Our largest event – ever?

Have you ever tried to follow the dots back to the beginning?  You know, from the end product and work out how you got there?

We were recently blessed to have Habib Kazim al-Saqqaf in Milton Keynes and if you didn’t hear about it, where were you hibernating?  Missed it,  missed out! However, you can watch here.

To know who he is would require a full blog, but our teachers at Muwasala have already done that for us, click here.

I won’t bore you with the full details, suffice to say I was due to travel abroad (more on this in another blog post), but my flights had to be postponed.  That postponement allowed me to take a call from a brother from OCC in Luton who said they would like to partner with us in bringing Habib Kazim to Milton Keynes.  The event was to be on September 3rd, a couple of days after I return.

My initial reaction was pure excitement, the thought of bringing someone like that to Milton Keynes.  It is the sort of event that dreams are made of.  Whilst we have been able to bring a number of scholars to Milton Keynes over the past 2-3 years, we haven’t had a mountain of this proportion before.

After agreeing in principle, the reality of how Lote Tree (with our very small volunteer base) is going to pull off an event of this scale with a number of the trustees being out of the UK dawned upon me. With the right intentions, Allah facilitates.  Imam Shahzad from Wolverton masjid was trying to get Habib Kazim to Milton Keynes at the same time and upon hearing this we decided to do something very strange for Muslims – we chose to collaborate!

Alhamdulillah, brothers got together and pulled out all the stops to make this event one which Milton Keynesians will be talking about for years.

The talk was on the Day of Judgement and after introducing the subject Habib explained the importance of leaving this world with the love of Allah i.e. our love for Allah and Allah’s love for us!  How do we get this love?  By doing virtuous deeds and virtuous deeds are done by the strength of our faith!

Every believer believes in the Day of Judgement and Allah has made mention of the Day of Judgement in more than 70 times with the use of various names for this Day.  He mentioned that a reason why Allah makes mention of this so many times and using different names is to root faith of this Day in the hearts of Muslims.

Habib Kazim then took us on a surreal journey covering aspects from the point of our deaths through to resurrection, followed by a graphic description of the Day of Judgement. He reminded us that we will be naked, starving, thirsty and scared but informed us of what actions we can do in this world to ensure that we don’t suffer on the Day of Judgement, which in some narrations has been stated as being 50,000 years.

The talk was so positive given the difficult realities of that Day and instilled in the listeners a sense that if we strive hard in this life, Allah will make the Day easier for us. We pray that Allah allows us to take heed of what Habib Kazim says and allows us to continue to bring luminaries to light our path in Milton Keynes.