Images like this make me appreciate what I have to the point where I cannot leave a morsel of food in my plate knowing that there are children out there that would die for it, literally.
Category: Uncategorized
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To my daughter…
I pray that you never will understand some of what I’m going through, some of what I feel, or some of what I think…because to understand you would need to experience what I’ve experienced. And I wouldn’t want you to feel the pain and the anguish that I’ve felt that made me feel, see and think the way I do. Although it’s the same pain and anguish that has given me this appreciation for life, for a smile on a stranger’s face, or for the chirping of the birds. My wish is for you to learn from my experiences and the experiences of others because there’s so much more to life than the opportunity to make your own mistakes.
The only way you can cheat time is to learn from the accumulated wisdom of generations past. But if you insist on learning it all yourself, know that you’ll never learn more than anyone who has lived only a single lifetime without any wisdom to draw on. Know that your pain and your anguish will be unnecessary, and know that your life would only ever be half-lived, if even that. So instead I pray that you are able to cheat time, acquire a wisdom beyond what you may inherit, and give your children more than what you had to cheat time with. And if you do this, know that you have achieved more than any human being can be expected to achieve in a single lifetime. This is the only path to immortality that I know.
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I need to engage with more Muslims that are similarly passionate about resisting the ritualistic observance of Islam, but instead are hungry to understand the purpose and beauty of it. Not just the beauty that we’re told it is by the ‘respected elders’ but the realisation of its beauty that we feel individually.
I’m starting to despise the rhetoric, the condescension and the air of superiority from those that think that the madhabs and the Indo-Pak interpretation of Islam is the purist form of its application. I lose respect for those that do without understanding, or at least make no effort to even try to understand.
I despise the blind faith that so many place in their leaders, or sheikhs, imams, maulanas, and others. We’ve done this to such an extent that we’ve inadvertently created a hierarchy not dissimilar to the Christian church! We’re imitating in ways we don’t realise, and I need desperately to find and engage with others that are equally appalled by this, so that InshaAllah we can collectively contribute to the reawakening of the Ummah.
We keep talking about how Islam was hijacked by Al-Qaeda, Wahhabism, the West, etc. but we fail to see how we’ve surrendered Islam to the social elite!
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