Shazia Aapa

Ah.......! I am still unable to digest the fact that she is not in this world now. This makes me think how she would be feeling. Or is there no feeling after death? Which I think is not right since I take the position that the religion does. I know that my worldly mind cannot capture the essence of life up there still I just cannot stop myself thinking again and again. How people 'live' after they have died, after they have left for a completely different system of galaxies. Where there is only love, only beauty, only milky-white beings, only sweetness, only LIFE, only true knowledge, only sacredness, only honey-and-milk rivers and above all only ALLAH!

Wo jahan kesa ho ga jahan Allah ka Arsh maujood hai! (How sacred will be the place where Allah's Arsh is!)

It is so strange that one moment someone is here, in flesh and blood, throbbing with life and zest, laughing, crying, speaking... and the next moment that same person has gone. Gone forever! Disappeared into the distance that is trillions of light years from us earthlings. O God! And there is a time when we have to stand answerable to Him. Thinking of this shatters my being!

Kash k me na hota ya koi janwar hota, ya paharr hota ya jheel hota, ya roshni hota, ya phool hota, ya chahay andhera ya kanta he hota. Kam az kam hisab to na dena parrta! Mujh main quwwat hoti to me apnay aap ko rate k karorron zarron main tabdeel kr k na janay kahan kahan urra deta. Lkn afsos k us gharri se phir bhi bacha nahin ja sakta. (Would that I was nothing, or an animal or a mountain or a lake or light or a flower or at most darkness or a thorn. This way I would not be held answerable to Him. If I could do it I would decompose myself in billions of granules and scatter them all over the universe. But even that cannot help me escape Judgement!)

Coming back to the dear aapa, I chatted with her only once. She was here in the UK in a certain hospital in Manchester. I think she said she was better. Then we could not chat again for well over a month. And then I found some of her messages on my profile at FK. I replied to them and AM STILL WAITING FOR A REPLY BACK! It does not seem to be coming for years on end.

My heart prays for her!

Waves (Lehren)

Waves or ‘lehren’ as they are called in Urdu stand high in imaginative poetry and are like a friend or foe to us (Though poetry is not the subject of discussion here).

The rise and fall of waves takes us up and down with them emotionally and create such a divine surge of thoughts that one goes running in fondness chasing these wave-thoughts and building on them. We flow with the waves thus created and are ecstatic in the delight or sorrow they bring. Thoughts in their very nature are just like waves; they come around, they rise, they fall, they take us up and down with them and create a bulge - be it of extreme ecstatic divineness or chilling sadness. Both of them serve to exalt us.

The waves that rise and fall in our minds are just like the waves that rise and fall in the sea. At times these waves bring with them roaring winds and heavy rains that flood the nearby areas and leave them in need of repair and care. Similarly there are waves that rise in our hearts and make us remember the pain, the trials of the past and how we got separated from the people we love or we thought we loved. The excruciating pain that such waves inflict tears through our bodies rendering us fragile and at times dead to the world. At yet other times there are waves bless us with divine sensations and fill us with such happiness as we had never experienced before. Waves of this kind take with them whatever ‘dirty’ or painful resides on the shores of our hearts just as sometimes waves in the physical sea do.

Yet there is another aspect to the concept of waves which we generally, being humans, ignore or make light of. It is this concept of waves that I personally hold dear, very close to my heart.

I like to think of man as a freely floating object on the colossal mass of the waters of this world; and Allah the shore. Man floats on and on in his pursue of worldly comforts and works hard to achieve goals that will make him rise in this world. He is constantly running notching up one milestone after the other. Man does all this in search of perfect poise where he can live his life smoothly and in extreme comfort. In this search for equilibrium he usually comes across hurdles, pain, troubles and seldom true success. In these trials and tribulations sometimes he feels so weary that he decides to stop running. After a few moments someone else comes by and he looking at this ‘amazing’, ‘awesome’ person decides again to take up the race to better his chances in the wide world.

But if he makes some space for this third aspect of waves; the one that tells him that he will only ‘float’ like lifeless objects until he believes Allah to be the shore towards which he must be striving to go; then and only then he achieves the true satisfaction and comfort and happiness. When one truly believes that whatever he is doing in the life has to be for Allah and Allah must be his top priority in all the struggles of his life. Here I do mean the ‘worldly’ struggles. Then when there is pain he shows patience and when there is success and happiness he does take into account his God, Allah and believes that this success came only because Allah wanted it this way; he achieves true happiness and satisfaction surges through his body until it ‘completely’ encapsulates him. Living life like this the true believer in the end reaches his ultimate goal – Allah. That’s why we see many people while dying have smile on their faces. This is the smile of meeting with Allah and ultimate destination of all the lovers.

Note:  I decided to write this post after reading a post about 'lehren aur yaden' at www.friendskorner.com.

Desecration Of Allah and Islam

Today I have watched a video that has shaken me to the core, it has my soul in turmoil and in agony at what I in person can do to stop this. The problem is no one on their own can do so. This has to be tackled by us all. Please watch the video first. 

If the video does not work, please click here.

 

This is shocking and tragic such things are being sold in our bazars and peopel who are fond of these abstarct designs buy these things happily without taking notice that they actually desecrate our religion and defile the basic tenets of Islam that has been the saviour of billions of people.

Now the question is what we can do.

Firstly, we have to be conscientious that Islam is our religion and we are the followers. Being followers of Islam requires us to know what is right or wrong and what we can do to stay the followers and the believers in the eyes of Allah. Since how He looks upon us is what matters most. Now-a-days we indulge in too many sham things only for the sake of the 'people' and the 'world'. Remember it is not the "world" and the "people" who will give us 'Ajr' (the reward) for being a good Muslim. It is Allah who will do so.

Secondly, we can simply stop thinking that if we will do something real religious, people will say that we are trying to be 'maulvi' (prayer leader/ religious leader) or that we are 'putting on this show' to be wali (Allah's friend). If we think for a while it will dawn on us that all this thinking is actually the result of our week faith. Again we must be doing these things for the will of Allah and to gain His happiness and belssings.

Thirdly, we must go through all such things at our homes to see if they contain any image that actually purport and prove that we are not Muslims. And if we do find things like this we must stop using them. If we cannot buy something to replace it we should not. Just wait for the time when there is enough money earned and saved and then go and fulfil our 'craving' or 'taste'.

Fourthly - last but not the least: we must jump to our feet and spring into action and jump-start to spread the word all over the web and by word of mouth to our near and dear ones. Please do not forget to let know those who we 'just follow' on social media platforms. For example if someone else has shared it in the main stream on Facebook or Google or Twitter which you follow please do not think that it is done. No it is NOT done. You have not done your part. Please do not think for one moment about someone that they might have learned about it anyway or what somebody else will think about you doing 'all this stuff'. We are not here to prove anything to others. We HAVE swore allegiance to Allah and we are here to prove to Him that we are His and we are on His side and we are craving for His happiness.

Related Post:

Kazhak Muslims Angry

He has no one but Allah!

The other day I went to Glasgow. At the train station I went into the WHSmith and began checking through the magazine section. There I saw a book which showed a Christian priest blessing a child. One of the excerpts from the article read: “This child has no one except the Lord.” I hope I quoted it correctly.

When I read this, I remembered that we just think the same way in Pakistan and I am sure this approach is there in many other Muslim countries as well. When someone is in real trouble we say that this person has no one except Allah. Implying thereby that he should be pitied.

In my view this sentence steers us towards “shirk”, rather not to mince my words: It is “Shirk”. Because when we say so we put the people or things right against Allah.

Just think for a moment and decide. Do we need someone else other than Allah for our help? Is someone more powerful than Allah? Can someone from this fickle world take better care of our needs than Allah does? NO! And absolutely no!

Though there are people who help us in this world. There are powers here that we fall back on when there is a problem. But all these things are also sent by Allah. The above sentence that is on the carpet only serves to take these people/things to the status of God na’aoozubillah.

I believe when there is such a situation where there is no one on this earth to look after us only then we should be most happy. Because then there will “only” be Allah. And he will give us / bless us/ help us that befits His status. He is the Ultimate Help. This can be understood in this way that if we go and ask for help from a District officer and then we go, say, to the Chief Minister for help, these two will help us in different ways because of the sources that they have. But if there is only Allah and we look only towards Him and wait for His blessings to come then obviously we will be helped in the best way simply because Allah is the Owner of all sources (Malik-ul-Mulk). He is the Creator of all sources (Khaliq) and he is the the Rehman, the Raheem and the Wakeel.

So if we have no one but Allah for our help then we should rejoice that he has taken in His hands to help us. Though even the worldly help comes from Allah, yet in the case above it is directly related to Allah without any “waseela” in between.

So we are not to pitied. Rather finding ourselves in an identical situation we should be over the moon.

(Please do correct me if you think I am wrong. Jazak A)

Looking Back!

     Looking back I was remembering a teacher of mine who was very strict, a disciplinarian and a ‘hard task-master’. He was a very good teacher though. His teaching method and his skills were amazing. His subjects were English and Pakistan Studies. The way he taught us and the way and the exact time when he tested us it all fit into the picture so well. I said ‘Fit into the picture’ because I treat the whole system - the teaching, learning, exams and the result and all the other constituents like a picture and all these elements building blocks of that picture. Meaning that if we put a piece somewhere it does not belong; it will not fit and make the picture as a whole look disorderly. So, all his ways fit into the picture so well that elegance emerged.

     

     He was such an iron-fisted teacher that some of the students might have attached the adjective “Draconian” with him. We always remained in awe of him. And the one important thing I forgot to tell you that he was my most favourite teacher in school.

     There was another one of nearly the same category. Very strict he was but was no match for the one I wrote about above. This teacher I really disliked. The reason being that I believed he was unjust, oppressively stern and unreasonably so. He did not even let us cough (even if someone was ill and had cough). Yes cough I mean. He thought that students did so intentionally and to provoke him (and some of us did do it to tease him). So whenever someone coughed, they were in for it. Tough luck! Besides he did not let anyone look back (not even for a reason). In his class you had to sit seriously still, without any movement and with ramrod stiffness; no movement – neither this way nor that. You produce any sound that even remotely sounds like a cough and you have invited trouble. There was always pin-drop silence in his class.

     Then there are some government officials whom we give undue respect (if you let me call that behaviour ‘respect’). Once I saw a soldier (a sepoy) supplicating to a principal to give his son admission. And my God what a poor sight it was. He just did not prostrate physically before him. Short of it everything else he did. Now I do not blame him but our system (for those who do know I am talking about Pakistan). Because that system made him do it and that system did not put any force above that principal who could ask him why he behaved the way he did – arrogantly.

     Now think! These people I just talked about neither give us food, nor drink, nor clothes, nor shelter. Nothing! They are nothing if we take a look at this grand system that we are in – the universe. But still we bow to them, we listen to them, obey them like they are the celestial being. Think! At times even we call ourselves their slaves and literally act like slaves. This is abject slavery – slavery to officials, slavery to system, slavery to feed ourselves and our children, slavery to money. You do not need to think hard to know that some rather most of us are slaves to our own diabolical desires. We are so far from ‘life’. We are social animals in the sense animals are. They attack one another and try to prolong their own life by killing the others – the ones in other species if not the ones in their own group. We do the same – unconsciously we believe aggressively and literally in the ‘survival of the fittest’.

Looking at all these things when I think what part of this respect we give Allah, I shudder. Whereas HE is the God – Allah, The Feeding, The Caring, The Sustainer, The Maker, The all-Knowing, The all-Seeing, The Just, The Forgiving, The Rehman, The Raheem, The Hakeem, The Lateef, The Wakeel and The Kareem. There are many more attributes of His that we even do not know. When we pray we are actually somewhere else (if we pray), we do not listen to Him when in actuality whatever He asks us to believe and do is for our own good. Think!