The Only Thing Constant In The World...Is Change.

Okay, I'm in super India Arie mode (she is SO legit), hence there are a lot of allusions to her lyrics in this post. The question at hand is one that transverses all generations: Will a woman ever be more than what she wears? It seems that we are constantly focused on a woman's outer appearance and fail to recognize deeper, more important aspects of situations. For example, during the earthquakes in Pakistan, I read an article on the front page of a newspaper saying that this tragedy befell on Pakistan because the women were wearing sleeveless clothes. Ummmm okay...what?! Wouldn't you think that there are more important things that deserve to be the focal point during this stage? Anyways, I think that it is very important for us to focus on our inner workings before we start agonizing over our outward showings.

If we try to change ourselves on the inside first, the rest will follow. “Verily, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (al-Qur’an, 13:11) Seriously, I remember at one point in my life I was on a super religious high (alhamdulillah) and as my iman got stronger on the inside, it became apparent on the outside. I began to find pleasure in dressing and acting modestly...and I don't quite have the words to describe what an amazing time that was for me, but basically, Allah (swt) is ready to help us out, we just need to take that first step.

“I am as My servant thinks I am. I am with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assembly even better than that. And if he takes one step towards me, I take ten steps towards him. And if he comes walking to Me , I go running towards him. ” (Hadith Qudsi)

This being my first year in college, I'm beginning to realize certain things. First off, this is a LITERAL fresh page; I can be whoever I want to be here without the awkward "what?! that's so unlike you" situation. What an excellent chance to be a better person, a better Muslim. Like what India Arie says in "I Choose:"

my past doesn't dictate who i am.
every day we're making a decision.
on what to do and who to be.
it's constantly changing.

Due to this constant changing, one cannot let labels turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. We cannot get stuck on one thing we've done and let it prescribe the rest of our lives for us.

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death." - Anais Nin

To ensure that we're changing for the better, sometimes it's helpful to tell myself: "Hey, every facet of your life should be all or nothing." So if I'm trying to be Islamic in certain aspects, but not in others...then why bother? That's like studying really hard for a test but then not reading any of the questions when the actual test comes around and just blindly guessing. Of course, we will never be PERFECT - but that's the point right? The struggle? So Allah can be like "Hey man, you tried hard" and i'A grant us His mercy and entrance into Heaven, because I sure know I wouldn't get in only based on my deeds.

So yeah, that was a bit all over the place, but essentially just a reminder to not let other people's perspectives of you (outer appearance) create who you are as a person. Keep striving to better yourself, holla!

"Life isn't about finding yourself, its about creating who you are." - George Bernard Shaw





Does the way I wear my hair make me a better person?

Does the way I wear my hair make me a better friend?

Does the way I wear my hair determine my integrity?



Peace.

Moving From the "No" to the "Yes"

I don’t know too much about Islam’s stance/definition of what dreaming is, other than it’s the sister of death...but it’s a pretty interesting subject, and i’A I’ll look into it and let you know! One of my friends recommended this movie (“Waking Life”) to me when we were on the subject of “indie movies” and some parts are pretty mind-expanding. However, if you decide to watch it, keep in mind that it is very existentialist and as I do not have a great understanding of existentialism I can't provide what parts are and are not in line with Islamic thought. But, watch with an open-mind. Anyways, the point of me putting this clip up is to comment on what he says from 5:10 to 6:14. It caused me to reflect on what I’ve been doing with my time...and if those are good decisions based on the ambiguity of HOW much time I actually have here on Earth. We should live this life as if we are travellers (i.e. don’t get caught up in materialism/worldly gain because our final destination is Jannah i’A).

I got this from Daily Reminders site (there's a link on my blog roll - check out this blog it's really cool): On the authority of Abdullah ibn Umar (May Allah be pleased with them both), he relates that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) once held my shoulders and said:

“Live in this world as (if you are) a wayfarer or a stranger.” And Abdullah ibn Umar (May Allah be pleased with them both) used to say: “If you live till night, then do not wait for the next day (i.e. do not have hopes that you will live to the next day), and if you wake up in the morning do not have hope that you will live till the night. And take (advantage) from your health before your sickness and take advantage of your life before your death (i.e. do every possible obedience in your life before death comes to you for then no deeds can be performed.)” [Bukhari and Tirmidhi]

Back to the clip, let’s focus on this part: “this instant where God is posing a question, ‘do you want to be one with eternity? Do you want to be in Heaven?’ and we’re all saying, ‘no thank you, not just yet.’” and “Time is a constant saying no to God’s invitation...and actually this is the narrative of everyone’s life...the story of moving from the ‘no’ to the ‘yes’...all of life is like ‘no thank you, no thank you’ and ultimately it’s ‘yes I give in, yes i accept, yes I embrace’ and that’s the journey, everyone gets to the ‘yes’ in the end.”

The way I interpreted this was: okay our life is as long as an instant compared to the Hereafter and we have been given all the resources to get into Heaven (i.e. the sunnah of the Prophet pbuh, the Qur’an, the power of reason) - so why, with the answers right in front of us, are we still following the ways of those who have gone astray and earned Allah’s wrath? Take a second to think about your life and all of the “no thank yous” you’ve “said,” where you’ve chosen temporary worldly pleasures over eternal pleasure. Take a second to try to grasp the meaning of “eternal” can you even wrap your brain around living forever?! subhan’Allah. Let’s look at this excerpt from a SunniPath.com answer:

“A person drowned in desires should reflect upon his condition after he has fulfilled and satisfied his desire. He should ask himself: Have I found the pleasure and comfort I am searching for after fulfilling my desire? It is the Wisdom of Allah Ta'aala that whenever a Muslim fulfils a forbidden desire he feels unhappy, distressed, depressed, miserable and ashamed to such an extent that these feelings compel him to repent. Thus a sinner is afflicted with an unending sadness, misery and disgrace. Ibne Mubarak (RA) has said: ‘I have seen sins deadening the heart. It's addiction causes disgrace. The abandoning of sins is life for the hearts. It is best for you to oppose your nafs.’”

And another huuuge point: Imaam Ghazaali Rahmatullah alaihi writes: "The angels and Ambiyaa alaihimus salaam are such that they never commit any sin. Shaytaan is such that he persists in committing sins. Never does he ever feel ashamed nor does he ever think of discarding sin. The human is such that immediately after committing a sin he feels ashamed and makes a firm determination to discard the sin in the future. From this it is understood that not to repent after committing a sin is the work of Shaytaan." We have to keep on struggling, because this life is temporary - we have to start taking those steps towards saying “yes” to Allah’s question before our lives pass us by.

Salaam!

Barack Mubarak?

November 7, 2008
Among Young Muslims, Mixed Emotions on Obama
By PAUL VITELLO

It was easy for them to love the candidate. With the same passion, and for the same reasons that millions of other young people did, they loved Barack Obama’s call to activism, the promise of change, the sheer newness of the guy.

What was hard was feeling they could not show it because they were Muslims.

“I pretty much kept away, because I didn’t want to appear with an Obama button and have people look at me and say: ‘Oh, a Muslim girl supports him. Aha,’ ” said Sule Akoglu, a 17-year-old New York University freshman, who wears a head scarf.

Like just about all the Muslim students who gathered Wednesday night at the university’s Islamic Center on the day after the election, Miss Akoglu described a mixture of delight and frustration at the successful campaign of the nation’s first black president-elect.

He had run a great race, broken so many barriers, done so much right. Yet the persistent rumor that Mr. Obama was a Muslim had led his campaign to do things that the students found hurtful, they said. The campaign had dismissed a Muslim staff member for seemingly flimsy reasons. A campaign worker had shuttled two young Muslim women wearing head scarves out of the line of sight of TV cameras at a rally.

And the candidate known for his way with words had never said the words they waited for.

“In my community, people were saying to me, ‘Who do we support?’ ” said Meherunnisa Jobaida, a journalism student from Queens. “The person who is making the stereotype? Or the person who is not defending us?”

The words defending them were finally spoken instead by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, when he announced his support for Mr. Obama on Oct. 19. Answering a question about the candidate’s faith, Mr. Powell said: “Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?”

The remark struck so profoundly, said the young Muslims at the meeting, that Mr. Obama’s election — in which they thoroughly rejoiced — was like the icing on Mr. Powell’s cake.

Lina Sayed, a Queens native and a recent N.Y.U. graduate now working in finance, said Mr. Powell’s matter-of-fact articulation of an essential American principle lifted a sense of alienation that she had come to accept, and was almost unaware of.

“I forgot about the American dream,” she said. “I forgot that something like this was possible.”

The Islamic Center at N.Y.U. serves about 2,000 students who identify themselves as Muslim, offering activities like skating and bowling, as well as a place for religious instruction, daily prayers and regular meetings like the one on Wednesday night, where students are invited to come and talk.

Though a small sample, the views of the dozen students that night — most of them the American-born children of immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East — generally reflected the results of surveys and recent scholarship.

The Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, for example, recently found overwhelming support for Mr. Obama among the country’s estimated 2 million Muslim voters; and scholars like Jen’nan Ghazal Read, a Duke University sociology professor who studies assimilation patterns among Muslims in the United States, has described the sense of resignation many Muslims felt at how the pejorative use of the word “Muslim” went unchallenged during most of the campaign.

“This is a very sober, mature voting population,” Professor Read said in a telephone conference call with reporters yesterday. “They understand the realities.”

Sufia Ashraf, a freshman pre-med student, voiced that sobriety: While disappointed by Mr. Obama’s failure to speak up for Muslims, she was willing to let it go. “I would rather Barack Obama win,” she said. “If he had said something like what Colin Powell said, he might have lost.”

Imam Khalid Latif, the Muslim chaplain who runs the N.Y.U. center, said that throughout the campaign students were “figuring out what it means to be a Muslim in America,” and that seven years after 9/11, young Muslims are still facing tricky questions in their everyday lives. To wear a full beard, or trim it? Skull cap or baseball cap?

Ms. Sayed, the recent graduate, said two of her brothers who worked in the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania, both of them with “very Muslim names,” decided to do their door-to-door canvassing as “Alex” and “John.”

Among the students, many are children of small-business owners who supported Senator John McCain. Many were schoolchildren on 9/11, taken by surprise by the taunting of their classmates, and even more surprised by the police security that became part of their daily school life for a while.

Miss Akoglu, the young woman who did not want to hurt Mr. Obama’s chances by campaigning for him wearing a head scarf, had made the religious commitment to wear a scarf, in fact, just the week before 9/11, when she was in the sixth grade. Though she received more attention by wearing it, and more grief, she has worn it ever since. (After Mr. Powell’s public remark, Miss Akoglu began wearing her Obama pin just to the side of the scarf. “That’s when I put it on,” she said.)

For all the apparent conditions placed on full participation in the political process, the students said, they were more optimistic about the future the day after the election than the day before.

The election proved that the promise of America is real, that the only barrier to participation is one’s own inertia and that “now is the time for us to step up,” said Haseeb Chowdhry, a senior at the university’s Stern School of Business.

“We love this country. This country has an ability to change — that is its strength,” he said.

The consensus among them about Mr. Obama (only one of those present had supported Mr. McCain) was partly generational, partly an identification with anyone saddled with a name like Barack Hussein Obama, and partly a sense of common ground with another child of the world.

“He’s grown up in Indonesia, in Hawaii, in the Midwest,” said Mr. Chowdhry, whose family roots in Pakistan allowed him to grow up in two cultures. “The guy is a cosmopolitan. That’s important for the future. To be able to understand that we are part of the larger world.”

Mr. McCain’s only supporter in the room, Jameel Merali, a junior studying hospitality management, said Mr. Obama’s victory was a wonderful thing, though he still had reservations about his view of economics.

After explaining his understanding of Mr. Obama’s view, and contrasting it with his own — using terms that college students taking economics courses might follow — Mr. Merali concluded that all in all the system of checks and balances would protect the nation against any intemperate economic decisions the next president might consider.

“That’s the beauty of it,” said Mr. Merali, who was born in Tanzania. “The way it was all set up by our founding fathers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/nyregion/07muslims.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp