More than a thousand years ago, Ali (AS) - the Master of the Faithful, the Prince of all Believers, the First Successor after the last Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (S) - discussed the following observances and only today are such facts being established by science. In one of his invocations, which appears in Sahifatul- Alawiyyah, Ali (AS) glorifies Allah in the following manner:
Glory to Allah! You are One and You have no partners.
Glory to Allah! The One to Whom the mountains glorify with their voices, and (these mountains) say, Glory to my God, the Great, and all praise due to Him.
Glory to Allah! The One to Whom the trees glorify with their voices, and (these trees) say, Glory to Allah, the Master, the Truth, the Separator of truth from evil.
Glory to Allah! The One to Whom the seven skies and earth glorify, and what is in them. They all glorify Him by saying, Glory to my God, the Great, and the Patient One, the Merciful. All praise due to Him.
• Albert Einstein showed with his well-known equation that the material world is nothing but energy and that everything in existence is part of this universal field of energy, vibrating at different frequencies and intensities.
• If this universal energy field is the sum total of existence then it can only be organized and acted upon by itself, and so must be conscious.
• This energy also stores memories, learns and evolves.
• All forms of energy are simply different manifestations of this one consciousness, and this means that things we previously may have thought were non-living or inanimate are very much alive and connected to us.
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This book begins introducing the Definition of Prayer, and its importance. The author explains how prayers are accepted, and what acceptance of prayer can lead to in a believer's life. Beyond the literal recitation of the prayer, in this text we can find the etiquettes of prayer, and other aspects we must take into consideration.
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And certainly We wrote in the Book after the reminder that as for the land, My righteous servants
shall inherit it. (21/105) Allah has promised to those of you who believe and do good that He will
most certainly make them rulers in the earth as He made rulers those before them, and that He will
most certainly establish for them their religion which He has chosen for them, and that He will most
certainly, after their fear, give them security in exchange; they shall serve Me, not associating aught
with Me; and whoever is ungrateful after this, these it is who are the transgressors.
We Shias are caught in the clutches of the hopes of humanity and we are being grinded between the oppressors. Therefore our sights are fully trained on the advent of a great savior so that he comes to establish the divine rule, as no one is needless of it and there is no injustice in it.
We are convinced of the age of justice in which injustice, oppression and slavery would be eradicated and he would spread love, lofty morals, equality and sacrifice among the people, and in the shade of such a government those powers would be destroyed and suppressed who play with human life or those who spread destruction on the earth.
We are present in the age of that divine just one and the Awaited one, who is the Haibatullah (awe of Allah), a gift and a great bounty of Allah for the humanity. That awaited leader, who is the hope for the deprived ones and the helpless and who would bestow them mercy and distribute goodness and divine bounties among them.
We live during the age of the twelfth Imam from the Imams of Ahle Bayt who is also known as the Qaim-e-Aale Muhammad, whom the Almighty Allah has prepared for the reformation of the world and changing of the system of the corrupted rulers of the world who have pushed the people into the worst circumstances.
The Almighty Allah has created the holy personality of Imam Mahdi (a.s) for the loftiest aims and the greatest reformation of human society. Thus it is him who would fill the earth with justice and equity after it would have been filled with injustice and oppression.
The Kind Lord has selected him from among the saints for such a lofty purpose, because the heart and the original essence (teenat) of the His Eminence is purer and cleaner than all the people and from the aspect of insight and intelligence is the most dominant one because he is from a family, which the Almighty Allah has honored and kept away from all sorts of uncleanness and bestowed it with purity and chastity.
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So long as three great problems of the world; the degrada-tion of man through indigence and pauperism, the corruption of women through hunger, the ignorance and poverty existing on earth, are unsolved; so long as spuriously creating hells amid the civilization on earth and social suffocation is possible in any part of the world, the personality of Imam Ali (s) and his speeches and maxims collected in Nahj al-Bal¡ghah can not fail to be of use.
Nowadays many people of the world are in easy circum-stances because of the advancement of learning and technique, but regretfully the morals and ideality are, at the same time, disappearing among them and it seems that the world is badly in need of morals and spirituality.
It is clear that the modern science is the result of a series of quarrels occurred between church and the scientists during the Dark Ages.
The people expected that church would teach them the prin-ciples of religion and would direct the society to welfare and peacefulness, but it was contrary to their expectation that the church persisted in its opinion to protect its prestige and im-position of its pretended ideas as the divine religion. It sur-prised every scientific movement and consequently scientists became involved in many difficulties. When they cleared the immoral acts of church, they were put to torture and finally they were badly killed.
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Death is a reality in which all human beings believe. However, it is also a reality which most of us like to keep out of our minds.
In Islam, death is not an end to our existence; it is a passage, which takes us from this world to the hereafter – the actual purpose for our creation and the result of our work in this life. Whether we fear death or not depends on how much we have prepared for the reckoning of the Day Judgement.
Preparing for death is a lifetime’s job. It begins on the day you reach the age of bulugh and are held accountable for your deeds in the eyes of Almighty Allah. Imam ‘Ali bin Abu Talib (a.s.) has beautifully described the preparation for death as follows: “Fulfilling the obligations, refraining from forbidden [things, and acquiring noble character.”
In this article, I have attempted to present some of the things which all believers are either required or strongly urged to do just before death by the Shari’ah.
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One of the fundamental issues dealt with in the Nahj al-balaghah relates to theological and metaphysical problems. In all, there are about forty places in the sermons, letters, and aphorisms where these matters are discussed. Some of these pertain to the aphorisms, but more often the discussion is longer, covering sometimes several pages.
The passages on tawhid (Divine Unity) in the Nahj al-balaghah can per-haps be considered to be the most wonderful discussions of the book. Without any exaggeration, when we take into account the conditions in which they were delivered, they can almost be said to be miraculous.
The discussions on this theme in the Nahj al-balaghah are of a varied nature. Some of them constitute studies of the scheme of creation bearing witness to Divine creativity and wisdom. Here, 'Ali speaks about the whole system of the heaven and the earth, or occasionally discusses the wonderful features of some specific creature like the bat, the peacock or the ant, and the role of Divine design and purpose in their creation. To give an example of this kind of discussion, we may quote a passage re-garding the ant:
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In the world where our existence unfolds, we have never heard of or seen an organization or administration that is left to its own devices without a supervisor being responsible for it. Human reason and intelli-gence cannot accept that social institutions be without a leader or ruler, and no thinker will approve of an organizational formula that lacks a re-sponsible leader.
Given that reason and logic emphasize the necessity of a responsible leader for even the smallest social unit, how can humanity as a whole at-tain the basic goals to which it aspires or acquire the lofty values of which it is worthy, without a leader and chief?
Now the Creator, within the system of creation, has not withheld any-thing that may be needed for any being to advance and attain a fitting degree of perfection; He has placed the necessary means and tools at the disposal of all things, and given to each part of every animate being and plant exactly what it needs. How then can it be believed that in the sys-tem of legislating for the human being He should overlook the sending of Prophets who play such a sensitive and multifaceted role in the evolu-tion of the human being, or that He should remain indifferent to this fun-damental pillar?
Furthermore, can any intelligent person accept that the vast scheme of being, with all the wonder-inducing manifestations of life, should be based on aimlessness and purposelessness? Is it possible to attribute such an irrational act to the sublime Creator? The question of reward and punishment, in a precise and calculated form, is involved here.
It is an indubitable scientific principle that purposiveness is the concom-itant of all life, thought and will. It is not possible that a wise being should consciously undertake an action in which no goal or purpose resides.
Apart from the fact that the human being instinctively regards an aim-less act as incompatible with wisdom and intelligence, he can clearly per-ceive that all the atoms in the world of being are ruled by order and cal-culation. So just as the orderliness of life springs from the knowledge and wisdom of the Creator, the same may be said of the purposiveness of the whole scheme of being, including the existence of the human be-ing.
Is God indifferent to the fate of humans? Has He abandoned them to their own devices, so they may shed each other's blood, commit any crime they like, and transform the world into a fiery hell?
A God Who holds back nothing in order for every creature to attain its perfection cannot possibly be indifferent to the human being's attaining the degree of perfection suitable to him. On the contrary, just as He guides the human being to material perfection by means of his instincts, He guides him to his true perfection both by means of the innate guid-ance of his nature and by means of legislative guidance, for innate guid-ance needs help when confronting the instincts.
The Quran says: "We will give help to both groups, those who worship the world and those who seek the hereafter, so that none should remain deprived of the favor and generosity of their Lord."(17:18)
If the human being were left alone in the world with his own hopes, everyone would judge on the basis of his own temperament and taste. He would do whatever he found pleasing and conformable to his inclin-ations. Every individual would follow his own path in order to secure his interests, and the result would be a clash of desires and interests, leading to the severance of individual and social relations and unending corruption and anarchy.
The French scholar, Emile Dermenghem, writes in his book The Life of Muhammad: The Prophets are just as necessary for the world as the be-neficial and wondrous forces of nature, such as the sun, rainfall, winter
storms, which shake and cleave open dry and infertile land, covering them with freshness and verdure.
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