Fasting six days of Shawwal
Your question was: How important is fasting six days in Shawwal? My response: Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, may Allah be pleased with him, reported from Allah’s Messenger, peace be upon him, that he said: “For one who observed the fast of Ramadan…
Religious emotion and self-knowledge
People often confuse the intensity of an experience or feeling with the reality and authenticity of that experience or feeling. This applies very much to religious and devotional exercises. Both these can induce states of minds like…
Manners in Islam
There is no rigid definition; it is relative to time and place and occasion. Nevertheless, we can apply a couple of test questions that, I find, always give a pretty good indication of what the level should be. First, I ask: am I behaving like this…
Apostasy among Muslims in the UK
Many Muslims and others repeatedly claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. If there is truth in this claim, it may have more to do with relatively higher birth-rates among Muslim communities than higher rates of conversion to Islam.
Supplications in the Quran
In the Quran supplication is a special form of human speaking addressed to God. We say human speaking because the Quran tells us that we humans do not understand the speech of other creatures who also address God.