Saturday, June 25, 2011

We don't have time for chit chat...

"Dude, what's with the beard?"


"You have such a beautiful body, why don't you show it off?"

You look much prettier without your hijab, can't you not wear it just for one day?”

No, this is not another Hijab post. We have enough of those, dont we? The statements above are some of the questions that those of us living in non muslim communties constantly have to hear. Many a times our confused friends, work colleagues and fellow members of the society try to question our faith, beliefs and action in hope not to get clarification but to cause confusion amongst us.

Alhamdulillah, most of us have had our share of sitting up through the nights trying to figure out what life is all about and many of us Alhamdulillah again have been made intelligent enough to believe in the unseen, to submit to the will of God and to dedicate our actions and life to the Almighty alone. We have gone through the phase of accepting Islam by choice and not just because we were born into it.

To all of those who aim to question our beliefs, first of all ask yourself what is your true purpose of this question. Are you a truth seeker hoping for guidance? Are you truly trying to find answers to things that trouble you or are you finding a vulnerable person that you can attack and make your ego look greater? Those of you who post nasty comments at the bottom of youtube videos and have an intention of just causing an uproar, driving the conversation in any direction you please, read no further. This post is not for you. Let us pray that you find guidance in some place where there will be no public pressure and ego in the way of your learning.

For everyone else who is a true seeker of the truth, congratulations... not everyone has the intellectual capabilities of going through what you are, right now.

Firstly we choose to submit our will to our creator – the one God: That means we have the strongest belief that what the almighty ordains for us to do or not do is always for the best. So we dont need some rational explanation as to why we save ourselves only for our husbands or why we are not permitted to eat certain kinds of foods. Three words - 'Allah knows best' - sets us at peace. While you are a slave to money or your boss at work, we are slaves only to Allah

Second: God did not just create us. He revealed a book by which we should live – The Quran. You dont just manufacture a product and put it out in the market without a user manual, do you? The Quran is the book by which we live – our user manual to life! The prophet is our role model, the human example that we follow. Everything he did, said or silently approved of makes the Sunnah or Hadith.

Hopefully by now you get not only foundation of what we chose to believe and why but also how it is so easy for us to do that.

Now for the simple logic..

If I may put it as such, there is a law – the bottom line by which we live:

“Everything that is not explicitly stated as haram (forbidden) in our day to day life becomes halal (permissible)”

Everything that is not explicitly stated as halal when it comes to our religious rituals is haram”

For example we can not change anything with regards to prayer, zakah, fasting and haj. I cannot pray six times a day instead of five. However when it comes to other matters we can take from our culture that which does not get in the way of our religious teachings. For example: weddings. 

So its as simple as that. No worries. No late nights thinking what must be and how large the universe is; rather we are busy in the worship of our God because that really is the reason we are here.

In the belief in God comes peace. In leaving everything to his Wisdom alone, comes serenity.

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