I want to share an important subject that has affected all of us in one way or another, and has negatively effected the productivity of the Muslim Ummah as a whole and individually. Something I have realized about time thieves (such as watching TV which is more harmful to the Iman than we think, notice or justify to ourselves) is that it changes us, whether slowly or quickly but surely.
If you are reading Qur’an or listening to a beautiful lecture and your Iman feels high, great and pure, then shaytan tells you “hey watch a show for only a half an hour”. Thinking that there is no harm in it, you go to watch it. But it doesn’t end there. You cannot switch your Iman on and off like a light switch. You cannot do something wasteful and then expect afterwards that you will go right back to feeling the light in your heart that you did just before that 30 minute show. I am talking about shows that have been so widely spread and have become so normal in today’s society that they aren’t considered “bad”, just normal. You too may not consider it “bad” but I intend to explain why it has such a harmful effect on our productivity and Islam. Continue reading
As Muslims, we must be proficient in whatever we do: be it our worship, our career, or our academic lives. The Muslims in the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ excelled not only in Islamic sciences, but advanced sciences of medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. The host of contributions in that golden age could not have been possible without their self-discipline in both their ‘Ibaadah(worship) and in their academic routines. Both in our quests for Islamic knowledge and that of the worldly sciences, we must make the most of the resources available to us. The time spent during school lectures is the best time to glean and retain information – so how can we make the most of this time? Read on!
Dr. Hany El Banna is the founder of several charities including The Humanitarian Forum, Islamic Relief, and the Muslim Charities Forum. He is also a board member of the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty (CIFA). He has visited over 60 of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries on behalf of these organisations.
If you’ve been through a particularly busy period where you were super productive and then suddenly took a long restful break, you’d normally find it difficult to get back into the productivity mode afterwards. I faced this issue recently as I was starting work after a much needed Eid break and it took me a couple of days to get into my productivity mode. So, how can you get back to being productive again?
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