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Activism and Islam
Jun. 30th, 2008 12:15 pmSo the past two weeks or so I've been spending alot of time with people concerned with various types of activism. And that's been amazing - I don't know what it says about my general opinion of humanity but whenever I meet intelligent articulate people who care about something I go away happy and starry-eyed for the rest of the day. This isn't really limited to a particular cause or anything: within the past few days I've come home to babble at my mom about all the amazing people I met who were into history/the environment/the effect of economics on the military/the importance of youth creativity.
In my religion there are basically two sources we take our behaviour from: the Quran which is our holy book and the sunnah or hadith of the Prophet Muhammed (p.b.u.h).
Hadith are essentially sayings of the prophet. There are hundreds of hadith and some are considered stronger than others. There's actually an entire branch of academia devoted to verifying hadith and checking their reliability. Hadith are generally classified into sahīh (authentic), da`īf (weak), or mawdū` (fabricated).
All of this is really intro for one of my favourite hadith that I think sums up how I feel about activism. It's taken from An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith
I was going to finish the post at that but I just went back to the website to re-read some of the other hadith and I really love this one as well. It's about charity.
I am now feeling really excited about the Islamic school my mom signed me up for starting July 15th. I'm going to get to learn more about my religion and it's going to be awesome. :)
In my religion there are basically two sources we take our behaviour from: the Quran which is our holy book and the sunnah or hadith of the Prophet Muhammed (p.b.u.h).
Hadith are essentially sayings of the prophet. There are hundreds of hadith and some are considered stronger than others. There's actually an entire branch of academia devoted to verifying hadith and checking their reliability. Hadith are generally classified into sahīh (authentic), da`īf (weak), or mawdū` (fabricated).
All of this is really intro for one of my favourite hadith that I think sums up how I feel about activism. It's taken from An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith
On the authority of Abu Saeed Al-Khurdari(ra) who said : I heard the Messenger of Allah (saws) say:
"Whosoever of you sees an evil action, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart; and that is the weakest of faith."
- related by Muslim.
I was going to finish the post at that but I just went back to the website to re-read some of the other hadith and I really love this one as well. It's about charity.
On the authority of Abu Hurairah, who said: The messenger of Allah said :
"Each person's every joint must perform a charity every day the sun comes up : to act justly between two people is a charity; to help a man with his mount, lifting him onto it or hoisting up his belongings onto it is a charity: a good word is a charity, every step you take to prayers is a charity and removing a harmful thing from the road is a charity."
- related by Bukhari and Muslim.
I am now feeling really excited about the Islamic school my mom signed me up for starting July 15th. I'm going to get to learn more about my religion and it's going to be awesome. :)
