A man came to Nabi saw and said “O Rasulullah, please allow me to travel as tourist.” Nabi saw replied ” The tourism for my ummah is to strive in the path of Allah.” (Abu Dawud)
So we try to learn and practice the above hadith by spending our time 40 days in the path of Allah.
Our flight to Dhaka dated 22-Dec-08 and came back to KL on 2-Feb-09. 8 brothers from Malaysia and 5 brothers from Bangladesh form a jamat. We went to Teknaf (the most southern part of Bangladesh, a border to Myanmar), Cox’s Bazar and Chittagong for about 25 days and 15 days in Dhaka.
The last part of our journey we gathered at Tongi Ijtima’ (the second largest Muslim gathering after Haj). Can you imagine a poor country can organise such a big event (about 3mill people attended) and the food, the transportation and the shelter is free.
Some people and friends wonder why the jamat should spend 40 days in the path of Allah every year. Many benefits that Allah will give. Some of you has knew about it and many others are not aware about it. Please read the Muntakhab Hadith compiled by Maulana Muhammad Yusof Kandhlawi.
One of it is that “A morning or an evening you spent in the path of Allah is better than the world and all that it contains”. It means that if the world and all that it contains is spent in the path of Allah, the reward of one morning or an evening in the path of Allah will be much more. Wow… imagine that all the gold, the silver everything you spent for Allah, just one morning in the path of Allah, the reward is more…
Besides many rewards that Allah gives, you will also learn something that is beneficial to your worldly life as well.
Among the lesson learned that I tell our unit trust consultants are:
- Never wait until you know everything for you to start doing your business. “Sampaikan walaupun satu ayat” Nabi says during Hajjatul Wida’. Entrepreneur knows this very well. Bill Gates never complete his knowledge on Windows Vista but he has launched the DOS earlier on. Imagine he waits until he learned the Windows Vista technology then he launched the software. What opportunity lost for him and also for the people.
- Everything is coming from Allah. Only Allah Alone is doing. Some people do sales aggressively but results is not favourable and some people just join and do sales can produce better results. So everything is coming from Allah. But don’t get me wrong. You must put all 100% effort and then tawakkal to Allah like the story of Musa a.s. when being catched by Firaun. What did Musa a.s. do? Don’t just relax and expect something from Allah. When Allah gives you something, make syukur Alhamdulillah. Allah give to those He wants.
- Istiqamah or persistent on everthing good that you do. A story of a droplet of water but continuously dropping will make the floor “melekuk” but a whole pail of water poured on the floor – no lekuk.
- Don’t cannibalise your long term objective with your short term gain. Try imagine that our objective is ultimately to make Allah happy with us and make us enter into Paradise. But because we are so desperate or love to make money in this world, we don’t care whether the money is haraam or halal. So in the HereAfter we will face the consequences. In the same manner, unit trust business – we want to make our clients happy, but we don’t give good service to existing clients and keep finding new clients – our existing clients will go away.
- We know the value of this world and that is why many people run for it. But we don’t know the value of Akhirat, the value of good deeds (amal agama like solah, zikr etc), the value of sunnah, the value of sacrificing our time and wealth in the path of Allah – even if we knew, we don’t want it or are lazy to do it because we can’t see with our eyes, we can’t touch it. Why? Because our believe to the unseen is weak. Because the environment for this life of our Nabi saw is long gone. People are afraid and even kutuk the sunnah of Nabi saw. But they are proud of practising the life of the Yahud and Nasara. They say they hate Yahud and Nasara verbally but they practice what these people do in their life. How is the help of Allah will come to us. Learn how Allah help Musa a.s and Bani Israel from Firaun. Who killed Firaun? Who saved Musa a.s. and Bani Israel? Why? So long that we don’t change, Allah helps will not come to us.
Oh..ho.. very long blog. Sorry for being emotional on point no 5.