My favourite day of the week

Wednesday is my favourite day of the week. I am usually utterly exhausted every Wednesday afternoon/evening, but Alhamdullillah this is still my favourite day of the week. The reason for this is because Wednesday is the day we have our ladies workshops at the Mosque. It’s part of my schedule already, the rest of the week I can do whatever other work I need to. My work includes counselling, psychological assessments and research and once again Alhamdullillah (All praise is due to Allah) that I am able to schedule things the way I want to so that I have time for everything. Okay, sure, I don’t get as much money as other people in the psychology profession with the same qualifications as I do, but I am very happy with the way things are for me. See if I get a full time job then that means I won’t be able to do things like our ladies workshops and that will not be good at all.

You may be wondering why it’s such a big deal or what’s so special about these workshops, well I’ll tell you. Once a week myself, and a group of ladies get together and run workshops for ladies in our community. The group we belong to is called; “Islamic Awareness Group”, we have a social worker, two learned Islamic teachers, a lady with a background in education, and me. With the will of Allah we have managed to do some good programmes to enhance the lives of Muslim women. We do things like parenting skills, marriage and dealing with issues in marriage, self reformation and so on. The beautiful thing about this is that we get to interact with our fellow Muslim sisters and at the same time we get to witness their growth and improvement as they implement the skills and teachings that they learn each week. SubhanAllah (Glory be to Allah); It’s wonderful when someone tells us that ; “I’ve tried this and it works”, or “my husband can really see the difference in me, he encourages me to come for this.” This is really rewarding, but the most rewarding thing is that we are doing this only for the pleasure of Allah Almighty and this makes the world of difference.

It’s actually funny when I think about how I got involved in this group. This group started out before I joined them, there were three ladies at the time and I happened to know one of them from some work we did together in the past. At the time a friend of mine (a fellow psychologist) and I were doing independent work and when I heard about these workshops I contacted this lady I knew with the intention of networking. That was all I intended, I thought that if we could share contacts and so on then it would make things easier. Allah had a different plan, and undoubtedly Allah’s plan was the better one.

So Islamic Awareness Group asked me to help them out, do a few sessions for their new workshop, which was on marriage in Islam, and I agreed to do two sessions. That went on for a while, and then we decided that we needed a new workshop, so we began a self reformation workshop. After a while the lady I initially knew from the group had to leave and they asked me to join in full time. So here I am today. Every Wednesday is workshop day and do I enjoy it (Alhamdullillah).

One of our Islamic teacher’s explained that we should purify our intentions and make sure that we do things only for the pleasure of Allah because then whatever we do becomes a form of worship. She said to us that every time we leave our homes on Wednesdays we should make the intention that we are going out for the pleasure of Allah, meeting our sisters for the pleasure of Allah, learning for the pleasure of Allah, and listening to the words and teachings of Quraan and Hadith purely for the pleasure of Allah. She told us that this would make a huge difference and she was right!

I look forward to going out on a Wednesday and I always feel extra happy on this day. Sometimes with my other work I feel fed up and tired of doing the work, other times I don’t feel like leaving home to go and work, especially when I have to go very early in the morning. But it’s never like that on a Wednesday, on Wednesday’s I can feel the barakah (blessings) of Allah and I know that everything will work out well. All my chores for the day, everything always works out well on a Wednesday. Once again SubhanAllah!

I guess this is a clear example of how even the work you do can become a form of worship, and truly when you do something only for the pleasure of Allah then you can see and feel the difference. You may not always get paid for what you do, but the reward you get (in this earth already) far surpasses any monetary reward or any other worldly reward. SubhanAllah.

I am so fortunate that Allah has chosen me to be a part of these workshops and a part of the Islamic Awareness Group. My fellow sisters in the group are the nicest group of women I’ve met. They are down to earth, humble and easy going and I love them all for that. It makes life easier when working with people who are so easy to get along with and so understandable. But I think that when you do things for the pleasure of Allah then you forget about yourself and that’s when you are able to accept many things without being offended.

Alhamdullillah for Wednesdays, Alhamdullillah that I have been given a chance to share the little knowledge that I have, Alhamdullillah for showing me that life can be wonderful when your intentions are correct. The truth is that I have learnt far more than the ladies who come for the workshops. I have learnt from my fellow facilitators and from every single woman who attends our workshops.

More than once I’ve been offered a full timejob, but this would mean that I would have to give up Wednesday workshops. I couldn’t bear to do this (through Allah’s guidance), I feel like that would be giving up a wonderful gift, only for material and selfish reasons. Simply put, I can’t really imagine my life without these workshops, and it’s all because Allah has put barakah in them. So yes, Wednesday is my favourite day of the week. How long this will last Allah alone knows, but for now I appreciate whatever I get and I am happy.

All Praise is due to Allah who definitely knows what is best for all His servants. Glory be to Allah, the Greatest, the Most Kind!

Image from here

The Whisperings of Shaytaan will never end

Things here in Johannesburg finally seem to be getting back to normal. There were many holidays that have just passed. April is usually a month of holidays; with the Easter weekend, and 27th April Public Holiday in South Africa known as Freedom Day, to commemorate the 1st ever Democratic Voting Day for all citizens of all races in this country, which took place in 1994, we usually get many days off in April. Then shortly after that it’s a public holiday for the 1st May, and South Africa has a system whereby if a Public Holiday happens to fall on a Sunday, then the Monday becomes the holiday since Sunday is already supposed to be a holiday. I have no idea who thought that up, but the people are not complaining, why would we when we get extra holidays, right?

Anyway, now that things are seemingly reaching normality, it’s time for us to begin again with our weekly workshops for women. Usually we deal with topics like “Parenting Skills”; “Marriage”; “Self-Reformation”, etc. Topics that are general and not purely Islamic in nature. The way it works is that we divide our session into two parts, before tea and after tea. In one part we present the Islamic perspective of the topic, and in the other part we present the Psychological and Social Perspective of the same topic. I think it works really well, Alhamdullillah!

Well, this time we decided to do something completely different, so we ended up choosing topics on Imaan, Sabr (Patience) and Shukr (Gratitude). I think this is when Shaytaan began his whisperings. When we sat in our first meeting deciding what we were going to present I looked at the topics and thought to myself, ‘There’s no way we’re going to have anything to present from a Psychological and Social Perspective’, and since this is usually the area in which I have more knowledge (not a lot of knowledge, but I guess it’s better than nothing), I began feeling a bit lost. I really felt that there was not much that I could contribute to this particular workshop and was even wondering if they needed me for this one at all. I didn’t recognize this as the whisperings of shaytaan until last week when we had another meeting.

One of the other facilitators mentioned that she had a moment where she was about to call us all and suggest that we cancel this workshop because it was almost time to start and she had nothing prepared at all. Alhamdullillah, through her wisdom and strength she was able to recognize this as the whisperings of shaytaan and that made her stronger in her resolve to continue.  While we were discussing this it dawned upon us that this workshop is different to our others because of the content, and inshaa-Allah the topics we’ve chosen (with the guidance of Almighty Allah) will help to bring people closer to Allah (swt) and so this would be a very good reason for shaytaan to make extra attempts to alter our minds and even try and steer us towards not having the workshop at all.

Alhamdullillah, we have now made up our minds to turn to Allah and continue this workshop. From my part I have to say that after feeling so lost I decided to ask Allah for help and soon after that the ideas began flowing in my mind and it became so easy for me to prepare our presentations. Seriously, it was like things to talk about suddenly appeared in my mind from nowhere and I was actually excited to prepare. My fellow facilitators had similar experiences. Although they had nothing prepared, somehow the information just came to them. For instance, one of the lady's sister sent some books with her to pass on to her daugter-in-law. When she looked at the books her sister had sent she found that it had a lot of information pertaining to this workshop. Then when she went through all her previously researched material, she found further information. This is the same lady who wanted to cancel the workshop because she thought she had nothing prepared, and now she has so much information she doesn't know if there'll be time to present it all. 

 SubhanAllah (Glory be to Allah). It's absolutely amazing how things work out when you turn to Allah!

Inshaa- Allah we will be starting our first session this coming Wednesday and I pray to Allah that it all goes well and that Allah accepts our efforts (which are only minor) and that Allah helps us to gain knowledge and understanding that will bring us closer to Him through this and of course I cannot forget to pray that Allah Almighty protects us all from the sneaky whisperings of shaytaan, which are so subtle that many times we are not even able to recognize it.

Allah says; whose meaning is:

"Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of mankind,
he King of mankind,
the God of mankind,
from the evil of the insidious whisperer
who whispers in people’s breasts
and comes from the jinn and mankind."

(Holy Qur'aan- Sur'ah Naas (Mankind)-Chapter 114: Verse 1-6)



Image taken from: http://www.moonmaiden-gothic-clothing.co.uk/moonmaiden-whisperings.htm