RENAISSANCE MAY 2019

Reflections 44 Monthly Renaissance May 2019 from the month of Rama ḍā n. Most of the points that are given in this article are equally related to those who cannot fast. In fact, having more energy than those who fast, they may even do better in adopting some of these points! 3. Cleaning any anger and hatred towards others from our heart To attempt to increase our taqw ā for the sake of tazkiyah while having a grudge and anger in our heart against a fellow human being is like trying to fill up a broken bottle with water. We need to do what it takes to erase any anger and hatred towards others from our heart. 4. Deciding what increasing taqw ā means for us and setting it as an aim of our month of Rama ḍā n This point seems to be the core requirement for those who want to attain more taqw ā in the month of Rama ḍā n. If we want to really aim for the real objective of the month of Rama ḍā n, then we need to carefully study our soul in an attempt to recognise its weaknesses. This can be anything: becoming angry very easily, offending others, becoming offended very easily, being lazy in our prayers, becoming worried very easily, behaving badly with others, not thinking about the right of others, eating a lot, sleeping a lot, wasting too much time, etc. No one can tell us better than us what these weaknesses are. We will then decide that in this month of Rama ḍā n we want to eliminate or improve (not all but) one, two, or only a few of these weaknesses. If we take the opportunity to use the month of Rama ḍā n to take the selected weakness/es out of our system for good, then by the grace of God we have managed to meet the real aim of the month of Rama ḍā n. This point is really the backbone of the idea behind this article. It therefore deserves some elaboration. There are a few tips that can help with the above: - Starting the month with repenting Since we want to get rid of some bad habits and practices in this month it makes perfect sense to start the month and in fact enter the month with offering a repentance prayer. This simply means to perform two rak‘ah prayers and then to ask God to forgive us for that or those habit/s or practice/s that we are now determined to throw out of our system during the month of