Twins of Faith Day 1 Part 1

I don’t know where to begin in this sharing. Basically the twins of faith refer to both the Pillar of Islam and Pillar of Iman, which in short Iman and Amal. The theme for the conference is Best of Nations – Building an Exemplary Community. You can read all about it in the webpage. 

As I mentioned, the activity was jam packed from 10am till 10pm. Throughout the talks, the main motto echoed was ilmu without amal is as good as amal without ilmu,  both are in vain. Amal meant here is action on the ilmu, be it via sharing, teaching and basically giving back to the rest so that we can be the Best of Nation, Muslims as a whole. I’ll be going through in gist what the speakers mentioned and hopefully we will get the message they are sending.


Day 1: 24th December 2011
The session started with recitation of Al-Quran by a local ustaz, I am so sorry for not taking notes on the ustaz’s name. He recited parts of Surah Al Imran, ayat 102-110. Up next was Sheikh Yahya Ibrahim. He addresses the conference’s theme, which very much described in the ayat recited by the Qari. 


Al Imran 102-110
Translation of Sahih International


102: O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims [in submission to Him]. 
103: And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided. And remember the favor of Allah upon you - when you were enemies and He brought your hearts together and you became, by His favour, brothers. And you were on the edge of a pit of the Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus does Allah make clear to you His verses that you may be guided.
104:And let there be [arising] from you a nation inviting to [all that is] good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and those will be the successful.
105: And do not be like the ones who became divided and differed after the clear proofs had come to them. And those will have a great punishment.
106: On the Day [some] faces will turn white and [some] faces will turn black. As for those whose faces turn black, [to them it will be said], "Did you disbelieve after your belief? Then taste the punishment for what you used to reject."
107: But as for those whose faces will turn white, [they will be] within the mercy of Allah . They will abide therein eternally.
108: These are the verses of Allah . We recite them to you, [O Muhammad], in truth; and Allah wants no injustice to the worlds.
109: To Allah belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And to Allah will [all] matters be returned.
110: You are the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah . If only the People of the Scripture had believed, it would have been better for them. Among them are believers, but most of them are defiantly disobedient.


From this ayat, it is clearly stated that we Muslims has to stick together, work in making the world a  better place, help our brothers and sisters from going astray from the guided path. We, every single one of us are ALL responsible of that. Else, we’ll risk seeing the ummah collapsed.


Sheikh Yahya also mentioned that perfection is only attainable through constant pursuit, meaning we could not give up in the quest to create a better ummah. We will face different people and it’s important that we do not judge others by a moment of their life, take it easy on others, but the key message is, never stop in working to make a better ummah.


Next inline was Sheikh Alaa Elsayed, man…. this Sheikh is super-duper funny :) . He has his talk made into very informal and entertaining session. He has loads of sound effect to compliment his points, well, I am a bit biased. I just came back from a 2 days course with him, but I’ll discuss about that later. His topic was Building Blocks. 

I was seated quite in the middle of the auditorium

We know our end goal, a united ummah that helps each other to make the world a better place, but how do we do that? First off we need to have the knowledge, and we need to start taking action. And that is why the first word revealed was ‘Iqra’ which means read, gain as much knowledge as possible and start putting those knowledge into action. Building an ummah should start from the very first step, you got it right, your family, your babies in particular. 


What is the child’s first right? Even before he/she was born? You have to give them a righteous mother or father. You owe your children that. 
And now you can start talking about building an ummah, he mentioned briefly on guides to choose a righteous spouse, for both men and women. We have always been flooded with the hadeeth that guides the men on criteria to look for in a potential wife, but how do we choose the right men? He shared that as well. As I mentioned, he discussed this in detail during the course, which I’ll share later, ok? Main take away from his talk:


Raise your child to be a nation maker, not a nation breaker. One of the tips that he shared was, if you can’t help, don’t hurt. This is pertaining on how to talk to a child. When he/she did something wrong, be careful on how you handle the situation, be mindful of the language that you used. Make sure that if you could not offer solutions or ways to improve, do not turn the fault on them and start calling names. This in the long run may contribute to negative development of the child. I think most parents know this, but when tested during actual scene, some may tend to get carried away.


After the Sheikh, we had a light entertainment from Brother Boona Mohamed, a poet hailed from Canada. He was reciting his poems and the content was heavy. My ability to decipher words was heavily challenged listening to his recitation, he’s good. Throughout the 2 days he was featured quite a few times and some of the poems that he recited was Heroes. Thanks to some of the participant, they have uploaded some of the conference's recording and posted in you tube. 


So that was it the session before lunch on the first day. Pretty tight eh? After lunch, Sheikh Navaid Aziz made his appearance with his topic, I’m Muslim & I’m proud. 

The Sheikh is cute and cuddly like a bear. He has loads of stories, be it the stores from prophets to the stories of sahabah. I was in awe most of the time seeing how eloquent they were with all these stories. I bet they must have memorized the whole Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim and only Allah SWT knows how many more kitab. I am seriously jealous. He shared a story of Umar Ibn al-Khattab on the how proud a Muslim should be. The story goes: 

Umar (r.a.) and his deputy and went to Jerusalem with his slave. They were having one camel on which each of them rode by turn. When Umar (r.a.) was entering Jerusalem it happened to be the slave’s turn to ride on the camel. Though the slave offered his turn to the "Khalifah" but Umar refused and remarked: "The honour of Islam (i.e., being Muslim) is enough for all of us." He entered Jerusalem holding the rope of the camel on which was riding his slave. His clothes were dirty and there were several patches on them. — Encyclopedia of Islam

The moral of the story: We Muslims should be proud by all the Islamic teachings, in this case being fair, and do not prioritize on how the others will look upon us. 
In order for us to be proud as Muslim, the importance of knowledge yet again is stressed, that is the essence of our izzah (honour, strength). 


The main theme of Islam is all ibadah are for Allah, love for one another and have mercy, compassion and forgiveness to others. We need to live by this element to show how good a Muslim is. He also shared few other stories that basically teaches us no matter how great we are being tested, never turn our back against Islam, be proud that we are a Muslim. He left us with a quote from the famous poet, Rumi, 

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself' (Rumi)

After the session, I moved on to one of the available workshop, this one runs by Dr Zaharuddin Abd Rahman, discussing on the Islamic approach of Family Finance. 

He started out the session with the daleel from Al-Quran on Islamic finances rules. Based on his slide pack, both feet of the son of Adam will not proceed to the next stage in the life after death except after he has been asked 5 questions, two of which are: 

1. Where do you get your wealth and 
2. How do you spend it?

I have been surfing high and low to find the hadeeth or related ayat to this statement but to no avail. The closest that I got was the hadeeth narrated by Imam Ahmad about the questions in the grave, the period between death and resurrection, which asked on the 3 questions:

1. Who is your Lord? 
2. What is your religion?
3. Who was that person who was sent to you? 

If any other person out there that can verify the additional 2 questions and what part of the afterlife it was asked, please share it with me. 


It is important to note, a strong reminder issued by one of the amir ul-mu'minin with regards to dealing with Islamic rulings in financial matters:

Khalifah ‘Umar bin al-Khattab RA said to the traders in the Madinah al Munawwarah market:“O traders! Do not trade in our market for those who not posseses knowledge (of Islamic commercial laws); because he may consume riba’ willingly or unwillingly (because of the lacks of knowledge). ”

His session has opened my eyes to know more on my own financial business, how much of my current transaction involves riba’ and what can I do to stop this. 
This is not the end of day-1. Still there are 2 lectures from day 1 to be covered. Bear with me, am working on to complete this before this week ends, insyaAllah. And by the way Happy New Year 2012!!


Wallahua’lam….