Dought & clear - Translation of the Namesof Allaah into languages other than Arabic .

Is it a kind of distortion to translate the names of Allaah into any
other language?
Praise be to Allaah.
It is permissible to translate the names of Allaah for those who do
not know Arabic, if the translator has a good knowledge of both
languages, just as it is permissible to translate for them the
meanings of the verses of the Qur'aan and the hadeethof the Prophet
(peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), so that they may learn
about Islam.
And Allaah is the source of strength. May Allaah bless our Prophet
Muhammad and his family and companions, and grant them peace.
Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa'imah, 3/122

An Analysis of Hardship inLife: Obstacle in our Path, Struggle and Emerge

A fact of human life is that from time to time we face difficulties.
Thesecan be small day to day annoyances or calamities that push our
patience and will power to their limits. Sometimes it is hard for a
person to understand the reasons behind these horrible events,
especially when he/she knows that there is a God maintaining order in
the universe andWho is merciful. In such asituation a person may even
resent God and ask why He is making life so difficult, especially when
He is supposed to love Hisdevoted servants.
It is important to remember that when making a judgment about a
situation we should think about whether or not we have enough
knowledge to doso. Something that is badin our minds may actuallybe
good, and we may only think it is bad because of our limited
perception and knowledge. For example, imagine a person who has lived
all his life in a rain forest. He has no knowledge of technologyor
civilizations and only knows what he has learned from experience and
from those around him. If we were to take him and bring him to the
city and showed him skyscrapers, cars, and computers, he would be
overwhelmed and overawed by the extravagance. Now, if he were to be
taken past a construction site where cranes and bulldozers were
demolishing a building, he would think that something bad was being
done. In his mind the construction workers would be destroying a
perfectly good building for no reason at all, and this act would be
considered senseless by him. But he is not aware that the old building
is being torn down so that a better one can be erected in its place,
and ifhe knew this, he would not think badly of the construction
workers for tearing down the old building. He would be happy that they
are bringing something better and would now consider the destruction
of the old building as something good and necessary. The hardship that
the people living around the site must bear by having to look at the
ugly torn down building for months, having their streets closed down
and traffic tied up, is only something temporary. Some people may
actually curse the construction workers for bringing this hardship
onthem but they are not keeping in mind that these hardships will be
followed by ease and improvement. Instead of viewing these things as
hardship and becoming annoyed and angry, one could see them as a sign
that soon there will be ease and progress.
An artist can relate to having people look at hiswork in its beginning
or middle stages, and without knowing what the end product will be,
they give unwarranted criticism. That is when heasks them to wait for
when it is finished. In thebeginning or in the middle the work may
notbe pleasing or have muchmeaning, but once it is completed then
everyonecan see what he was working towards. We humans can only attain
such a limited amount of knowledge in our lives. So how can we look at
a hurricane, tornado, flood, Tsunami or volcano and blame God that He
is doing something cruel and unjust? How can we know what His ultimate
purpose is for all of thesehappenings? In the same way that the man
from the rain forest would be unjustified in viewing the demolition of
old buildings as wrong, we would be unjustified to view the calamities
of nature as cruel acts of God.
There was once a king who put his subjects through a test. He went out
onto the main road of his kingdom and he had a large stone placed in
the middle, thereby making the road difficult to cross. After having
placed the large stone hehid himself nearby to watch the reaction of
thepeople. He saw the dignitaries of his court and the wealthy cross
by,and as they did so they managed it only with great difficulty.
While they did so, they cursed the rock and said to each other, why
doesn't the King move this rock? All of the wealthy aristocratswent
along in the same manner, cursing the rock and wondering in amazement
at the incompetence of the Kingto have placed such an obstacle in
their path, because it only brought them hardship. Then along came a
poor old man carrying a heavy load on his back, and the King watched
him intently. The old man stopped in his tracks and looked at how the
stone was blocking the road. He put down his load andbegan, with great
difficulty and tremendous effort, to move the stone off of theroad.
Using all his strength and ability he finally accomplished his task.
When he went back to the road and looked atthe spot where the stone
had been, he saw a bag, picked it up, opened it, and found it to be
full of jewels and a note from the King indicating that the jewels was
for the person who removed theboulder from the roadway. The old man
learned what many others never understand.He placed his load on his
back along with his new treasure and went on his way. This story
illustrates a fact of life, that there is no ease or success or
progress or elevation without some sacrifice and hardship along the
way. But once the end is reached that hardship would no longer be seen
as unbearable.
Moral:Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve one's condition.

Islam and Struggle: Survival Story, Changes for Survival, Eagle Story

Eagle Story is about a wounded Eaglet who was rescued by a kind
farmer. Farmer found Eaglet in one of his fields,and so took him home,
tended to his wounds, and then placed him outside in the barnyard to
recover.
Strangely enough, Eaglet soon adapted to the habits of all the
barnyardchickens. Eaglet learned to walk and cluck like chickens.
Eaglet learned to drink from a trough and peck the dirt for food, and
for many years Eaglet peacefully resigned himself to this new life on
the farm and grow up to become beautiful Eagle.
But then one day, one of the farmer's friends spotted the Eagle and
asked, "Why in the world is that Eagle acting like a Chicken?" The
farmer toldhim what had happened,yet the friend could hardly accept
the situation.
"It's just not right," said the friend. "The Almighty Creator made
that Eagle to soar in the sky, not scavenge in the barnyard!" So he
picked up the unsuspecting Eagle, climbed onto a nearby fence post,
and tossed him into the air. But the confused Eagle just fell back to
earth andscurried off in search of his feathered friends.
Undaunted, the friend then grabbed the Eagle and climbed to the top
ofthe barn. As he heaved him off the roof, the Eagle made a few
halfhearted squawks andflaps before falling into abale of hay. After
shakinghis head a few times, the Eagle then made himself comfortable
and began mindlessly pecking at pieces of straw.
The friend went home that night dejected, and could barely sleep as he
remembered the sight of those powerful talons caked with barnyard mud.
He couldn't bear the thought, so the very next day, he headed backto
the farm for another try. This time he carried the Eagle to the top of
a nearby mountain where the sky unfolded in a limitless horizon.
He looked into the Eagle'seyes and cried out, "Don'tyou understand?
You weren't made to live like a Chicken! Why would you want to stay
down here when you were born for the sky?" As the man held the
confused Eagle aloft, he made sure the Eagle was facing into the
brilliant light of the setting sun. Then he powerfully heaved the bird
into the sky, and thistime the Eagle opened his wings, looked at the
sun, caught the updraft rising from the valley, and disappeared into
theclouds of sky.
Moral:Do you know that we, too, were born for some high purpose in
this life? The Almighty Creator has called us to live in the heights,
yet too many of us have huddled together in the barnyard, not
struggling to search for our own Islamic identity and the purpose of
Islamic life?

All philosophies constructed on the basis of matter is collapsed

In the early 20th century,scientists discovered something new: that
matter was not as we had imagined it to be. Matter was not solid.
Matter had no colors. It gave off no smells, sounds or image. Matter
was simply energy. The chair you sit in, the tableyou lean on, the
house you live in, your dogs, the people around you, buildings, space,
stars—in short, the whole material world exists as a form of energy.
In the face of this unexpected discovery, all philosophies constructed
on the basis of matter therefore suffered a scientific collapse.
Science revealed the proof of something inside the human body but not
belonging to it, something that perceived the entire physical world,
but was not itself physical: the human soul.
The soul could not be explained in any way in terms of materialist
claims. Darwinism, which produced countless fictitious tales regarding
the imaginaryevolution of species, remained silent in the face of the
existence of the soul. Because the soul was not matter, it was a
metaphysical concept. And metaphysics was something that materialists
were completely unable to accept, because metaphysics did away with
all the unconscious events, coincidences andrandom processes that they
had deified. Metaphysics submitted evidence of a conscious creation,
in other words,of the existence of Allah (God). That, in any case, was
why materialists had been denying the existence of the soul ever since
the days of Ancient Greece.
This struggle, which had persisted since Ancient Greece right up to
the present, now became meaningless because there is an entity that
makes a human being human, that lets you say,This is me. That, in
other words, is your soul: It exists, and it belongs to Allah. Science
definitively proved that the human soul observed all things as they
were presented to it and that there could be no reference to any
reality beyond these perceived images. To putit another way, it
openlydeclared that the only absolute Entity was Allah.
This proof by science is of importance in convincing minds that deify
materialist philosophy. In fact, though, all who possess reflection
and intellect are aware that they possess a sublime soul. Anyone who
can reason at all will understand that it is the soul that rejoices,
thinks, decides, judges, experiences joy and excitement, loves, shows
compassion, gets anxious, enjoys the tasteof an apple, takes pleasure
from listening to music, builds planes, raises skyscrapers and
constructs laboratories in which it examines itself.
If human beings are possessed of souls, they cannot have been created
haphazardly. There is a purpose behind their presence inthis world.
All people bear a soul that belongs to Allah and are being tested in
this lifetime, after which they will be held responsible for all their
thoughts and deeds. There is no randomness or aimlessness in life.
Thereare no chance events, as Darwinists maintain. Everything has been
created by the will of Allah to become part of the tests to which we
are subjected. In this life,which will end in death, the only thing
that will be left behind is the body. The soul, on the other hand,
will live for all eternity in the Hereafter, which is its true abode.
These are great glad tidings for anyone who realizes he has a soul and
is able to appreciateits Creator. Darwinists, however, will continue
to refuse this reality with all their means and maintain that they do
not possess a soul. They will continue to refuse to accept that they
will one day enter the presence of Almighty Allah, Whose existence
they denied throughout the course of their lives. They will continue
to regard themselves as randomly formed collections of atoms and will
keep on dismissing the miraculous human consciousness that has
discovered DNA, investigated the structure of the atom and has been
amazed bythe innermost workings of the cell.
The human soul is a terrible dilemma for Darwin and the supporters who
came after him. It is the basic evidence which they cannot explain,
which they cannot refute and cannot resolve. Allah has vanquished them
by providing proof, of a scientific kind that they cannot deny: the
insubstantiality of matter. In the face of this, any objections to the
soul's existence they may come up with are invalid and meaningless.
In His verses in the Qur'an, Allah tells us:
Who could be further astray than those who call on other things
besides Allah, which will not respond to them until the Day of
Resurrection and which are unaware of their prayers? When humanity is
gathered together, they will be their enemies and will reject their
worship. (Surat al-Ahqaf, 5-6)
Darwinists and materialists need to realize that the only absolute
Entity is Allah. Confronted by this truth, all hollow, empty
deceptions and superstitious faiths fall into an insuperable quandary.
Allah has enfolded all things with His Sublime Might. All things
belong to Him and are under His control. Denying creation and the
existence of the soul cannot alter these facts one iota.
The world that the soul perceives is merely an illusion, a phantom and
the sole absolute Entity Who rules the entire universe is Allah, Ruler
and Lord of the Earth and sky. Henceforth, those with unclouded minds
who understand this fact will look at the world from a different
perspective and realize that Allah is their only savior. In order to
attain salvation in the Hereafter, their true life, people need to
behave in the light of that understanding.