Advice For Seekers & Converts

Advice for seekers/converts trying to start their spiritual path and development in Islam

- you must connect to sayyiduna Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم and develop love for him. This is your entry point and your guide. The first stage of the call to Islam began before the Quran was revealed. It was 40 years of people knowing the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, trusting him, loving him, noticing his speciality. You need deep knowledge of the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and how his companions were with him to know what qualities to look for in teachers and mentors. And without this trust and love of sayyiduna Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم every point of fiqh, even for basic prohibitions and commands becomes a struggle, where with it even the smallest acts of the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم are cherished and easily adopted.

قُلْ إِن كُنتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ ٱللَّهَ فَٱتَّبِعُونِى يُحْبِبْكُمُ ٱللَّهُ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورٌۭ رَّحِيمٌۭ ٣١

Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ “If you ˹sincerely˺ love Allah, then follow me; Allah will love you and forgive your sins. For Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.”

- send salawat on the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم as much as you possibly can

- Learning Arabic is good, and you should learn how to recite as quickly as you can if you haven’t already. But learning fard ayn is essential. You have to know the basics of belief and practice well. And don’t let someone teach it to you via modern standard Islam. Learn it from a classical widely accepted text with a teacher online or in person

- Go to the masjid regularly, but understand that’s likely not where you are going to find your deeper friends and community. Go to the masjid every prayer if possible, make jumma an immediate priority and you’ll see a lot of blessing and ease in other areas of your practice and prioritizing it will clean up your life. But the brothers who are 20 years older than you and from another country likely arent going to be your best friends or understand your background. And many frustrating things will occur at the masjid, that’s a reality. We’re brothers and sisters with all the Muslims but our friends and companions on the path are different, deeper relationships. To find relationships like that you need to find classes, gathering of dhikr, mawlids, tariqa. Seek Allah tala first and foremost, make a lot of sharia, and Allah will facilitate the right company.

- Don’t go faster than you can handle but don’t sell yourself short. Take on whatever additional practices you can but the ones which will really benefit you are the ones you can keep up everyday

- Read Quran in translation, books on adab, spirituality, biographies, seerah, poetry. Don’t just get big collections of Hadith that are too big for you to understand. Great Hadith books are the shamail tirmidhi, riyad as-saliheen, and many collections of 40 Hadith. Going beyond that you have to understand that your reading to gain familiarity but you need a scholar to understand and know how to act on.

- seeking knowledge is an essential part of the spiritual path, but not its end. You have to learn to grow, but this does not mean that the only way to develop spiritual is to become a scholar or reach an advanced level of study. You need to learn your basics well and enough aqeedah to remove doubts and fiqh to encompass the relevant areas of your life but your purpose is to know Allah tala. And this is the objective of tassawuf. Tassawuf is the one science a Muslim can never abandon or have enough of.