Last evening, I met with an old friend from university on a flying visit to London. He has spent the last twenty years expanding his firm’s international business. Me? I’ve spent it just finding my feet. For sure, we don’t have much in common anymore; perhaps we never did. But he was a gracious host, good enough to make time for me in his very busy schedule.

You will never know the impact, good or bad, you had on others. You may encounter another only for a moment, or for a matter of days, or a few months, and have absolutely no idea how your interactions with them might shape them for years to come.

The world — dunya, maya — is my great test these days. Everywhere I turn, people seem to be pushing it in my face and now a little voice petitions me from within: “Why did you pursue faith in your youth?” That voice (waswasa) whispers: “That could have been you!”

I’m not a new Muslim. If my life can be divided in two, at this point I’ve lived the larger part of it as a Muslim. Most of my contemporaries had just a five-year head start on me, in deciding in their late teens to take their faith seriously. Others rediscovered their faith much later in life, choosing to make changes long after I had.

I came across some old writing today… thoughts I had penned twenty-seven years ago, which I’d completely forgotten about. It reminded me of the intense loneliness I felt back then… that inner despair and pessimism.

O believers! Whoever among you abandons their faith, God will replace them with others who love Him and are loved by Him….

Quran 5:54

If we abandon the path, we will be replaced. This is quite clear. It does not matter if our forefathers followed the path for generations; if we abandon it, it will be taken away from us. Likewise for each of us in our own lives. So hold fast.

Most people we meet in our daily lives are not religious. Some identify with a religious community or tradition from a cultural perspective, but more often than not have no interest in the practices or devotions of their particular faith.

I could not sleep again last night. All night long, memories of my sins, stacking up before me. I wish I had chosen the path of righteousness through all those years, instead of heeding the calls of my scheming self. I’m not very happy these days. I blame that on the realisation that I spent most of the past three decades subsumed in sin. If only I’d had the piety of my companions. If only I was refined like them. If only I had understood the nature of the world, and of the life we live. Here we are, asleep, just dreaming. Soon we will awake to the true reality, and then we will discover our loss. It will be as if we had been asleep only for an afternoon, or a part of it, all of a sudden wide awake, alert to the accounting that awaits us. Perhaps it is a blessing that I have been granted such great regrets during this dress rehearsal of the sleeplessness to come. May the Lord of my soul enable me to repent and reform, before the curtain’s close.

For me, Sufism—tasawwaf, ihsan, tazkiya—concerns the purification of the heart, striving to replace our egocentric egomania with God centeredness. With that understanding, I embrace it.

I have not disclosed my religious affiliations at work for over a decade. No, that’s not true. I did once tell my former line-manager—also our director—who promptly quipped, “I hope you’re not going to blow yourself up.” Ah yes, and I confided in a couple of Muslim colleagues five years ago.

Wandering one: do not lose hope in the mercy of your Lord. You are doing well. Stay strong. Take it slow, but stay strong. Allow your living faith to sustain you. Hold fast.

Feed the poor. Clothe the destitute. Provide shelter for the homeless. Be an ally to the orphans. Walk humbly on the earth. Strive for peace. Spend your wealth in the service of others. Let that living faith of yours sustain you. Try your best and leave the rest.

I get hypertension whenever I wander onto the news feeds of our starlets of social media. That’s probably because, reading their shares and forwards, I soon conclude that I can only be a turncoat, so completely cut off from this thing we call community. But the truth of the matter is that I have never been, and have never been allowed to be, a part of that community.

I still don’t understand why the pious Hanafi insists on bashing Muslims who hold positions wholly consistent with those of Abu Hanifa, by appealing to the opinions of the most rigorous contemporary Hanbali scholar any of us know.

It’s true. I’ve been time-travelling again, prising open doors that were never properly closed. Now an inner voice rebukes me.

Remember O soul, it says, the world is the realm of tests and trials. Those tests are finished. If you failed them, no matter: try to pass whatever is to come. Verily with hardship comes ease. Verily with hardship, another ease.

I confess that, with the exception of my wife, I don’t really know how to behave around women—and practising Muslim women, in particular. I have a long history of putting my foot in it, with that eternally awkward and self-conscious behaviour of mine.

How many have been driven away from the truth by sectarianism? May the One guide those same souls back to the truth once they have overcome their traumas or whatever it is that has taken them away.

Our activist friends this morning are sharing Yasir Qadir’s talk at Cambridge Central Mosque, lauding his insightful observations on the clash of ideas taking place in western civilisation. Actually, I was already aware of the talk, for I had seen it appear in my YouTube subscriptions at the weekend, but I passed over it, for I knew it would only wind me up. In that respect, it did not disappoint.

I don’t trust myself, even less others. I never trust my own motives, always interrogating myself as to what lies behind my intentions. I am a man. I know both the darkness and the light within. I know that I could do great evil if I let my guard down. I know I could do great good, but with ulterior motives if I wanted to.

Once more, the activists attack their Muslim brethren for holding views they consider heretical, despite those views being wholly consistent with the Quran.

My first encounter with the polemicists of Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner occurred in the basement cafeteria at All Souls, Langham Place, just across the road from Broadcasting House on London’s Regent Street. I think it was Sunday 3 August, 1997. In the company of my maternal grandmother and brother, we had just listened to John Stott preach the second of his series of sermons on the four faces of Christ, as purportedly expounded in each of the four gospels. This one was entitled, The Suffering Servant.

Are the callers really calling people to faith? It doesn’t look like it to me. Rather, they are chasing them away, with their bullying cries and denunciation. Who would want to jump aboard this ship, knowing that they would soon be made to walk the plank and be thrown into the sea? Who is there who will call the callers? Who will call back to a noble way?

Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but righteousness is to believe in God, the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets and to give wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveler, those who ask for help, and for freeing slaves; to establish prayer and give zakah; to fulfill promises; to be patient in poverty and hardship and during battle. Such are those who have been true, and it is those who are the righteous.

QURAN 2:177

The Muslim faithful of old used to shun the limelight and, if they feared they were becoming famous, would abandon their circles altogether, to wander off in search of obscurity.

Will nobody say something to the scholars, preachers and callers of YouTube, demanding that they abandon their risible antics? Here one clown, preaching his own peculiar wisdom, and here another firing back with a refutation. Here a pair of clowns, jumping up and down with glee. Here another clown reproaching them. So many clowns, expertly clowning, except it is not funny. The circus has come to town, and they perform before all the world, self-absorbed in their own buffoonery, entirely oblivious to the impact on all who witness this churlish spectacle.

If your spiritual companions demand that you oppress others, I’d dare surmise that they are not spiritual at all. If those professing to have reached a high station arrogate to themselves permission to do what has been clearly prohibited, I would dare surmise that they have reached no such station at all. Don’t abdicate personal responsibility to those who abrogate the path they claim to excel in. Don’t be taken in by the fraud of fools. Use your intellect, as you are commanded to by the Lord of all the worlds. Worship your Lord alone. Be loyal to the truth alone.