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I had the opportunity to listen to Tariq Ramadan in Washington, DC at the ISNA 2012 Annual convention. Ramadan is a professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford.

During Ramadan's last talk at the convention he encouraged Muslims to always be critical of themselves and to question their actions with respect to the end goals they are trying to accomplish. Specifically, Ramadan urged us to always ask ourselves if what we are doing is ethical. Ramadan asked us about what it is we are currently doing – attending an Islamic conference to gain knowledge and to improve ourselves. Ramadan asked us about low numbers of African Americans in attendance. Although attending the conference is a good and beneficial action for those attending, what about those who were not in attendance?

In other words, Ramadan is asking what have those who could afford to be far away from their homes in hotel rooms, dining at restaurants, and raking mileage on rental cars done for the others in their communities that weren't as privileged?

This makes me think, do we go about our life accomplishing selfish ambitions under the guise that we are doing good deeds for the sake of Allah? I feel that often times we are able to justify many of our actions to ourselves when what we are doing is not the most ethical approach to achieve or desired goals.

To illustrate an example what Ramadan wants us to do, I will attempt to evaluate my attendance of the ISNA convention by first questioning my goals. Let's say that my goals were to 'increase my knowledge of Islam so that I may one day help the Muslim community and the rest of humanity' and maybe many others shared this goal.

I have gained a lot from the convention however I can't help but wonder was the effort and money spent towards my goal of increasing my Islamic knowledge and helping the Muslim community done in the best way possible? Could I have been able to help the community spending my time volunteering or maybe teaching those who couldn't read to learn the alphabet? If my noble goals were what truly motivated me, did I make the most ethical choice towards their accomplishment?

Lately I have been in search of knowledge in the Deen. Like many other Muslims who grew up in the west, I want to improve my understanding of Tajwid, Tafsir, Hadith, and Arabic. I stop and think to myself, why am I doing this? What am I trying to achieve? Do I want to gain the pleasure of Allah to become closer to him as well as gain true understanding to improve my practice? Or do I strive to gain knowledge so that the people at theMasjid can see how learned I am? I should question my approach; how am I going about seeking knowledge for the sake of Allah? Am I going to listen in to popular Shaykhs and skipping on the local Masjid lessons? Do I only attend lectures when I know my friends will be there too?

There are many more questions I can pose to myself about my actions and the ethics of my decisions. Taking time to pause and reflect can help us understand and improve ourselves so we can become effective at reaching our goals. Often times we start acting on good intentions and find that we have drifted in our ways. I hope that we can all question our motivations and actions and reflect on whether what we are doing is truly rooted at gaining the pleasure of Allah.

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