Page 8 The Islamic Bulletin Issue 10 Page 9 The Islamic Bulletin Issue 10 One of the most famous women in the history of Islam is Aisha, the Prophet’s wife. And the quality for which she is remembered primarily is that of her intelligence and outstanding memory. She is considered to be one of the most reliable sources of hadith by virtue of these qualities. More that a thousand ahadith are reported by her and she is regarded as one of the greatest teachers of the hadith. Generally speaking, in the Muslimworld of the early medieval times, there was not any bar or prohibition on women pursuing studies-- on the contrary, the religion encouraged it. As a result of this many women became famous as religious scholars, writers, poets, doctors and teachers in their own right, such as Nafisa, a descendant of Ali who was such a great authority on hadith that Imam al-Shafi’l sat in her circle in al-Fustat when he was at the height of his fame: and Shaikha Shuhda who lectured publicly in one of the principle mosques of Baghdad to large audiences on literature, rhetoric and poetry, and was one of the foremost scholars of Islam. There is therefore every encouragement for a Muslim woman to pursue studies in any field for her intellectual benefit and to make use of her academic or professional training for the good of the community, subject to certain moral and familial conditions which will be dealt with in following issues. Black Seed (Nigella Seed) It is narrated by the hadith that the Holy Prophet (pbuh) said: ‘Use the black seed because it has a relief of all diseases, but death.’ Contents: Black seed has a tasty aroma and contains phosphate, iron, phos - phorate, carbohydrate, oil 28%. It contains anti-virus bacteria, carotene, anti-cancer fighting material, and hormones which give strength and activity. Benefits: There are many, many benefits of the black seed. Here we will list some of them. 1. Dizziness and ear infection: use it as a drop for the ears, for ‘infection’; and drink it in tea and rub under your cheek and at the back of your neck for dizziness. 2. For women and delivery: it is the best thing for helping with the pains of labor. Boil the black seed with honey and drink. 3. For skin diseases: mix a unit of the black seeds’ oil with a same unit of rose water and 2 units of brown flour. Before you use the mix rub the area with a cloth dipped in vinegar. Lightly apply the mix to the skin and then expose to the sun every day. 4. Rheumatism: Warm black seed oil and massage the oil into the painful areas. Also, make a drink of boiled black seed and mix with honey, drink before going to sleep; and have a lot of yaqeen (full-faith). 5. High blood pressure: Mix the black seed with hot liquids you may drink, such as coffee, tea, etc; and rub your body with the oil and have yaqeen. 6. Chest pains and colds: Add 1 tablespoon of the black seeds in boiling water and inhale the vapor and cover your head before you sleep. 7. Heart burn: add a few drops of black seed oil to a hot cup of milk and add one teaspoon of honey. Also, eat a lot of lettuce. 8. Eye pain: rub the oil around the eyes before you sleep and mix a few drops of the oil with hot drinks. 9. Ulcers: Mix 10 drops of black seed oil with a cup of honey. Eat 1 spoon of this mixture daily, every morning, before you eat or drink anything else. Follow with a glass of milk. Do this for two months. 10. Cancer: Rub the affected area with black seed oil. 3 times a day drink a mixture of a teaspoon of the oil with a glass of carrot juice. Do this for three months. 11. Laziness: Mix 10 drops of black seed oil with a glass of orange juice when waking up for 10 days. Important, do not sleep after Fajr salat. 12. For memorizing: Boil mint and mix it with honey and 7 drops of black seed oil--drink while warm any time of the day. Also, stop drinking coffee and tea. The Quran as a Precept and Discipline For Life Another remarkable feature of the Quran is that it explores and prescribes some remedies for all mankind. As a ‘remedy’ its fundamental objective is to cure any widespread corruption or deviation from pre-established moral values and ethical norms. The Quran deals with all these shortcomings and prescribes remedies for them. Far from falling short of dealing with con - temporary issues confronting mankind, it is as relevant today as when it was first revealed. However by failing to perceive the wider and more profound meanings of the Quran, man sometimes misses the remedy. There is no fundamental issue concerning man’s existence in this universe that is not inherently dealt with. The Quran is fun - damentally a discipline of worship and guidance in establishing a right way of life. Thus, when the Quran tells us to explore the earth for evidence of Allah’s greatness, or to study the universe for knowledge and enlightenment, or to toil and produce, or build and populate the earth, it is, in fact, delineating rules which should govern man’s movement within Allah’s universe. In our endeavor to achieve our goals, we must be armed with unwavering faith in Allah’s grace and infinite justice, as well as with the firm conviction that we are divinely guided subjects whose principal concern should be the fulfillment of Allah’s plan for mankind as expressed in the Quran - for Allah does not assist or reward those who ignore His decrees or stray from His path. By failing to follow Allah’s directions one should not hope to share their fruitful ends. By straying, nations lose mobility and become decadent when they diverge from Allah’s way, failing to implement His injunctions. It is unreasonable to give lip service to the directives Allah has prescribed in His message and expect His blessing and rewards. It follows that there is no action without reward, and no reward without action. This is the core and kernel of Allah’s precepts and discipline. It is this equilibrium which constitutes harmony and beauty in life and existence as a whole. Indeed, this balance would become meaningless if the industrious and the idle, the studious and the lethargic, the productive and the negligent were equally rewarded, irrespective of their effort or yield. If this became the rule, beauty and harmony would eventually disappear and be replaced by grossness and the lack of drive, motivation, ambition, ingenuity, creativity, and the desire to excel. There would be no addition to one’s cultural heritage. AnAccount of anAmerican Jewish Lady WhoAccepted Islam - MaryamJameelah Q: Would you kindly tell us how your interest in Islam began? A: I was Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. As a small child I possessed a keen interest in music and was particularly fond of the classical operas and symphonies considered high culture in the West. Music was my fa - vorite subject in school in which I always earned the highest grades. By sheer chance, I happened to hear Arabic music over the radio which so much pleased me that I was determined to hear more. I would not leave my parents in peace until my father finally took me to the Syrian section in New York City where I bought a stack of Arabic recordings. My parents, relatives and neighbors thought Arabic and its music dreadfully weird and so distressing to their ears that whenever I put on my recordings, they demanded that I close all the doors and windows in my room lest they be disturbed! After I embraced Islam in 1961, I used to sit enthralled by the hour at the mosque in New York, listening to tape-recordings of Tilawat chanted by the celebrated Egyptian Qari, Abdul Basit. But on Jumha Salat (Friday Prayers), the Imam did not play the tapes. We had a special guest that day. A short, very thin and poorly-dressed black youth, who introduced himself to us as a student from Zanzibar, recited Surah ar-Rahman. I never heard such glorious Tilawat even from Abdul Basit! He possessed such a voice of gold; surely Hazrat Bilal must have sounded much like him! I traced the beginning of my interest in Islam to the age of ten. While attending a reformed Jewish Sunday school, I became fas - cinated with the historical relationship between the Jews and the Arabs. From my Jewish textbooks, I learned that Abraham was the father of the Arabs as well as the Jews. I read how centuries later when, in medieval Europe, Christian persecution made their lives intolerable, the Jews were welcomed in Muslim Spain and that it was the magnanimity of this same Arabic Islamic civilization which stimulated Hebrew culture to reach its highest peak of achievement. Totally unaware of the true nature of Zionism, I naively thought that the Jews were returning to Palestine to strengthen their close ties of kinship in religion and culture with their Semitic cousins. Together I believed that the Jews and the Arabs would cooperate to attain another Golden Age of culture in the Middle East. Despite my fascination with the study of Jewish history, I was extremely unhappy at the Sunday school. At this time I identified myself strongly with the Jewish people in Europe, then suffering a horrible fate under the Nazis and I was shocked that none of my fel - low classmates nor their parents took their religion seriously. During the services at the synagogue, the children used to read comic strips hidden in their prayer books and laugh to scorn at the rituals. The children were so noisy and disorderly that the teachers could not discipline them and found it very difficult to conduct the classes. At home the atmosphere for religious observance was scarcely more congenial. My elder sister detested the Sunday school so much that my mother literally had to drag her out of bed in the mornings and it never went without the struggle of tears and hot words. Finally my parents were exhausted and let her quit. On the Jewish High Holy Days instead of attending synagogue and fasting on Yom Kippur, my sister and I were taken out of school to attend family picnics and parties in fine restaurants. When my sister and I convinced our parents how miserable we both were at the Sunday school they joined an agnostic, humanist organization known as the Ethical Culture Movement. The Ethical Culture Movement was founded late in the 19th cen - tury by Felix Alder. While studying for rabbinate, Felix Alder grew convinced that devotion to ethical values as relative and man-made, regarding any supernaturalism or theology as irrelevant, constituted the only religion fit for the modern world. I attended the Ethical Culture Sunday School each week from the age of eleven until I graduated at fifteen. Here I grew into complete accord with the ideas of the movement and regarded all traditional, organized religions with scorn. When I was eighteen years old I became a member of the local Zionist youth movement known as the Mizrachi Hatzair. But when I found out what the nature of Zionism was, which made the hostility between Jews and Arabs irreconcilable, I left several months later in disgust. When I was twenty and a student at New York University, one of my elective courses was entitled Judaism in Islam. My professor, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Katsh, the head of the department of Hebrew Studies there, spared no efforts to convince his students--all Jews, many of whom aspired to become rabbis- -that Islam was derived from Judaism. Our textbook, written by him, took each verse from the Quran, painstakingly tracing it to its allegedly Jewish source. Although his real aim was to prove to his students the superiority of Judaism over Islam, he convinced me diametrically of the opposite. I soon discovered that Zionism was merely a combination of the racist, tribalistic aspects of Judaism. Modern secular nationalistic Zionism was further discredited in my eyes when I learned that few, if any, of the leaders of Zionism were observant Jews and that perhaps nowhere is Orthodox, traditional Judaism regarded with such intense contempt as in Israel. When I found nearly all import - ant Jewish leaders in America supporters for Zionism, who felt not the slightest twinge of conscience because of the terrible injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian Arabs, I could no longer consider myself a Jew at heart. One morning in November 1954, Professor Katsh, during his lecture, argued with irrefutable logic that the monotheism taught by Moses (peace be upon him) and the Divine Laws reveled to him were indispensable as the basis for all higher ethical values. If morals were purely man-made, as the Ethical Culture and other agnostic and atheistic philosophies taught, then they could be changed at will, according to mere whim, convenience or circum - stance. The result would be utter chaos leading to individual and collective ruin. Belief in the Hereafter, as the Rabbis in the Talmud taught, argued Professor Katsh, was not mere wishful thinking but a moral necessity. Only those, he said, who firmly believed that each of us will be summoned by God on Judgment Day to render a complete account of our life on earth and rewarded or punished accordingly, will possess the self-discipline to sacrifice transitory pleasure and endure hardships and sacrifice to attain lasting good. It was in Professor Katsh’s class that I met Zenita, the most unusual and fascinating girl I have ever met. The first time I entered Profes - sor Katsh’s class, as I looked around the room for an empty desk in which to sit, I spied two empty seats, on the arm of one, three big beautifully bound volumes of Yusuf Ali’s English translation and commentary of the Holy Quran. I sat down right there, burning with curiosity to find out to whom these volumes belonged. Just before Rabbi Katsh’s lecture was to begin, a tall, very slim girl with pale complexion framed by thick auburn hair, sat next to me. Her appearance was so distinctive, I thought she must be a foreign student from Turkey, Syria or some other Near Eastern country. Most of the other students were young men wearing the black cap of Orthodox Jewry, who wanted to become rabbis. We two were the only girls in the class. As we were leaving the library late that afternoon, she introduced herself to me. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family, her parents had migrated to America from Russia only a few years prior to the October Revolution in 1917 to es - cape persecution. I noted that my new friend spoke English with the precise care of a foreigner. She confirmed these speculations, telling me that since her family and their friends speak only Yiddish among themselves, she did not learn any English until after attending public school. She told me that her name was Zenita Liebermann but recently, in an attempt to Americanize themselves, her parents had changed their name from “Liebermann” to “Lane.” The IslamicCure Miracles of theQur ’ an Why I Embraced Islam
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