A Good Aid – Abdur Rahman’s Corner

Peace, one and all…

Dhu al-Nun al-Misri is reported to have said:

‘A good aid in refraining from lusts is keeping guard over eye and ear’.
Quoted in Attar, Tazkerat al-Owliya

Ramadan is a month of beautiful interruption, a month in which God becomes between us and our everyday habits, our automatic and barely conscious behaviours. This interruption also allows us to see ourselves a little more clearly, to examine ourselves a little more honestly. The month opens us up to the possibility of insight. Beloved Dhu al-Nun here offers us a powerful aid in deepening that insight. If we are able to look carefully, we can see where unhelpful behaviours enter into us. That is, although our own faults draw us on to wrongdoing, there is much out there in the world surrounding us that can also create distance. Not only are we to work on ourselves, we are to accompany that work with an examination of those things we are allowing to enter into our consciousness. We are called to turn away from everything that inflames desire, that incites shahawat.

This work is not easy. Leaving behind these things is challenging, especially in these days of ours, with all their distractions.

Let us flee then to Allah, and turn our whole hearts towards His overflowing Grace.