ready to display their piety in public, but few are really pious in private. Everyone wants to see Islam established in the whole world, but no one has time to establish it in the individual self. Everybody

tremble in fear of Hell. Everybody is enthusiastic about Islam when it is embellished with material grandeur, but no one is interested in the Islam, which shakes one’s soul and makes one live in awareness

what is just and forbid what is evil; they attend to their prayers and pay the alms-tax and obey God and His Messenger. On these God will have mercy. He is mighty and wise.8 Their Lord answers them, saying:

that a woman occupies in Islam. Everything in this world is a piece of property, or a possession. The best possession in the world is a pious woman.15 Shall I not tell you what the best form of wealth

Sufism. Kashmiri culture means Sufi culture. Kashmir is perhaps the only place in the world where Islam was spread only through the Sufis. As such, a revival of Kashmiriat in Kashmir would in fact mean

based wholly on peace and love. Indeed, Sufism is only another name for a culture of peace and love. What is Sufi culture? In the words of the Sufis, it is peace with all. This Sufi culture is desirable as

communicated the message of peace and love. This brought about a tremendous revolution in Kashmir, where Islam spread far and wide. For instance, Shayhkh Nooruddin Noorani (d. 1439) one of the great Sufis of

manage to convey their message to people and receive a great reward from God for this work. This is what has been called in the Quran one of the two best things, that is, either success in dawah work in

‘they’ People generally divide human beings into ‘we and they’, but this is not the way of Islam. The way of Islam is to look at non-Muslim human beings as madu. When we divide people into ‘we and they’,

bonds of matrimony, they are expected to do their utmost, till the day they die to honor and uphold what the Quran calls their firm contract, or pledge.11 To this end, the full thrust of the shari’ah is

divorce; the laws it lays down in this regard exist primarily, therefore, as checks, not incentives. Islam regards marriage as an extremely desirable institution, hence its conception of marriage as the rule

“Marriage is one of my sunnah (way). One who does not follow it does not belong to me.”12 Although Islam permits divorce, it lays great emphasis on its being a concession, and a measure to be resorted to

(Prophet of Islam, Sahih al-Bukhari) THE above Hadith teaches us about having regard for others. If you study the corpus of Hadith, you will learn that it was the practice of the Prophet of Islam to have regard

different books of Hadith. According to Sahih alBukhari: “Abu Hurayra has recorded that the Prophet of Islam observed—God has ninety nine names, one less than a hundred. Those who have counted these words will

he is able to understand these different aspects of God. Conscious realization of these aspects is what is meant by enumeration of God’s names. Those who attain the realization of God in this way will undoubtedly

the prophets who appeared between them, and what is common to the teachings of these exalted prophets. By aqim ud-deen is here meant the establishment of Islam: the oneness of God, obedience to God, faith

glade your blood stream will turn into a blood storm. This is what happens when we stand in the presence of a tiger. At every moment Islam brings man to the realization not only of the Creator of the lion

ten-thousand-strong army by announcing and then fighting the Quraysh and capturing Makkah. Instead, what he did was that he made preparations for the journey in complete secrecy and travelled along with

practical examples of this very Sunnah of peace. As indicated above, peace is the general commandment in Islam, while war is only a rare exception, to be resorted to only when it becomes an unavoidable compulsion