Article 1:3 of Achieving Success
Soon after I came back to the UK, I went to my local masjid in Sheffield for Friday Prayers and heard the then Imam, Dr. Omer El-Hamdoon, giving a series of khutbahs (Friday sermons) on how to achieve success. It was wonderful; I really felt as if I had 'come home'; what he was saying was reinforcing everything I had been saying during my life coaching.
So, acting on a bit of a long shot - and based on the premise that if you don't ask you don't get (they can always say 'no', but by asking at least there is a chance that they might say 'yes'!) - I contacted him to ask if he would let me have some articles based on what he had been saying for me to share with the visitors to my website. And he agreed!
Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing with you the three articles that he gave me; jazak Allah khairan Dr. Omer for your generosity!
This is the first of his articles:
By Omer El-Hamdoon
Islam aims to enhance life rather than promote death.
The message of the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) can be summarized by the Hadith narrated by Imam Al-Bukhaari on the authority of `Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her):
She asked the Prophet, “Have you had a day that was worse than the Day of Uhud?”
He said, ‘I received [the harm] from your tribe that I did. And the worst was that which I received from them on the day of Aqabah. I went to see Ibn `Abd Yalayl ibn `Abd Kilal, but he didn’t respond positively. So I left feeling quite worried and anxious. I wasn’t aware [of anything], except that I found myself in the Qarn Al-Tha’lib area. I raised my head and I saw a cloud that had sheltered me. I looked and there was Jibreel. He called to me, “Allah heard what your tribe said to you. He has sent you the angel of the mountains for you to order him as you wish.”
The angel of the mountains called me, he greeted me, and then he said, “O Muhammad! What is it that you want? If you would like, I will close the two mountains on them [i.e. destroy them].”
So the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Instead, I hope that Allah will bring from their loins those who worship Allah alone; not associating anything with Him.”
So you can see that the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) didn’t want vengeance for himself; he wanted salvation for the people. The message of Islam - and the trust carried by humans - is to convey the Mercy of Allah, His Generosity, His Virtue, His Gifts, etc., to the people
Allah says: “Then We made you successors in the land after them so that We may observe how you will do.”
There are three factors behind every success:
To succeed you must:
It is important that you ask yourself the following questions:
And you should always seek to please Allah and His Messenger.
If you ask Allah for anything, ask Him for the High Firdaus [the highest level of Paradise]. The evidence for this is:
Abu Hurrairah narrated that the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “If anyone believes in Allah and in His Messenger, and establishes Salah (Prayer), and fasts Ramadan, it is incumbent upon Allah to make them enter Paradise; whether they go out to strive in the path of Allah or sit in the land they were born in.”
So they said, “O Messenger of Allah! Should we not give the people this good news?”
He commented, “In Paradise, there are one hundred levels that Allah has prepared for those who strive in the Path of Allah. Between each two levels is like that [distance] between the sky and the Earth. So if you ask Allah, then ask Him for Al-Firdaus, as it is the highest of all Paradise.”
And:
Raja’ ibn Haywa (`Umar ibn `Abdul `Aziz’ minister) said, “I was with `Umar when he was the Governor of Madinah. He sent me out to buy a garment for him. I purchased one for 500 dirhams. When he looked at it, he said, ‘It is good, had it not been cheap.’
When he became the Caliph, he sent me to purchase a garment for him. I purchased one for 5 dirhams. He looked at it and said, “It is good, had it not been expensive.”
Raja’ said, “When I heard that, I cried.” He asked me about my weeping and I explained.
Then he said, “O Raja’ I have an ambitious self. Whenever I achieve something, I desire something higher. My self desired to marry my cousin Fatimah, daughter of `Abdul Malik, and I married her. Then it desired to become the governor, and I became that. Then it desired the caliphate; and I achieved it. And now, O Raja’, my self desires Paradise; so I hope to be one of its inhabitants.”
What are your constraints? What are your abilities? Get some ideas together; try brainstorming and gathering all your ideas, small and large.
Then:
And of course, as a Muslim, your vision has to be Islamically sound and defined.
Look at the Companions and take examples from them. (We will look at this more in Part II)
This life is a competition [to succeed], but what is the real life that is worth competing for? Allah says, after mentioning the reward of Paradise: “And for this, let those who wish to compete, compete.”
Other characteristics that your vision should have are that it should be:
Success is not the key to happiness; happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Article 2:3 of Achieving Success: If there's a Will, there's a Way
Article 3:3 of Achieving Success: Have a Work Ethic
Disclaimer: Any articles published on the CoachAmal website are here because they are felt to contain material that may be of use/interest to visitors to the site. They do not infer agreement with any other material that the author may have written.
If you’d like to contact Dr. Omer as a result of this article, please contact us and the message will be passed onto him, as he asked that you do so through this website.
~Sister~ If you're ready to make important changes in your life, ask for a phone / Skype coaching consultation to discuss how we could work together on this
Get my FREE eBooklet: Is Coaching for Me? to find out:
We women tend to mull over things and hold onto them, whereas men are more pragmatic thinkers; if they can’t do something about a matter, they tend to move on from it and leave it behind. So why do we keep on doing this and how can we stop?...
Being dismissively brushed-off when you've thanked someone can sometimes feel quite insulting. Find out how you can avoid falling into that trap...
The more you show genuine gratitude to the people around, the better your relationships will be. But there is an art to it, as people can spot disingenuous gratitude a mile off. So how can you show your gratitude genuinely? Read on....
