Danger Signs All Over

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum

Dear Friends

I pray that you are well.

The number of paths to Allah is as the number of breaths of Allah's creation. We have to discover and search where our individual paths lie. Part of this discovery is coming to know ourselves and knowing what we can do and cannot do.

The greatest thing you can do is to discover what the Lord wants from you. Once you discover this, it is beautiful if you can spend the rest of your life devoting to your Lord.

Ali bin Abi Talib, the fourth righteous Caliph, may Allah be pleased with him, used to say he knew the pathways to heaven better than the pathways on earth.

Heaven has its pathways. If you don't know where you are going you can get lost. We need teachers who have traveled the pathways to show us the way.

Allah has made His creatures such that we need teachers. There are different kinds of teachers. In the realm of religion, they have studied with an unbroken chain of teachers all the way back to the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him peace. There are teachers who can teach you knowledge. There are teachers who will refine your character--they help you know the perishing nature of the world and the diseases of the heart. There are teachers who can teach you how to attain the higher level of faith (ihsan).

However, it goes back to our own free will. Are you going to discover and follow?

It is important to have good companionships. Don't underestimate the power of companionship. If you have bad companionship, it is not easy to find the right way and if you are on the right way, it is not easy to keep going.

People are easily affected by the environment. In this day and age, in which people are being bombarded with entertainment and consumerism, and many societies seem to embrace the culture of greed and impunity and people are oblivious to decency and morality, it is a huge struggle to practice the religion properly and if the iman is not strong, slowly but surely you will slip and fall. If people around you are God conscious and Godfearing, they will protect you from the causes of destruction and plots of shaytan.

Remember, shaytan to mankind, is a clear enemy, who is always lurking to enter your heart and snatch your iman away. If he is unsuccessful from one door, he will try to enter from another door. Just like there is an inherent danger in physical travel, there is an inherent danger in our spiritual travel as well.

You are walking on this earth with danger signs all over and if you ignore these signs, you will eventuallly self destruct.

So, choose your companions well, go out there and discover the good teachers and learn from them.

May Allah protect and increase our iman and grant us righteous companions and righteous teachers. May Allah grant us tawfiq to the highest station. Ameen.

Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.

And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam