RECITING QURAN
Once I asked a certain Sufi shaikh if he had any advice about how to read Quran. His answer has remained imprinted in my mind and heart: "when you read it as if you are reading the word of God, it will open its secrets to you"
Excerpt from "The Knowing Heart" by Kabir Helminski
REPENTANCE
One day, a rich man came to Rabi'a al-'Adawiyyah and said, "For many years I've lived a very spoiled, arrogant and sinful life. If I repent now will God forgive me?"
Rabi'a replied, "No, but if God forgives you, you will repent."
SINCERITY
Shaikh Abul-Qasim al-Junaid said, “Sincerity is a secret between God Most High and His servant. Even the recording angel knows nothing of it to write it in the recording of one’s deeds. Satan does not know it to corrupt it, nor is passion (animal soul) aware of it that it might influence it.”
Excerpt from "The Risalah" by Al-Qushayri
PRAYERS
…prayer showed me the way to the kind of equanimity and inner independence that seemed to shield Muslims form the constraints and duress of the material world (al duniya), because they can stop the world after all and get off –by escaping from an environment where time is money, and money is everything.
Excerpt from “Journey to Makkah”, by Murad Hoffman
ISLAM
One thing is certain: Every born Muslim must be reconverted to Islam sometime during his life; Islam cannot be inherited.
Excerpt from “Journey to Makkah”, by Murad Hoffman
BACKBITING
God, glory to Him, revealed to Prophet Moses, “He who dies having repented from backbiting will be the last to enter paradise, and he who dies persistent in it will be the first to enter hell.”
A person who maligns other people is like someone who sets up a catapult with which he throws his good deeds East and West. H e criticizes one person from Khurasan, another from Damascus, another from Hejaz, another from Turkistan- he scatters his good deeds, gets up, and has nothing left!
Excerpt from ‘The Risalah’ by Al Qushayri
SALAT (Prayers)
In salat (prayers) there is fast of Ramadan, fast of Maryam, zikr of Allah, the conversation of Me'raj and ends with a prayer of mercy to all on the right and the left.
Late Prof. Abdul Qadeer Siddiqui
SINCERITY (IKHLAS)
Abu Yaqub al Susi said, "When people see sincerity in their sincerity, their sincerity is in need of sincerity!."
Yusuf ibn al-Husyn said, "The most powerful thing in the world is sincerity; yet how often have I striven to drive hypocrisy from the heart, while it has sprouted up again in another form?"
Excerpt from 'Risalah' by Al-Qushayri
SIGNIFICANCE OF HAJ
But this voluntary rite (Haj), ........ remains none the less a secret dimension in Islam, hidden from all those who have not actually explored it themselves; and this dimension is the link between the present moment and the past. It is by no means only in virtue of pilgrimage that Islam is named the ‘primordial religion’, but the pilgrimage is the eloquent demonstration of what these names imply, for it is not only a journey in space to the center towards which one has always turned one’s face in prayers, but also a journey in time far back beyond the missions of Mohammad, Jesus and Moses.
Excerpt from "Mecca From Before Genesis Until Now" by Martin Lings
ABANDONING QURAN
The Muslims abandoned the Qurán for the hadiths. Then they abandoned the hadith for the sayings of scholars. Then they abandoned the sayings of the scholars for the method of blind followers. Then they abandoned these blind followers and their sternness for the ignorant people and their confusion. The evolution of Islamic thought in this manner was a disaster for Islam and the Muslims. Ibn Abdul Barr reports from AlDahhak ibn Muzahim: “There will come a time over people when the Quran will be left on the shelf and spiders will build their webs over it: no use will be made of what is in it and men’s actions will be according to narrations and hadiths.”
Excerpt from Mohammad al Ghazzali’s Fiqh-Us Seerah