| By sz,
on 11-07-2005 14:47
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Published in : , Articles |
I don’t write many articles, so I wanted to be sure I made this one count. To get to where you want to, you have to know where you’re going so I set about thinking what an article is for and came up with a flood of purposes: information, advice, persuasion, self-help, entertainment and so on.
Looking at this list, they all seem very popular and practical aims, but looking deeper, none of them appealed to me as the goal of a satisfying article.
I could have written something informative, but my aim isn’t to copy out of a book. What I want is for this article to help me and through that route to perhaps help you. I want to open my mind and heart to each other; they’ve been separated for far too long, each ruling over its own kingdom. I want to expose all the truths about myself that I’ve hushed down in denial. I want a motivation to question and probe and call into judgement my character, actions and mind-set. I know that I often feign deep thought. I read a poem and my ego tells me “well done, you’re a deep thinker” in the hope that this compliment will satisfy the human need for contemplation and I won’t probe into other dangerous grounds, such as myself. Just as a person offers a child a sweet to distract her from discovering the fun she can have with their valuable mobile, I give myself a patronising pat on the back and am told to move on.
It’s an easy existence; I don’t have to face an harsh telling-off from myself. But as with all superficial things, there’s the eternal uneasy feeling. Any second, all of those demons and guilts that are festering in the dark recesses could escape and drown the soul in venomous sin. Every second I am waking, sleeping, sitting, these parasites feed on the peace of the heart. But the relationship has become a convenient one. They suck on my wellbeing but repay me by drugging my mind with feel-good sedatives. And they’re so deeply ingrained my ego fights me against exhuming its adopted allies.
“On their hearts, on their hearing and on their eyes is a veil”. On my heart, on my hearing, and on my eyes is the veil of the material world and self-deception. It’s this personalisation that’s missing; realising the Qur’an was sent down for me, it’s talking to me and about me. It’s presenting the different people I can be: the believer, the hypocrite, the guided, the one led astray. Presented that simply, the goal isn’t difficult to see. Why am I writing this article in the first person? At the risk of not including the speaker in the narrative, I believe that Muslims better themselves by learning from other people. We are told the stories of the prophets in the Qur’an so that we can adopt the learning they did to live their lives for Allah, for “Allah sets forth parables for men that they may be mindful”. As Muslims we can’t read about another Muslim’s life and say “that doesn’t apply to me”, because that is you. We identify with every Muslim on this globe; their experience is our experience, their loss is our loss. Everyday we pray that Allah guides us to the straight path
Going back to the start of this article, I’ve found my purpose for writing this. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, to Jannah, but I was blind to the obstacles within myself that prevented me from getting there, and even if I did see them, I wasn’t prepared to clean out my mind and soul. The state of my heart is now clear; these words have spelt it out in black and white. There is no more denial and claiming ignorance, the evidence that I know the condition of my ego is in front of me. But far from seeing this page as sentencing me, it’s my saviour. The parasites have been identified, the cause of my sickness discovered, and the barriers to my healing known. The treatment? Putting myself through a crucible every living day and realising the pain I will suffer is a façade. This world labels it as pain, Muslims revel in it as joy, as every struggle to please Allah brings them closer to the All-Loving and closer to the eternal bliss of Jannah.
I hope you can appreciate how deep the words I have written have cut into me, burning out the disease of this world that clung on so tightly. You must have read an article before that “changed your life”, well, I’ve just written an article that has changed my life. You have just witnessed the eyes of a Muslimah being opened.
Last update : 11-07-2005 14:47
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