Productivity Lessons from the Hijrah.

With the beginning of each Islamic year, our scholars and Imams remind us of the story of the momentous Hijrah (migration) of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his companion Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) from Makkah to Medina which they undertook over 1400 Years ago. This Migration was a very special journey and a turning point for Islam and Muslims in that it was chosen to mark the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

Although there are many lessons that one can extract from the Hijrah, I just wanted us to focus on some of the productivity-related lessons one can learn from the Hijrah.

Perhaps the first lesson that strikes me, and is often not talked about, is the difficulty and magnitude of the decision to migrate itself. We tend to think that this migration was a simple 3-day journey by camel between 2 cities, and don’t give much thought to its implications in those days. Living amidst the globalised tourist industry, we tend to forget the difficulty of taking a journey to a completely new territory which you’re not accustomed to the terrain, culture, or people. By all scales, the migration itself as an act was not that easy. How many of us are truly ready to leave our homes, our families, our businesses and just go to a new town and start from scratch?

So, the question is why? Why did the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) migrate? The standard answer is that the migration occurred to escape persecution from Makkah and save the Prophet’s life (peace be upon him) from an evil assassination plot. But I believe there’s another reason, one that derives an important lesson about the Hijrah: staying in Makkah with the persecution from the Makkan people was unproductive for the Prophet (peace be upon him) because the environment was not conducive for the message which he (peace be upon him) carried, Islam. The Prophet (peace be upon him) had to find a way out, he (peace be upon him) had to find a venue for his message to flourish. In essence, the migration was not about saving his life, but it was about saving the message and fulfilling his mission! The evidence of this is that immediately after reaching Madinah, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) didn’t relax but immediately went through an all-embracing process to establish a faithful and strong society by building a mosque, establishing a market, managing the politics of the new town, and so on.

So there’s a deep lesson here about the Hijrah that is subtle but important – it is that the Hijrah is a process of transfer to a better situation to enable you to be productive and active vicegerent on Earth.1 It is not meant to be a means to find a comfortable place where one would relax and stop being productive. Rather, it is a search for an environment more favorable to continuous and constructive productivity for Allah’s sake.

Think how you can apply the above to your life? What do you need to ‘migrate’ from in order to live a productive lifestyle in conformity with your purpose of worshipping Allah (Subhanhu wa Ta’ala)? It doesn’t have to be migration from place to place, but it could be migration from a non-halal job to a halal one, or migration from sins to repentance, or from evil deeds to good deeds.

The Pre-Planned Journey

Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) and his companion Abu Bakr Al-Siddeeq (May Allah be pleased with him) went through a lot of preparation for this epic journey. They prepared their transportation, planned how to hide their tracks, hired a guide, and even appointed the people who’d bring them the news from Makkah and who would bring them the food each night.

One might ask: Why did the Prophet and His companion have to go plan so meticulously to go on this Hijrah? Wasn’t this Journey blessed by Allah (Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala)’s permission for the Prophet to migrate to Medina? Aren’t these the best of people in those times? Surely, Allah (Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala) could have prepared for them a miracle of instant transportation to Medina like He did in the journey of Israa wal Mi’raaj?

Placing Your Trust In Allah

When we think of these questions, we realise, that this journey was not about the Prophet and his companion only, this journey was for us – the Muslims – to learn deep lessons from, to study from it and extract unforgettable lessons that apply to all times.

The Prophet and his companion prepared and took all the means to teach us the lesson that even being the best of mankind, even if you worship Allah, you need to use the means Allah has provided to achieve your goals in life. This indicates the need for action to fully trusting in Allah’s decree, in fact it’s part and parcel of believing in Allah’s decree. The above point is highlighted further in those precious moments where Abu Bakr Al-Siddeeq (May Allah be pleased with him) spent with the Prophet in that cave between Makkah and Medina. They were hiding there, but the Makkans were able to trace their tracks to the cave. When the Makkans approached the cave, Abu Bakr Al-Siddeeq started panicking saying: “O Prophet, if they look to their feet they’ll see us!” But the Prophet’s confident response was: “Don’t be Afraid, Allah is with us”.

These powerful words should be on the tongue of every Muslim and Muslimah in any situation of difficulty he/she faces after you’ve exhausted all possible means.

Practical Lessons From The Hijrah

I want us to think about this practically, how we can apply this concept of balancing between taking the means and trusting in Allah in our lives? This requires a special mindset that comes with training and constantly self-evaluating your actions. When you have goals, you need to force yourself to prepare the utmost whilst at the same time praying and pleading to Allah as if you’ve no means at all.

I remember once I was given an extremely challenging task at work, I did my utmost and worked hard to surmount the task but at the same time I started praying to Allah to make it easy and finish it on time, and subhanAllah it all went smoothly. You honestly taste the sweetness of true tawakkul when you strike this balance between taking the means and trusting in Allah (Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala).

The Measuring Stick of Justice

One final beautiful lesson from the Hijrah is the instruction that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) gave to his cousin, Ali ibn Abi Talib (May Allah be pleased with him) asking him to return the ‘Trusts’ that were with the Prophet to the rightful people in Makkah. I had to stop at this and really imagine the situation to understand the magnitude of this act of honesty.

Imagine you’re in a town where most people don’t like you, they make lies about you and they want to kill you. But they also trust you with all their precious goods. On the night you are about to leave, you could potentially take ‘revenge’ for all the pain and suffering they caused you, instead you actually return these goods to them! What does that teach us? What does that tell us about our attitude to the Non-Muslims even when they harm us?

It teaches us that our measuring stick in Islam is Justice, not our whims and desires or revenge or hatred. We do justice even to our worst enemies and this is how we become servants of Allah instead of servants of our desires. We become truly the Best of All Nations when we apply such principles in our lives.

These were some of the productivity lessons from the beautiful Hijrah, I hope we can learn from them and apply them to our lives so we can have a true turning point within ourselves just like the Prophet and His Companions did after the Hijrah. Thinking back to the Hijrah, what other lessons of productivity have you come across? Share your thoughts with us below!

The Prophet of Mercy… (1)

1. The Garbage Thrower: (a heart touching story)

 

She thought till late at midnight and finally decided how to take revenge from him. She could not sleep all night, because she was too eager to take revenge for the idols she worshiped. Even before the first ray of sunlight had entered her window, she was busy sweeping her house. She saved all the garbage in a basket, placed it on the roof of her house and proudly looked at it for a while, then with an impatient look on her face, she looked at the street that she lived on, and thought, “No one has ever seen him angry. Everybody will praise me when they will see him shouting at me and getting mad. They will laugh at him and make fun of him.” She looked at the basket again and grinned.

 

Meanwhile, she heard footsteps, announcing the approach of the end of her waiting. “Finally my prey has arrived,” she thought, as she saw a man dressed in clean, white clothes coming that way. She picked up the basket in her hands and threw all the garbage on him when he passed by. Much to the woman’s disappointment, he did not say anything and continued on his way.

 

She did the same the following day thinking, “Maybe this time I will be able to annoy him.” But he was too gentle to shout at a woman. She misinterpreted his attitude as fear and decided to repeat the same mischief everyday in order to keep him frightened, so that he might stop preaching the Oneness of God.

 

This gentleman whom the woman hated so much was Muhammad (pbuh), the last prophet of Allah Almighty. He did not want to disappoint the woman and so continued to walk down the street everyday, instead of picking an alternate route, and prayed for the woman to recognize the Truth.

 

One day, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) did not find the woman to be on the roof of her house with the basket. This worried him, because he thought something must have happened to her for not being over there. So he knocked at the door. “Who is it?” asked a feeble voice. “Muhammad bin Abdullah,” was the reply, “can I come in?” The woman feared, “I am sick, and too weak to fight or talk back, therefore Muhammad has come to take revenge for what I have been doing to him.” But the permission to enter her house was in such a gentle voice that she allowed him in.

 

Muhammad (pbuh) entered the house and told the woman that not finding her on the roof had worried him and he thus wanted to inquire about her health. On finding out how ill she was, he gently asked if she needed any help. Hypnotized by the affectionate tone in the Holy Prophet’s (pbuh) blessed voice, she forgot all fear and asked for some water. He kindly gave her some in a utensil and prayed for her health, while she quenched her thirst. This made her feel very guilty for being so cruel to him in the past and she apologized for her mean behavior. He forgave her and came to her house everyday to clean it, to feed her and to pray for her, till she was on her feet again. The kind attitude of the Holy Prophet (pbuh) inspired her into the recognition of the Truth, and his prayers were answered in the form of yet another addition into the growing number of Muslims.

Allah tells us in a Hadith Qudsi (sacred narration of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ): “O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you” (Al-Tirmidhi).

Jabir reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “The believer is kind and gracious, for there is no goodness in one who is neither kind nor gracious. The best of the people are those who are most beneficial to others.”

Source: Mu’jam Al-Awsat 5937