Ar-riyaa’: May Allah swt save us!

http://www.suhaibwebb.com/blog/contributions/reflections-on-riya%e2%80%99-muslema-purmul-al-azhariyah/

A scary topic, but an excellent post, masha Allah.

Definitely subtle. I remember when I first started practicing, i was so scared of riyaa’ that if I was about to put money in a charity box or something, and someone walked in, I would wait til they left. But then someone told me that that in itself proved my insincerity because if you’re doing it only for Allah..it really makes no difference whether they’re there or not, and that that’s shaitan’s trick to prevent you from doing a good deed. That makes sense to me, Allahu ‘aalim. SubhanAllah shaitan tries at your right with riyaa’ and at your left with leaving the good deed.  May Allah swt save us! Ustadh Usama once, when talking about the 4 enemies of man: dunya, shaitan, hawa and nafs…likened it to 4 dogs attacking you. He said if you try and fight one, the other one comes. If you defeat 2, the 3rd and 4th come together, etc. and your success is very unlikely. But if you ask the owner for help, all the owner does is whistle and the dogs go running. So similarly, we should rely on Allah swt’s help and constantly ask Him for it. We are incapable of any success alone, laa hawla wa la quwwata illah billah.

*Andd..a REALLY random sidenote so I don’t have to write a whole new post lol: Today in class, Professor Goldenberg was talking about the existence of God in light of the book we’re reading about different theories of religion, and some people (mostly athiests/agnostics) started to complain about the view expressed by the theorist that God exists, and professor Goldenberg said, “Well, it’s really hard to explain what color is to a blind man.” SubhanAllah, I found that analogy really beautiful and just wanted to share it. This is the second class i’ve taken with Professor Goldenberg and masha Allah he’s definitely a goldmine…(or should I say a golden-berg? lol ok i’ll stop while I’m ahead) Definitely thinking about taking a 3rd class with him next semester… If any Stony Brookers read my blog, Consider taking “Great Books of India” with Professor Sridhar if you’re interested in the topic, and either “Modern Judaism” or “Zionism before 1948″ with Professor Goldenberg. Oh, AND “Orientalism” with Professor Nicholson. These 3 classes btw, for those who actually wanna learn