It’s okay, I have made peace with myself and the past. I’ve made peace in my heart with those I once knew, embracing their successes, overlooking old animosities. From here on, I will try not to glance backwards to wonder at what could have been. Instead I embrace all that came to be. I have wandered two decades on this path, accompanied by my beloved, this companion at my side. Alhamdulilah, what blessings. Let me strive harder to be of the Saliheen — those who live in harmony with the rest. Peace it is.
Category: Faith
Ambition
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.
Continue reading “Ambition”What makes us
It used to hurt me so much that others ostracised me. It happened a lot for the first twenty years of my life. I really struggled with it. First because I was the shy kid. Later because I was the geek kid. Even later on, due to sectarianism. I suffered many a bout of depression, dealing with these anxieties.
Continue reading “What makes us”Tightrope walk
Muslims converts, as a statistically insignificant demographic, have a tightrope to walk. To live wholesome lives to the best of our abilities, without arrogating to ourselves a special status. It is important to remember that every person has to make a choice: whether to believe or not.
Continue reading “Tightrope walk”Your honour
It shouldn’t be the job of women’s support groups to put an end to violence against women and girls. These are messages that should be articulated and promulgated by groups working with men. Instead of focussing on peripheral issues and mere rituals, our khutbahs, halaqas and family conversations ought to be reorientated to address the grave societal problems of our time.
Continue reading “Your honour”Disconnected
“Are you well connected with the revert community?” a fellow asked me today.
Continue reading “Disconnected”Best tariqa
I don’t know why we travel thousands of miles to Yemen, Syria, Turkey and Pakistan to sit at the feet of a sheikh with problems of his own, thinking he will help us master our nafs, when we have the best tariqa right here, before us: marriage and raising children.
Continue reading “Best tariqa”Desi pub
I confess that the Desi Pub disappoints me. That’s because, in earlier times, I looked into the traditions of their proprietors.
Continue reading “Desi pub”“Even if wine is made from the water of the Ganges, O Saints, do not drink it.”
Guru Granth Sahib
Vigilance
Man must forever be vigilant to the diseases of his soul. After years of trying, it seems God enabled me to vanquish one set of sins and bad habits that had plagued and harangued me since my youth. Alhamdulilah. But into their place, unnoticed, settled another set. Rancor, the short temper, that shouting rage. All of life is a test, we forget, as our children perpetually wind us up. I am hardly reformed, it occurs to me: I have simply replaced one set of sins with another. May Allah have mercy on me. Be vigilant for your soul.
Dark days
The months of November to February are always hard, their short dark days drawing a heavy melancholy down on me.
Continue reading “Dark days”Among His signs
Continue reading “Among His signs”“And among His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.”
Quran 30:21
These encounters
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.
Continue reading “These encounters”illusory enjoyment
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!”
Continue reading “illusory enjoyment”I am what I am
God granted me an extra chromosome, by which He made me all that I am.
Continue reading “I am what I am”To each their own
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.
Continue reading “To each their own”To be free
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.
Continue reading “To be free”Replacement
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.
Peculiar
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.
Continue reading “Peculiar”Sleepless
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.
Sufism
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.
Continue reading “Sufism”Faith at work
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.
Continue reading “Faith at work”Wanderer
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.
To walk alone
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.
Continue reading “To walk alone”The light of faith
Consider this: I may have been inspired and guided to the light of faith by the way you carried yourself: by a smile, the appearance of modesty, the appearance of humility, a kindness imagined.
Continue reading “The light of faith”Get over yourself
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.
Continue reading “Get over yourself”Closing the door
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.
Continue reading “Closing the door”Lowering the gaze
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.
Continue reading “Lowering the gaze”Call them back
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.
Continue reading “Call them back”The challenges of our time
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.
Continue reading “The challenges of our time”Trust
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.
Continue reading “Trust”An open letter to everyone I wronged
There is a line in one of my favourite songs, Sol, by Blanco White:
If I need no forgiveness
I’m all but forgotten
Lost in the changing of the tides
How very true this is.
Continue reading “An open letter to everyone I wronged”Migration
Once more, the activists attack their Muslim brethren for holding views they consider heretical, despite those views being wholly consistent with the Quran.
Continue reading “Migration”Polemicists for life
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.
Continue reading “Polemicists for life”Callers
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?
Neither east nor west
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
Regret
For the majority of my life, I have been driven and dominated by my lower self.
If others knew all that I have done and what I hide inside, they would disown me. I disown myself.
All I have to hold onto now is hope in the mercy of my Lord. “And who despairs of the mercy of God except one who has gone astray…”
Now my only prayer: that He forgives me, guides me and reforms my soul. This my daily prayer. Hope in His mercy, but perpetually in a state of regret, fearful that my remorse can never be enough.
Nightly I recall all I have done. Nightly I call out for His clemency. O Allah, have mercy on this wayward soul who has wronged himself and others.
O Allah, shower me in mercy, rectify for me all of my affairs and set me on a straight way.
Without the One who created me, time, the universe and every atom, all I am left with is regret.
Contentment
Be content with what you have. You never know what blessing will come your way, nor when they come, nor where they come from. God will provide, whether through unexpected gifts or self-seeded plants in the garden. Daily, Allah will surprise you. One day you may think to yourself, “I should get myself a something or other.” When, the following day, one is gifted to you, though you mentioned it to no one, how else could you respond than to utter praises of the exalted Lord? Alhamdulilah, alhamdulilah. Be content with what you have, and God will take care of all of your affairs.
Brand faith
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.
Continue reading “Brand faith”Clowns
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.
Continue reading “Clowns”The fraud of fools
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.