally. Enter paradise YOU and your spouses together. This is the paradise YOU have earned for YOUR actions. 

Now looking at the very next verses that talk about the punishment of hell, they not once suggest this is for the reader. Instead of using the word أنتم or "you", God says هم or "they". THEY wronged THEMSELVES and are now in this state. THEY will regret THEIR past actions. 

Reading this gives the reader hope in God and in his eternal bliss. Sometimes we feel like we are not doing enough and that goodness is just for a certain type of people, or "them". But it doesn't have to be that way. It can be me, you, we, us. أنتم: you all.