What can one do to concentrate in Salah/Prayer?

Assalamu Alaikum warahmatullahi t3ala wa barakatuhu,

Some advice for myself first, then you. May ALLAH t3ala give us all the tawfeeq to act upon this advice, aameen thumma aameen

To concentrate in salah you have to remind yourself who your standing in front of. Is he just some random person? Is he a friend? How would you approach a person of big status like a king? Remember the one who you are approaching is your creator; The king of ALL kings! When you think about his status, and that hes capable of anything and everything.

Also, Ulema always advice not to rush right to salah.
Make ablution about 10-5 minutes before salah time, sit down on the prayer mat, and do zikr from your heart, ponder over who you are about to talk to. You have to take your heart and mind out of your daily activites, and bring them towards your salah. Salah is the only ibaadah in islam in which you do takbeer (raising your hands to your shoulders/earlobes, and saying ALLAHU akbar), and you know why?Raising your hand to your shoulders is a sign that you are leaving everything, the world, anything that concerns it, all thoughts behind you (behind your hands),and now you are approaching ALLAH t3ala. InshaALLAH t3ala when you do this, your brain will get the time to take itself out of the worldy activities, and concentrate in salah.

                                            

Also, Ulema always advice not to rush right to salah.
Make ablution about 10-5 minutes before salah time, sit down on the prayer mat, and do zikr from your heart, ponder over who you are about to talk to. You have to take your heart and mind out of your daily activites, and bring them towards your salah. Salah is the only ibaadah in islam in which you do takbeer (raising your hands to your shoulders/earlobes, and saying ALLAHU akbar), and you know why?Raising your hand to your shoulders is a sign that you are leaving everything, the world, anything that concerns it, all thoughts behind you (behind your hands),and now you are approaching ALLAH t3ala. InshaALLAH t3ala when you do this, your brain will get the time to take itself out of the worldy activities, and concentrate in salah.

Once you start your prayer, you need to keep on reminding yourself, You are in salah, ALLAH t3ala has moved all the
curtains out of the way, Its just you and him, without ANYTHING in the middle, you are talking to him, Your tongue is reciting the beautiful words of ALLAH t3ala. Think about what you are reading (read the translation of the surahs you are going to read if you dont understand arabic), It will help you concentrate in your salah, and enjoy even more. Dont rush in your salah, take a second to recall whatyour doing before every rukn (before ruku, think that you are bowing in front of ALLAH t3ala, out of humility, make yourself feel humble), and everytime you see subhana rabbiyal azeem, subhana rabbiyal a'ala think what your saying,
make yourself say it from your heart.Believe what you say, He is
very almighty, he is very exalted.

When you go to sajdah, imagine your putting your palms and head on the the feet of ALLAH t3ala the almighty (ofcourse, ALLAH t3ala doesnt have features like us,
and we dont know the reality of them) (I heard this in a bayan, and have been doing it since then, and it is very beneficial), you will feel like crying when you imagine it, and you will start to mean what you say.

                                      

The whole time while you pray, fight with yourself! Keep your mind out of wordly thoughts! Remember a prayer in which a person fights his nafs, and reminds himself what hes doing, and tries to keep his mind in salah, is better, and gets more ajar, then someone who prays easily without and difficulty. There is an example given by the ulema, that there is a guy who sells fruits, he has a cart,which he walks around with selling the fruits, and when the Muazzin gives the azan, he immedietly stops, and goes towards the masjid, and covers his cart, and enters the masjid to pray. While hes praying, hes so worried, that someone will steal something from the cart, and the whole time while hes praying, hes constantly tries to fight his nafs, and tries to concentrate in his prayer. There is another man who is old, and has retired, he doesnt have any duties, so he easily prays with concentration, without any difficulty. Whos prayer do you think is more virtious? who gets more good deeds? If you said the person who sells fruits, your correct! That is because he prays with difficulty, and whenever someone has difficulty in ibaadah, he gets double good deeds.

Finally, Ask ALLAH t3ala for khushoo3, and khudhoo3, and to give you the halawah of ibaadah (abstain from sins, you will be blessed with the halawah of imaan), cry and make lots of duas for me, yourself, and the rest of the ummah! 

Words of Wisdom

(From Online Sources)

Is that vase more valuable or your childs heart?

Assalamu Alaikum warahmatullahi t3ala wabarakatuhu,

 ~*~بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم~*~

This is a really different type of post compared to my usual posts, but I'm really annoyed about this. I really hate it when women start to yell at their young cute innocent children for dropping something or breaking something, I mean seriously you can find a million of those in the world, but how many "your child" will you find? The poor kid is already crying and asking for forgiveness, so why scream at him like crazy and hurt him? Kids are kids, they are going to play, and run around, and may break things, but that's part of being a child! Now, if you told him/her to stay away from something because its dangerous, or they might get hurt, than okay I understand, but I've seen ladies start to scream at children for breaking an expensive vase or some type of show piece. May it be from Italy, Egypt, United Kingdom, the Caribbeans, Where ever its from, your child is still and will always be waaaaayyy more valuable!

    Also, I seriously don't get whats wrong with women these days, they totally have lost the meaning of motherhood and it's responsibilities! Like there's this girl playing until she got hurt or something, and so she came up to her mother, who was busy doing something on her ipod, and chatting on the phone at the same time. This girls like practically begging her mother to listen, but the woman is way too busy talking about what that lady wore, and what she said, and totally gossip! The woman asks the person on the cell for second, screams at her daughter "Can't you see I'm on the phone, go away!", just looking at the kids face could break your heart!  Its like women today are too busy with their facebook, ipods, chit chatting on the phone, than spending time with their children, doing good tarbiyah (raising their children properly), and looking up to the needs of their family. Like, the other day theres this girl who was extremely disrespectful, naughty, and totally rude to everyone. She was like picking on older girls, giving rude comments, and she was onlyyy 12 years old! Her mother was too busy chatting to notice, and when someone did complain she puts the cell down and is like: " ---- stop it.", Seriously, that was her reaction, now tell me, how in the world is that going to make a difference? Her child basically looks at her, ignores her, and goes right back to her attitude!

     I'm the type of person who can't really yell back at disrespectful children or like get them off my back, so I usually have to go through this kinda rudeness from disrespectful children (from distant family), alhamdulillah t3ala other than family, I never have problem with children, i actually get along really well with kids, but these kids, I don't know, maybe because they know I wont say anything back, or I'll just ignore, they start to get out of hand....but I really don't know how to shake them off....soo I just stopped going to this place I used to go to, because of one of the children who was extremely rude and had to pick on everyone! Its kinda funny because my other cousin shes kind of straight forward, so she'll tell you off, or scream at you, or even hit you, so the kids keep their distance from her, but when it comes to me, they start to get on my last nerve, then I get really annoyed at their mothers, why don't they teach them respect, when they see them being rude to an elder, right in front of their eyes, why in the world don't they stop them!

 it just hurts to see mothers so distracted from giving their children the proper tarbiyah, so they become rude, and disrespectful, then when it gets out of hand, and they can't stop it anymore, they cry about it. It is really important for women to realize their responsibility and appeal to it, because their children are who they are, since they are the first madrassah for them, and however they're children will be, that's how the next generation is going to be.

  I pray to ALLAH t3ala to guide women to the straight path and follow the footsteps of the ummahaat-us-salihaat of our aslaaf, and become great role models for their children, and a source of hidayah for them, and may their children be the coolness of their eyes, aameen thumma aameen.

                                                

I a (born muslim) learned how to pray from a convert.

Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmatullahi t3ala wa barakatuhu,

My aunt was telling me that a friend of hers went out in the path of ALLAH t3ala (in jamaat), she said one day, it was time for Salah, so all of us made our ablution and stood up to pray. While we all made our intentions and started to pray right away, there was this convert woman, who just stood there. We kept on praying, and she still didnt start, until a long time after. After salah, we asked her: "Is everything alright? How come you didnt start your prayer right away?" She answered that: "Alhamdulillah t3ala all is well, and I delayed in starting because you all are old muslimahs, so the k3bah (baitullah t3ala) comes in front of you right away, but since im a new muslim, it takes a very long time, so I stood there and waited for it to come in front of my eyes clearly, and then I started. MashaALLAH t3ala.

Subhanallah t3ala! What has become of us muslims? Why do we take our imaan for granted? ALLAH subhanahu wa t3ala has given us the most greatest blessing that he made us muslims from the moment we were born, and take it for granted. May ALLAH t3ala teach us the proper way to pray, and may he give us the love of his ibadah! aameen thumma aameen.

How embarassing it is, to say new muslims advance in their imaans to such a high level, and leave us way behind, what kind of examples are we to the world, one day we shall be asked. One day we shall be asked!

Don't let people control your feelings!

Assalamu Alaikum warahmatullahi t3ala wabarakatuhu,

كن يا عبد حاذرا اليوم                     فان الدنيا و أناسه ظالمون

لا تلتفت عن شر هاؤلا                 ولا تترك عطائفك في أيديهم
فان شرهم عظيم                   إن شاءوا لالتهموك عضوا عضوا

كما يلتهم الكلب اللحم                       فكن لحساسك مالكاً واعلم

أن الناس لن يتركوك                    كيف ما كنت لابد أن يعيبوك

مهما فعلت أو قلت                            انهم سيطعنون فيك دوماً

فافعل كل شيء لله                       مخلصا وابتغ رضوانه أبداً  

 إن اساؤوا اليك فتوكل                  على الله واحتسب منه الأجر

وتذكر ذلك اليوم الذي      أوذي فيه رسول الله (صلى عليه وسلم)

يرمى بالاحجار ويدعو                لاعدائه دون الشكوى واللعنة

فاجعله لك اسوة و تعلم                من حياته واقتد به في أمورك

واعد الزاد لآخرتك واتق             ربك واعبده حتى يأتيك اليقين

(¯`·._.·[Musafirah]·._.·´¯)

(Translation: Oh insaan(people)! Beware this world and its people as they are cruel. Dont keep your back on their cruelty, and dont leave your emotions in their hands, verily their

viciousness is great. If they want they shall gobble you bit by bit, the way dogs gobble up meat, so keep control over your feelings. Without doubt people will never leave you alone, whatever you do, they will always criticize you. No matter what you say or do, they will find something, so whatever you do, do it only for ALLAH t3ala, and always seek his satisfaction. If people hurt you, be patient, keep your trust in ALLAH t3ala, and ask him for ajr, and remember the day wen the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was traumatized, he was thrown at by rocks, and his lips were praying for his enemies without complaining or cursing them.

make him your role model, and learn from his teachings, and follow his foot steps in everything you do. Prepare for the hereafter, fear ALLAH t3ala, and worship him until death takes you away.)