Let us Pray!

Indeed, all praise and thanks are due to Allaah. We praise Him; seek His help and His forgiveness. We seek protection from Him from the evils of our own souls and from our bad deeds. Whomever Allaah guides, no one can misguide him, and whomever He sends astray, there is no other guide for him. I testify that nothing has any right to be worshipped except Allaah alone, having no partner, and I testify that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger-may the peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him, his family, companions and those who follow them in goodness until the Day of Judgment. To proceed:

Assalaam alaykum wa rahmatullaah wa barakatuuh.

Alhamdulillaah, I’ve completed the theme on the beautiful names of Allaah and I found it very inspiring and sometimes overwhelming reading about His names, their meanings and manifestations. I hope you found the posts useful too. InshaAllaah, I pray we all go on to learn more of His names. One other lesson I took away from last month’s theme is the importance of the Islamic (lunar) calendar. Given that Allaah, exalted is He, associates it with being part of the right religion [al-Tawbah 9:36], I have decided to change my daily juz recitation to rhyme with it.

For this month’s theme, I thought that what better way would there be to take the knowledge that I have just acquired, than to immediately put it into practice and act upon it. So as Allaah says:

﴿وَللَّهِ الأَسْمَآءُ الْحُسْنَى فَادْعُوهُ بِهَا﴾

And (all) the Most Beautiful Names belong to Allah, so call on Him by them (7:180), and,

﴿قُلِ ادْعُواْ اللَّهَ أَوِ ادْعُواْ الرَّحْمَـنَ أَيًّا مَّا تَدْعُواْ فَلَهُ الاٌّسْمَآءَ الْحُسْنَى﴾

Say (O Muhammad) “Invoke Allah or invoke the Most Gracious, by whatever name you invoke Him, for to Him belong the Best Names.” (17:110)

وَقَالَ رَبُّكُمُ ٱدْعُونِىٓ أَسْتَجِبْ لَكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَسْتَكْبِرُونَ عَنْ عِبَادَتِى سَيَدْخُلُونَ جَهَنَّمَ دَاخِرِينَ﴿٦٠

 And your Lord said: “Invoke Me, I will respond to your (invocation). Verily! Those who scorn My worship [i.e. do not invoke Me, and do not believe in My Oneness] they will surely enter Hell in humiliation!” (40:60)

This Safar, I’ll be seeking out and using the concise yet complete duas that occur in the Holy Quran and which invoke Allaah by one or more of His names. I ask Allaah, exalted is He, to accept our duas, to forgive our sins and gladden our hearts both in this world and in the hereafter.

PS: As we are already a number of days into the month of Safar, I’ll try to catch up on my recitation by reading and posting on two ajzas per day for the next 8 or more days inshaAllaah.