Letter from Allah to the Prophet (saw)

Amaali of Sh Tousi 1:298, Oyoun Akhbar al-Ridha 25, Ikmaal al-Deen of Sh Sadouq 1:308

Abi Abdillah Jaafar bin Mohamed (as) said,


One day my father (Imam Mohamed bin Ali al-Baqir) said to Jabi bin Abdullah, 'I need to see you privately.' 


So when my father was alone with Jabir he said, 'Tell me about the tablet that my mother Fatema (as) had.' 


Jabir said, 
'Allah is my witness that I went to Fatema, daughter of the Messenger of Allah, to congratulate her on the birth of Hussein (as). I saw a green tablet in her hand made of aquamarine. There was some writing on it with a light that was brighter than the sun and the tablet smelled better than musk. 


I asked Fatema, 'What is this tablet O Daughter of the Messenger of Allah?' 


She replied, 'This tablet is a gift from Allah to my father. It contains the names of my father, my husband and the names of his successors from my sons after him.' 


I asked her to give it to me so that I could write a copy of its contents, and she accepted. 
Then my father (Mohamed Bin Ali (as)) asked Jabir, 'Can you show me the copy you made?' 
Jabir replied, 'Yes' 
Then Jabir went to his house and brought back a piece of paper with him. 
My father said to him: 
'Look at you copy to see (if) what I say (matches your copy). This is what was written on that tablet: 


In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Merciful. 

This is a letter from Allah, the most Honourable, the most Knowledgeable, which was sent with the guardian spirit to Muhammad, the last of the Messengers. 


O Muhammad, glorify my Names, be thankful for My grace, and do not deny My blessings. 


Do not desire anyone but Me and do not fear anyone but Me, because those who desire anyone but Me or fear anyone but Me will be punished in a way that I have never punished anyone else from all of the worlds. 


O Muhammad! I have chosen you from amongst all of the prophets and I have given preference to your successor above all of the successors. 


I have made Hasan the container of my knowledge after the time of his father, and I have made Husein the best of the sons from the first to the last, and through Husein the imamate will continue. 


Ali, the beauty of the worshippers, will remain from Husein, and then it will be Mohamed, the one who rips open My knowledge, the one who will invite people to My path through the right methods. 


Then it will be Jaafar, the truthful in his speech and his actions after whom there will be a deafening conspiracy. 


Woe and more woe unto those who deny My slave and the best of My creation, Musa!


Then Ali, the pleasant, will be killed a Kafir deamon, and he will be buried in the city that was built by the righteous slave, next to the worst of Allah's creation. (Harun al-Rasheed, the killer of Imam Musa bin Jaafar).


Then Muhammad will come, the guide to My path, the one who safeguards My sanctity, and the one who will leave Ali behind.


Ali will be the one with two names (Ali and Naqi).


After him, Hassan, the honourable will lead his people.


And after him, Mohamed, will rise at the end of time. There wil be a white cloud over him to offer him shade from the sun. He will speak with an eloquent language and his voice will reach everyone and everywhere. He is the Mahdi of the family of Muhammad and he will fill the earth with justice, just as it will be filled with injustice.'

The heart... ...The house of God... ...The abode of dhikr.

William C. Chittick


The human task can only be accomplished in the 'heart', a word that designates the unlimited realm of human awareness and consiousness. The heart alone, among all created things, is given the capacity to encompass God. As the famous extra-Quranic Divine saying puts it, 'My heavens and My earth embrace Me not, but the heart of My believing servant does embrace Me.' To remember God fully and actually is to find Him sitting within the heart, which is His Throne in the microcosm.


Knowledge of things as they actually are can only come through knowing them as disclosures of the Real, as signs and traces displaying God's names and attributes. This is not a theoretical sort of knowledge, but a knowledge of recognition and gnosis. It is to gain a true vision of the Divine omnipresence, the fact that, as the Quran puts it, 'And Allah's is the East and the West, therefore, whither you turn, thither is Allah's purpose; surely Allah is Amplegiving, Knowing. (2:115)' Such knowledge comes by way of dhikr, which is al-hudhur ma a'l-madhkur, 'presence with the One Remembered.'


It is only this sort of knowledge that allows man to see that everything in this world is accursed if he does not see it as displaying the Real, and that he himself is accursed to the extent that he does not know that things do infact display the Real. Once we see the world for what it is, we see that it is nothing but dhikr-Allah - a reminder of God, a mention of God, a remembrance of God. Our response to the world can only be to follow its lead - to mention and to remember God. 'Everything is accursed,' says the hadith, 'except dhikr-Allah.' But everything is dhikr-Allah, so nothing is accursed. The alchemy of dhikr transmutes the accursed into the blessed. The place of that dhikr, where God becomes truly present and man becomes truly blessed, is the heart.


As Ibn Arabi put it:
The greatest sin is what brings about the death of the heart. It dies only by knowing God. This is what is named 'ignorance'. For the heart is the house that God has chosen for Himself in this human configuration. But such a person has misappropriated the house, coming between it and its Owner.


A person like that is the one who most wrongs himself, for he has deprived himself of good that would have come to him from the Owner of the house - had he left the house to Him. This is the deprivation of ignorance (III 179.6)

An Important Rule Often Neglected 27

A Code of Practice For Muslims in the West : Eating & drinking » Questions and Answers
Fatawa of Ayatullah al Uzama Syed Ali al-Husaini Seestani


191: Question: We are unaware of the ingredients of food sold in shops in Western countries: it might be free from those ingredients that are forbidden to us or it might contain them. Are we allowed to eat such items without looking into their ingredients, or inquiring about them? Or is that not allowed to us?


Answer: It is permissible [to eat such food] as long as it is not known that it contains meat, fat, and their derivatives that are forbidden to us.