Time Capsule

Exalted is He who took His Servant by night from al-Masjid al-Haram to al-Masjid al- Aqsa, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him of Our signs. Indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing.

[AL-ISRA’ Ch.17:V.1]

          Alhamdulillah, thank to Allah as we are still in Ramadhan. But let’s us take a few minutes in our daily life to pray for our brothers and sisters in Gaza, for their safety. It is great to be back here and write another entry. Maybe we cannot involve in the battle, but we can do other things such as boycott, pray for them, gives donation to them and so on. So this is one of my battle fields to spread the knowledge, insyaAllah.

          Today I am going to continue the journey with the continuation about time. Last entry I already discuss about “time”, and I just realised that there are something that I not mentioned in the earlier part. So I will continue a bit more in order to explain that “time” is one of unique creatures that Allah created. There is nothing before Allah and there will be nothing after Allah, as Allah is not dependent on “time”. He is not in the system of “time”. There will be some more proves today about this.

          In the Quran, there are a lot of stories about the people of the Book and also about people that lives before. It is not just stories, not just a story telling, but incidents or events that we need to take lessons to learn. Allah described the stories not in detail but just the important point for us to remember and learn. There are few examples of verses below.

And [recall] when Moses said to his people, "O my people, indeed you have wronged yourselves by your taking of the calf [for worship]. So repent to your Creator and kill yourselves. That is best for [all of] you in the sight of your Creator." Then He accepted your repentance; indeed, He is the Accepting of repentance, the Merciful.

[AL-BAQARAH Ch.2:V.54]

And [recall] when Moses said to his people, "Indeed, Allah commands you to slaughter a cow." They said, "Do you take us in ridicule?" He said, "I seek refuge in Allah from being among the ignorant."

[AL-BAQARAH Ch.2:V.67]

And [mention, O Muhammad], when Abraham was tried by his Lord with commands and he fulfilled them. [ Allah ] said, "Indeed, I will make you a leader for the people." [Abraham] said, "And of my descendants?" [ Allah ] said, "My covenant does not include the wrongdoers."

[AL-BAQARAH Ch.2:V.124]

          We can say that, the majority stories in the Quran tell about the Bani Israel. That is one of the reasons the name of Prophet Moses came out so many times in the Quran. There are also stories about other prophet in other chapter such as Prophet Yusuf, Prophet Jesus, and so many more. It will take some time to list all those names and it will make this entry longer. In the example above there are also about Prophet Abraham.

          We say that Allah is omniscient (Maha Mengetahui), so He knows what happened in the past, present and also in the future. When we read the verses telling stories about the past events, maybe we not feel it is weird or miracle or impressed with it. This is because the nature of Allah to know it. So maybe most of us will take it easy and not care it too much. Most of us just read it, without an understanding about it. So we just feel it just like story telling.

          Today’s topic is “time capsule”. I already brought you to the past with a few verses and now I am going to bring you to the future with a few verses also. With the nature of Allah I mentioned above, still some of us thing that there is no need to feel weird or what if Allah can tells story in the future. Maybe some can say that, there are people also can predict what happen in the future. But there are no one can predict it as accurate as Allah. Let’s take a look on the verses.

And give good tidings to those who believe and do righteous deeds that they will have gardens [in Paradise] beneath which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with a provision of fruit therefrom, they will say, "This is what we were provided with before." And it is given to them in likeness. And they will have therein purified spouses, and they will abide therein eternally.

[AL-BAQARAH Ch.2:V.25]

If you could but see when the criminals are hanging their heads before their Lord, [saying], "Our Lord, we have seen and heard, so return us [to the world]; we will work righteousness. Indeed, we are [now] certain."

[AS-SAJJADAH Ch.32:V.12]

          In the beginning of this entry, I put the verse about isra’ mikraj. The event that Prophet Muhammad goes to the heaven to receive prayers duty from Allah. In that event, Allah shows to him a few things such as heaven and hell. Our prophet saw people being punish for their fault that they did during their lives on the earth. Now the question is, how can there are people in the hell and also in the heaven as the world is not destroy yet? The doomsday still not coming, it means that if people die they should still in the grave and waiting to be back alive in the day after to be judge by Allah.

          This is incredible for me. There are few verses in the Quran telling about the people in the hell, they ask Allah to give them chance so that they can repent and not enter the hell. There are also about people in the heaven saying they get the food same like they got during their lives. Things are not happen yet, but the stories are there (for us). Actually, alongside of Allah all things are already happen.

          For Allah, it just a movie. He can play it at the “time” He wants. He can bring it forward and also backward the movie. If He wants to show to His prophet, He can just select the “time” and views to him. In the Quran, it is just like a movie trailer. The movie already complete, just wait for the “time” to publish it. In the mean “time”, Allah shows a few examples so that we can take it as lessons to learn and to avoid the bad things.

          So the conclusion is, we need to read the Quran with understandings. Hope we can improve it in this remainder of month of Ramadhan. There are a lot of people can tell you about this more interesting than I did, still a lot more to learn.

And We have certainly created for Hell many of the jinn and mankind. They have hearts with which they do not understand, they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear. Those are like livestock; rather, they are more astray. It is they who are the heedless.

[AL-A’RAF Ch.7:V.179]

~Pray for Gaza~

~Do the best in Ramadhan~

~Wallahua’lam~

Time

By time. Indeed, mankind is in loss. Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience.

[AL-ASR CH.103:V.1-3]

          Bismillah and Alhamdulillah. I begin this entry with the name of Allah and by praising Him. It is too long I did not write an entry in this blog. Therefore, it is good to be back here writing and dakwah. Thanks to Allah as He prolong my life and your lives, to do good things, dakwah, worship Him and also repent from our mistakes.

          First of all, before going into the topic, I want to seek for apologize as I did not update my blog for more than two months. I had been busy with other stuff in my university, in club and others. After that I have to go through the final exam for this semester, so I need to focus more on studies than to write an entry here. I did write something in the notes in facebook, so maybe you can check it in my account. However, I am so sorry again because I wrote it in Malay, maybe some of you cannot understand it. I hope that I can back to continuously write entries here in this beautiful month of Ramadhan.

          Today’s topic is going to be a lot different from the others. This is because in the entries before, I always discussed about God, a bit on angels and also Quran. This time, I am going to write about “time”, something that I think so unique and also mystery. I am sure there are many people like me that asking the same questions about “time”.

          For example, I have been thinking it is better to die near to the end of the day (doomsday @ day of the last judgement). This is because, for those who died earlier need to be punish longer time compare to those who died before. This is because after the first call, the universe going to destroyed and all things will die and the second call from Allah will wake all people from their graves. So this shows that Allah is not fair enough. The punishment in the grave going to be different in period of time compare to other person.

          If people ask this question to you, how are you going to answer them? Actually it is simple. In surah al-Ikhlas, the second verse already told us that Allah does not depend on other things. He can stand by His own. So Allah does not depend on time. He is time independent. He is the one who controlling the time. It means that “time” also one of His creature, a very unique creature.

          Let’s take a look on a few verses that Allah cursed (sumpah) by using time. I am sorry if the meaning changing when I said “curse”, because I did not know what exact word to be used.

By the morning brightness.

[AD-DUHAA CH.93:V.1]

By the night when it covers.

[AL-LAYL CH.92:V.1]

By the sun and its brightness.

[ASH-SHAMS CH.91:V.1]

By the dawn.

[AL-FAJR CH.89:V.1]

          The verses that Allah used “time” also include the chapter that I put in the beginning of this entry. When we die, we will be buried in the grave (for most of the people), and of course we are going to be alone in the grave. Imagine that we are inside a box and everybody has their own box. The box is in different space and dimension from our real time here. Then Allah control the time for every boxes.

          To be fair to all people (human kind), the setting of the “time” need to be different so that all human will feel the same period of time in the box. When I said “time”, it is not necessary to be days like in earth (day and night). This is because we are in different dimension, maybe there is no light or no moon or no sun in the grave (box). There are a few examples in the Quran that sometime people get confused and misunderstood with.

          In the Quran Allah said that He created the universe (earth and heaven) in six days (ayyam). In Arabic “ayyam” not only meaning many days (day and night) but it is also means that for a long time. It is the same if we translate in English. The word “days” used in Bible also have the same meaning that is long time. Days here are not the replacement of day and night, so it is the same for those who are in the box (grave).

          In the first year, I learned calculus. The lecturer always has stories to tell to the students. The most interesting story is that, he said that there are mathematicians found or have theories saying that there are more than 4-Dimensions. Like us now, we are using 4-D (front and back, up and down, right and left and also time). But there are mathematicians said there are 12 dimensions for example.  So I think that these theories may be useful in order to prove something, such as dimension of the box or grave that I mentioned earlier in this entry. There are a lot more to be explored.

          For this month of Ramadhan, I hope that we can have a good time with “him”. I hope that we can fully use this opportunity to seek for Allah’s forgiveness and accumulate pahala as much as we can. I hope that this entry is useful and give something new knowledge to us.

So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?

[AR-RAHMAN CH.55:V.13]

~Wallahua’lam~

~Time passes and it will not wait for us~

~Salam Ramadhan~