- Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H&HF): Whenever one of you is needy and brings that to other people, he will not be satisfied. and Whenever someone is needy and brings that to Lord, he shall give him what he wants. sooner or later.
- Imam Sadiq (As.): Whenever you had tenderness in your heart, Pray. because your heart doesn't get tender unless it's pure.
- I told to Imam Baqir (A.S): “What is the meaning of “truly, Ibrahim was awwah and patient”? He replied: “Awwah means (the one who is) praying (to) and wailing (for God) a lot.””
- “Two people, who have acted alike, enter the heaven, but one of them sees the other one in a higher place. Then, he says: O’ Lord! How come has he a superior place in comparison to me while we acted alike? God the Almighty replies: “because he asked Me (whatever he needed) and you did not do that”.
- “The most knowledgeable person to God is the one who asks more from Him”
- “Whoever prays a lot, the angels say: This voice is familiar (to us) and this is the supplication which is accepted and this is the need which is provided”
-
The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his Household):
-
وَ لَوْ عَرَفْتُمُ اللَّهَ حَقَّ مَعْرِفَتِهِ لَزَالَتِ الْجِبَالُ بِدُعَائِكُم
If you knew god the way you should’ve known, Mountains definitely will be moved by your supplications. - Crying out of fear of God is the key to his mercy, it’s a sign for his acceptance and it’s a door to answering [supplications]
- Pray to God and believe in his answeres. But understand that God won't accept prays from an unwitting oblivious heart.
On the Fatality of Silence
Before I stumbled on the inspiration that gave birth to this write-up, I had always consciously avoided joining in any debate that had to do with the Nigerian polity. I believed that doing so was pointless since ours is a country where the craziest and the creepiest of things happens everyday. So I thought it’s worthless catching some nasty headache for the sake of the country that has refused to be serious for once. For me, Nigeria is an eerily unbelievable country where sanity is far from making sense. But sometimes, I get pricked by this bizarre amalgam called Nigeria. In my silence (before I broke it recently), I had always respected the contributions of those who never get tired of talking about this country despite its daily dose of madness. However, I personally don’t agree with them on certain grounds but I sincerely respect them for always trying to cope with this madness. About two years ago, I finally decided to break my silence because of two incidents. The first one is the piece that Dr M.A. Lateef of the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University wrote about the perennial fuel scarcity and how he refused to buy at inflated price despite the hurl of insults from the petrol attendant. His courage to confront injustice in a country where doing so makes you a non-conformist really shocked me and amazed me at the same time. The second incident took place on the pages of Random Blues by Niyi Osundare, where I had quite a long quizzical dialogue with the following gripping lines.