One of the most inspiring pieces of writing that I have ever  read is a short booklet by the late Khurram Murad entitled 'Sacrifice the Making of a Muslim'. Ustad Khurram was a wise, quietly spoken, humble, spiritual and dynamic personality who was an inspiration for many (Praise be to God). I had the privilege to spend some time with him and learn from not just from his words but also from his character.

With Eid ul Adha approaching I felt it was an appropriate time to reflect on  'Sacrifice the Making of a Muslim'. Eid ul Adha with the qurbani sacrifice is in remembrance of the test (trial) prophet Abraham (Ibrahim) was put under when Allah (The God) told him to sacrifice his son Ismail. When Abraham demonstrated that he was prepared to make this sacrifice then God told him to sacrifice a ram instead. This trial was also showed Abraham's quality of sabr (patience and perseverance)  as he neither complained nor was reluctant to carry out the order from his Lord. This is a lesson for us, ie neither complain nor give up when we are faced with making sacrifices.

But what does it mean to make a sacrifice (in the generic sense). Well, it means to give up something of value for the sake of something else. This varies from person to person. For someone in poverty to give £20 in charity could be a sacrifice as they may need that money but for a rich person giving £200 may not be a sacrifice as it does not really affect them financially.

Anyone who wants to be successful or wants their family to be successful understands the value of sacrifice. A student who wants to well will sacrifice time spent with friends in order to prepare for their exams. Someone who wants to progress in their career will sacrifice time with their family in order to spend more time at work to impress their boss (they may even delude themselves that they are doing this for their family). A parent who wants their child to receive a good education may make a financial sacrifice of sending them to a private school instead of going on family holidays.

People thus make sacrifices to progress in this world. Muslims though should be more concerned with making sacrifices in order to achieve success in the hereafter (God-willing). Thus Ustad Khurram equated sacrifice with jihad (struggle). Jihad is a term misunderstood by Muslims and others alike; literally it means struggle and this is what I mean by it in this post (God-willing in another post we can discuss this further).

Ustad Khurram wrote that life is a struggle both an inner and outer struggle. Thus we strive to cleanse our hearts by subduing our desires, to purify our beliefs and concepts we hold and to ignore the whispers of Shaytan (Sata), to improve our character... We also should struggle to show people true Islam by our words and deeds and strive against injustice and oppression.

Struggle implies that there are obstacles to overcome and requires sacrifices in order to achieve this. In order to strenthen our  iman (faith) and thus also purify our hearts we perform acts of worship. All the acts of worship require sacrifice. We sacrifice our time to pray and to go on hajj, fasting involves sacrificing having food and drink and sexual relations with our spouses between dawn and sunset... All these require patience and perserverance (sabr), it is not easy to give up food and drink it makes you tired, also to perform hajj also requires sabr when you are performing acts of worship with a few million people!

Ustad Khurram though was not just concerned with the reform of the individual. He was also concerned with  Muslims working collectively to bear witness to the teachings of Islam as people are far more effective when they  work together than individually. This also requires certain sacrifices. Ustad Khurram divided these into two types: tangible and intangible.

Tangible sacrifices include time and money. We constantly make choices on how to use our time and once time is spent it can never be recovered. Are we prepared to sacrifice our time to not just spiritually develop ourselves but to show others Islam? There are so many lies and distortions about Islam, most people do not really understand what Islam is, are we prepared to address this? Are we prepared to give up time to help our children abd youth to remain strong on their deen by organising social programmes for them and educating them about their deen? Are we prepared to join with others to address social ills and thus show people practically what Islam means. Are we prepared to sacrifice our love of wealth to financially support these projects?

Intangible sacrifices, Ustad Khurram argued, are more difficult to make. These include opinions and friendships. In Islam not everything is clear cut, there is often difference of opinion, are we prepared to sacrifice our opinions for the common good. Some friendships may hold us back in the work of dawah as they may be based just on having fun or may be based on negativity poisoning our hearts- are we prepared to sacrifice these friendships if we can not change our friends for the better? This does not mean that having fun is wrong but it shoud not be our main priority.

Ustad Khurram also pointed out that in order to make sacrifices for the sake of Allah then we need to have a number of prequisites including the following. Our motivation should be an inner urge based on willing choice, not due to external pressure. Remember God as much as we can throughout the day which will develop our love for God and thus willingness to make sacrifices. Long to meet God, this will motivate to strive hard and make sacrifices so that on the Day when we will meet Him (Day of Judgement) He will be pleased with us. Finally we should be grateful and humble. We should be grateful for all the blessings that have been bestowed on us which will give us inner peace ; ungrateful people are never happy. We should also remain humble, when we work in public we may be affected by the praise of others or the whispers of Satan thus developing a sense of self importance. Our role model though, the Prophet Muhaamad (peace be upon him) was humble, we should follow his example to keep our hearts and intentions pure.