Defining Taqawa

Defination of Taqawa for Quran and Ahadith of Prophet (PBUH)

Taqwa is an Arabic word which is explained as a shield against wrongdoing and further expounded as to be “conscious of Allah” or to have “fear of Allah” or to be “cautiously aware of Allah”.
This consciousness and fear of Allah is understood as a protection and a shield against wrongdoing. The abstention of evil through this fear, consciousness and establishing a cautious awareness of Allah, ultimately develops one’s love of Him.

The only basis of superiority and excellence that there is, or can be, between man and man is that of moral excellence. As regards birth, all men arc equal, for their Creator is One, their substance of creation is one, and their way of creation is one, and they are descended from the same parents. Moreover, a person’s is born in a particular country, nation, or clan is just accidental. Therefore, there is no rational ground on account of which one person may be regarded as superior to the other. The real thing that makes one person superior to others is that one should be more God-conscious, a greater avoider of evils, and a follower of the way of piety and righteousness. Such a man. Whether he belongs to any race, any nation and any country, is valuable and worthy on account of his personal merit. And the one who is reverse of him in character is in any case an inferior person whether he is black or white, born in the east or the west. These same truths that have been stated in this beef verse of the Qur'an, have been explained in greater detail by the Holy Prophet in his addresses and traditions. In the speech that he made on the conquest of Makkah, after going round the Ka'bah, he said: 'Thank God Who has removed from you the blemish of ignorance and its arrogance. O people, men are divided into classes: the pious and righteous, who arc honorable in the sight of Allah, and the sinful and vicious, who arc contemptible in the sight of Allah, whereas all men are the children of Adam and Adam had been created by Allah from clay." (Baihaqi, Tirmidhi). 

On the occasion of the Farewell Pilgrimage, in the midst of the Tashriq days, he addressed the people, and said: 'O people, be aware: your God is One. No Arab has any superiority over a non-Arab, and no non-Arab any superiority over an Arab, and no white one has any superiority over a black one, and no black one any superiority over a white one, except on the basis of taqva (piety). The most honorable among you in the sight, of Allah is he who is the most pious and righteous of you. Say if I have conveyed the Message to you?" And the great congregation of the people responded, saying: Yes, you have, O Messenger of Allah." Thereupon the Holy Prophet said: "Then Iet the one who is present convey it to those who are absent," ( Baihaqi) In a Hadith he has said: "You are all the children of Adam, and Adam was created from the dust. Let the people give'up boasting of their ancestors, otherwise they will stand more degraded than a mean insect in the sight of Allah." ( Bazzar) In another Hadith the Holy Prophet said: "Allah will not enquire about your lineage on the Day of Resurrection. The most honourable in the sight of Allah is he who is most pious. "(Ibn Jarir) In still another Hadith he said: "Allah does not see your outward appearances and your possessions, but He sees your hearts and your deeds." (Muslim, lbn Majah). These teachings have not remained confined to words only but Islam has practically established a universal brotherhood of the believers on the basis, which does not allow any distinction on account of color, race, language, country and nationality which is free from every concept of high and low, clean and unclean, mean and respectable, which admits all human beings with equal rights, whether they belong to any race and nation, any land or region.
“It is not taqwa that you turn your faces toward East or West, but it is taqwa to believe in Allah and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book and the Messengers, to spend of your substance out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer and practice regular charity; to fulfill the contracts you have made; to be firm and patient, in pain and adversity. Those are the truthful and those are the muttaqun.” [Qur’an 2:177]
Taqwa in Ahadith
The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said, “The most common thing which leads people to Paradise is taqwa of Allah and good conduct, and the most common thing which leads people to the Hell Fire is the mouth and the private parts.” [Tirmidhi]
Tafseer ibn Kathir mentions that Atiyah As-Sa’di said the Propeht (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said, “The servant will not acquire the status of those with taqwa until he abandons what is harmless out of fear of falling into that which is harmful.” [Ibn Majah, Tirmizi]
"O ye who believe! Have taqwa of Allah and let every soul look to what provision he has sent forth for the tomorrow." [Al-Hashar, 59:18].

Taqwa (piousness) means, to fear, to refrain and to defend oneself from sins on account of fear of Allah. Muttaqi (pious) is a religious person who lives paying attention to taqwa.The first thought about taqwa is to refrain from harams (forbidden things). Refraining from Makrooh acts (abominable acts) comes after that. Makrooh means a disgraceful and abominable act, talk or behavior. Giving them up is also of taqwa. After that, we confront doubtful things. They have a relationship with harams like as makrooh acts. The suitable behavior in the name of taqwa, when confronting a doubtful, undefined matter, is to think its probability of being haram and to give it up. Then, Mubah (permissible) and Halâl (Lawful) acts and behaviors come. Enjoying them sufficiently and avoiding waste is also of taqwa.Allah’s Messenger (Peace and Blessings be Upon Him), in one of his Hadiths says:” Lawful things are defined, so are unlawful things. However, there are some suspicious things between these two. When a shepherd puts his sheep out to pasture near a forest, there is a possibility that sheep could enter into that forest at any time; similarly, the one who does not refrain from doubtful things could go into harams. “

The Power of All Powerful The Almighty - To WHOM everyone will Return

The Power of All Powerful



" The Almighty - To WHOM everyone will return to present his case with Balance Sheets, with Debit and Credits Written Clearly. If results is in right hand It Will be Heaven and if not then it is fire of Hell.

Check Your Credit Balance Today.............before it is tooooooooooooooo Late. No body knows when is his turn to go back.

Al-Zalzala Quran Surah -99



In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful


When the Earth is shaken to her (utmost) convulsion, (1) And the Earth throws up her burdens (from within), (2) And man cries (distressed): `What is the matter with her?' (3) On that Day will she declare her tidings: (4) For that thy Lord will have given it inspiration. (5) On that Day will men proceed in companies sorted out, to be shown the Deeds that they (had done). (6) Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight of good, see it! (7) And anyone who has done an atom's weight of evil, shall see it. (8)

This is taken from SIFY.COM WITH THANKS

First Person: Rich Japan's stunning descent into misery





Unfamiliar setting

Unfamiliar setting
Bodies are strewn among the knotted skeletons of entire towns.
Military helicopters clatter overhead.
Survivors who lost everything huddle under blankets in schools-turned-shelters as foreign governments dispatch aid and urge their citizens to flee.
After years spent reporting from desperate and war-torn corners of the world, the scenes I've witnessed here are unsettlingly familiar.
It's the setting that's not.
Image: Japanese military helicopter sits among debris at Matsushima air base of the Japan Air Self-Defence Force, northeastern Japan, on Saturday, March 12.
Text: Todd Pitman, Associated Press
AP Images (Any unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited)

Cascading disasters
Here, in one of the richest and most advanced nations on earth, I've found one of the most challenging assignments of my career.
Japan's cascading disasters were spawned by one of the planet's strongest quakes in a century.
Next came a tsunami that killed more than 10,000 people and demolished vast swaths of the northeastern coast in minutes.
That triggered a nuclear emergency that has amplified a deepening sense of apocalyptic doom.
The grim sights have been widely compared to the astonishing destruction wrought here during World War II.
But it also reminds me of Lebanon in 2006 - when Israel's Hezbollah-seeking rockets leveled whole villages - or any other conflict zone filled with refugees and military convoys.
Image: In this March 12, 2011 photo provided by the U.S. Navy, an SH-60B helicopter assigned to the Chargers of Helicopter Antisubmarine Squadron (HS) 14 from Naval Air Facility Atsugi flies over the city of Sendai, Japan to deliver more than 1,500 pounds of food to survivors.

Quiet airport

Quiet airport
When I stepped off the plane in Tokyo the morning after the quake, Narita International Airport was quiet.
The escalators had been shut off.
Stranded passengers lay on sleeping bags throughout the terminal.
Outside, not a single taxi stood waiting.
We finally found one willing to take us downtown, but only at the departure hall where a dozen others dropping off fleeing travelers had already refused to give us a ride.
Image: Passengers take a nap at the Narita International Airport.

Obstacles at every turn
Later, I headed north toward the tsunami zone with a team of three other AP journalists.
There were obstacles at every turn.
The GPS system could not know that some roads no longer existed or that others had been blocked by mudslides or ripped apart during the mighty tremor.
That first night, it took 14 hours on backroads to cover 180 miles (300 kilometers).
When we finally reached the ruined port of Sendai the next morning, we found survivors wearing surgical masks picking through the wrecked junkyard of their annihilated city.
Image: A survivor of the tsunami that swept through his village of Saito, in northeastern Japan, retells the story to a rescue team that arrived to search the area Monday, March 14, 2011.

Ghost towns
In a tech-savvy society better known for hosting robot marathons, the crisis has produced surreal images, some more apt to appear in a novel about life after a nuclear holocaust: Cut off with no electricity and no phone reception, the hungry and isolated braving long lines outside near-empty grocery stores just to get food; the desperate homeless warming frigid hands in heavy snow above fires fueled by the wooden planks of their own pulverized homes.
In Kesennuma, I saw the hull of a behemoth ship parked inland on a sea of burnt debris beside a wrecked 7-Eleven.
In Shizugawa, a lone Japanese soldier relentlessly swept a small strip of pavement that somehow survived, a futile and slightly bizarre effort considering the entire city surrounding it was reduced to a mashed heap of garbage.
Most of these towns have simply ceased to exist.
In some, far from the ravaged coast, everything is still closed: restaurants, malls, pinball arcades, drugstores - even ATM machines because they cannot function without power.
Image: Residents carrying household belongings they retrieved from their ruined home walk past a stranded ship in Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture, Sunday, March 20, 2011.

A constant concern
We have survived mostly on snack food - peanuts and potato chips and canned coffee scavenged from mostly empty street-side vending machines. When we found one small food store open, it's dwindling stocks already plundered, we bought everything left that we could fit in our car - raw sausages, dried squid, bread.
Finding fuel is a constant concern.
Vast lines of cars queue ominously at every gas station - even those that are closed - waiting up to 36 hours to buy limited rations.
We need gas not only to move, but to charge our laptops and satellite transmitting equipment through an inverter that connects to our car's cigarette lighter - which at one overloaded point blew a fuse, threatening to bring our mission to a halt.
Image: A motorist gets out of his car to check the length of a queue for petrol in the city of Iwaki, Japan, Tuesday, March 15, 2011.

Never-ending crisis?
One big problem with Japan's crisis: It doesn't feel like it's over.
Every night, we are woken by aftershocks. These come during the day, too - during interviews, while parked in our car - grim reminders that what started it all can be unleashed again, anytime.
Every day, we hear snippets of news about the possibility of total nuclear meltdown at the Fukishima Dai-ichi plant, more than 150 miles (240 kilometers) from where we have been working. There is talk of helicopter crews testing positive for radiation exposure, of foreign governments urging their nationals to leave.
The experience got even more surreal when AP issued me a pocket-sized 'dosimeter' - a device that looks like a Maglite flashlight and monitors surrounding radiation levels from the safety of one's pocket - and a ration of potassium iodide to protect my thyroid from cancer in the event of a serious nuclear event.
With heavy snow now adding another level of desolation, I sometimes wonder: If it gets any worse, can we get off this island?
Image: Pills of potassium iodide, foreground, are placed after being delivered to a shelter in Miharu town, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Sunday, March 20, 2011.

Loss is everywhere
With nowhere else to stay, we spent many nights in makeshift shelters, sleeping alongside displaced families wrapped in blankets on the crowded wooden floors of school basketball courts.
At all of them, large wall-mounted clocks are still frozen at 2:46 pm - give or take a few minutes - the moment when the earthquake changed everything.
It's hard not to be impressed with the immense grace of the people we've encountered along the way.
I've seen no fighting, no shouting, only patience.
We've been offered miso soup and rice balls - by people who have lost everything and have no idea when or how they'll ever go home.
The shelters we've stayed at are so well-organised that one even offered different trash bags for recycling, and there were group calisthenics at dawn.
On the surface, there seems too little emotion, too much stoicism. But loss is everywhere.
Image: A woman, second right, who lost her mother and her three-year-old son reacts after she confirmed their bodies under the rubble of her house in Miyako, northern Japan Monday on March 14, 2011.

Denial or real hope?
At Ishinoseke, a man who has not seen his wife since he spoke to her minutes before the tsunami told me with the utmost certainty that she MUST be alive.
After failing to find her at seven different shelters, he began searching for her inside a city gym-turned-morgue where the bodies of 300 tsunami victims lay under blue tarps, waiting to be identified.
At a shelter in Shizugawa, I watched an elderly man tell a group of survivors that those who'd gone missing had not yet been confirmed dead.
Was it denial or real hope? I couldn't tell.
As he read out the names of dozens who have not been seen since March 11, women listening intently on their knees began weeping in silence.
Image: Ritsuko Oikawa, 84, walks in the rubble towards the ruins of her house in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan, Sunday, March 20, 2011Also see: How bunglings, cover-ups define Japanese nuclear power

Taqawa is Submission to Allah

This is first posting in this blog. This blog is dedicated to Taqawa its defination in Modern World. How to strive for it.

Quran :- (49:13) Human beings, We( Allah) created you all from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another. Verily the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most God-fearing of you. Surely Allah is All-Knowing, All-Aware.

“It is not taqwa that you turn your faces toward East or West, but it is taqwa to believe in Allah and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book and the Messengers, to spend of your substance out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer and practice regular charity; to fulfill the contracts you have made; to be firm and patient, in pain and adversity. Those are the truthful and those are the muttaqun.” [Qur’an 2:177]
Success

And the Prophet said: (صلى الله عليه وسلم)
"0 you people! Your Lord is One. Your (original) father is one. All of you are offspring’s of Adam, and Adam's origin was dust. The noblest among you is the most God-fearing person. An Arab does not have a right to claim superiority over a non-Arab, nor has a non-Arab a right to claim superiority over an Arab, except through righteous deeds. 0 Lord ! Please witness that I have conveyed (the message). And (you listeners), let those who are now present convey to those who are absent".
The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said, “The most common thing which leads people to Paradise is taqwa of Allah and good conduct, and the most common thing which leads people to the Hell Fire is the mouth and the private parts.” [Tirmidhi]

Allah’s Messenger (Peace and Blessings be Upon Him), in one of his Hadiths says:” Lawful things are defined, so are unlawful things. However, there are some suspicious things between these two. When a shepherd puts his sheep out to pasture near a forest, there is a possibility that sheep could enter into that forest at any time; similarly, the one who does not refrain from doubtful things could go into harams. “

Hadrat Umar ibn Khattab (R.A) once asked Hadrat Ibn Ka’ab (R.A) the definition of taqwa. In reply Hadrat Ibn Ka’ab asked, “Have you ever had to traverse a thorny path?” Hadrat Umar replied in the affirmative and Hadrat Ka’ab continued, “How do you do so?”
Hadrat Umar said that he would carefully walk through after first having collected all loose and flowing clothing in his hands so nothing gets caught in the thorns hence injuring him. Hadrat Ka’ab said, “This is the definition of taqwa, to protect oneself from sin through life’s dangerous journey so that one can successfully complete the journey unscathed by sin.”

Umar ibn Abdul Aziz (ra) once said, "Taqwa is not by fasting the day and not by praying the night. And it's not by mixing between the two of them. But taqwa is leaving what Allah (swt) has made Haram and by doing what Allah (swt) has made Fard. After one has done this, Allah (swt) will provide good things for that person."
Hadrat Hasan Basri said, “Taqwa is the basis of Deen. Desire and greed destroy this basis.”

This Hadith about bankruptcy is dreadful and terrifying:
“Bankrupt from my Ummah is a person that comes with deeds such as prayers, fast and alms in the Doomsday. Nonetheless, he swore at people, slandered, defrauded them, and hurt or chastised some of them. His rewards are divided up among those people whom he harmed. If his deeds do not suffice, then some misdeeds of those people are placed onto him and he is sent to hell.”

India Budget 2011-2012 - 9% for rich, misery for poor

India Budget - The Road To No Where

If we look at the budget, which Mr. Prime Minister says for people. But even after hard work, I could not find anything for Aam Aadmi. The government which came to power saying they will serve Aam Aadmi, there is no Aam Aadmi in the Budget.

The allocation for Agriculture and Rural Sector are minimum. This will not, and can not change India's Aam Aadmi.

Yes this can definitely add to the wealth of wealthy people. 9% growth can be achieved and will be achieved but where is Aam Aadmi in it. The common man is no where.

I thought Pranab Babu will give old thought of common masses some weight but unfortunately the budget looks like it of P Chidambaram, and Montek Singh Ahluwalia has worked on it rather than Pranab Mukharji the Finance Minister.

If we look at it see what people's saying.

No Green Revolution, only the lip service. ( Mr. M S Swaminathan, member of NAC)


If we look at the India's hungry they are getting more hungry.

Super growth didn't help hungry kids

And yes inflation, what it is doing to the misery of poor. Everything is unaffordable.

'Misery index' clearly up: Guessing what this could mean

India need solution rather than patch up work as presently done by government.

Japan Nuclear Disaster & India's Nuclear Agreement

Huge blast at Japan Nuclear Plant

India has signed a nuclear agreement with US and as agreed passed by the IAEA. For this purpose Mr. Prime Minister has betrayed their partner and went ahead for vote in parliament. Poor Left Front never understood it and those who supported this motion do not as well. The so called secular Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav.

After this Earthquake followed by huge Tsunami. I have few questions for Indias proponents of nuclear treaty.

What are the standards and can Indian Nuclear Plant stand the disaster, specially the newly proposed Jaitapur Power Plant.

What is the cost of energy and cost of managing disaster and cost of post disaster. Country like India which is poor just do not have enough resources to manage disaster.

Bhopal Gas Tragedy is well known example, still after 25 years fight is on and no justice.

Bombay flooding in 26th July 2005.

Gujarat Earth Quake are some examples.

With Koyana Dam which is prone to EarthQuake government should think twice before going for Jaitapur or anyother nuclear plant.

The cost of treaty is very high. If we look at oil prices and its effect on inflation in India. We stop IPI gas pipeline to please the Masters who are willing to sell us disaster at huge cost.

This cost is today, when we are byuing costly oil rather than cheaper gas. We are paying huge for the Nuclear Energy and yes calling for disaster.

I request those who thinks to say no to Nuclear Plant in India.