Good Habits for New Muslims to Develop

Objective:

•      To provide new Muslims with some guidelines to learn more about Islam, and to gain insight into some of the beneficial practices that make following Islam easy.

Arabic Terms:

•   InshaAllah – God willing, if God wills it to be so. It is a reminder and acknowledgment that nothing happens except by the will of Allah.
•  Alhamdulillah – All praise and thanks is for Allah. By saying this we are thankful and we acknowledge that everything is from Allah.
•  SubhanAllah – How Perfect is Allah, far removed is Allah from every imperfection.
•  Allahu Akbar – Allah is the Greatest.

After a person has accepted Islam as their religion they will come to realise that Islam is more than just a religion – it is way of life.  Worship is not reserved for special days or special ceremonies; it is a part of our living and our dying, our working and our play, our rest and our study.  In short Islam is something that we live with all our actions, thoughts and deeds.  Developing good habits to assist us in our everyday lives as a worshipper of the One God is easy. Below you will find a few guidelines to get you started.  They are habits that should InshaAllah become as familiar as breathing.

1.    Dedicate some part of everyday to reading a translation of the Quran.

2.    Pay strict attention to learning how to pray.  Try to improve your prayers until you are satisfied that you are praying in the correct manner. Sometimes this takes longer than you might expect, so do not be discouraged.

3.    Try to learn some words of remembrance.  These can be said at any time of the day or night.  If you feel you do not know enough of the prayer ritual but want to spend longer connected to Allah then they can even be repeated at the end of your prayer.  Learn to say: SubhanAllah, Alhamdulillah  and Allahu Akbar.

4.   Give some form of charity every day.  Remember that in Islam giving charity can be as simple as smiling and brightening a person’s day.

5.    Avoid wasting your free time. You will discover that there 1001 things to do that are beneficial.  Time wasted on video games and idly surfing the internet can be better spent.  Once you understand that every single thing can be a way of worshipping Allah then playing video games for hours on end does not seem to be a very wise way to spend time.  Having said this however we now come to the next point.

6.   Avoid going to extremes.  It may be tempting to fast everyday or read all of the Quran in one sitting but Prophet Muhammad warned us against going to extremes.  Therefore in a 24 hour day there is time to play and time to learn.