The Purpose of Fasting: Accustoming Self to God-Consciousness
Verse 183 in Surah Baqara prescribes fasting for all believers, and at the end of this verse Allah explains the wisdom behind this command. In the words of Quran commentator Elmalılı Hamdi Yazır: “Fasting has been prescribed on us as it has been prescribed on those before us, so that we may shield ourselves from all sorts of danger and reach the rank of God-consciousness by attaining the faculty o...

Keeping Away From the Haraam is not Sufficient
The need for the fasting person to try to keep away from all sorts of haraam is self-evident. We will not be able to experience the worldly and spiritual pleasure of our acts of worship unless what we eat and what we drink, as well as what we speak and what we listen to, are distant from the stains of haraam. This is a point also emphasized in the words of our Prophet (s.a.w). Al-Ghazali compares...

Hunger
Our only knowledge of desperate hunger comes from the war and famine stories told by family elders and the novels we read. The deprivations suffered in various parts of the world do not affect those that are well-off and comfortable in the slightest. Hunger, as told by Knut Hamsun’s stomach-pains-inducing descriptions, leads to rebellion when it is brought about by injustice in the allocation of ...

Moving Lips and Rustling Pages
One of the fundamentals of Ramadan is the muqabala,* which is a celebration of a sunnah that our Prophet (s.a.w) and Jibreel (a.s.) repeated every Ramadan. Mushafs, which would normally not be carried out in the open any other time, are pressed under the arms, people put on their skull caps and headscarves, and run to the mosques where muqabalas are taking place. Ramadan, which brings life to its...

Moments When Your Faith is Tested
Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of Mary (ra), who gave birth to a fatherless child? Or Moses (ra.), as he was standing right by the Red Sea? Or the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), when he was in the cave?

What binds their stories together is that they submitted to what was coming from God during the most difficult moments that a person could live through. They devoted themselves to Him with an ab...

How Are We to Realize the Mawlid?
The word mawlid is defined as “place and time of birth” in dictionaries. “Mevlid,” or the “Veladet Kandili” in Turkish, is the night on which Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) graced the earth with his arrival, coinciding with the 12th night of the month of Rabi` al-Awwal on the Hijri calendar.

The era of the Prophet and the four Caliphs that followed, as well as the reign of Umayyads and Abbasids, did not s...

What If There Is No Afterlife?
LastProphet regular writer Fatma Bayram offers some thoughts on the Islamic understanding of the Hereafter (akhira), presented as a dialogue between a friend [E] and herself, discussing the precepts and confusing perceptions which are sometimes offered on the subject. What if there is no afterlife? E: The people around me seem to have the hardest time in believing in an afterlife. And I think to...

Not Knowing What to Say
In daily life, we may face objections and questions having to do with religion that are not well-intentioned. Don’t object immediately thinking, “How can you know someone’s intentions?” What gives people with such attitudes away are their expressions, their raised eyebrows, a belittling and mocking tone, and instead of the usually intrigued wide eyes, there are half-closed  eyes that seem lik...

How do you make people feel?
They say that people may forget what they spoke to you about, what they experienced with you, but they will never forget you made them feel. Do we think that when we treat people in a way that makes them feel valuable, that our own value will decrease? And is this why we treat people in such a way that they will feel insufficient, weak, inadequate and helpless? Is our opinion of ourselves so low...

Our shield: Fasting
Fasting is the shield donned by the soul. It represents the human inclination towards the soul in the battle between the soul and the body. Fasting in other faiths According to this statement in the Holy Qur'an, all divine religions prescribe fasting: "O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you, even as it was prescribed for those before you that ye may ward off (evil)." (Surah Bakara:183) T...

The Foundation of the Principles Brought by Our Prophet: Revival
When Allah the Almighty sent our Prophet to the polytheists  of Mecca for the purpose of a divine calling, his first message was to be that Allah is the only deity and that human beings, following death, would be resurrected and brought before Him (s.w.t.) Despite the fact that the polytheists were idolators, they believed in Allah. However, they denied resurrection and the Afterlife. And today, ...

Staying Vigorous With the Qur'an
How frequently does a Muslim read the Qur'an? How did the Companions do it, how do we go about this and is there an average measure to go buy? What is the status of our texts and transliterations readings that are read from one Ramadan to the next? A person who does not adorn their average days with worship and dhikr, how will they, spend important days and times, in remembrance of what? During ...