Our dreams—the yearnings of our heart—are the antidote to the wild world in which we live today. The discomfort with the age we are living in is real, but it is unavoidable all the same. The Prophet reportedly informed his followers that a time would come when holding on to religion would be like holding on to hot coals—a metaphor that increasingly strikes true with every passing day.Hadith recorded in the collections of Ahmad and Tirmidhi.
There often appears to be no beauty—no mercy, no goodness, no light—in the behaviour of people of religion, while irreligious folk claim the high moral ground, sometimes justifiably. The apparent confounds those sincere men and women attracted to faith who must forever negotiate accusation and association, navigating arduous hurdles towards their goal. Extremism has become the order of the day—from the religious and irreligious in equal measure—setting in place great obstacles to our dreams. ‘When elephants fight,’ went a Swahili proverb I encountered during my travels in Tanzania a decade ago, ‘it is the grass that gets crushed’.
One day the Prophet informed his followers, ‘Extremists shall most certainly perish,’ repeating these words three times.Hadith recorded in the sahih collection of Muslim.
These are the days when decent and honourable people must express respect for one another as we witness nations gathering to devour the weak just as people share a plate of food.As in a hadith recorded in the collection of Ahmed, ‘…the strong will devour the weak, until the Hour comes’ and of Abu Dawud, ‘The nations will summon each other upon you as you call guests to eat from a plate of food…’ In the name of human rights, human rights are abused. In the name of freedom, innocent men and women are incarcerated. In the name of religion, believers are cut down with Kalashnikov rifles and explosive belts. In the name of civilisation, vacuum bombs, cluster bombs and cruise missiles are rained down on far-off lands. Insignificant though they may seem, our dreams and our actions are the antidote—the quiet counter-revolution—to the anarchy unfolding around us.
