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A Spiritual Note
Edition 6 - 29 July 2005 - 22 Jumada al-Thani 1426
As-salaamu 'alaikum (Peace be upon you).
Our Spiritual Note for this week has been taken from the book Glimpses from the Life of the Prophet Muhammad, p. 28, by Eminent Scholars.
Humility
"If spirituality consists chiefly in doing something to advance real human happiness by precept and example, a king is also advanced in spirituality: he can do more to further human happiness than a discarded recluse. Humility of mind and meekness in deportment, the two among several other essentials of spirituality, when exhibited by those who can afford to do otherwise, add charms to their owner. They are taken as a good moral object-lesson and act as a magic wand converting every haughty, stiff-necked into a gentle and humble creature. But when these high morals find their manifestation in one humble in position, they only invite effrontery and rebuke and excite jeer and jest. They are not taken as good morals of their owner, but as a necessary outcome of his low social status.
In this respect, Muhammad
is the only glorious illustration of true spirituality. Once an orphan,
again a persecuted citizen, again one fleeing for his life, and then a
spiritual and temporal chief. But could this taste of power change his
method of living? Did he surround himself with the pomp of power? Did
he keep a retinue or bodyguard, or did he indulge in any one of those
outward manifestations of earthly glory in which the monarchs of the earth,
ancient and modern, have loved to clothe themselves? Did he amass wealth
or leave a large fortune behind? In fact, in no one single respect did
he change. Power, notwithstanding, and stupendous power too, for he exercised
a power which the greatest of monarchs might have envied, he remained
to the last simple, unostentatious, free from pride, living for his flock
and living with them with a self-sacrifice rarely to be seen in life."
Khuda Haafiz,
Riaz Ahmadali
Institute for Islamic Studies and Publications
Paramaribo, Suriname
[email protected]
http://moeslim.8m.net
A Spiritual Note
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Qur'anic quotations in the Notes are from the English translation of the Holy Qur'an by Maulana Muhammad 'Ali, which you can read at http://www.muslim.org/english-quran/index.htm and http://aaiil.org/text/hq/trans/ma_list.shtml
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