I am continuously humbled by the generosity of my Lord, for no matter how far I fall, His Mercy is never failing. Over recent weeks I have made the tiniest steps back to Him, shunning the folly that evaporated a decade, and yet He has responded with great openings for me, brought forth without any effort on my part. They are too profound to articulate — or perhaps I am just too lazy to set it down — but it has touched me deeply.
God can convert bad deeds into good. Isn’t that true? God can turn our intentions on their head and turn us around and back to Him. Perhaps I have just witnessed this. Towards the end of last year, my mischievous self pleaded me to listen to its devious calls. Heeding not the warnings of my higher self, I agreed to entertain its preposterous proposition and followed through to the very last, all the while aware that it could not benefit me at all. In the moments of humility that eventually followed, perhaps weeks later, I prayed that God let good come of it, however impossible it seemed just then. Perhaps that prayer has been answered. Perhaps an opening came because of it. Perhaps I would never have learned of it had I not wandered off as if insane. Perhaps I had to consider myself master of my own destiny for a moment to rediscover the Master of my destiny. Perhaps I had to wander off in order to turn back. Perhaps I had to err in order to repent. Perhaps I have lots to learn.
A stranger comes knocking, asking favours. I respond, for the tasks are of my trade and will take me but a moment to fulfill. They shower me with gratitude, but it is I who should be thankful. For the gifts of Allah: a few small good deeds to compensate for my vast array of misdemeanors. But it is more than that, I believe. I investigate the stranger and shy away suddenly humbled: a lover of God and His Messenger, a teacher and guide, a pious soul. Tis the sacred month of Rajab, I learn, in which Allah pours His Mercy upon the penitent and accepts the actions that people have done for His sake. Whoever is spiritually sick due to their sins – know that the medicine has come. Allah sends a stranger knocking; they appear to be asking a favour, but they are really dispensing guidance.
My hosting for this website expires in two weeks time and while renewing it will not break the bank, I do wonder whether I ought to let it lapse. An argument once put to me for continuing to publish my thoughts was that the Internet is the one platform of mass communication that Muslims have at their disposal to clarify their beliefs, to promote a good living and to counter a culture of misrepresentation.
An alternative point of view has been gathering in my mind over recent weeks, however. If I am honest, the impression I have gained from reading various websites — of friends and strangers alike — over the past little while is of a great confusion descending. Established beliefs are up for discussion, while basic manners are thrown to the wind in honour of internet fan clubs — 5 thumbs up, I liked this, even when the language is vile, the sentiments devoid of any kind of self reflection1.
A million nobodies like me hammer out our thoughts, all of us convinced that what we are doing is good, that we are striving in the Way of God. We’re all fighting the good fight, we convince ourselves, firm in the belief that Qwerty is mightier than the sword. But to what end? An even greater confusion than all that went before?
I remain a firm believer that Muslims need to make use of the tools available to them to have their voices heard. But which Muslims? Ignorant fools like me, or the learned, the wise? A Muslim teacher in the United States has recently made the case for using the internet to counter the rising hate already swamping it. He is right of course. Only, two thoughts come to mind: 1) that is his job as a learned teacher, not the task of lay men and women like me , and 2) I think he is about a decade too late.
You could say that I have become jaded by happenings in the Muslim quarter of the Internet of late, but I would say that it is more likely that I am haunted by a particular hadith of our Prophet, upon whom be peace:
“Allah will not take away knowledge from His servants, but knowledge will be taken away as the men of knowledge are taken away until there is not a single man of knowledge left. Then people will take ignorant men for their leaders who will be asked something and will give a ruling without any knowledge. They will go astray and lead others astray.”
True — as you always insist on pointing out whenever I ramble along this line of thought — sometimes silence is a crime. Yes, that’s quite right. But I shudder to think of the things I have said over the years that may have caused others harm. I think of my comments about the slaughter of animals I witnessed at an abattoir some years ago and my perception of the halalness of the meat produced: I shall forever blame myself for the stance some friends took ever after. I am haunted by many a case like this. We say things all the time, failing to foresee the consequences down the line.
Well, this could be the same thing. Don’t take an ignorant man like me as a guide on this matter; my analysis may be completely wrong, too simplistic or entirely superficial. But caution, I believe, has its place. Let us hold fast to those four tests of ours: are these words true, necessary, beneficial and kind? And may our Lord preserve us from going astray and leading others astray in the process.
When we expire we will be asked about these things.
Who sits this side of the computer terminal, tapping out words that shoot out across the web? Nobody knows.
Nobody knows if the author is a believer or a doubter, the pious or a sinner, the learned or the ignorant, a guide, the guided, the misguided or a misguider. Nobody knows if the author is who she says she is, if she is a ghost-writer, a fantasist or an imposter. Nobody knows if what he says is honest and true, or if with his typing fingers he proclaims one thing, whilst his heart witnesses to another.
Of course only God and ourselves know what our hearts contain, but in this world of decapitated voices we are more easily led astray. A thousand admirers praised an author for their vast faith, sincerity and piety, whilst the applauded one’s faith withered away, witnessed only by God, close companions and their computer’s pale night-time glow. But how, but why, but please, oh no!
Such pain for one nobody ever even knew, except through their own words, selected and refined for public consumption. Who sits before the whirring box, its disk drives chattering, its fan blowing hard, its display imprinting the retinas with those small white squares that return whenever he looks back at his beloved? Nobody knows, except He who knows what our hearts contain.
May our Lord grant us virtuous non-virtual companions who guide by their actions and character, not merely by the words of their tongues or typing fingers, who emit that great light of faith that alone can carry us home.
Hold fast to the rope of Allah and never take your faith for granted. These are not empty words.
I have passed through those phases of great despair — despair at my own propensity to overwhelm myself with the same sins over and over — when a voice from within whispers, “There is no hope for you.”
God is Most Merciful insists optimism in one ear. But my sins are too many, too consistent, too repetitive, too foolish, too inexcusable… too much to bear. The pessimistic soul feels them weighing on him too heavily. It is not long before he is contemplating abandoning his soul to destruction, not because he disbelieves in God, but because he disbelieves in himself.
This blog has documented many such troughs in my own life, but I am not alone. A friend’s words were once littered with sentiments such as these, though few noticed at the time, attributing them to modesty or humility instead. “Be who I am not,” they once said, telling us how far we had misjudged them: “From these depths, I see what goodness is, and this is why I want you to aspire to it.”
These were not the words of one who had lost their faith in God, but of one who had lost faith in their own capacity to rise above whatever dragged them down. They saw what faith could do for you, but they had already given up on their own self. Such is the nature of despair.
But who despairs of God’s mercy except one who has gone astray? This verse reverberates in my mind each time I descend into that heavy gloom under the weight of my sins. There remains an intense fear that we take His forgiveness for granted, and that He might withdraw it from us. The fear remains that those sins will come back to haunt us, but hope must prevail for it is the antidote to despair. The ultimate outcome of despair is simply giving up: my sins are too many, too vast, too great, so why bother?
The answer, I have found over recent months, is to make gradual steps towards rectifying one’s condition. For a decade I was unable to read the Qur’an in Arabic, for I told myself that the task of learning it was beyond me, but these past few months I have begun to make progress. For five years my Qur’an teacher instructed us to make a regular habit of reading the Qur’an, but only in the past few months have we begun starting the day with a portion of Ya-Sin and ending it with Surat al-Mulk.
My shortcomings outweigh my progress for sure — and I am not immune to continuing to fail — but it is necessary to put in place an antidote to despair. It is necessary to take small steps now, in order to make greater strides in the future, if the Most Merciful wills. “Certainly,” says our Lord in a Hadith Qudsi reported by al-Tabarani, “I run the affairs of My servants by My knowledge of what is in their hearts.”
In these past few months when our little universe has changed immensely, when great blessings have descended upon us unexpectedly, I have come to appreciate the rope of Allah all the more. In God is the remedy to all of our affairs.
Two or three years ago in one very insignificant corner of the internet, a huge argument broke out between proponents of vaguely different interpretations of Islam, between brothers if you will. To the casual observer, such as myself peering in, it seemed like a skirmish on the border. But its effect on others was catastrophic.
Some of our fellow Muslims, many of them converts to the deen, had already lived through the Salafi inquisitions of the late 1990s that had demanded that the enthusiastic new faithful declare exactly which type of Salafi they were. Some Muslims, distraught by the collapse of the structures that had sustained their nascent faith, found their iman shattered and left the fold soon thereafter. Others held on, trusting in the guidance of Allah, recalling that they became Muslim for the sake of God, not for the sake of people, insisting that the schism would not shake them.
For some, salvation came in the form of what would later be called Traditional Islam. Early websites introduced them to material that had largely been unavailable in the English language until then and a new way forward emerged. Their old enthusiasm for their faith returned as they grasped hold of isnads and ijazahs connecting them back to the Prophet, peace be upon him. The sunnah sprang back to life in their lives, revealed in their conduct and words, and in their appeal to the words of the Prophet, peace be upon him, whenever they perceived shortcomings in themselves and those around them.
For a while it seemed that they had found themselves in the midst of a different kind of community, one that would not succumb to the very human failings they had witnessed previously. This community was, it was thought, less self-righteous, gentler, more grounded in the humility that faith promotes.
All of sudden, however, that illusion was blasted to pieces. In the tempest of an argument that came from nowhere, the very voices that had called people to faith now raged with a sectarian intolerance that stunned those who had benefitted from them in the past. It was apparent to me as an outside observer—still just a Muslim lacking investment in any particular group—that many of the participants were oblivious to the impact of their involvement in the new schism. They certainly did not see how their standing fell in the eyes of people who had once respected them immensely, and what that loss of guidance meant for them.
Some, distraught by the apparent disintegration of a firm foundation beneath them, found their iman teetering on the brink and left the fold soon thereafter. Others held on, trusting in the guidance of Allah, recalling that they became Muslim for the sake of God, not for the sake of people, insisting that the schism would not shake them. But just as this was not the first, it would also not be the last, and the aftershocks and convulsions went on, buffeting believers to and fro over the weeks and months that followed.
For some who had invested heavily in their faith, it was a calamity amongst calamities that severely tested them. Alas, for some it was the catalyst for a certainty that none of us would wish for now: that certainty in nothingness, that those of us who have been atheist have had the misfortune to experience in full. It was, if you like, The End.
Yet all of us are tested by degrees. Some of us by the call of our own nafs or childlessness. Some by divorce and in bringing up severely disabled children alone. Some by the destruction of their homeland and being forced to live as a refugee until the end. Some by a great flood, or by the pollution of their livelihood. Some by the death of a loved-one to cancer. Some by their own terminal illness. Some by slaughter and oppression. Some by wealth, and ease, and love and light and happiness. And some by the fitnas that return time after time.
My Qur’an teacher taught his class one day that the word fitna is of the Arabic root alfatn. In days of old there were people who would mix lesser metals with gold for personal gain, but their deception could be detected by tossing coins into the flames of a fire. The process of separating true gold from false in this way is know as alfatn. It is the law of God, our teacher taught us, to put people through tribulation to separate those made from gold from the rest:
2. Do the people think that they will be left to say, “We believe” and they will not be tried?
3. But We have certainly tried those before them, and God will surely make evident those who are truthful, and He will surely make evident the liars.
4. Or do those who do evil deeds think they can outrun Us? Evil is what they judge.
5. Whoever should hope for the meeting with God—indeed, the term decreed by God is coming. And He is the Hearing, the Knowing.
6. And whoever strives only strives for the benefit of himself. Indeed, God is Free from need of the worlds.
7. And those who believe and do righteous deeds—We will surely remove from them their misdeeds and will surely reward them according to the best of what they used to do.
8. And We have enjoined upon man goodness to parents. But if they endeavour to make you associate with Me that of which you have no knowledge, do not obey them. To Me is your return, and I will inform you about what you used to do.
9. And those who believe and do righteous deeds—We will surely admit them into Paradise among the righteous. {Surah al-Ankabut}
Nothing that happens in our lives occurs without the will of God. And it has been said that those most loved by God are often tested to ever greater degrees, raising their standing before their Lord beyond our wildest dreams. At times, when the darkest and most difficult moments descend, we may stumble and err, for of course we are but human. But our Lord is known as the Most Merciful, the Compassionate, and He leaves the door to repentance open for us repeatedly.
They said: “We give thee glad tidings in truth: be not then in despair!” He said: “And who despairs of the mercy of his Lord, but such as go astray?” {Qur’an 15.55}
The door is open for as long as he prolongs our lives.
O son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. O son of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the earth and were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring you forgiveness nearly as great as it. {Hadith Qudsi}
Here I am reminded of that old parable of the lost sheep from my childhood. Indeed of the parable of the prodigal son. May God keep us all on the straight path and raise us in a good state on the Day of Judgement. And may He guide those who have lost faith back to His Way, raising them stronger than before.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, was once asked, ‘What actions are most excellent?’ He replied, ‘To gladden the heart of human beings, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful and to remove the sufferings of the injured.’
He, peace be upon him, also said, ‘Give glad tidings and do not repel the people. Make things easy for the people and do not make it difficult for them and make them calm with glad tidings and do not repulse them.’
Are any more words required?
In 1996 I wrote a novel entitled The Beauty of the Lion. From a literary point of view, it was a disaster, but for me as the writer it was remarkably influential.
There was nothing remarkable about the book itself, except for its particularly sloppy style and poor punctuation. Indeed, I suppose the same story has been recounted a million times before, only with mildly different characters. This was no ground-breaking tale or spectacular innovation; it was, perhaps, just another tired-out rewriting of a quite ordinary life.
Yet as I occupied the lives of those characters for a few short months — mainly in the darkened hours — as I hammered the story into the keyboard and burnt my retinas with the word processor’s midnight glow, a whole new world opened up before me. It is quite true to say that this project started my writing habit, having avoided any kind of hard work throughout my schooling, but this is not what I have in mind. Rather, though completely unintended, my investment in those semi-imagined lives carried me along a path towards an unexpected destination.
The story accompanied two quite unlikely companions: a young Sikh woman from an irreligious family attempting to rediscover her faith and a young white man running away from his. But the story was not about religion, for these faiths were purely markers of identity. For the jumble of atheist, Sikh, Christian and Muslim characters race was the defining identity that caused tensions between them.
So a tale began of how two insecure characters could have become friends were it not for the intervention of their other acquaintances: the Pakistani Muslim girls who befriended the Sikh at school and warned her of the white boy’s crimes, and the boy’s Muslim friends who derided the girl for her odd ways. The Muslim characters were one dimensional, with few redeeming qualities. The girls were judgemental and racist, while the boys befell one misfortune after another.
Naturally, as these tales almost always go, eventually the two saw through the machinations of their advisers and decided to become friends. And so of course the Sikh girl’s brother threatened to break the white boy’s back, and her friends turned their backs on her, and a friendship was exaggerated into something akin to fornication, and though they denied that it was anything more, the girl finally faced the consequences of insinuation and was thrown out of the house and sent away.
And yet that was just the beginning. Fifteen chapters and a hundred thousand words later, a period of fifteen years having passed by in its pages, the novel ended on her son’s first day of school. Her job now ‘was to see that Benjamin-Piara, and Laila, would succeed the way she did, but without the heartbreak and the struggle.’ Apart from the terribly poor writing, it was quite a grim novel — the encounters with racists and criminals were hardly light entertainment — but it had a happy ending, of sorts.
For me, however, that was not the end of it. About four months after completing the project I moved down to London to begin a university degree. A few of my fellow students read copies of my novel, but they were all far too polite to offer any constructive criticism. It did not matter, for I had already come to terms with its flaws. Finding myself in a hugely cosmopolitan environment, interacting with people from all sorts of backgrounds, I was suddenly conscious of the one dimensional nature of the characters in the book and the great complexities of real people. Gradually I was becoming sympathetic to some of the antagonists in my novel and more critical of the two main characters.
As the year wore on and I honed my writing skills penning essays on environmental degradation and theories of economic development, I knew that I had to rewrite that novel. At first I just wanted to improve the quality of the writing, which I knew was poor and immature, but as I committed to revisiting the story it began taking on a life of its own.
The Sikh girl’s friends were not as bad as I had thought. One was just principled in her beliefs. She had her faults like anyone, but her objections to the boy came not from malice, but out of genuine concern for her friend. The Sikh girl was not as certain about beliefs as I had thought: she was just putting out feelers, stumbling to find her way in an environment devoid of guidance. The boy was no pure victim of the vindictiveness of others: he had played an active role in messing up his life.
By the time I returned to my word processor at the start of the summer break and began the novel anew, it was already a different book. Where it had once been clearly about race, now it was threaded with ambivalent questions of faith. Where there was once a certainty about the rightness of some characters and wrongness of others, there was now uncertainty in everyone. The girl that was the thorn in the side of the main players in the first draft had somehow won my respect.
In the process of writing a piece of fiction, it was as if the writer had moved a thousand miles. My summer break proved too short and by my return to university to begin my second year of studies I had only completed half of the rewrite, and that was as far as I ever got. My writing had carried me — though not alone, for there were other influences too — towards another world. Before the following summer I would be a treading a new path myself. Not as a well defined, one dimensional creature, but a complicated, ambivalent character that a far greater Creator had willed into existence.
I shall forever be grateful for the pen, for bringing me this far from home. And to the publisher who recognised that the manuscript was best consigned to the bin.
You never know which intermediary will bring you guidance. I arrived back from work at quarter to seven this evening, parking up carefully because we’ve had a scattering of snow that has since turned to ice. Closing the front door behind me, I headed straight for the kitchen to turn the boiler up and put my dinner in the oven. Then I hurried upstairs to put the computer on so I would be online if my beloved signed on to MSN; I said I’d login at 9.00pm their time.
Yet I had not even removed my coat when there was a knock at the door. I knew it was my next-door neighbour, for I had heard his side gate swing back into its latch on his way. As I came down the stairs I saw him standing in the icy air with a large pink Quality Streets tin in his hands. ‘Hello,’ he said, as I opened the door, ‘Dorothy baked you a cake…’
Naturally I was taken aback when he handed me the tin. What was this in aid of, I wondered, and I wondered even more when he told me it was to mark the special day tomorrow. I wracked my brains in case I had forgotten an anniversary or something. But there was a small blue note fixed to the lid. ‘Happy New Year,’ it read.
And so it was that I learnt from my Christian neighbours that it is the first of Muharram tomorrow. I was rather apologetic that I did not know, but I accepted the cake anyway. And then, when my neighbour had gone back on his way, I learned that in the first ten days of Muharram we should strive to draw near to our Lord, that, perhaps, on the tenth day He may forgive us all our sins.
What more could a person want? Guidance and a cake!
Allah has never failed me, but I have failed myself. I have witnessed His signs over and over, yet still I stumble and fall.
There was a period earlier this year when my wife and I frequently felt dizzy and sickly, which we attributed in the end—rightly or wrongly—to not having eaten meat for quite some time. No sooner had we agreed that we should order some, than a friend turned up out of the blue with a curry his wife had cooked and another family arrived with a roast chicken to share with us. Of course, Allahu Akbar slipped from our lips, for none had known of our situation except the One who witnesses all things.
And a few months back after reading and reflecting, I decided that I wanted to start a study circle in my home, to feed my soul and inspire me. I shared such thoughts only with my wife and the One who has power over all things, but the following day our teacher rang to ask if he could hold his new class in our home. Of course, Allahu Akbar came to mind once more.
We witness the signs of our Lord frequently, and each time it is a reminder of His generosity—and that He never fails us. Yet still we wander on, and we slip and stumble, and despair and complain, and mince our words. But, in truth, Allah has never failed me. But I certainly have failed myself.