The Internet Islamic Art Database | Library of Islamic Art and Quotes

“Maybe Allah withholds something from us in this life in order to give it to us in its perfect form in the next.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Every love outside of His love, is pain.

Rumi

“It's human nature to have desires. It's animal nature to give in.

Yasmin Mogahed

“One of my dear teachers once told me: "The Truth will set you free...but it will make you miserable first."

Yasmin Mogahed

“Something to reflect on: What is loved for other than His sake will be the source of your greatest pain.

Yasmin Mogahed

“It is so liberating to love for the sake of God. To love for the sake of the self is nothing but torment. Rise above the self and let go.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Indeed I have fasted from all of the delights in my life, and the day that I meet You, that day shall be the Iftar of my fasting.

Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali

“Those who love us will correct us.

Abdulbary Yahya

“Everything is as it should be. God's design is perfect.

Yasmin Mogahed

“What occupies us in salah is what occupies us outside salah.If we only think of dunya outside salah, we can only think of dunya inside salah.

Yasmin Mogahed

“What is courageous spirituality? It's to be ready to expose both your intimate weaknesses to yourself and the tyrant's tyranny to the world.

Tariq Ramadan

“The tear of the sinner is more beloved to Allah than the arrogance of the righteous man.

Ibn 'Ata Allah al-Iskandari

“If the door shuts, do not go away. Be patient, even if every possibility seems closed. The friend has secret ways known to no one else.

Rumi

“...when something happens that you dislike, or that hurts you, be careful not to get lost in the illusion created by pain. Look through it. Find the message in the bottle. Find the purpose. And let it lead you to glimpse just a little more of Him.

Yasmin Mogahed

“We must study the stars, the trees, the snow-capped mountains in order to read the message behind them. Because if we do not, we are like the one who finds a message inside a beautifully decorated bottle, yet becomes so enamored by the bottle, that he never even opens the message.

But what is that message, stuck inside the intensity of stars? There is a sign— but a sign of what? These signs are a pointer to Him, to His greatness, His majesty, His beauty. A pointer to His might and His power. Study, reflect, absorb the beauty and majesty of what’s created—but don’t stop there. Don’t lose yourself in beauty. Look beyond it and consider that if the creation is that majestic, that great, that beautiful, how majestic and great and beautiful must be the Creator.

Yasmin Mogahed

“But, what if every single stumble, every challenge, every experience in our life was only intended for one purpose: to bring us back to our origin? What if every win, every loss, every beauty, every fall, every cruelty, and every smile was only intended to unveil another barrier between us and God? Between us and where we began, and where we are desperately seeking to return?

Yasmin Mogahed

“So much of our pain is caused by one simple thing: when we're faced with a difficulty, we depend on ourselves, instead of Allah.

Yasmin Mogahed

“It is only by our connection to our Creator that we rise or fall in life, in our relationship with our world—and with all of humanity.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Lose yourself, lose yourself in this love. When you lose yourself in this love, you will find everything.

Rumi

“If what I love and what You love are not the same, make it easy for me to do what is most beloved to You—not what is most beloved to myself.

Yasmin Mogahed

“And if He bars against you all ways and passages, He will show you a secret way, which no man knows.

Rumi

“What if everything—everything—was just about seeing You?

Yasmin Mogahed

“When we are empty and at our weakest it's hard to give love. Even to God. It's then that what we need most is to fill ourselves with His love for us.

Yasmin Mogahed

“If you've given your heart away, take it back. You don't belong to any of this. You belong to Him. It is unjust to give away what belongs to another.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Ibrahim (as) was thrown into fire. God willing none of us will ever face such a trial in this life. But there is not a person who won’t get thrown into some sort of emotional, psychological or social fires in their life. And don’t think for a moment that God cannot make those fires cool for us.

Yasmin Mogahed

“He has sent the month of the Quran to elevate us and bring us from our isolation to His nearness.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Nothing is difficult if you seek it through your Lord, and nothing is easy if you seek it through yourself.

Ibn 'Ata Allah al-Iskandari

“I don't belong to any of this. I belong to You.

Yasmin Mogahed

“The same test repeats itself over and over in different forms...until you pass it, until you learn the lesson it was sent to teach.

Yasmin Mogahed

“If you want to know where you stand with God, ask where God stands with you.

Yasmin Mogahed

“When you are free inside, you will never allow anyone to take away your freedom. And when you have inner freedom, you can look through tyrants and thugs to the Lord of the tyrants and thugs. When you are free inside, you become unenslaveable, because you can only enslave a person with attachments. You can only threaten a person who is afraid of loss. You only have power over someone when they need or want something that you have the ability to take away. But there is only one thing which no person has the power to take away from you: God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“We must first conquer greed, selfishness, shirk, ultimate fear, love, hope and dependence on anything other than Allah. We must conquer hubb ad-dunya (love of dunya)—the root of all our diseases, and all our oppression. Before we can defeat the Pharaohs in our lives, we must defeat the Pharaoh inside ourselves.

Yasmin Mogahed

“To understand the concept of tadaru, imagine yourself in the middle of an ocean. Imagine that you are all alone on a boat. Imagine that a huge storm comes and the waves become mountains surrounding you. Now imagine turning to God at that point and asking for His help. In what state of need, awe, dependency and utter humility would you be in? That is tadaru. Allah says that He creates conditions of hardship in order to grant us that gift. God does not need to make things hard for us. He creates those situations in order to allow us to reach a state of closeness to Him, which otherwise we’d be unlikely to reach.

Yasmin Mogahed

“When I looked into history I found a small number of individuals whose lives mirrored the life-cycle of a grain of wheat. They were torn from their roots, then crushed, then ground in mills, then kneaded with fists, then rolled out and baked in ovens at high temperatures… just so they could provide food for others.

Mostafa Saadeq Ar-Rafe'ie

“Patiently persevere in the face of hardship hoping for a good outcome because you never know how many dead hearts you will bring to life in the process. No hardship lasts forever. There is always an end.

Babar Ahmad

“Muadh ibn Jabal (ra) was undergoing the pangs and agonies of death, he cried out, “O Allah! Bear witness that I love You, so do with me whatsoever You wish!”

Mu'adh ibn Jabal

“When an innocent man is kidnapped from his home by bearded Arab gunmen and locked indefinitely in a room he is a “hostage.” But when an innocent man is kidnapped from his home by uniformed white gunmen and locked indefinitely in a room he is a “terrorist.” The world causes uproar over the former but is silent over the latter. “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends,” observed Martin Luther King.

Babar Ahmad

“The Quran is not just a book that mentions stories which are centuries old: it is a book that mentions the present. “We have certainly sent down to you a Book in which is your mention. Will you then not reason?” (Quran 21:10)

Babar Ahmad

“Whosoever reads the Quran and reflects on it will find himself and his situation mentioned therein. This is only one of its many miracles.

Bishr al-Hafi

“Prison has taught me that there is a part of you that no-one can ever take from you, and that is your heart.

Babar Ahmad

“When you reach the stage where you are content with your destiny you have defeated your captors and become the most powerful prisoner in the world. This is what belief in Divine Destiny is all about. It is to be happy with whatever Allah has decreed for you: to be happy with your life, to be happy whether you are rich, poor, tall, short, dark or fair. When you are satisfied with your lot in life, you have won.

Babar Ahmad

“Every hardship is like being in prison. People feel imprisoned by ill-health, marital discord, financial insecurity, family disputes and other problems. To anyone who feels imprisoned by life’s problems I would say: be content with what you already have and never lose hope of things getting better. Be happy with your share because this is a quality of someone who truly loves Allah. When the Companion Muadh ibn Jabal (ra) was undergoing the pangs and agonies of death, he cried out, “O Allah! Bear witness that I love You, so do with me whatsoever You wish!”

Babar Ahmad

“Fear is a disease that consumes the soul of the one who embraces it. Man’s total capacity to fear is fixed: the more he fears one thing the less he fears another. People fear standing up to a tyrant because they are afraid of some harm that he ‘may’ cause them, even though that harm is limited to the life of this world. Such people have little or no fear for any harm that Allah will cause them in the Hereafter. However, if these same people were to fear the Day when they shall return to stand before the Lord of the Worlds, they would not fear any tyrant on the face of the Earth. “Do they fear them? Allah is more worthy for you to fear if you are indeed believers.” (Quran 9:13)

Babar Ahmad

“We survive in life by wearing a variety of faces that disguise our true inner selves. We have one face for our families, a face for our friends, a face for our colleagues, and a face for strangers. Since we are always switching between faces others hardly get to see who we really are. Sometimes we ourselves forget who we are. The harsh reality of prison life relentlessly files away at your external faces and personae to reveal the true you. There are no secrets in prison. Sincerity, hypocrisy, bravery, cowardice, good, evil – all are laid bare. Prison brings out the best, and worst, in people.

Babar Ahmad

“Prisoners undergo such a concentrated experience that they develop intensely deep personalities. We interact with each other heart-to-heart, not face-to-face. Our conversations frequently revolve around hope. No man, let alone a prisoner, can live without hope: hope that there is indeed a dawn at the end of this long, dark night. What else do you say to a man facing life in prison?

Babar Ahmad

“During the last four years I have personally witnessed the worst of men turn into the best of men. I have seen gangsters, drug barons, armed robbers and murderers, of all faiths and races, convert to Islam in prison. I have always been inspired by converts since every conversion is a miracle, but seeing a hardened criminal accept Islam is something else. Only the true religion is able to cause genuine, lasting change in an individual in a short space of time.

Babar Ahmad

“...the one book that has helped me through my ordeal the most: the Glorious Quran. It is my breakfast, lunch and dinner. If I do not read my daily portion at dawn, my heart feels heavy by mid-morning.

Babar Ahmad

“The Sahabah asked the Prophet about the buildings of Paradise and he replied with a wonderful description:
“Bricks of gold and silver, and mortar of fragrant musk, pebbles of pearl and sapphire, and soil of saffron. Whoever enters it is filled with joy and will never feel miserable; he will live there forever and never die; their clothes will never wear out and their youth will never fade.”

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“It is sparkling light, aromatic plants, a lofty palace, a flowing river, ripe fruit, a beautiful wife and abundant clothing, in an eternal abode of radiant joy, in beautiful soundly-constructed high houses.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“The space of the bow of any one of you in Paradise is better than all that the sun rises upon.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“There will be no hatred or resentment among them, their hearts will be as one, and they will glorify God, morning and evening.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“The most miserable man in the world of those meant for Paradise will be dipped once in Paradise. Then he will be asked, “Son of Adam, did you ever face any misery? Did you ever experience any hardship?” So he will say, “No, by God, O Lord! I never faced any misery, and I never experienced any hardship.”

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“In Paradise there are things which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has thought of.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“A space in Paradise equivalent to the size of a foot would be better than the world and what is in it.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“A caller will call out in Paradise when people enter it: “Indeed may you be healthy and never be sick again, may you live and never die again, may you be young and never grow feeble again, may you enjoy, and never feel sorrow and regret again.”

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“Sufyan Ath-Thawri said: "Du`a' on that night is more beloved to me than salah". He meant that do make much du`a' is better than a salah that doesn't include much du`a'. And if he recited [i.e. performed salah] and made du`a' that would be good and the Prophet ﷺ used to perform tahajjud in the nights of Ramadan and he would recite a rolling recitation and wouldn't pass a verse that mentioned mercy except that he asked [for it from Allah] and he wouldn't pass a verse that mentioned punishment except that he sought protection [from Allah]. Thus he would combine salah, recitation, du`a', and reflection. And this is the best and the most complete form of good deeds in the last ten nights [of Ramadan] and all other times.

Sheikh Ahmad al-Ajmi

“When you’re in trouble don’t depend on yourself. Don’t depend on people. Depend on God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“On that Day, the people of paradise will ask those who have entered Hell-fire, why they have entered it. And the Qur’an tells us exactly what their first response will be: ”What led you into Hell Fire? They will say: ‘We were not of those who prayed.’” (Qur’an, 74:42-43)

Yasmin Mogahed

“The first thing which will be judged among a man’s deeds on the Day of Resurrection is the Prayer. If this is in good order then he will succeed and prosper but if it is defective then he will fail and will be a loser.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“Salah is the first thing we will be asked about on the Day of Judgment, and yet it is the last thing that is on our mind.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Salah is something we squeeze into our day, when we find time—if that. Our ‘lives’ don’t revolve around salah. Salah revolves around our ‘lives.’ If we’re in class, salah is an afterthought. If we’re at the mall, the Macy’s sale is more urgent. Something is seriously wrong when we put aside the very purpose of our existence in order to watch a basketball game.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Reflecting upon this incident scholars have explained that the process of going from fifty to five was a deliberate one, intended to teach us the true place salah should hold in our lives. Imagine for a moment actually praying fifty times a day. Would we be able to do anything else but pray? No. And that’s the point. What greater way than that to illustrate our life’s true purpose? As if to say, salah is our real life; all the rest that we fill our day with…just motions.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Dont grieve at the fall. The ground is where humility lives. And humility waters the garden of tawbah...the only path to God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Dear nafs, I want to go to war with you and win.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Don’t let your definition of success, failure, or self-worth be anything other than your position with Him (Qur’an, 49:13). And if you do this, you become unbreakable, because your handhold is unbreakable. You become unconquerable, because your supporter can never be conquered. And you will never become empty, because your source of fulfillment is unending and never diminishes.

Yasmin Mogahed

“How can we hope to find constancy if what we hold on to is inconstant and perishing? In the statement of Abu Bakr is a deep illustration of this truth. After the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ died, the people went into shock and could not handle the news. But although no one loved the Prophet ﷺ like Abu Bakr, Abu Bakr understood well the only place where one’s dependency should lie. He said: “If you worshipped Muhammad, know that Muhammad is dead. But if you worshipped Allah, know that Allah never dies.”

Yasmin Mogahed

“Seek the help of people—but realize that it is not the people (or even your own self) that can save you. Only Allah can do these things. The people are only tools, a means used by God. But they are not the source of help, aid, or salvation of any kind. Only God is.

Yasmin Mogahed

“And if there is one recipe for unhappiness it is that: expectations. But herein lay my fatal mistake. My mistake was not in having expectations; as humans, we should never lose hope. The problem was in *where* I was placing those expectations and that hope. At the end of the day, my hope and expectations were not being placed in God. My hope and expectations were in people, relationships, means. Ultimately, my hope was in this dunya rather than Allah.

Yasmin Mogahed

“After years of falling into the same pattern of disappointments and heartbreak, I finally began to realize something profound. I had always thought that love of dunya meant being attached to material things. And I was not attached to material things. I was attached to people. I was attached to moments. I was attached to emotions. So I thought that the love of dunya just did not apply to me. What I didn’t realize was that people, moments, emotions are all a part of dunya. What I didn’t realize is that all the pain I had experienced in life was due to one thing, and one thing only: love of dunya.

Yasmin Mogahed

“And pain is a pointer to our attachments. That which makes us cry, that which causes us most pain is where our false attachments lie. And it is those things which we are attached to as we should only be attached to Allah which become barriers on our path to God. But the pain itself is what makes the false attachment evident. The pain creates a condition in our life that we seek to change, and if there is anything about our condition that we don’t like, there is a divine formula to change it. God says: “Verily never will God change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.” (Qur’an, 13:11)

Yasmin Mogahed

“Our first and true home was Paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here. And so we create ageless creams and cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to hold on—in an attempt to mold this world into what it is not, and will never be.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Our weight was only meant to be carried by God. We are told in the Quran: “…whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And God hears and knows all things.” (Qur’an 2: 256)

There is a crucial lesson in this verse: that there is only one handhold that never breaks. There is only one place where we can lay our dependencies. There is only one relationship that should define our self-worth and only one source from which to seek our ultimate happiness, fulfillment, and security. That place is God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“This world cannot break you—unless you give it permission. And it cannot own you unless you hand it the keys – unless you give it your heart. And so, if you have handed those keys to dunya for a while—take them back. This isn’t the End. You don’t have to die here. Reclaim your heart and place it with its rightful owner:

God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Satan rejoiced when Adam (peace be upon him) came out of Paradise, but he did not know that when a diver sinks into the sea, he collects pearls and then rises again.

Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah

“Deprived is the one who has never witnessed his own desperate need for God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Fasting is all about detachment. It is the detachment from food, drink, sexual intimacy, vain speech. By restraining our physical self, we ennoble, purify and exalt our spiritual self. Through fasting we are forced to detach ourselves from our physical needs, desires, and pleasures.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Five times a day we must pull away from the dunya to focus on our Creator and ultimate purpose. Five times a day, we detach ourselves from whatever we are doing of worldly life, and turn to God. Prayer could have been prescribed only once a day or week or all five prayers could have been done at one time each day. But it is not. The prayers are spread throughout the day. If one keeps to their prayers at their specified times, there is no opportunity to get attached. As soon as we begin to become engrossed in whatever dunya matter we’re involved in (the job we’re doing, the show we’re watching, the test we’re studying for, the person we can’t get off our mind), we are forced to detach from it and turn our focus to the only true object of attachment.

Yasmin Mogahed

“If there is anything—or anyone—other than God, that we could never give up, then we have a false attachment. Why was Prophet Ibrahim told to sacrifice his son? It was to free him. It was to free him from a false attachment. Once he was free, his object of love (not attachment) was given back to him.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Before you can fill any vessel, you must first empty it. The heart is a vessel. And like any vessel, the heart too must be emptied—before it can be filled. One can never hope to fill the heart with God, so long as that vessel is full of other than Him subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He).

Yasmin Mogahed

“By Allah I don’t fear for you poverty, but I fear that the world would be abundant for you as it has been for those before you, so you compete for it as they have competed for it, so it destroys you as it has destroyed them.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“What relationship do I have with this world? I am in this world like a rider who halts in the shade of a tree for a short time, and after taking some rest, resumes his journey, leaving the tree behind.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“Like the ocean’s water entering the boat, the moment that we let the dunya enter our hearts, we will sink. The ocean was never intended to enter the boat; it was intended only as a means that must remain outside of it. The dunya, too, was never intended to enter our heart. It is only a means that must not enter or control us. This is why Allah (swt) repeatedly refers to the dunya in the Qur’an as a mata’a. The word mata’a can be translated as a “resource for transitory worldly delight.” It is a resource. It is a tool. It is the path—not the destination.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Detachment [from Dunya] is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.

Imam Ali bin Abi Talib

“As long as the ocean’s water remains outside the ship, the ship will continue to float and be in control. But what happens as soon as the water creeps into the ship? What happens when the dunya is not just water outside of our hearts, when the dunya is no longer just a means? What happens when the dunya enters our heart?

That is when the boat sinks.

That is when the heart is taken hostage and becomes a slave. And that is when the dunya – which was once under our control – begins to control us. When the ocean’s water enters and overtakes a ship, that ship is no longer in control. The boat then becomes at the mercy of the ocean.

Yasmin Mogahed

“This worldly life, the dunya, is just like the ocean. And our hearts are the ships. We can use the ocean for our needs and as a means to get to our final destination. But the ocean is only that: a means. It is a means for seeking food of the sea. It is a means of travel. It is a means of seeking a higher purpose.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Allah is al-Kareem, so if He withholds from you it is not on account of stinginess. It is on account of His generosity. He withholds to give.

Yasmin Mogahed

“With every delayed or missed prayer, a hidden battle is being waged: The battle of shaytan. By abandoning the salah, the human being has put down the armor given to them by Allah, and has entered the battle field with no protection. Now shaytan can have full reign. Of this truth Allah says: “And whoever is blinded from remembrance of the Most Merciful – We appoint for him a devil, and he is to him a companion.” (Qur’an, 43:36)

Yasmin Mogahed

Largest Collections