“Don’t worship Allah so He may give you. Rather, worship Him so He may be pleased. For when He is pleased, He will astonish you with His Gifts.”
By the dawn
And the ten nights
And the even and the odd
O you tranquil soul!
Return to your Lord, well-pleased and pleasing
[al-Fajr: 1-3; 27-28]
Loftiness is attained in accordance to one’s struggles,
And whoever seeks nobility, remains vigilant by night.
Whoever wishes to achieve without due effort,
Will waste their life seeking what’s impossible.
You search for glory and yet you sleep at night,
It’s only the seeker of pearls who dives deep into the sea.
– Imam al-Shafi’i, al-Diwan
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All is not what it seems!
Words are not always what they seem to be.
Here, 3 poems are presented – in most of the cases, the same word is used (sometimes a derivative of it) and in each case it means something different!
رَأيْتُ فِي كَافرٍ كافرَ بنَ كافرٍ يَكْفُرُ في كافرٍ عند كافرٍ
“I saw in the field (kaafir), a farmer son of a farmer (Kaafir ibn kaafirin), digging ( yakfuru) in the field (kaafir) near a wide valley (kaafir)”
The verb ‘كَفَرَ‘ literally means to cover up/hide, it also means to be ungrateful. The farmer will dig, bury and cover up a seed, ready to grow it, whilst a disbeliever in his Lord is an ingrate to the favours of his Lord and he indeed covers up the Truth when it comes to him…
Seas and wide lakes are also sometimes called ‘Kaafir’ because according to Lisaan al-Arab, they cover what is beneath them.
And you thought kaafir just meant someone who disbelieved!
The next post will inshaa’Allaah be going through this topic in more details… watch this space.
Consider this… what does it mean to you?
الخِيَارُ خِيَارُ الخِيَارِ
Khiyaar is the khiyaar of the khiyaar 😀
It means:
“Cucumber is the choice of the Elite”
The term خيار here means 3 different things each time! [Cucumber/choice/the elite]
بِجَدِّي لا بجِدِّي كلُ مجدٍ *** فهل جدٌّ بلا جِدٍّ بمُجْدِي؟
The poet says,
Every glory is by exertion and not by luck
Is luck without any exertion of any glory?
جدّ (with fat-ha and kasra) also has an extensive range of meanings from seriousness, effort/exertion to luck and also grandfather!
*Jazaakillaahu khayran to my study partner who mentioned these poems to me during our fiqh sessions 🙂