Salwa Nazir

Recently my family and I went on a trip to Utah in the U.S. And if you live here in America, you would know that Utah is a very hot state, the temperatures went up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. And we spent most of the day outside hiking, and it got extremely hot. Subhan Allah, it was so hot that we had to take multiple breaks to drink water. This just made me realize the immense blessing of water, which we take for granted every single day. We would not be able to survive without water, its such a huge blessing Alhamdulillah! This also made me think about the heat of Jahannam and how whatever image we can think of as Jahannam, it's much worse than that. The Earth gets so hot, so just imagine h

'You reap what you sow' This is what I think of every time I read this ayah. How we will only reap the fruits of whatever we sow in this dunya. This is logical, and only makes sense-relating it to a farmer. A farmer plants seeds and tends to those seeds, waiting for the fruits. Farmers don't just sit back, and expect to receive harvest without planting any seeds. Just like that, we must plant lots of seeds in this dunya and constantly water them so that they grow, which means more harvest Insha Allah. Along with planting seeds of good deeds, we must weed out the filth contaminating our garden. It's just not logical to think that we can just relax in this dunya without doing

The balance and symmetry throughout the entire Quran is so beautiful, whenever Allahs Mercy is mentioned, His Punishment is as well, and vice versa. These are just a few ayahs with this example, but there are many, many more throughout the entire Quran. We know that Allah swt's Mercy prevails His wrath, but there is still a balance between His Mercy and wrath. Allah swt has Created this balance for Himself, just as He made us a balanced nation. There must be a balance in everything. We must fear Allah because of His punishment, but also love Allah swt because of His infinite Mercy. When we stand up to pray, we worship Allah swt out of fear, because we know how severe His punishment is, b

Subhan Allah, Allah swt wants us to enter His Jannah, He wants to see us succeed. We were not created for the life of this dunya , but we were created for Jannah. This also reminds me of a hadith that says 'The dunya is a prison for the believer, and a paradise for the nonbeliever.' That's why the true happiness begins when we live our lives the way that Allah swt wants us to, the way in which He has commanded us to live our lives-when we act upon the words of Allah swt. This is also when our life truly begins, the true life of our heart, when we obey Allah and strive to have a connection with Him. In my own experience, I found that once I started praying all 5 salah in a day, and st

This ayah teaches us that the promises of shaytaan, what he promises you in this dunya, are transparent. Because the shaytaan always breaks his promises, and if you fall into the trap of shaytaan, following your desires, it will only leave you unsatisfied and sad. This is so prevalent in society when we see people constantly chasing the dunya and money, it leaves them sad and depressed, always wanting more. Because there's something missing, which is Allah. Because Allah always fulfills His promises, and never ever breaks them.

Allah swt gives us all chance after chance every single day by His infinite Mercy. He gives us life after death every single day, because when we're sleeping we are basically dead-since our soul returns to Allah while we sleep. Allah gives us life again and again and again, because He Alone is Ar-Raheem! If Allah wanted, we could have stayed dead, but He gave us life again by His Mercy. And Allah does not bless us with another chance, another day, to waste it; but to become closer to Him and improve. It would not then be reasonable of any of us to ask Allah for another chance (rabb irjiunee- Lord send me back), when He has already given us so many chances-a whole lifetime, actually.

This ayah is beautiful, it truly gives me hope and comfort in times of despair. Allah (swt) is speaking directly to us, and comforting us that He favored us above everyone else, and Guided us when, if He had willed, He could have misled us..then who would have been there to bring us out of the darkness? Out of millions and millions of people Allah (swt) could have guided, He chose to guide me; He chose to guide all of us and made us Muslims Alhamdulillah! As Muslims, we have nothing to fear or lose hope about when Allah is with us, when we are the ummah of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ! We didn't become Muslims by chance, but by Allah's will and Mercy because He wants to see us all in Jannah-we j

Allah (swt) is talking about alcohol and other intoxicants in this ayah, that their harm is greater than their benefit. We can apply this general principle to anything else in our lives, that when something's harm is greater than its benefit, then it can at least be considered makrooh (disliked), if not haram. Ex: Music may not be explicitly stated as haram in Islam, but it's harm is much greater than it's benefit. It leads you away from Allah, and you don't gain anything from listening to it anyways, and it makes you act in an immodest way-because shaytaan runs the music industry. This is just one example of applying the lesson from this ayah into things we see nowadays.

Every generation has its own idols, and nowadays we don't see any statue, any cross, so we think that we are safe from idol worshipping, from shirk. But really, an idol is something you worship, something your hopes are associated with, something you think about all the time, something that replaces the place of Allah (swt) in your heart. Subhan Allah, the younger generations nowadays have strayed away from Allah because of these idols of today. Money, technology, phones, video games, social status; these can all become idols very easily in today's world. In the earlier times, people would cry because they don't have enough money to make Hajj, but now people cry and become depressed

Life is like a set of stairways, you just have to keep climbing, don't look back. While climbing a set of stairs, you just keep climbing, you don't look back at the previous step or step backwards either, right? Just like that, keep moving forward in life, and don't look back at the previous step, focus on the step you are on, and just keep moving, keep improving, until you reach the top; until you reach Allah (swt). You just have to keep climbing higher and higher, just like you do on a set of stairs. Islam is about progress, about improvement, it's shaitan that tries to trick you into looking back and regretting what you did. There's nothing you can do to change the past, we must learn fro