as-salaamu ‘alaikum. Welcome to you, my name is Saifuddin. I am a Sunni Muslim, I follow the Hanafi School of Orthodoxy (madhhab). I was born and raised in America where I gave bayat and became an initiate (murid) of Sheykh Abdul-Kerim al-Kibrisi, Deputy to Sheykh Maulana Nazim al-Hakkani Grand Sheykh of the Osmanli Naks-i’bendi Sufi Association. Therefore I am an American Ottoman.
I have been blogging since the fall of 2004 so many of you have seen my blog, my face or one of the many names I’ve used since the inception of the Wa Salaam Blog. My efforts on this site and blogspot, where I originally began blogging, were attempts at discussing Islam in a way that I thought would benefit others.
However, overtime and after some maturity these positions changed. What appeared to me as something beneficial for my audience in 2004 did not seem appropriate in 2006 for example. I reevaluated myself several times over the years and as a result my interests and blogging style changed accordingly. Those changes, I noticed, attracted different people and different responses but was it benefiting anyone? This is a question that most Muslim-bloggers eventually face asking, “Am I benefiting anyone by doing this?”
Then I met Shaykh Abdul Kerim Hazretleri who told me,
“The Holy Prophet is saying, ‘Either speak something that benefits you and others, or keep silent.’”
This made more sense to me than anything I had heard or read from any of the celebrity scholars of Islamic popular culture. So again I had to reevaluate myself and asked,
“When and where did I receive the most benefit in my life? When was the beauty of Islam real and the benefit truly recognizable for me in my life?”
The answer was simple, everything pointed to my late teens and early twenties when I was in tariqat. And there I was nearly 10 years later recognizing that sitting in front of Sheykh Abdul-Kerim with the Osmanli Lions was real and that there was real benefit coming down in that sitting. I was once again in the midst of Islam’s beauty and I pray that what comes out of this blog is beneficial to myself and others, amin
assalam alaikum Saifuddin, a very nice blog you have here, masha Allah. Glad to have found it.
BismillaharRahmanirRahim
wa ‘alaikum as-salaam. alhamdulillah, cyclewala thank you for stopping by. Please visit the site often and feel free to make comments that you may think are of benefit.
-Saifuddin
Saifuddin: Thanks for visiting & commenting at my blog. I’m so pleased to meet you & glad to read that you oppose terror whether it be directed against Muslims or perpetrated by them. My feelings precisely.
I’d like to encourage you or any of your readers to visit the blog of a Jew who shares many of your feelings about such violence. Also, I run a progressive Israeli-Palestinian discussion forum in which I’d like to see more participation by Muslims:
http://www.israelpalestineforum.com/forum/
MashaAllah. As salam ‘aleykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
wa ‘alaikum as-salaam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh x 3
selamün aleyküm.