Let us dream! Dreams are the spirit of the oppressed, the food of the poor, the shield of the threatened, and the land of the lost. We have the freedom of dreaming, a right that no tyrant was able to steal and history will continue without discarding the power of dreams!
We are the protectors of freedom and justice! We are the guardians of the truth! We spark light; we shine wisdom and we plant hope! We are one billion plus fractions! We are Muslims!
We are the people of the Cave! We are the martyrs of the Tunnel! We are the survivors of the Massacre. We are the foam of no river!
We love poetry and we live passion. But let us listen to the narrator so we might weave some missing gold threads!
The people of the land were stones; they burry an innocent soul, accused of being the wrong gender, and then return home to dine with bread and meat! The people of the land were insane; they spend days creating gods made of dates, and when they get upset the gods are squashed between teeth. In that land, the wise was asked: “what is justice” he replied: “To raid and seize your neighbour’s sheep!” O wise man, this is awful, how would you then define injustice? He replies: “Injustice is my neighbour’s raid to return his sheep!” The people were nothingness inhabiting the land of murkiness.
A simple and noble man carrying the heritage of humanity descended from the mountain of light. He had the fatherhood of Adam, the truthfulness of Abraham, the piety of Ismail, the softness of Jacob, the beauty of Josef, the light of Moses, the soul of Jesus and the seal of prophethood. He brought the pearls to the surface of the ocean, spoke to the innermost of the souls, touched purity with his gentleness and brought wisdom to its throne! The one, two, and three grew in twenty years to be over a hundred thousand and in a full-moon night one of his companions stared at the moon and then turned to him with his red garment, and said: “He is more beautiful to me than the moon”. [1]
Close your eyes and then quickly re-open it. The Bedouin is wearing the jewelleries of the Kings of Persia. Flash your eyes again, the caliphate [2] is instructing the clouds: “ go wherever you want, you are going to rain in my lands.” The Umayyads are in Spain, the walls of Paris heard the chants of the Ottomans; and hundreds of thousands are changing their garments in Indonesia upon the hands of special merchants.
We are dreaming! Reality is much different! Reality is much painful! Please keep us dreaming, do not wake us up!
We look around: scientific minds, intellectual presence, human rights, freedom of speech, democracy, men and women side by side, moreover, pride, entertainment and the dreams of life. We go with the powerful stream; we try to be them; for we are humans and we cannot resist the beauty of freedom and the charm of equality. Someday, we are “unlucky” to go to the backyards: drugs and wild drinking, sex mixed with rape, deceiving market built on poverty of others, modern slavery of human trafficking, hidden support of oppressive regimes, wars launched through lies; darkness upon darkness. It is a long story, and maybe for no reason, but we decide at the end to return to the mosque.
Life in the mosque is different! Smiling faces and peaceful surrounding. We begin to understand the reality of life, we reconcile with Allah, we promise to start a better life and we work on controlling our untamed desires. There is light which we were missing before! Youth hood means energy so we go out preaching the lost society; tens of activities: at the local mosque, MSA, online chat rooms, local community...etc. We should have patience and we should sacrifice! And life goes on for a period of time!
Few yards on the road, we get tired! We are overwhelmed with activities. This illusion is alive: if we don’t participate, Islam would be threatened and we will be held responsible. So far we achieved enough in drawing a line between ourselves and temptations. We pray and we do the rituals, but there is an emptiness which we do not know how to explain. Our activities in the Islamic society granted us much, but it seems to be missing something we are in dire need of. We are religious but not religious; we are spiritual but not spiritual; we are Muslims but not Muslims.
We start building our theories and Islamic opinions. The seeds of ideas grow up to convictions and it is very difficult to tolerate the false accusations and claims. Everyone is confronting each other. Everyone is attacking each other. Everything is for the sake of Allah and everything is by the name of Quran and Sunnah. The other side of our “Islamic society” starts foaming on the surface. Jihadists, shites, liberals, salafis, sufis, activists, traditionalists, old Mu’tazilis, Asha’ris, current Deobands, Braelwis, Muslim brotherhood; the extreme Islamilis and Ayhmadiyya; who are who; and for God’s sake leave me alone! Our newest comer to the mosque is shouting at the door: “Please! Please! Leave me alone! I just want to pray! I do not want to be involved in any of this, I just Want to Be a Muslim.
After finishing my third year in the west, I have seen the above model repeat itself hundreds of times. I have heard – lip to lip – tens of stories about many youths who are confused and are struggling to find a foot in the clouds of ideas and streams of thought. As there are still many Muslims struggling to find their identity between the western model and the Islamic choice; there are hundreds of thousands of young energetic Muslims who are struggling to find their identity “within Islam”.
Trying to formulate this confusion in questions: how can we know who is right? Which group should we follow? Do we have to belong to a specific “sect” from the first place? Everyone is claiming to be on the “right” path, how can we know if what we are doing is “right” and they are “wrong” and not the other way round? Can’t we be just Muslims? Why is there much domestic hatred between groups? Is there any possibility of everybody uniting and leaving behind their differences?
The good and sad news is that the above confusion is not limited to the West. Youths in the East are much more confused. Their confusion is coupled with political oppression, poverty, and directed media presentation of Islam which make their struggle to think and synthesize for a solution much more difficult. On the other hand, Muslim youths living in the west, free from the above obstacles, suffer from strong social peer-pressure which put ahead “presentable ideas” to “actual correct opinions”. Moreover, they see much more variety of ideas because immigrants carry in their luggage complicated traditional, political and theological understandings of Islam. Finally, the scientific mind structures of the youths complicate the discussion of many Islamic issues because they search for quick justification of ideas, regardless of their depth and authenticity. In other words, they want to know the “why” behind every religious belief, practice and opinion while they do not have easy access to renowned Muslim scholars [3].
By His Power and Will and with full admission of my limited knowledge and short understanding of this great religion, in the next series of articles we will attempt to spot more light on this issue based on my humble understanding of the texts as taught by the respected scholars. Meanwhile, I would like to kindly direct the attention of the readers to a previous post “Scholar Profiling” which discussed one of the aspects of this issue.
Abu Saeed Al Khudari narrated that the messenger of Allah peace be upon him said: “There will come a time when the best property of a Muslim will be sheep which he will take to the tops of mountains and the places of rainfall so as to flee with his religion from the afflictions”. [4]
O our Lord! We are poor to Your Mercy!
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[1] Narrated by Imam Al-Tirmidi in His Al Jame’ al Sahih and in Ashama’el Almhuamadiyya. It is narrated through Jabir bin Sumrah (may Allah be pleased with him) and Imam Tirmidhi commented: “Hassan Gharib”.
[2] Haroun Ar Rasheed
[3] For more thorough presentation of the struggle of Muslims in the west, see: Tariq Ramadan, “Western Muslims and the Future of Islam”.
[4] Narrated by Bukhari, book of Afflictions.
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