Birds chirping outside
The Masjid’s carpet smells good
—invites me to prayer

“ Disputation and argumentation concerning knowledge takes away the light of knowledge.”

And he also said, “Disputation concerning knowledge hardens the heart.”

{Fadl ‘Ilm as-Salaf ‘Ala al-Khalaf, by al-Hafiz ibn Rajab}

” One who acts without knowledge is like one who travels off the path; and the one who acts without knowledge corrupts more than he rectifies. So seek knowledge in a way that does not harm your worship, and seek to worship Allah in a way that does not harm your seeking of knowledge.

For verily, there were people {the Khawarij} who sought to worship Allah but abandoned knowledge until they attacked the Ummah of the Prophet Muhammad ~ peace and blessings of Allah be upon him ~ with their swords.

But if they had sought knowledge, it would not have directed them to do what they did. ”

{Related by Hafiz Yusuf Ibn ‘Abd Al-Barr, Jami’ Bayan Al-’Ilm wa Fadlihi}

I was at a point in my life, where I had to reevaluate my values, my goals and my whole person, my identity, what I had so far achieved, by what means and if this was the way to continue.

I had little clue about who I really were as person, although I knew that I had a core of good in me and I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to be humble because I knew that with humility comes gratitude.

I had tried to cross boundaries in many ways, as I had looked as this as being “free”, but in doing so, I had finally come to the conclusion that a total freedom without laws, without attachments or duties, was not leading towards a happy, satisfying life.

I had already realized that happiness for me was not to be found through any form of chemicals, as alcohol and other substances. While leaving this behavior and bad habits behind I found myself looking for more, for a purpose of life one may say.

Naturally I searched for the God of my culture, a Christian understanding of God, so I began going to churches and consulting with people who knew more about Christianity than me.

I met good people, but also found things that were hard to comprehend to me and when I asked further into these matters I was often met with the answer: “You have to have more faith”. Well the only thing that I at this point wanted was faith, but they did not really show me a way of achieving it and the bible in itself pointed in too many directions for me to follow any of them.

So I started to look outside Christianity for a God that, I in someway could understand or get to know, I went to library and started randomly to burrow books about religion also books about Islam.

I did not have any close Muslim friends and my knowledge of Muslims in my town was very limited and the ones I knew were maybe not the best representatives of Islam as I knew them from bars and discos.

I had also borrowed a Danish translation of the Quraan, and it quickly became very clear to me that this religion was most definitely not what I first thought it to be. So I became more interested. One time while reading I felt something inside of me calling me to Islam, telling me to become a Muslim.

I perceived this as very strange and remember saying out loud to myself and God: “Is this really what you want me to?” And actually I felt a bit scared about it because I could not picture myself as a Muslim at all.
So I put the Quran on the book shelf and there it rested for a couple of weeks I guess.

Of course I started reading again and felt the same thing once again and I had always had a belief in God, in some kind of way, and I thought to myself: “who I am to question this call?” And at that point I decided to become a Muslim. I must admit that my knowledge of our Deen at that point was fairly small to say the least but I had made up my mind.

I told my father about my decision is he told me to think it thoroughly through, and I did for about two weeks, so I went and told him that I had done what he asked me to do, I had waited, but I still wanted to become a Muslim and so I did. I converted in a Turkish Masjid in my birth town in 2001 the 13th of December.

Naturally a lot of my friends and family did not see this coming, me becoming a Muslim and neither did even I. If somebody had told me even 4 -5 months before that, I would surely have labelled them insane, it was that big a turnover for me.

After the conversion I had some negative experiences around me, people were giving me rubbish about Muslims and Islam from what they knew about it through media here in Denmark. It was a little difficult in the start because this was of course something that I felt very strongly about, therefore I was very sensitive when the talk touched Muslims or Islam, I say know that I was in some ways in a state of mental Jihad all the time, because I felt that they were all attacking me. Truth be told is that they were not and I have come to distinguish between Muslims and Islam, when I choose to go further in a debate with friends, colleagues and family. My real friends stayed with me and the other ones left, some friends took time off from our relationship, but came back after maybe realizing that I had changed for the better and Allah is the All-knowing, Supreme in all matters.
I think that my family took my conversion quite well, they did question my decision and when we meet we often have talks about religious issues, but they have come to respect me more and though they would not admit it they know that I have become a more stable and reliable person through my religion. This is what I am feeling in my heart anyway.

My goals as a Muslim is to raise a good family and provide well for my family, there are some material things that I would like to have like a house etc. but other than that I hope to be a humble person, staying close to my deen and being able to help the people who followed after me and being a good spokesperson for my religion. I feel that we as Danish Muslims have the responsibility to prove that Islam fits in our culture as well, that we participate just as much in the our society or even more, to show that our deen is not a religion of seclusion and only limited for some nations. Believing this is belittling our religion, which I take refugee in Allah from. It is quite simple what we need, we need stability we need time to develop knowledge and to practice this knowledge in everyday matters and inshaAllah we are well on our way. We must take small, but stable steps in order to move forward and secure ourselves from not moving backwards.

I am married to a Muslim woman and we have now been married for four years and have two children and one on the way inshaAllah. I could not have dreamed or asked for more, so I am content with my Lord and I ask of him to be content with us, to strengthen our good qualities and to remove or diminish our bad attributes.

Jazak Allahu Kheiran
Your Brother in Denmark

In the Name of Allāh, the Beneficent, the Merciful

I grew up in a fairly typical Danish family as the youngest of four children, in a village in Djursland (a smaller peninsula within the main Danish peninsula of Jutland).

My parents are Protestant (Lutheran) Christians, but the Christian religion wasn’t a big part of my life growing up.

The first time I became interested in Islam, was when I read my parents’ encyclopedia of the major world religions as a boy. It fascinated me that one could become a Muslim simply by saying the shahādah[1]. Even as a boy I had a strong feeling that there was a God who controlled everything and I remember praying to this unknown God, even though I was never taught how to. I wanted to call Him by an elevated name, so I used “Caliph of Caliphs”, a phrase I borrowed from a comic book.

The second time I took interest in Islam was when I was a freshman in high school. I went to a high school with virtually no immigrants so I didn’t know any Muslims and I heard a lot of negative things about Muslims and Islam in the media. This prompted me to borrow a translation of the meanings of the Quran from the library. I didn’t read all of the book, but what I read did not strike me as bad at all.

In my senior year in high school we heard about Islam in Religious Studies and there was something about the religion that interested me and all praise is due to Allāh (عز وجل) for that.

Eighteen months later I had moved to a different city for studies. A female fellow student was going to marry an African man from a Muslim background. She was a little worried about his Muslim background. I offered to find some books for her about Islam at the library and I did. The young lady never came for the books so I ended up reading them myself, and all praise is due to Allāh (عز وجل) for that.

When I came across the concept of Tawḥīd[2] in the books it was something that really struck me and the fact that Islam offered so much evidence for its truth was shocking and mesmerising–since I had read about other religions before and they mainly argued emotionally and philosophically and seemed so contradictory.

Of course I was emotionally moved by what I read too. As important as evidence was, the overwhelming feeling of having found God’s true religion and of having “found the way home” was so profound that I could not stop reading and researching about Islam. The following 3-4 months I plowed my way through all the books I could find about Islam and surfed the Internet for answers to my questions about the religion.

After this initial period of research I approached a mosque in Copenhagen through their website. They sent me some basic books on Islam and invited me to the ‘Īd al-Fiṭr[3] in a huge in-doors sports arena in Copenhagen. It was an amazing experience see approx. 6,000 Muslims, none of whom I knew. All I met were very friendly and happy that I was considering becoming a Muslim and that same evening (when I stayed with some friends) I was sure I would be a Muslim.

Shortly after I took my shahādah at the age of 20, all praise is due to Allah (عز وجل) for that.

Initially my parents and siblings seemed shocked by my decision to become a Muslim. Today, fourteen years later I have a great relationship with my parents who have accepted my choice and even buy halal meat for us when we visit. They also have a really good relationship with my Moroccan wife and four children and I can only thank Allāh (عز وجل) for that.

Like many other new Muslims I had to figure out which group of Muslims were following the authentic understanding of the religion. After reading good clarifying articles from orthodox Muslim scholars, I realised that the true and original Islam understanding must necessarily be taken, as Islamic scholars have always taken it since the first generations of Muslims, namely through the orthodox Sunni legal schools (madhāhib)[4] and that the true Islamic doctrines and beliefs were what the early Muslims were upon and later was codified by the Ash’arī and Māturīdī schools. This is also the understanding, or “mainstream Islam” followed by the vast majority of Muslims worldwide. This orthodox Islam is also called Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jamā’ah.

Today I am still so very happy about the choice I took in 1998. I thank Allāh (عز وجل) for having led me to his beautiful religion and ask Him to continually guide me and my loved ones on the straight path. Allāh (عز وجل) says in Surat al-Fātiḥah (the first chapter of the Noble Qurān):

“In the name of Allāh, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,
The Beneficent, the Merciful.
Master of the Day of Judgment,
Thee (alone) we worship; Thee (alone) we ask for help.
Show us the straight path,
The path of those whom Thou hast favoured; Not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.”

- Translation of the meaning of Surat al-Fātiḥah [The Meaning of the Glorious Quran, 1:1-7]

And our last supplication is to Allāh, the Lord of the Worlds. And may His peace and blessings be upon our Master and Prophet Muḥammad and his Family and Companions and all those who follow them sincerely until the Day of Judgement.

Said Allan Bak

9th Jumādā I | 31st March 2012

Footnotes:
[1] Shahādah: The Islamic testification of Faith, which is to say: “Ash-hadu al lā ilāha illā Llāh wa ash-hadu anna Muḥammadar rasūlaLlāh” (in English: “I testify that there are no gods (none worthy of worship) except Allāh and I testify that Muḥammad is the Messenger of Allāh”).
[2] Tawḥīd: Faith in Allāh’s Oneness – the absolute Islamic Monotheism.
[3] ‘Īd al-Fiṭr (often written as Eid ul-Fiṭr): The celebration immediately following the fasting month of Ramadan.
[4] Madhāhib (sing. madhhab): Schools of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh): The Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfi’ī and Ḥanbalī schools.

[© Muwatta.com / Said Allan Bak 2012]

“It is obligatory to train oneself to recite the Quran with tajwid. Whoever recites the Quran incorrectly through neglect is sinful.”

” The Hadîth are a pitfall {madilla}except for the fuqaha {legal jurists}.’”

Imam Malik’s companion `Abdullahi ibn Wahb {May Allah have mercy upon them} explains what is meant:

“Hadith is a pitfall except for the Ulamah {scholars}. Every memorizer of Hadith that does not have an Imam in fiqh is misguided, and if Allah had not rescued us with Malik and al-Layth {ibn Sa`id}, we would have been misguided.”

{Related by Ibn Abi Hatim in the introduction of al~Jarh; Ibn Abi Zayd, al~Jami` fî as~Sunan, pg. 118-119; Hafiz Yusuf ibn `Abd al~Barr, al~Intiqa’ pg. 61, Imam ad~Dhahabi and others}

“I have met people here in Madinah who had no faults of their own, but who spoke about other people’s faults, so people found fault with them. I also met here those with many faults but who kept quiet about other people’s fault, so other people kept quiet about theirs.”

{Al~Muntaqa Sharh al~Muwatta’ of Shaykh Abu al~Walid al~Baji al~Andalusi}

The Sharh al~Muwatta’ has two versions:

1} al~Istifa’ and its abridgment,
2} al~Muntaqa}

{This quote is from al-Muntaqa; Volume 2 pg. 300}

“Al-Shāfi’ī was sitting at Mālik’s feet one day when a man came in and said: “I sell turtle-doves, and one of my customers returned one of them to me today saying that it does not coo, so I swore to him on pain of divorce that my turtle-dove coos all the time!” Mālik said: “You have divorced your wife and are not to approach her.”

Al-Shāfi’ī was fourteen at the time.

He said to the man: “Which happens more, your turtle-dove’s cooing or its silence?”

They said: “Its cooing”. Al-Shāfi’ī said: “Your marriage is valid and there is no penalty for you [due to your oath].”

Whereupon Mālik frowned at him saying: “Boy, how do you know this?” Al-Shāfi’ī replied: “Because you narrated to me from al-Zuhrī, from Abu Salama ibn ‘Abdur-Rahmān from Umm Salama that Fātima bint Qays said: ‘Rasūlullah! Abu Jahm and Mu’āwiya have both proposed to me.’ The Prophet (sa) replied: ‘Mu’awiya is penniless and as for Abū Jahm he does not put down his staff from his shoulder {i.e he travels a lot}.’

That is, most of the time ‘Arabs assert the more frequent of two actions [exclusively of the other] because of its constancy. Since this man’s turtledove coos more than it is silent, I can declare it constant in its cooing. Mālik was pleased at his reasoning.”

The scholars said that Allāh accelerated the intelligence of al-Shāfi’ī and al-Nawawī because he gave them a short lifespan. Al-Ḥumaydī narrated that the faqīh of Makka, Imām Muslim ibn Khālid Al-Zanjī (100-180), said to al-Shāfi’ī: “Give fatwā, Abū ‘Abdullāh! It is time you gave fatwā,” at which time al-Shāfi’ī was fifteen years old. Abū ‘Ubayd al-Qāsim ibn Sallām said: “If the intelligence of an entire nation was brought together he would have encompassed it!”

{Tabaqat ash~Shafiyyah al~Kubra by Ibn as~Subki, Volume 5 pgs. 147-148}

http://www.shafiifiqh.com/the-biography-of-imam-ash-shafii/

Imam Sufyan bin `Uyaynah {May Allah have mercy on him} said:

“Honoring the prayer includes coming before the Iqamah is recited.” 

{Tabaqat al~Hanabilah, Volume1 pg.141, Hilyatul’ Awliyah, Volume 2 pg.163, Sifat as- Safwah, Volume 2 pg. 80 & 235}