I wrote in a recent post how I needed to stay physically fit and couldn’t find a place to play badminton or someone to play with, but found a place to learn the sufi-based martial art of Pencak Silat for free and right next to where I live. The only problem with that Silat place is that they seem to have forgotten about this spiritual part of the art. It was in a tiny room, and there was more than a handful of beautiful girls there, not too modestly dressed. And even though I was hoping to find in Silat a means of mental and spiritual discipline, I somehow convinced myself that I wouldn’t be spiritually affected by their presence (or the occasional contact). And to be honest, in my first class, there was more than just occasional contact.

I only went once, and then the next week, before it was time to go again, I fell asleep while reading. And I kept wondering after that if falling asleep at the strangely early time of 6 p.m was meant to keep me from going again until I decided to stop going or something like that. Then, two days after that, I went to the Habib Umar talk in Peterborough with the brother that I met that day, who reads my blog. Before going to the talk, while sitting at the brother’s house, he showed me a diagram from a course of spiritual purification that he takes, that shows how the heart can be blackened by little black dots, one by one. According to that diagram, there are many channels that can bring black dots to the heart, such as the eyes, ears, limbs, etc. You have to purify them one by one in order to stop any blackness from entering the heart. So while talking about dots and how they can add up little by little without you realizing it, he mentioned as an example the Silat girls that I had written about in the previous post, and how they can cause these tiny dots to increase in my heart without me realizing it, until my heart is blackened. That really made me question myself on why I thought that I could escape such a thing in the beginning… What made me think that I’m special, or that I wouldn’t be affected by such a setting? At that point I decided that I was (most likely) to forget about Silat and try to find another alternative. I want to thank him about this naseeha he gave me by asking him to read the hadith that I have posted on my other blog here, which shows the greatness of sincere advice: (nuruddinzangi.blogspot.com/2007/11/naseeha.html)

Then that night, at the talk of Habib Umar, the venerable shaykh said that how could we expect to see the Messenger of Allah, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam,  with eyes that see that which is haram? And this little sentence from a wali of Allah sealed the deal for me, and I made up my mind that I was definitely going to drop the Silat lessons, even if that means I don’t do any physical exercise for the rest of the year.

But subhan-Allah! As our Messenger salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam promised us, if we leave something for the sake of Allah, then Allah Most Generous will replace it with something better. And the very next day, when back in London, I found out that one of my new friends here in London: a) Loved Badminton and was looking for someone to play with  b) Has an extra racket that someone left at his house  and  c) There are Badminton courts right next to his house!