The Month of Ramadan is Guidance to Mankind

Guidance to Mankind

In his Glorious Book God Says:

{Ramadan is the month in which We sent down the Quran as a guide to mankind, also clear signs for guidance and judgment }

        This Blessed month is the month that Allah wants us to be devoted to worship … To come to know Him better and obey Him more, so that we will be closer to Him, and become spiritually attached to Him so much that we live with Him but without ignoring our needs in life.

        As we devote ourselves to Him, Allah wants us to think about ourselves, so that each of us will understand himself in a precise and thorough manner. Why does Allah want us to do so? It is because what is inside ourselves may well be involuntary… For instance, we might have acquired certain negative or bad attitudes from the environment we live in, or we might have learned certain habits and traditions from our parents or from society at large. We might even discover that we love some people so blindly that we do not question their positions and stands. The problem with this kind of love is demonstrated in Allah’s saying when He talks about the losers:

{ Those whose efforts have been wasted in this life, while they thought that they were acquiring good by their works  }.

Self- Accountability

        This kind of social, psychological and political chaos- and I am saying this to myself as well- in addition to the noise that fills our ears and the distractions we have to attend to in our daily life, makes us alien to ourselves. The Prophetic tradition says: Judge yourselves before you are judged by others”.    Therefore, you ought to contemplate and try to understand yourself.

This is far more important than wasting time chatting uselessly with others. It is very dangerous to ignore this judgment and self-accountability, for its effect involves both worlds. In this world, you will lose the criteria to distinguish between good and evil, and in the hereafter when you have to defend your deeds, you will not find anything to say. Therefore, one ought to know the ulterior motives of his deeds to determine if his deeds and morals are Islamic or not.

Our Duties in this Month

 Thus, with the advent of this blessed month, we have to review the supplication of Imam Zein Al-Abideen in which he defines our responsibilities in this month, and I would like to take this opportunity to underscore the importance of the Imam’s supplications (Al-Sahifa Al –Sujadiah) for they deal with the issues of the individual the society and the general Islamic concepts.

The Imam Says: “And praise belong to God who appointed among those roads (of His beneficence) His month (which means that this month in particular is the month of Allah, for we know that all months are the months of Allah, but the month of Ramadan is for Allah alone. And as such it should be devoted to Him being the month of fasting and Islam, in which the believers ought to read the Quran to become educated and knowledgeable in the issues of Islam. Allah wants us to live the spirit of the call in this month. It is the month of purification in which we are purified from our psychological and moral dirt. It is the month of putting to test, in which we struggle against ourselves to move in the right direction.

It is the month of standing in prayer in which the Quran was sent as guidance to the people, and as clear signs of Guidance and the separator (between good and evil) This verse  clarified its excellence over all months. Therefore it is the best month. Because of the many scared things and well-known excellencies which He placed therein, for He made unlawful in it what He declared lawful in others to magnify it,

>He prohibited foods and drinks in it to honor it, and He appointed for it a clear time which He(Majestic and Mighty is He) allows not to be set forward and accepts not to be placed behind.

Then He made one of its nights surpass the nights of a thousand months and named it the Night of Decree; in it the angels and the Spirit descend by the leave of their Lord upon every command, a peace constant in Blessings until the rising of the dawn upon whomsoever He will of His servants…

Knowing the Excellence of this Month.

What does the Imam ask His lord in this month and thus teach us to ask our lord the same things too.

O God, bless Muhammad and his household; inspire us with knowledge in its excellence, veneration of its inviolability, and caution against what Thou hast forbidden within it, and help us to fast in it by our restraining our limbs all our organs should not do any unlawful act  from acts of disobedience toward Thee and our employing them in that which pleases Thee, so that we lend not our ears to idle talk( since one of the signs of the believer is he does snot listen to such talk) and hurry not with our eyes to diversion. We stretch not our hands toward the forbidden and stride not with our feet toward the prohibited our bellies hold only what thou hast made lawful and our tongues speak only what Thou hast exemplified.  We undertake nothing but what brings close to Thy reward and pursue nothing but what protects from Thy punishment! Then rid all of that from the false show of the false showers and the fame seeking of the fame seekers, lest we associate therein anything with Thee or seek therein any object of desire but Thee!

O God, Bless Muhammad and his Household. In it make us attend to the appointed moments of the five prayers within the bounds Thou hast set so that nothing will make us ignore them or forget  the obligations Thou hast decreed, the duties Thou hast assigned, and the times Thou hast specified; and in the prayers make us alight in the station of the Keepers of their stations, the guardians of their pillars, their performers in their times, as Thy servant and Thy messenger set down in his Sunna (Thy servant and Thy messenger set down in his Household) in their bowings, their prostrations, and all their excellent acts, with the most complete and ample ritual purity and the most evident and intense humility!

Then the Imam attends to the social aspects and says: Give us success in this month to tighten our bonds of Kin with devotion and gifts, attend to our neighbors with bestowal and giving, purify our possessions through paying the alms( for there are those who do not pay the alms except when they want to perform pilgrimage And all those who do not deliberately pay the Khoms are thieves who have stolen the money of the orphan, and the needy).

Go back to him who has gone far from us, Treat justly him who has wronged us make peace with him who shows enmity toward us (accept him who is regarded as an enemy in Thee and for Thee (Those enemies who fight us because we have embraced your religion for he is the enemy whom we will not befriend, the party whom we will not hold dear), and seek nearness to Thee through blameless works which will purify us from sins and preserve us from renewing faults, so that none of Thy angels will bring for Thee the kinds of obedience and sorts of nearness-seeking unless they be less than what we bring!

This is the atmosphere Imam Zein Al-Abideen, wants us to live as we prepare ourselves to receive this month, expressing the views of his fathers and that of the prophet (P.). Thus, and before we start to think about what food we have to eat when we break our fast, we have to prepare ourselves spiritually and morally. We have to be always with the good, the right and Justice, so as to be with those who obey Allah.