When people are sent my way, seeking help, I think there may be hope for me yet. An opportunity to do a few good deeds. But when I am left to my own devices, I am nearly in despair, fearing, “This could be the end of me.” How is it that I am drawn to …
I could be blaming my biology for poor impulse control where, in fact, I am just lazy and weak-willed, which is just as plausible. When held to account for all of my bad deeds — so many of them — might I equally discover that my excusing myself holds no weight at all? Might my …
For thirty years, I’ve framed my inner battles as purely spiritual challenges, which I continuously seem to fail. But just last night, after taking myself to task for repeating decades-old mistakes, I was confronted by a new thought: could there be more to this than just a spiritual malady. In short, how does my spiritual …
I am at that juncture once more like so many times before. That dawning realisation that has dawned so many times before, after investing so much in an idea. It’s the realisation that strikes hard as I remember every single sin through the years, all of them of a similar kind. In truth, I return …
Same old
To dull my domineering nafs, I deliberately neglected treatment for several years. And, in my mind, it worked. I felt in control, my spirit subdued, my vigour vanquished. But that apparent spiritual success may have been a mere mirage. What I perceived to be progress may have merely been melancholy, and my self-restraint an intense …
Why do I always get deeply invested in what I know I will eventually have to leave behind?
All these years struggling against my self, repeating the same mistakes over and over, and it turns out my problem is probably neurological. There’s a name for this collection of symptoms and possibly even potential treatments. Yes, beyond recurrent repentance. Who knew?
Do not invest in your sins, for they will be difficult to leave when the time for repentance descends. I speak from experience, sadly.
I guess one mistake we make when we set out upon this road is to assume that we are important, or that the world does or should revolve around us. Very soon we grow despondent because nobody notices us, while we remain oblivious to all the other souls that are thinking just the same thing. …
In the two years before I first uttered my shahada, I came to fancy myself as a fine writer, although my only real talent was to have the patience to hammer out a million words on a keyboard in the middle of the night for months on end. I had two self-printed novels to show …
In this month of clemency, our Lord sent us a mercy in the form of a man who refused to fly into an unholy rage when his son was torn away from him in the midst of the anarchic disintegration that had seized a nation in the preceding hours. He has become an example for …
Some of my friends are angry with me, dispatching lengthy emails voicing their dissatisfaction. I know I should be hurt and offended, but instead I find myself thinking that this is just the voice of the Divine, revealing itself through His creation. I could compose great tracts in my defence, but I fear it would …
There is a disease that I have harboured for the best part of my life. It accompanied me as a child, an adolescent and an adult; as a Christian, an atheist, an agnostic and a Muslim; and in times of both health and sickness. I would define it as a disease of the soul — …
I’m not really sure about this Web 2.0 malarkey. I’ve just deleted my Facebook account again. Last time it was because I imagined a fantastical conspiracy in which key investors were databasing our identities for unspeakable ends. I can’t remember how the account came to be resurrected, but somehow I delved back in and rebuilt …
