#icnyu

[amnestyusa]

Solidarity work is a critical tool in helping to end the#MuslimBan. Learn how to be an ally in this fight. Here are some tips to get you started! #NoBanNoWall http://bit.ly/MuslimBanAlly Thank you to our partners CAIR California and the Islamic Center at New York University.

[aadamsaleem]

Eid Mubarak 🌙 #eid #eidmubarak #eidmubarak2018 #eidulfitr #eidulfitr2018 #nyu #icnyu #washingtonsquarepark (at Washington Square Park)

[aadamsaleem]

Eid Mubarak Y'All. May Allah shower infinite mercy and happiness upon all of us. PS-I accept eid in the form of Venmo (aadam-saleem) #eid2017 #eid #icnyu #eidulfitr #washingtonsquarepark (at Islamic Center at New York University)

[aadamsaleem]

IC Formal 2017 #icnyu #formal2017 #classof2017 #nyugrad (at NYU Richard L. Rosenthal Pavillion)

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Pre-Iftar: Halaqa with Khalid Latif

"Forgiveness - Facing Fear and Finding Freedom"

ICNYU Pre-Iftar Halaqa, 6/29/16 "Forgiveness - Facing Fear and Finding Freedom" Ar-Rahman is an emphatic, a complete state of being at a given time. Al-Raheem indicates a continuous state. So Allah (swt) is merciful both in the moment and continuously always. You have to believe Allah's mercy is far greater than the worst of your sins. "Nothing is bigger than the worst of our actions. If your mindset tells you that you are not bigger than the worst of what you have done, it is going to be that much more difficult to believe that somebody else is bigger than the worst of what they have done to you. It's going to be that much harder to let go of things that people have done wrong by you. And in both situations where you can't forgive yourself or you can't forgive someone else, the person who will hurt the most...is you. You will carry that toxicity inside of you and it will shape how you see the world around you. Your heart is more precious than that. You are more deserving of things than that. Believe that you are bigger than anything that you have done and start a process of real healing." Practical strategies: -thinks about where it is that I am and what it is that is holding me down amidst the negativity. you need a space to interject positivity into so that you can begin to think about how to forgive past all of that darkness that is inside of you -if fasting, praying, having iftar with your community has been uplifting and good for you in this past month, don't stop after Ramadan. -you won't be able to forgive fully if your life is devoid of reflection and contemplation -take moments to breathe and think. your soul and heart are precious. not in an archaic salvation/damnation way. your heart is important because you are important. and the most important part of you is your heart. and when you're not taking care of it, that's when the decisions manifest with whatever darkness is there inside of you whether or not we're actually consciously thinking about it. Three levels of forgiveness in Arabic: 1) safha (صفح): the sin is still present but you're ignoring it 2) maghfira (مغفرة): the sin is covered up but still exists 3) ‘afw (عفو): real obliteration of the sin, like it never happened If we want real afw, we cannot be prone to the same internal conversations- Explore your emotions, take care of your heart. Engage in meaningful, substantive interaction with spaces that are positive. Take the lessons you might have gained from Ramadan and continue applying them to your life and heart in the future.

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"Facing the Reality of Mental Health Issues: An Islamic Perspective with Dr. Omar Mahmood"

October 16, 2015, ICNYU

tl;dr: Tawakkul, having full faith in Allah(swt), gives you resilience. But you cannot just say if your iman is strong enough, you will never be depressed because the converse of that wrongly implies that if you are depressed, your iman is weak. We can't map those onto each other- you could have very strong faith and yet still go through very emotionally/psychologically impactful experiences. Suffering from powerful emotional experiences doesn't have a bearing on the strength of your spiritual state. Dua of the Prophet(s): اللَّهُمَّ إنِّي أعُوذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْهَمِّ وَ الْحَزَنِ ، وَ الْعَجْزِ وَ الْكَسَلِ ، وَ الْبُخْلِ وَ الْجُبْنِ ، وَ ضَلَعِ الدِّيْنِ وَ غَلَبَةِ الرِّجَالِ "O Allah, I take refuge in You from worry and sadness, From weakness and laziness, From miserliness and cowardice, From the burden of debts and from being over powered by men.” [Sahih al-Bukhari 7:158]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ_EouVDWcE Notice that the first two things that the Prophet(s) seeks refuge from are worry and sadness. Anxiety and depression are the two most common psychiatric disorders that people suffer from. Hamm = worry about future. Hazan = sadness over things in your past. When afflicted by these things, you are not living in present. You are stuck being sad about the past or worrying about the future. Modern day equivalents of hamm and hazan are anxiety and depression, and they prevent us from living in the moment and making the most of it. We all go through these feelings but sometimes they get overwhelming in certain situations. The Prophet(s) experienced many tragic events- the deaths of Abu Talib and Khadijah(r), the Year of Sorrow. Even years after the death of Khadijah(r), the Prophet(s) would still reminisce about her idiosyncrasies, showing how deeply her death affected him. Obviously the Prophet(s) has the highest iman; we would never question that. And yet he has experienced this intense sadness. Also consider the example of Prophet Yaqub(a) who cried until his "eyes became white" when Prophet Yusuf(a) left (12:84). This is not normal sadness. It is not normal to cry so much that you can't see anymore. But again, Prophet Yaqub(a) is a prophet and we would never question the greatness of his iman. To people who ask if depression exists in Islam, does diabetes exist in Islam? You can believe what you would like theologically with respect to why you might have diabetes, but then it should consistently apply to the former as well. You can believe Allah will take away any disease from you at any point if He wills. But we also believe in the means. The seatbelt doesn't protect you, Allah does. But you wear a seatbelt to invoke the qadr of Allah. To fight stigma in Muslim communities and start to help mental health patients in our communities, we need to have open conversations and train more Muslim mental health professionals, or at least more culturally competent mental health professionals.

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“Finding Hope and Fighting Hopelessness: Journeying Through Tough Times and Tribulation”

tl;dr from Weekly "Reflections" Halaqa with Imam Khalid Latif at ICNYU, November 23, 2015:

It is okay to acknowledge that something was really difficult for you or that it gave you emotional agitation. Tribulations are humbling, they show us how weak we are, how we are nothing without what God has given us. Trials are a way for us to get closer to Allah/they bring us closer to Allah. Iblis/shaytan wants you to be hopeless. If you only turn to Allah during difficulty and then feel more negativity and hopelessness because you realize that you only turn to Allah during difficulty, that is what shaytan wants.

A strong believer can control himself in moments of anger. There are two types of anger- one where you seek retribution and one where you demonstrate forbearance.  Shaytan interjects opportunity for toxicity to get into our hearts and make us angry. 

Don't let that happen- your heart is for your God alone. Every heart is important to the Prophet (s). If your heart was broken, you will feel pain. It is in how you react to that pain what forbearance is all about.

[ephemerallyperpetual-blog]

ICNYU Reflections Halaqa, 5/9/16

tl;dr:

hatred, for other than the sake of God, is a disease of the heart.

what is hatred for the sake of God? what is hatred for other than the sake of God? what is hatred that can be beneficial and what is hatred that is bad for you?

can we hate homelessness? rape? murder? racism? arrogance? of course. hatred = anger + judgmental-ness; the soul’s way of fleeing things it finds repulsive. but the soul can sometimes be socialized to find something repulsive without valid justification, and this is can be what is meant by hatred for other than the sake of God.

to remove counterproductively negative hatred from the heart is good for it, because allowing your heart to be consumed by hatred impacts your physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being

hatred leaves you exhausted and tired, your soul is debilitated, and you keep trynna meet life with that debilitation. if you remove hatred/animosity from your heart, not only do you no longer have to harbor that burden in your heart, but you are also no longer seeing the world through that lens of overt anger and hatred

without pushing yourself against a wall of self-deprecation of good vs bad, instead critically ask yourself how does the presence or absence of this burden of hatred impact my ability to deal with other aspects of my life? if you meet hatred with self-hate, that doesn’t help anything. don’t meet yourself with self-deprecation; your self-analysis needs to be uplifting

your nafs is battling with your heart each day and trynna get you to hate yourself. if you’re in a place where you’re so beaten down by your nafs, life starts to get heavy. Allah is Al-Wadud, the Source of Love. if we hate creation, that is not something Allah is going to want to accept.

The Prophet (s) found goodness in people who had done even the most evil things and thus he empowered them to find goodness within themselves too and stop doing those evil things. He helped people believe they were bigger than the worst of their actions because he believed it. The Prophet (s) said the two things that destroyed the nations before ours were jealousy and hatred.

pain that is not dealt with can become a root cause for anger and hatred; and this has potential for major detrimental impact upon you. “hurt people hurt people”; you gotta deal with the pain sitting inside of you

we give more weight to that which is negative than to that which is positive; something will be heavy if you make it heavy, it will have a deep impact on your heart if you let it control you that way

the cure for hatred is straightforward- pray for this person specifically mentioning them by name, do it with total sincerity for the cure to be effective, pray for the best for them in this world and in the next.

you can’t give something from yourself that you don’t have. so to pray for the thing that causes you anger, you have to get to that healthy place first to be able to do it. through self-expression, hear the things you’re thinking about. find solace through letting it out and not letting it sit inside of you. reflect on the blessings in your life and document them. when we’re in pain, we think everyone has it better and we don’t see what we have ourselves. don’t think in absolutes. build up positivity.

tie emotional well-being to physical and spiritual well-being, don’t chase complacency with petty distractions but rather seek opportunities to find contentment through having positive/productive mechanisms that enhance your understanding of reality rather than distract from it—you will see your anger subside and your positivity go up.

forgiveness is an important process towards the conclusion of resentment/anger/hatred—it is more for the forgiver than the forgiven, so that you don’t have to continue carrying that toxicity inside of you

love is an attribute of God. hate is not. love is infinitely more powerful than hate.