assalaamu ‘alaykum

i gave up facebook during ramadhan also and now that i’m back on ( it’s v. useful for islamic events and activism and keeping in touch with other sisters ) I only log in 1 time a day alhamdulilaah so that is a better habit! :-) alhamdulilaah!

gave up t.v. and movies for good after ilm summit and the habit continued during and after ramadhan alhamdulilaah.

improved my relationship with al-qur’aan because i read from an arabic/english one so each ayah i read in arabic, I read the meaning right after and could connect so well with what Allaah was telling me.

jazaaki Allahu khairen for sharing your experiences!

bismillah. alhamdolillah, after hurricane ike, we lost power and after power was restored we found we had still lost our satellite dish reception.

alhamdolillah alaa kulli haal. until tonight. my sisters and their husbands were visiting our home, and their discontentment without TV was palpable. then Allah subhanahu wata ala gave the hours they spent trying to turn back on the dish success, and that evil has not been off since.

may Allah guide my parents and my sisters, and their families, and those of all the Muslims to realize how evil it is to bring into their homes hundreds of channels filled with smut and obscene speech. and may He do so before they have great cause to regret it.

anyone who has ever heard Shaykh Muhammad Alshareef’s khutbah “Regret” knows that the TV and music are causes for a Muslim to become so distant from his deen that he may die on other than la ilaha illAllah, and what good would regret be in that case? do the people of hellfire not “regret” their past lives when they realize the folly of it all?

Allah Says in Surah an-Naba:

إِنَّا أَنذَرْنَاكُمْ عَذَاباً قَرِيباً يَوْمَ يَنظُرُ الْمَرْءُ مَا قَدَّمَتْ يَدَاهُ وَيَقُولُ الْكَافِرُ يَا لَيْتَنِي كُنتُ تُرَاباً
40:
Sahih International: Indeed, We have warned you of a near punishment on the Day when a man will observe what his hands have put forth and the disbeliever will say, “Oh, I wish that I were dust!”

In the name of Allah,

I do not have a TV and I do not listen to Music obsessively. But usually after an hour or two of work I listen to a piece of music by the composer Yanni.
I do not think music in itself can be called haram. You can waste your time listening to music or browsing the web, so why is music haram while browsing the web not?
Also, why is it not haram to watch a movie that stimulates an awful lot of negative emotions within oneself and contains murder while it is haram to listen to some peace-bringing and inspiring music?

I think our scholars should first understand the thing they want to make haram. Most things can be used for good and for bad.

I rarely watch movies because most are stupid or boring, or they contain Zionist propaganda.
And alhamdulillah I have made it my personal rule to read one Juz’ of Quran everyday, no exceptions. And I think that everyone who calls himself/herself a Muslim should do the same or more. In Surah Al-Muzzammil there is a mention of how the Prophet (saw) and his friends used to stay up one third of a night, or half the night, or two thirds of it, praying and reading Quran. Who does that these days?

I don’t even know why I have a tv, except for watching hockey (which is only half the year). I went through seven years without one, and the one I have now rarely turns on for anything other than sports… news, weather, and anything else somewhat interesting and informative is all available through the internet now, so I really think it’s only a matter of time before I can break away from tv ownership again. Of course, internet is an even bigger waste of time if we let it be, so perhaps it’s not the medium that’s the problem but ourselves..

bismillah. so after thinking about my last post in this thread, i promised myself not to return to MM until i had done something good. and alhamdolillah, i did a few things including reading two pages from the mushaf.

shaykh waleed basyouni mentioned in his friday khutbah at the end of Ramadan that one of the things that makes doing good deeds easier in Ramadan is that all the Muslims are doing good deeds at the same time. fasting is easier, for example, because everyone is fasting.

alhamdolillah, we do not need to join the people of bidah who make difficult-to-fulfill pledges and burden themselves with ibadat that are not fard already. so i am not encouraging anyone to make bayah or to make a pledge to do extra fasts, etc. that would be wrong.

but i will encourage everyone to think about the extra good deeds they did in Ramadan, and think about how to keep up with those good deeds now that Ramadan is gone. for me, for example, that means reading more Qur’an outside Ramadan. alhamdolillah, i am grateful to Allah that He puts it in my heart to read much more Qur’an in Ramadan. and i pray to Allah for steadfastness so that, even if it is less than in Ramadan, i still read a significant amount every day, inshaAllah.

and i think that setting a personal benchmark each day would be good. as would increasing that goal from time to time.

and i think that treating my time on this site as a reward for meeting my daily goals would be better than letting my time here delay me. and i will try to keep that in mind with other distractions, though i pray that Allah will keep me steadfast in avoiding TV and similar wastes.

the difference between MM and TV as distractions is like the difference between a ripe and crunchy apple on the one hand, and a processed-milk-and-cocoa-byproduct-chocolate-bar sweetened with refined sugar on the other. one as they say will keep the doctor away, and the other is a prescription for diabetes.

MashAllah! What an inspiring post :-)!

Mashallah its a great article!
Subhanallah this article applies to me so well! I alhamdullilah used to watch enough TV and never realize how many I wasted away in my day just watching that devil box. Ever since I stopped watching TV, things like lowering my gaze have become easier, and I have become slightly more immune to the evils around me, especially at university. It also allowed me to find more time for quran and taraweeh. Now, that shaitan has been unlocked the challenge lies in if we can actually persist in doing these so obedient acts, and I have already subhanallah felt shaitans attacks at me!….”its ok keep sleeping, pray fajr when you wake up”, “its JUST sunnah salah”, “just sit and loaft around on the internet, its so HALAL, and CHILLING”.
Like subhanallah, his attach is full fledged.
May Allah make it easy for us to fight the dreaded shaitaan for the rest of the year, and maintain the taqwa and piety that we attained during ramadhan.