Making the best of this Ramadan

01/08/2010| IslamWeb

Manage your time. This is so essential in Ramadan. Prophet Muhammad's advice in this regard, as stated in many Hadeeths, is unambiguous: Look at time as your life's capital and count any wasted part of it as a loss.

Break up your days and nights into time for worship, time for handling worldly business, and time for rest and socializing with friends and family. It may help one to engage in conversations about Ramadan, or do Thikr (remembrance of Allah), or make lots of Du'aa (supplication) every now and then, for Ramadan is the best time to do that as per the Hadeeth, “Three supplications are guaranteed answer by Allah: a supplication made by a fasting person, a supplication of a wronged person, and a supplication made by a traveling person." [Saheeh Al-Jaami’]

Be active and energetic. Do not succumb to the erroneous notion that Ramadan is a season of slumber and relaxation. If you happen to harbor such a mistaken notion, you better hasten to disabuse yourself of it. Fasting should in no way hamper work or involvement with good and fruitful endeavors, either worldly or otherworldly. Many of the great enterprises of the Prophet were carried out during Ramadan. However and sadly enough, some of us today pass the blessed days of Ramadan in perfect inactivity and dormancy, which they interrupt only briefly to perform prayer. What is more, many are in the habit of putting off benevolent acts until after Ramadan. Indeed the fact that the rewards for good deeds during Ramadan are doubled and redoubled to almost endless times should encourage one to do as many charitable deeds as possible.

 

Mend fences. Make Ramadan a season for reconciliation with your Lord and fellow humans around you. No other time is more propitious than Ramadan to do that. Many are the excellent attributes of Ramadan that the Prophet pointed to in countless authentic Hadeeths.Of these is the fact that Satan's intriguing capability is greatly reduced during this blessed month—a great Divinely-granted respite indeed of the evil plots of this sworn enemy of ours. Also fasting enhances spirituality, thus enabling the person to be less inclined to evil thoughts, less egotistic, and more prone to be forgiving, cooperative and reconciliatory. So seize this beautiful opportunity to lower your wings to those you know and those who might have wronged you, and shed ill-feelings that you might naturally harbor in less spiritually rich times.