Zaytuna College Ramadan Reader | 2021

“Surely with hardship comes ease.”

(Qur’an 94:5)

TH E ZAY T U NA C OL LE G E

Ramadan Reader 1442 AH/2021 CE

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T U 1430 | 2009 L E NA COL

“And say, O Lord, increase me in knowledge” Sur ah ţĀ HĀ , Ver se 114

Zay t una C ollege R amadan Reader 14 4 2 AH/2021 CE This Reader features short essays by Zaytuna faculty and students inspired by Qur'an 94:5, “Surely with hardship comes ease.” We hope, during this Ramadan falling in the midst of the uncertainty of a global pandemic, this Reader serves to remind us of the benefits and blessings that accompany all forms of tribulation. All photographs in this Reader, including the cover image, are by Youssef Ismail, a noted San Francisco Bay Area nature photographer as well as a faculty member at the College, where he has taught Maliki jurisprudence, mathematics, astronomy, and history of science.

In the Name of G od, the Benefic ent, the Merciful

Hardship and Ease: The Readiness Is All The Prophet s was always positive, hopeful, and at peace with the abode; that is why the numerous trials and tribulations he experienced never dampened his spirit.

He resided always in the hub—in the eye of the hurricane of this world. Indeed, while God made the vexing hurricane, He also made its irenic eye. If we perceive the eye of the hurricane and strive to abide within it, the turbulence swirling around us will no longer unsettle our equanimity. The worldly hurricane (dunyā) always has an otherworldly eye that we can discern when we choose to see everything, the blissful and the burdensome, as emanating from a benevolent, merciful Creator. This tempestuous, monstrous gale of goodness from our Creator enables us to participate in its richness as believers whose affairs, according to the Prophet s, are all good. With that belief, the effulgent evanescence that is life on earth, with its sorrows, ills, joys, and griefs, not only becomes bearable but provides solace in this world and, for the patient ones, is rewarded in the felicitous true life of the next abode. In the brief time allotted to us on this planet, we can discover our purpose and the One who created us for that purpose, and we can prepare to return to our Lord with sound hearts, with the trials and tests of this abode having polished them to become the mirrors of truth God created them to be. Indeed, with each and every adversity or affliction that befalls us, let us remind ourselves, “Truly we are God’s and unto Him we return” (2:156).

President Hamza Yusuf

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The Direction of Eternity Faraz A. Khan H uman l o ss a nd affliction are recurrent themes in Islamic scripture. The Qur’an was revealed in an Arabian society inhabiting an austere desert environment and characterized by religious persecution, female infanticide, and abuse of the dispossessed. Indeed, in the chapter This City, which references the difficulties of the Arabia of prophetic history, God, the exalted, proclaims after three oaths that “man was created in pain and hardship [fī kabad]” (90:1–4).

The immense tribulations experienced by Prophet Muĥammad himself s demonstrated to the community that affliction was not a sign of divine wrath or forsakenness; rather, he taught that “those of humanity who undergo the most intense tribulation are the prophets, then those nearest them, and then those nearest them.”

Hence, the Prophet Muĥammad s experienced, as did many messengers before him, several instances of loss of life among his loved ones. While in the womb, he lost his father, ¢Abd Allāh; at the tender age of six, his mother, Āminah; and two years later, his grandfather and caretaker, ¢Abd al-Muţţalib.

At the age of fifty, the Prophet s lost Khadījah, his faithful and deeply pious wife of twenty-five years with whom he had six of his seven children. She had the distinction of being his wife when revelation commenced, and from that moment until her death ten years later, she provided him unwavering support as he faced the trials that came with preaching to the hostile pagans of Mecca. Her spiritual rank was so lofty that, on one evening during those beautiful years of their marriage, he was told by the Archangel Gabriel, The believer proffers his pain and grief to his Maker, beseeching “God Himself sends her greetings of peace.” Indeed, his love for her was so immense that he would say in later years, “Verily, my love for her was Him in a state of humility and granted [by God] as provision.” lowliness yet without negating That same year, which the Prophet s once identified as the most his humanity. difficult year of his life, he lost his paternal uncle, Abū Ţālib, who had raised him like a son from the age of eight after the passing of his grandfather. Throughout the remainder of his blessed life, he buried six of his seven children with his own hands and lost innumerable devoted companions, may God be pleased with them all.

With all this loss, along with many other forms of hardship, God’s emissary s never once departed from the spiritual station of contentment (riđā), a virtue that is higher than patience and describes the state of being pleased with the divine decree. A hadith reports that he once taught: “The magnitude of reward is commensurate to the magnitude of the affliction, and verily, when God loves a people, He afflicts them with tribulation. So whoever is content and pleased [with God] will receive God’s good pleasure, but whoever is dissatisfied and angry will receive God’s anger.”

Shaykh Faraz A. Khan teaches prophetic biography and theology at Zaytuna College.

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The believer proffers his pain and grief to his Maker, beseeching Him in a state of humility and lowliness yet without negating his humanity. Abū ¢Alī al-Daqqāq, the mentor of Imam al-Qushayrī, taught that contentment does not mean one cannot feel the pain of misfortune; rather, it means one does not object to the divine decree and ruling. The prophetic response to suffering is predicated on a deep recognition of divine agency, as we are instructed to say when we lose a loved one, “To God do we belong, and to Him alone are we returning.”

Imam Ĥusayn, the beloved grandson of the Prophet s, said, “Whoever relies on the goodness of God’s decision will not desire other than God’s decision,” echoing, as it were, his grandfather’s supplication, “Goodness, all of it, is in Your possession.”

Thus, the ground of spiritual contentment is only certitude in God’s oneness and perfection.

An aphorism of Ibn ¢Aţā’ Allāh states, “Knowing that God alone afflicts you relieves the pain of your affliction, for the One whose determinations of fate assail you is also the One who accustomed you to your choice preferences.” In the midst of our trials, God remains all-merciful. He eternally possesses all His sublime names and attributes, which He never lacks or loses, and He decided our fates in His eternality before there was creation or even time.

Contentment (riđā) is to look beyond the aching bitterness of loss. It is for the heart to gaze in the direction of eternity.

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A Confident Faith Ali J. Ata i e T oday, m a n y Mus l im s face an increasingly familiar hardship: the apparent loss of faith among their family and friends, a result of the prevalence of quasi-intellectual trends that oppose religion, including the so-called new atheism (essentially the old atheism minus the intellectual rigor), existential nihilism, cancel culture, and an insidious revolt against all things traditional. Young people succumb to the false notion that belief in God is somehow opposed to reason, that faith is “belief without evidence.” Disturbingly, advocates of such ideas often portray Islam as the religion most antithetical to reason. Lately, I have had to advise disheartened Muslim parents whose children—high school or college students—no longer profess faith in God and His Messenger s.

Of course, the irony is that Muslims have traditionally adhered to a three-dimensional epistemological approach: we can know that things are true based upon our senses, reason, and revelation. Regarding the latter two, because both originate from the same source, they cannot be in conflict—revelation repeatedly bids us to exercise reason, not to embrace the irrational. The Qur’an declares, “Indeed, the worst of creatures in God’s sight are those who are deaf and dumb—those who do not reason” (8:22). At times, the Qur’an also provides reason for its commands, such as the command to prayer: “Indeed, prayer prevents indecency and wrong action” (29:45). Similarly, it provides the rationale for the command to fast (2:183) and for the proscription against adultery (17:32).

Unfortunately, the word faith has been sullied in modern culture. Material reductionists and one-dimensional empiricists who rely only on their senses—what they can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste—imagine faith as something that religious dogmatists blindly cling to in spite of their intellects. In reality, however, we believe precisely because it is reasonable to believe. Perhaps using the word confidence rather than faith is more appropriate in our time; the former comes from the Latin con (with) + fides (faith) and carries no negative connotations of the latter. For example, if I tell modern atheists that I have faith that a hurricane will occur tomorrow, they might conclude I’m a religious oddball or superstitious soothsayer. However, if I say that I have confidence that the hurricane will occur, they may ask if I am a meteorologist.

Such use of confidence conveys that everyone is with faith concerning many things; atheists have confidence in the law of gravity every day or that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Both experience and reason convince (with + victory) them of these things. Similarly, both experience and reason convince Muslims that an ordered material universe dependent upon space and time was brought into existence by a Being who is necessarily spaceless, timeless, and immaterial, as well as unfathomably intelligent and incomprehensibly powerful.

The Qur’an says, “Believers, if any of you turn from His religion, God will bring forth a people whom He loves and love Him, humble toward the believers, stern toward the disbelievers, striving in the way of God without fearing the blame of the critic” (5:54). Commentators say this renouncement of religion (irtidād) Dr. Ali J. Ataie teaches Qur’anic studies and comparative theology at Zaytuna College.

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stems from a lack of love for God, the source of all good things. Those who lack the love (maĥabbah) of God actually lack knowledge (ma¢rifah) concerning Him. If they knew Him intimately through experience, reason, and revelation, and more importantly through reflecting on the bounties of their existence, they would necessarily love Him. Also, the verse above describes believers as not fearing the blame of the blamer because they are intellectually armed to defeat attacks upon their convictions.

Our materialistic culture, largely unaware of the unseen world, has a corrupting influence on young people who have a natural faith in God; all children are natural believers who sense the miracle of everything around them. Our challenge, like our sister co-religionists among the Abrahamic believers, is to build our own schools, centers, retreat spaces, and communities, so our youth are integrated—sharing with their fellow citizens a desire to contribute to the common weal—but not assimilated. We also have to restore the centrality of knowledge in our community. We have a chain of faith that stretches back over a millennium and pulls from the unseen world, and our children are the latest link in that chain. We are inheritors of a tradition of hope, and we don’t despair about an apparent break in the link, as the chain repairs itself. God sees and knows all the prayers of our ancestors who called in the night, “O our Lord, rectify our progeny, and make them among the righteous.” God will not neglect those prayers.

The Qur’an’s declaration that “Surely with hardship comes ease” (94:6) continues to ring true in our current crisis.

We need to study theology, both creedal and natural, from teachers of transmissional knowledge. When we acquire the ability to speak with confidence and conviction about God, His messenger s, and His Book, ease will follow. God willing, these feeble philosophies that dominate our culture and challenge our young people, especially in the academy, will fall like a house of cards in the face of our robust intellectual engagement and logically superior discourse.

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How to Gain When We Lose Abdull a h bi n Ha m i d A l i O nc e a m a n complained to the mystic Ibrāhīm b. Adham about the exorbitant price of meat. “Then reduce its price!” Ibrāhīm responded. “How do we do that?” the man asked. “By not consuming it” was the reply. On another occasion, Ibrāhīm stated, “We sought poverty and were met with affluence. Others sought affluence and were met with poverty.”

As Muslims, we understand wealth as one of God’s greatest blessings, and the Qur’an, more than once, describes wealth (māl) as good (khayr). Still, for many, it can be a curse. We’re naturally inclined to pursue wealth, and to be seduced by its elusive promise of enduring happiness. The Qur’an characterizes spendthrifts as imbeciles (sufahā’), and the Prophet Muĥammad s stated, “The worse traits in a person are distressful stinginess and paralyzing cowardice.” This holds true because the miser eschews helping those in need, and the coward forsakes the weak, oppressed, and himself.

In the shariah, affluence and poverty connote not only material wealth and deprivation but also a state of mind, a spiritual quality. Faqr, a Qur’anic word that denotes poverty, has a rich semantic field, and its meanings include deprivation save the bare necessities; utter destitution; absence of spiritual contentment; and complete dependence on God. In a weak but widely quoted hadith, the Prophet s reportedly said, “Poverty verges on disbelief ” In the shariah, affluence (kāda al-faqru an yakūna kufran): in other words, dissatisfaction with God’s and poverty connote not decree threatens faith. A stronger, less ambiguous hadith narrates that the only material wealth and Prophet s supplicated, “I seek refuge in God from poverty and disbelief.” deprivation but also a state of A man asked, “Are they the same?” He was told, “Indeed.”

Discontentment with what we have and always desiring more remains a mind, a spiritual quality. deeply rooted human problem. Imam Mālik, asked who the lowest people were, replied, “Those who lose their afterlife in pursuit of this world.” He was then asked, “Is there anyone lower than that?” Imam Mālik said, “Yes, those who lose their afterlife due to their focus on other people’s worldly successes.” An Arab proverb similar to our adage about greener pastures is “Whatever abounds bores, and whatever can’t be found lures” (kullu mawjūd mamlūl wa kullu mafqūd maţlūb).

How do we understand wealth, and what makes us rich? To help us grasp that real wealth resides in the reward of God, the Prophet Muĥammad s reminded us that “Charity does not reduce wealth.” The Qur’an says, “Satan promises you poverty and commands you to commit indecency, while God promises you forgiveness from Himself and bounty” (2:268).

We worry about losing wealth and relentlessly seek worldly ways to protect and increase it, but there’s no certainty in that. The Qur’an tells us that many a man thinks that “wealth will make him last forever” (104:3).

Dr. Abdullah bin Hamid Ali teaches courses in Islamic law at Zaytuna College.

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The Qur’an relates the story of Qārūn’s riches, envied by all until, by God’s command, the earth swallowed him and his house. Qārūn’s admirers were chastened: “Alas, it seems God enlarges provision for whom He wills of His slaves and straitens it. If God had not been gracious unto us, He would have caused it to swallow us [also]. The ingrates do not prosper” (28:82). Such a fate does not result from giving freely. It occurs, says the Qur’an, because “you did not honor the orphan. Nor did you encourage the feeding of the poor” (89:17–18).

Detachment from material wealth found its fullest expression when the Prophet s asked his companions to give in God’s way, and ¢Umar b. al-Khaţţāb donated half of his property. When the Prophet s asked him, “What have you left for your family?” he replied, “An equal amount.” Abū Bakr, on the other hand, sacrificed all of his wealth, and when asked, “What have you left for your family?” he replied, “God and His messenger.”

Though the Prophet Muĥammad s encouraged work and discouraged begging, he lauded givers, saying, “The giving hand is better than the receiving hand.” In one tradition, God asks Abraham, “Do you know why I took you as a friend? It’s because I observed that giving is more beloved to you than taking.”

When we give willfully, it enriches us. We receive God’s pleasure (riđā), increase in our nearness to Him (qurbah), grow in our generosity (karam), and gain the prayers and protection of the angels. We tend to see losing our material wealth as a major misfortune, but if we understand the metaphysical reality of wealth, we realize we may still gain when we lose.

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The Blessings and Benefits of Hunger ZAID SHA K I R T h e Qur’a nic ve r s e “Surely with hardship comes ease” (94:5) reminds us that encountering difficulties on the road of life is an inevitable part of being human. Choosing to ignore this reality and instead pursuing paradisical utopias has proven to lead to disappointment, if not disaster and devastation. Muslims who understand their religion accept hard times and seek the hidden blessings and benefits that emanate from such acceptance.

Hunger has always been a constant and common affliction throughout the world. We read in the Qur’an, “We will surely test you with something of fear, hunger, and loss of wealth, life, and the fruits [of your fields].

Give glad tidings to those who patiently endure” (2:155). Conventionally understood, this trial of hunger ensues from calamities such as droughts, famines, pestilences, and war. For example, swarms of locusts may denude croplands, or large populations of people may find themselves hungry as they seek refuge from war and oppression. The believer is challenged to remain patient and to maintain a good opinion of God, who chooses hunger for His servant through these and other means.

Hunger can also be a trial because we naturally crave food, a characteristic created within us to maintain our life, for if we lacked the desire for food, we could easily suffer from malnutrition or even starvation. By our restrained response to this trial, we can unlock the ability to exist in a state where we can consciously resist our soul’s desire for satiety, for it is said, “Satiety kills the heart just as excessive irrigation kills the crops in a field.” In this case, as we acknowledge that God ultimately ordains our actions, we choose hunger.

The ability to resist the temptation to eat excessively, thereby consciously inviting hunger, is a great impetus for spiritual growth. Imam al-Ghazālī relates ten virtues of hunger in his Reviving the Sciences of Religion and provides detailed discussions of each in the chapter “Breaking the Two Desires.” They serve as an important reminder of the role of hunger in our spiritual growth. In summary, Imam al-Ghazālī says hunger can serve in 1. purifying the heart, which ignites creativity and facilitates inner vision; 2. softening the heart, which prepares it to realize the sweetness of intimate discourses with God and to be affected by His remembrance; 3. breaking and humbling the soul, removing the hubris, giddiness, and intemperance, which constitute its excesses and heedlessness of God; 4. remembering the trials and torment God can expose us to; 5. crushing one’s lusts and appetites to achieve mastery over the soul—and this is the greatest benefit; 6. repelling sleep and facilitating nightly devotions; 7. making easy consistency in worship;

Imam Zaid Shakir is professor emeritus and a Board of Trustees observer at Zaytuna College.

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8. benefiting physical health and warding off disease; 9. lightening worldly loads; and 10. prioritizing charity and giving preference, with excess food, to the needs of the poor and orphans.

Hunger and the avoidance of excessive eating soften and purify the heart and lead to a humbling of the soul, thus liberating us from the prison of our physical nature and appetites. This prepares us to experience the deeper realities associated with the oneness of God, which effectively defines everything in creation. The carnal lusts are no longer a veil shielding one from God. This is true liberation, and arriving at this station makes it easy to bear any difficulty in the world; God says, “Surely with hardship comes ease. Surely with hardship comes ease” (94:5–6).

The Arabic word for hunger is jū¢, and most exegetes mention this interpretation when the word is used in Qur’an 2:155. The word may also be interpreted as a reference to fasting during Ramadan. One of the great benefits of Ramadan is that believers consciously expose themselves to hunger for the sake of their Lord and for the sake of their spiritual growth. That choice serves as the gateway to hunger’s many benefits and is one reason why Ramadan offers us the opportunity of liberation from hellfire.

Let us pray as our Prophet s taught us: “O God! Make us among those You liberate from hellfire during the month of Ramadan.”

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Staying the Course Sa r a Kur at nik G od ha s e nc our ag e d Muslims—despite their often possessing little knowledge of Arabic—to become intimately familiar with the miracle of the Prophet s: the Qur’an. The Book, being read and re-read throughout our lives, becomes a lived experience, and its details open up to the one who struggles with its depth and subtleties. The enduring spiritual benefits of reciting the Holy Book as revealed to the Prophet s remain a constant blessing available to anyone willing to persevere with patience and strive to understand with sincerity. Additionally, Muslims with a passion for discoursing with God will inevitably realize the importance of Arabic as the means to understand the Qur’an; from that realization, a lifelong study of Arabic begins. That experience, of longing for understanding, of grappling with words for the sake of unearthing nuances of meaning, amplifies the Studying feels more like study of sacred knowledge. traversing a vast plateau than My search for a legal ruling related to performing prostrations necesclimbing a steep hill; it isn’t easy sary to redress mistakes in the prayer prompted me to venture, unaided, into a non-scriptural Arabic text for the first time. Imam Ţaĥţāwī’s to measure the distance we have supra-commentary on Marāqī al-falāĥ was perhaps not the place for already traversed or the someone who had a beginner’s knowledge of Arabic grammar (a fact journey ahead. attested to by the three hours it took me to decipher a few sentences).

Between navigating unfamiliar vocabulary, parsing the grammatical role of each word without vowel markings, and trying to comprehend the ruling in the context of what I had learned in class, I found it a strenuous and exhausting exercise. However, the gratification that ensued—of knowing that I knew something new—was well worth the effort. In the end, I had learned something of the sacred law that could help refine my worship of my Lord.

Moments like these are precious gifts on the path of knowledge. They remind us to be grateful for what has been gained and to be hopeful for what we can achieve. They also tend to be relatively rare, still another reason for their preciousness. Studying feels more like traversing a vast plateau than climbing a steep hill; it isn’t easy to measure the distance we have already traversed or the journey ahead. At times, it may even feel like learning has slowed to a standstill. The struggle of serious study, then, forces us to struggle to stay the course—particularly in the face of monotony.

We gain and sustain deep, penetrating knowledge through repetition, and if we seek mastery, if we really yearn to know something, we must willingly recognize the positive role of monotony in our lives. I’ve realized that it takes great discipline to persist, to go back to the same flashcards or passages many times. Many people prefer to dabble instead of delving into a subject deeply, especially because the experience of learning something new, even superficially, is simply wondrous, and our access to information is so vast. In addition, Sara Kuratnik plans to graduate from the MA program at Zaytuna College this May.

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it’s not always apparent that the study of some sciences now may later serve an instrumental purpose in the journey of learning. It can be difficult to see, for example, that learning ten different verb forms through rote memorization today can help us read an exponentially greater number of words based on those patterns tomorrow. Nonetheless, my experience has led me to conclude that the practices of reading, re-reading, and rote memorization prove indispensable to the one who willfully persists in them as a means to understand, retain, and acquire deeply grounded knowledge. Only time bears the fruits of such endeavors.

Perhaps the sweetest fruit of my study of Arabic—a prerequisite for the study of religious texts—turned out to be how it enhanced my reading comprehension of the Qur’an. Sundry times, certainly far more than I recall, I found that my study of grammar, rhetoric, logic, and theology greatly enriched my appreciation of the nuances found in the Qur’anic verses I was studying. As an example, let me share with you one such time: in an explanation of the verse, “Surely with hardship comes ease,” our teacher explained that people normally understand this to mean that after difficulty relief follows, which is true by our experience. But the word “with” in Arabic (ma¢a) indicates accompaniment. In other words, the hardship and ease are also experienced simultaneously. This meaning permeates every moment of our lives, but for me, as a student, it represents a tremendous glad tiding.

In remaining focused and committed to lifelong learning, one encounters difficulties and stressful periods, but I have no doubt that embedded in those hardships are incomparable fulfillment and ease. To stay the course is what remains.

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The Loss of Life, and What Lives On Ma rya m Aw wa l T wo y ear s ag o , I volunteered with eleven of my classmates for Zaytuna’s annual Alternative Spring Break trip to Humble, Texas, to join relief efforts for people whose lives had been uprooted by a hurricane.

One day, as I painted the walls of an elderly woman’s home, I glanced down at my phone and saw the text: “Dada Bhai passed away a few minutes ago.” Dada Bhai was my grandfather in Bangladesh.

The news paralyzed me momentarily; recovering, I called my father, who had been caring for Dada Bhai.

Hearing him speak pained me in both a palpable and spiritual sense, but I listened attentively as he told me that he and his sister, upon learning that Dada Bhai’s heart had begun to slow down, had arrived just in time at the hospital to be with him in the moments before his death. He passed away in his sleep when his heart finally stopped beating. My father, even in his grief, tried to console me: Dada Bhai was at peace, he said.

My father, who immigrated to the United States four decades ago, expressed his gratitude that he was able to serve my grandfather and his family. He had spent many nights in the hospital with Dada Bhai, sleeping in the waiting room and regularly providing us updates. Most significantly, my father and his sister helped ensure that, during Dada Bhai’s final waking moments, my grandfather’s last spoken words were the testimony of faith.

As much as we all desired As much as we all desired a different ending to Dada Bhai’s illness, we aca different ending to Dada cepted the divine decree and understood it as a beautiful one. “God chose Bhai’s illness, we accepted the my father to be with Him. He knows best,” my father said. “We find comdivine decree and understood fort in God’s choice.” it as a beautiful one.

My classmates on the trip, meanwhile, paused their work to recite Surah Yā Sīn for my grandfather. When they finished, I encouraged everyone to return to their jobs, but the volunteer coordinator sent us home for the day, advising us to take care of each other and ourselves. She had met us only two days earlier, but she already manifested God’s abundant generosity to her new acquaintances, particularly to me. Her gesture of kindness allowed me to pause and process my grief.

I called my mother that day, who displayed her incredible strength by telling me the words that I selfishly wanted to hear, that I should stay in Texas—an unfamiliar place that perhaps would make grieving easier— instead of coming home. She only suggested that I intend my service now as a means of ease and forgiveness for my grandfather and family.

As the day progressed, I saw my Zaytuna education come to life. In our class on Islamic jurisprudence, we had studied the practices and prayers related to death and dying, and I watched as my classmates brought them to fruition. Besides reciting Surah Yā Sīn, they also completed a recitation of the entire Qur’an shortly after we returned to our hotel. I became more attentive to the theological reality that God creates every moMaryam Awwal is a graduating senior at Zaytuna College.

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ment—there was not a second that did not remind me of His subtle benevolence (luţf).

I learned anew what it meant to believe in the divine decree.

As Imam al-Ghazālī mentions in his Iĥyā’: “To teach by proof is one thing, and to see proof by eyes is another.”

I also learned that we never really lose the people that we love—they continue to reside in our hearts. Even in his death, my grandfather was still teaching me. He always strived to see beauty in the world, and throughout that day I saw beauty unfold before me. His way of life was slow and gentle, his days filled with quietude. Often he chose to write rather than to speak. He never asked much of others.

His keen awareness of beauty had always inspired me, and I continued to feel that quality in every moment after he passed. I heard him reciting the Qur’an in the background of the voices of my classmates; I felt his smile behind my own; I sensed his gentleness in the compassion of my peers toward me.

Even now, I carry his pen as I write. In my grief, I feel his love endure.

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Ramadan Supplications s u p p l ic at i o n s w h e n b r e a ki n g t h e f a s t

َ َ َّ ُ َّ ُ َْ َ ُ ‫ك ُص ْم‬ ‫ َو َع ِر ْزقِك أف َط ْرت‬، ‫ت‬ ‫اللهم ل‬

Allāhumma laka śumtu, wa ¢alā rizqika afţartu.

O God, for You have I fasted and with Your sustenance I break my fast. ( Abū DĀw ūd )

ُ َْ​َ َ ُ ‫احل َ ْم ُد ل َّالي أَ َعنَن فَ ُص ْم‬ ‫ َو َر َزق ِن فأف َط ْرت‬، ‫ت‬ ِ ِ ِ ِ

Al-ĥamdu li-llāhi-lladhī a¢ānanī fa-śumtu, wa razaqanī fa-afţartu.

Praise be to God, Who aided me so that I could fast and has given me sustenance so that I could break my fast. ( Ibn al- Sunnī)

n g e n e r a l s u p p l ic at i o n s

َ َّ َّ ْ َّ َ َ َ َّ َ َ ْ ‫ك أَن‬ ُ ‫السم‬ َّ ‫ت‬ ُ‫يع الْ َعليم‬ ‫ربنا تقبل ِمنا ۖ إِن‬ ِ ِ

Rabbanā taqabbal minnā innaka Anta-s-Samī¢ ul-¢Alīm Our Lord! Accept (this worship) from us! Indeed, You are the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing. ( Qurʼan 2 : 12 7 )

ُّ ‫َر َّبنَا آتنَا ف‬ َّ َ َ َ َ َ ً َ َ َ َ ِ ‫ادل ْنيَا َح َسنَ ًة َوف‬ ‫ار‬ ِ ِ ِ ‫اآلخر ِة حسنة وقِنا عذاب انل‬ ِ

Rabbanā ātinā fi-d-dunyā ĥasanah wa fi’l-ākhirati ĥasanah wa qinā ¢adhāb an-nār Our Lord! Grant us good in this world and good in the afterlife, and protect us from the torment of the Fire! ( Qur’an 2 : 2 01)

n s u p p l ic at i o n f o r t h e n i g h t o f q a d r

َ ُ ْ َ ْ ْ ُّ ُ ٌّ ُ َ َ َّ َّ ُ َّ ‫ب ال َعف َو فاعف ع ِّن‬ ‫ت‬ ِ ‫اللهم ِإنك عفو‬

Allāhumma innaka ¢Afuwwun tuĥibbu-l-¢afwa fa-¢fu ¢annī.

O God, You are Oft-Pardoning and You love pardoning, so pardon me. ( Al-Ti r midhī)

“God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.”

Qur’an 24 :35

In the beginning, as related by all the great world religions, the first creation of God, the Creator, was light, and the rest of creation pivots on light as its foundation. We are blinded by the intensity of pure light, and we are blind in pure darkness, but in the shade, a mixture of pure light and darkness, we can see. Photography, writing with light, captures the light that emanates from the interaction of pure light with the natural world. I call this interaction Organic Light because it possesses the quality of change common to all organic living things. My hope, through these photographs, is that they may help us recognize the Signs of the Creator in the cosmos, and to eventually glorify the Creator in concert with His creation, in unity, as a whole, the way we were meant to be.

Youssef Ismail

All photographs in this Reader were taken by Dr. Ismail, a nature photographer and a Zaytuna College faculty member.

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Bookstore

Ce lebr at e R a madan at t he Zay t una B o okst or e This Ramadan, connect with the Zaytuna College Bookstore online and its collection of books and products curated to illuminate minds with knowledge and enrich souls with beauty. Offering books, handmade rugs, leather journals, jewelry, perfume oils, tea glasses, incense, gift sets, and gift cards.

Visit us online at bookstore.zaytuna.edu

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Journey through Ramadan with Zaytuna The sacred month of Ramadan brings not only the imperative to fast but also the opportunity to refine our actions and intentions for the sake of God. This Ramadan, Zaytuna College asks faculty, staff, and guest speakers to reflect upon timeless reminders from the Qur’an and from the Islamic tradition. From lessons on the sacred history of fasting in the Abrahamic traditions to the inculcation of God consciousness, our Ramadan offerings—live online sessions as well as podcasts—highlight the applicability of Islam’s vast spiritual tradition and offer reliable companionship in your journey through this blessed month.

Learn more: zaytuna.edu/ramadan2021

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