Underrate not any goodness; donate a token daily to the mosques around you! It is one of the palliatives our mosques need at this crucial time to function properly.
Its abandonment can be a hindrance to the day-to-day running of the House of Allah who is the sole Creator of our universe and what abound therein.
An Arabic poet says on our mosques:
“If you see the prayer’s lines in our mosques these days the bulk of those that made them are the indigent, the commoners and the beggars!
A critical analysis of the couplet above reveals that:
These days commoners, indigents and beggars are mostly the dwellers of our mosques in this part of the world. They are the only category of men and women who constantly and regularly enliven the mosques without a break come rain come shine!
The rich, the well-to-do as well as the influential people among the Muslims that are supposed to pray together in our mosques with the needy are conspicuously absent not because of the ill-heath they suffered or because they are on travelling but because they want to neglect the divine functions placed on their shoulders by the law giver, Allah, such as daily contributions for the mosques upkeep, feeding of the destitute and clothing of the needy!
This is a reminder to both the rich and commoners on the essence of contributing a token of their wealth to the functionality of the mosques!
The glorious Quran has encouraged us to give a token of our wealth to God who in His wisdom Has deemed us fit to be Muslims.
The Quran says: ” Whatever you spend out of your wealth, He (Allah) will pay it back, and He is capable of all things” _ Qur’an 34:39
A Muslim apart from the fact that he believes in God and His messenger, in the book, the angels as well as the prophets and the day of judgement is mandated to give out a token of his wealth in form of alms to the needy and the wellness of his religion which has mosque as its home!
Mosques these days in this country cannot survive unless we donate 20, 30, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 naira, etc for their upkeeps because what make up a mosque now is different from what made up a mosque then.
Now, electricity supply in the country is epileptic, tap water is comatose while most mosques administrators are not free like those of the years past.
For these, we will need money to buy fuel which is also skyrocketed price wise, we will need to buy water, dig borehole and manage it while the mosques’ administrators will need to be paid for the jobs done by them; in all of these we will need substantial amount of money to make our mosques function optimally!
Therefore, the daily contributions we are donating to the mosques need to be continued non-stop as they amount to something substantial at the end of the months!
Besides, we should not underrate them and abandon them in the name of recession or economic quagmire the country is experiencing.
Your five naira, ten naira and so on can move a mountain when it comes to mosques upkeep in this part of the world. Remember still, that for every good or bad a man does he will be rewarded accordingly. The Quran has this to say on that:
“Anyone who has done an atom’s weight of good shall see it. And anyone who has done an atom’s weight of evil, shall see it” _ Qur’an 99:7-8
In the same vein, the prophet said:
“Do not underrate anything out of the goodness for once, even if it is to meet your brother with smiling face”
In essence, what we are saying is that a token had facilitated the admittance of some people into the Paradise!
In Islamic history, we read the story of a prostitute who was known for her waywardness among the children of Israelite, who had entered Paradise because he gave water to a thirsty dog.
It was narrated that the woman saw the dog roaming around a well while its tongue was outside anticipating water to drink.The woman looked around for a drawer to fetch water for the dog but saw no one.
She later removed her shoe, got a rope and used it to draw water from the well and gave it to the thirsty dog. For this reason, the prophet said she was given a free passage into the Paradise.
In another instance in the Hadith of the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) , the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) has cited unkindness of an owner of a cat, as the reason that which will predispose him into the hellfire!
He has said that a man was rearing a cat but did not take proper care of it. Instead of allowing it to roam around in the vicinity so as to fetch food on its own, the owner still tied it down and did not give him any food until it died!
Not taking proper care of the mosques in our areas of dwelling is a similitude of the unkindness of the owner of the cat in the story above! It is an insouciant behaviour to abandon mosques without caring for their upkeeps and goodness which nobody will come to enjoy except those that take good care of them in the first place, even if it is God that will reward those who make them habitable for worship later.
Friends, your 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200 Naira etc are capable of giving you a free passage into the Paradise as little as they appear in your estimation and as the little effort of the prostitute woman first mentioned above had given her a free passage to the Paradise. Don’t underrate them and donate with passion to the House of God around you.
Personally, I have been fortunate to live among a people who are elderly and moderately above poverty line but who daily contribute tokens to the proper maintainance of the mosque we are worshipping in.
Every morning I see their enthusiasm to give their Lord a part of their wealth even if it is a little while the younger ones, despite a little bit above them in wealth, do not give a hoot on donating to the mosque.
While doing so, I ruminate on the lives and conditions of wellness of these elderly people despite their ages and see the hands of God manifesting positively in them all.
For examples , where I’m living these bunches of the elderly have the most stable of families, blessed children and good health.
To me, I take these blessings on them as a reward of their dedication to their Creator and more, the products of their readiness to donate based on their capacities, to the House of God, basically for its wellness.
THE NEED TO MAKE THE RATIBI AND MASJDUL-JAMIH HABITABLE FOR THE WORSHIPPERS
Beyond this, there is a need to make the Ratibi (the surrounding mosques) and the Masjidu-Jamih (the central mosques) around you more habitable for the worshippers.
The struggle for better living as well as the economic situation of the worlds at large, have led men especially the youth to abandon cleaning of their mosques.
Unlike in the days of the yore, there were volunteers who out of their busy schedules still have time for the upkeep of the mosques. They cleaned them, dusted the dust that enveloped them in the harmattan as well as clearing the water ways in the mosque’s vicinities.
But these days, the number of the volunteers that see to the upkeep of our mosques, be it daily or weekly sanitation, is declining at alarming rates. It remains in most Muslim cathedrals, old people who are doing these rewardable jobs.
It is therefore, a maslahatul-hama or istisana I. e, public goodness if the youth of this ummah can devise means or ways of reinventing themselves into what their noble Book has encouraged, their Prophet has praised and which their righteous predecessors have done.
Some of the ways in which the youths of this ummah can trek to make mosques habitable for the worshippers are:
– Organization of volunteers that will clean the mosques daily into groups so that, the group that clean the mosque today will not be the one that will do it tomorrow. The benefit of this is that, it will allow the volunteers to plan ahead of their schedule.
– Volunteers from the Ratibi mosques in a town or city can arrange themselves on monthly basis and go to the central mosques around and clean them.
– There should be an agglomerate of youths who will saddle the responsibilities of cleaning and organizing the jumuah mosques around every Friday morning so that the worshippers will enjoy the environment for the time they will spend there on the day of congregation ( On Friday).
– Wealthy people, the well-to-do as well as the committee of each mosque may contribute token and give stipend to the volunteers or those they employed for the service as a motivation, encouragement and booster so that the good works they are doing will continue without break.
– Waqf that is, a foundation which is dedicated to mosque sanitation can be entrenched by wealthy families, individuals or Islamic groups. This is even the practice in countries that are more grounded in the knowledge of Islam and which are ready to propagate the knowledge.
In the glorious Qur’an 24 (suratul-Nur) Vs 36-38, Allah has instructed on how He wants His house, mosque, to look in one breath, and in another breath in the verses, He Has praised men that see to the upkeep of His house. He says:
“In houses (mosques), which Allah Has permitted to be raised to honour; for the celebration, in them, of His name; in them is He glorified in the morning and in the evenings, (again and again),-by men whom neither trade nor sale can divert from the remembrance of Allah (Remembrance of Allah is wider than prayer: it includes silent contemplation, and active service of Allah and His creatures), nor from regular prayer, nor from paying Zakat.
Their only fear is for the Day when Hearts and eyes will be turned about, -That Allah may reward them according to the best of their deeds, and add even more for them out of His Grace: for Allah does provide for those whom He wills, without measure”.
Cleaning and taking proper care of the community mosques is so important because the main physical feature of any Islamic neighbourhood or community is the masjid or mosque.
Whenever Muslims have settled, they have sought to have a masjid which means literally ” a place of prostration.”
In addition, the noble Prophet has said that the whole Earth is a masjid meaning that man must have the natural freedom to perform Salaat and worship whenever in the world he is when the time of prayer comes.
However, a masjid/mosque in the form of a building or a site is necessary to provide the vital focus for any community, giving it shape and direction and it is also necessary the part of the Earth that will be chosen as a mosque must be properly made clean and pious for the worshippers.
Ideally, establishing a mosque alone is not enough, but establishing it and making it habitable for the worshippers and Allah’s visitors is the essence of establishing it! A mosque is not a refuse dumping site nor it is a place to see dirty and anything eyesore!
Rather, it is supposed to be a clean, pure and sacred place for the worship and remembrance of God on the one hands and reading and teaching of God’s book and the words of His Prophet.
Therefore, it is imperative that every worshipper in a mosque must strive to make it habitable for other worshippers.
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