Since this whole Mr. Possibility thing has been over, I've been doing a lot of thinking. For those of you who know me (from my blog...which is quite an accurate indicator of me), you are well aware of my belief that all things happen for a reason. I am an individual that likes to see the good in every situation despite its bitterness. That being said, I am happy in a dreary kind of way. However, with that happiness came a sort of realization that I will take as a wake up call of sorts. Remember when I said I thought I was compromising my faith? I think I have in a sense and I'm scared! I need an Iman Rush stat! Before my time became occupied with telephone conversations and emails and formal dinners at his parents house or mine, I spent my time at the masjid as much as possible, even if it was just very quick to stop by and make salah. I want to point out that I am not blaming him...its all my fault (well shaytan played a huge role in too).
I just feel like I've hit this point of disconnect. I mean I still pray and all that good stuff (alhamdulilah), but sometimes it feels like this combination of words and actions - I'm missing the kushoo..and I wish it would come back really quick.
I dunno...I just feel empty...help.
Showing posts with label shaytan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shaytan. Show all posts
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The predicament of Muslim youth....
I know I said that I would take a break from blogging thoughts and what not, but I have been holding this under my hat for a quite a while now, and to be honest, I'd love to share. So, today will be my last official personal/my thoughts post until Eid Insha'Allah. Besides, school starts tomorrow, so I'll be rather busy with school and Ramadan. I will continue the "186 Rules for Ramadan" next week perhaps.
My cousins have been in town visiting me from the UK for the past few weeks. Alhamdulilah, despite the miles of ocean between us, we very close to one another so much so that we stay awake all night talking about everything under the sun from school to work, marriage and our personal lives, and the list goes on. With us, nothing is off limits.
When my cousin arrived, her first question to me was "Do you mind if I use your internet?" I jokingly call her a facebook junkie, and she admits it. Anyways, after about a good hour of catching up on photo comments and writing on peoples walls, letting her friends know that she has arrived in the states safely, she proceeds to show me her friends and catch me up on her life. And what I learned was rather horrifying to me, but apparently its no big deal where she comes from.
My cousins grew up in London but when they grew older and were of high school age, their father decided to uproot the family and move to Blackburn. Apparently it has a larger Muslim population - I saw the difference between London and Blackburn on my trip there about 4 years ago.
So, as we sat in our pijamas on my bed she went through her facebook pictures, dscribing to me who everyone in the pictures were and who was married to who, who was engaged to who, who was dating who, etc. (yes, I said who was dating who!). Now, many people maybe thinking whats the big deal, right? You know, its sad for me to even say this, but perhaps I could swallow this pill a little easier if the pictures of who was dating who were Muslim girls and boys who did not look religious, did not wear hijaab, were not Hufadh, not Alimahs, etc. I'm not saying that all of these types of people are saints. For goodness sake, any man can grow a beard and any woman can put on a hijaab. On the flip side, I am absolutely not saying that every non-hijaabi sister or every non-bearded man is involved in fitnah. As a matter of fact, I know a lot of people who don't necessarily fit the physical description of what people might think is "religious" who are very religious and have completely managed to stay away from fitnah all their lives.
I beleive that it is every Muslims duty to act like a good Muslim, whether you are young or old, a hijaabi or non-hijaabi or if you have been Muslim your whole life or only for the last 5 minutes. But for goodness sake, if you are wearing a hijaab, or have a long beard with a kufi, please, please, please ACT MUSLIM!! I am not saying that it is always easy, I have been there, but it has to be done and insha'Allah the reward will be sweeter in the hearafter.
Amid all this, the thing that baffles me more is that these "students of knowlege" are so open about their sin and in doing so, they are giving off the vibe to their "less educated" peers that its all good, when in fact it isn't! When my cousin was like "My friend the Alimah goes out with this guy, he's a hafidh" I had to clarify what she meant by go out, becuase to me the only going out that should be going on between the two of them is chaperoned "dates" with her father, brother, or other mehram. When she explained they were going out in the western sense of the word I gave her this look and she responded with "The way I see it, you can't help who you fall for. When you wanna be with someone, you just wanna be with them." I can't say that I don't agree, but why not "be with" that person the halal way? Why not have your nikkah done and then be with them? She continued to show me pictures of girls and guys hanging out in the same appartment near the University, I didn't see any parents in the picture and people were definitely in eachother's bubbles - I jokingly asked her if the Hafidh remembered any of the Quran that he had memorized (because I heard that you forget Islamic knowledge when you commit sin), but she didn't get the joke - it wasn't really meant to be funny, I was really curious.
My cousin is interested in wearing hijaab but one of her concerns is that people in her community will think that "she's like every other scarfie" and wears hijaab but acts like any other person on the street. She tells me that where she comes from a hijaab and an abaya is nothing and that she was rather suprised that wake up for fajr and refuse to go out to hookah bars and other things that good Muslims don't do. She's shocked at my desire to learn more about Islam and to spend time in the Masjid.
I don't know what is when you go to places like England where there is a high population of Muslims. When I went to England 4 years ago, I fell in love with it, mainly because I met someone who I thought to be religious, but I think it has lost its lustre as far as I am concerned. While I was there, I noticed that the youth had a lot of freedom, perhaps its becuase all the neighbors are Muslim? Parents never asked questions as to where their kids were going and what time they would be home or even who they were going with. Its a shame that parents have forfeited their rights to know what their children are up to.
My father always says "I am so happy that I did not raise you in England!" and I never knew what he meant, until now. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) that this is not only a problem in England, we probably have the same problems here in the US, I just don't have an account of it. My concern isn't to back talk the British - I love them - especially their accents, my point is to point out what is going on...I'm sure its in my backyard too. It just makes me sad. I think parents really need to step it up a notch and start asking questions. Just because you kids are with Muslims doesn't mean anything, because Shaytan will work harder to throw a Muslim off his course.
Please keep the Muslim Youth and the entire Muslim Ummah in your duas.
My cousins have been in town visiting me from the UK for the past few weeks. Alhamdulilah, despite the miles of ocean between us, we very close to one another so much so that we stay awake all night talking about everything under the sun from school to work, marriage and our personal lives, and the list goes on. With us, nothing is off limits.
When my cousin arrived, her first question to me was "Do you mind if I use your internet?" I jokingly call her a facebook junkie, and she admits it. Anyways, after about a good hour of catching up on photo comments and writing on peoples walls, letting her friends know that she has arrived in the states safely, she proceeds to show me her friends and catch me up on her life. And what I learned was rather horrifying to me, but apparently its no big deal where she comes from.
My cousins grew up in London but when they grew older and were of high school age, their father decided to uproot the family and move to Blackburn. Apparently it has a larger Muslim population - I saw the difference between London and Blackburn on my trip there about 4 years ago.
So, as we sat in our pijamas on my bed she went through her facebook pictures, dscribing to me who everyone in the pictures were and who was married to who, who was engaged to who, who was dating who, etc. (yes, I said who was dating who!). Now, many people maybe thinking whats the big deal, right? You know, its sad for me to even say this, but perhaps I could swallow this pill a little easier if the pictures of who was dating who were Muslim girls and boys who did not look religious, did not wear hijaab, were not Hufadh, not Alimahs, etc. I'm not saying that all of these types of people are saints. For goodness sake, any man can grow a beard and any woman can put on a hijaab. On the flip side, I am absolutely not saying that every non-hijaabi sister or every non-bearded man is involved in fitnah. As a matter of fact, I know a lot of people who don't necessarily fit the physical description of what people might think is "religious" who are very religious and have completely managed to stay away from fitnah all their lives.
I beleive that it is every Muslims duty to act like a good Muslim, whether you are young or old, a hijaabi or non-hijaabi or if you have been Muslim your whole life or only for the last 5 minutes. But for goodness sake, if you are wearing a hijaab, or have a long beard with a kufi, please, please, please ACT MUSLIM!! I am not saying that it is always easy, I have been there, but it has to be done and insha'Allah the reward will be sweeter in the hearafter.
Amid all this, the thing that baffles me more is that these "students of knowlege" are so open about their sin and in doing so, they are giving off the vibe to their "less educated" peers that its all good, when in fact it isn't! When my cousin was like "My friend the Alimah goes out with this guy, he's a hafidh" I had to clarify what she meant by go out, becuase to me the only going out that should be going on between the two of them is chaperoned "dates" with her father, brother, or other mehram. When she explained they were going out in the western sense of the word I gave her this look and she responded with "The way I see it, you can't help who you fall for. When you wanna be with someone, you just wanna be with them." I can't say that I don't agree, but why not "be with" that person the halal way? Why not have your nikkah done and then be with them? She continued to show me pictures of girls and guys hanging out in the same appartment near the University, I didn't see any parents in the picture and people were definitely in eachother's bubbles - I jokingly asked her if the Hafidh remembered any of the Quran that he had memorized (because I heard that you forget Islamic knowledge when you commit sin), but she didn't get the joke - it wasn't really meant to be funny, I was really curious.
My cousin is interested in wearing hijaab but one of her concerns is that people in her community will think that "she's like every other scarfie" and wears hijaab but acts like any other person on the street. She tells me that where she comes from a hijaab and an abaya is nothing and that she was rather suprised that wake up for fajr and refuse to go out to hookah bars and other things that good Muslims don't do. She's shocked at my desire to learn more about Islam and to spend time in the Masjid.
I don't know what is when you go to places like England where there is a high population of Muslims. When I went to England 4 years ago, I fell in love with it, mainly because I met someone who I thought to be religious, but I think it has lost its lustre as far as I am concerned. While I was there, I noticed that the youth had a lot of freedom, perhaps its becuase all the neighbors are Muslim? Parents never asked questions as to where their kids were going and what time they would be home or even who they were going with. Its a shame that parents have forfeited their rights to know what their children are up to.
My father always says "I am so happy that I did not raise you in England!" and I never knew what he meant, until now. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) that this is not only a problem in England, we probably have the same problems here in the US, I just don't have an account of it. My concern isn't to back talk the British - I love them - especially their accents, my point is to point out what is going on...I'm sure its in my backyard too. It just makes me sad. I think parents really need to step it up a notch and start asking questions. Just because you kids are with Muslims doesn't mean anything, because Shaytan will work harder to throw a Muslim off his course.
Please keep the Muslim Youth and the entire Muslim Ummah in your duas.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
I have a love-hate relationship with facebook. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past 10 years or so, facebook is an online networking website, kind of like myspace, freindster and other such websites. My love for facebook began roughly about a year ago. I realized that it was far more professional than myspace was. Facebook wasn't just about adding as many friends as possible it was about joining networks and making friends within those networks.
Facebook allowed me to search my friends and acquaintances through the networks that they belonged to. It allowed me to link to a friend from the profile of another friend. It also facilitated a lot of the MSA work I did in that many speakers were on facebook and many of the MSA presidents from other schools were easily contactable through facebook. And of course, it facilitated the advertisement of MSA events.
Facebook also makes it extremely easy for me to keep in touch with my family that lives over seas. It allows me to communicate with them and stay updated with their lives and it also allows me to share pictures with them. And while I love the pictures....I also hate them.
I hate facebook for its pictures because it is often too telling of an individual's character and often times it just shares more information than is necessary to be shared. I read somewhere that "Facebook is the greatest test for the 70 excuses rule" and it is so true! Honestly, what conclusion can one draw from a picture in which there is a Muslim girl who is at a bar with beer and alcohol bottles on the table in front of her and she is holding a a martini glass?
Here is my attempt at providing this sister with 70 excuses:
1. The martini glass has water in it
2. Perhaps her drink is a virgin drink (i.e. containing no alcohol)
3. Maybe she is holding her friends martini glass (but then why is she posing with it?)
4. ......
5. ......
6. Clearly I am running out of excuses (can someone help me out?)
I can honeslty say that in the amount of time I have spent of facebook I have lost a ton of respect for a lot of the brothers and sisters I know. People that I grew up with, people that I have always respected and that my family respects have this awful habit of posting pictures on their facebook pages for the world to see of themselves misbehaving. There are pictures of sisters with brothers with their arms around one another, sisters dressed provocatively, brothers posting pictures with captions that contain profanity, my list can go on and on. These are Muslims that I see at the Masjid on a regular basis I am hurt to see that this is the direction that our ummah is heading in.
Facebook has also paved the way for open mingling between the genders. It first starts off as a POKE, because this is the only way to poke a non-mehram without actually touching him. Soon, it progresses into a friend request. Next thing you know, you're looking at his pictures (and posting pictures of you looking more beautiful than usual for the sheer intention of having him see them) and you're leaving him random comments on his wall asking him about how his day was, all the while you're thinking "there is no way that this is haraam, everyone can see. we're not alone!" And if wall-flirting wasn't enough, facebook decided to add facebook chat to the mix, and now you can talk to your "brother-friend" in realtime.
I often wonder if these brothers and sisters realize that they are posting pictures of their trips to Las Vegas with their boyfriends and girlfriends or if they know that they are posting it do they know that I and everyone else on their facebook can see them? I wonder when I say salaams to them if they know that I know about their double lives.
For a while, I shut down my facebook because to me it facilitated shaytans attempt at making Muslims backbite their brother's and sister's. I hated facebook for making me see the bad in my peers and for making me judge them based off of what I saw on their pages. The way I am, I like to look for the good in people in that if a perosn is nice to me and treats me with respect that's enough for me to conclude that this person is a nice individual, but facebook has done a good job of ruining that for me. Because I feared judging my brother or sister and because I despised backbiting them, I made the decision to shut down my facebook. I soon realized that without my facebook, I was saving a lot more time, sometimes even hours on end.
Currently, my facebook is back. I tried to stay away from it for as long as I possibly could, but life was much too dificult without it, especially with the community work that I do, its very hard for me to get in contact with people in my community without the convenience of simply typing in their name and searching it. Nonetheless, I am trying not to aimlessly browse through others' facebook pages for fear that I will find somethng that will require 70 excuses and for fear that it will cause me to pass judgement on another Muslim.
Facebook allowed me to search my friends and acquaintances through the networks that they belonged to. It allowed me to link to a friend from the profile of another friend. It also facilitated a lot of the MSA work I did in that many speakers were on facebook and many of the MSA presidents from other schools were easily contactable through facebook. And of course, it facilitated the advertisement of MSA events.
Facebook also makes it extremely easy for me to keep in touch with my family that lives over seas. It allows me to communicate with them and stay updated with their lives and it also allows me to share pictures with them. And while I love the pictures....I also hate them.
I hate facebook for its pictures because it is often too telling of an individual's character and often times it just shares more information than is necessary to be shared. I read somewhere that "Facebook is the greatest test for the 70 excuses rule" and it is so true! Honestly, what conclusion can one draw from a picture in which there is a Muslim girl who is at a bar with beer and alcohol bottles on the table in front of her and she is holding a a martini glass?
Here is my attempt at providing this sister with 70 excuses:
1. The martini glass has water in it
2. Perhaps her drink is a virgin drink (i.e. containing no alcohol)
3. Maybe she is holding her friends martini glass (but then why is she posing with it?)
4. ......
5. ......
6. Clearly I am running out of excuses (can someone help me out?)
I can honeslty say that in the amount of time I have spent of facebook I have lost a ton of respect for a lot of the brothers and sisters I know. People that I grew up with, people that I have always respected and that my family respects have this awful habit of posting pictures on their facebook pages for the world to see of themselves misbehaving. There are pictures of sisters with brothers with their arms around one another, sisters dressed provocatively, brothers posting pictures with captions that contain profanity, my list can go on and on. These are Muslims that I see at the Masjid on a regular basis I am hurt to see that this is the direction that our ummah is heading in.
Facebook has also paved the way for open mingling between the genders. It first starts off as a POKE, because this is the only way to poke a non-mehram without actually touching him. Soon, it progresses into a friend request. Next thing you know, you're looking at his pictures (and posting pictures of you looking more beautiful than usual for the sheer intention of having him see them) and you're leaving him random comments on his wall asking him about how his day was, all the while you're thinking "there is no way that this is haraam, everyone can see. we're not alone!" And if wall-flirting wasn't enough, facebook decided to add facebook chat to the mix, and now you can talk to your "brother-friend" in realtime.
I often wonder if these brothers and sisters realize that they are posting pictures of their trips to Las Vegas with their boyfriends and girlfriends or if they know that they are posting it do they know that I and everyone else on their facebook can see them? I wonder when I say salaams to them if they know that I know about their double lives.
For a while, I shut down my facebook because to me it facilitated shaytans attempt at making Muslims backbite their brother's and sister's. I hated facebook for making me see the bad in my peers and for making me judge them based off of what I saw on their pages. The way I am, I like to look for the good in people in that if a perosn is nice to me and treats me with respect that's enough for me to conclude that this person is a nice individual, but facebook has done a good job of ruining that for me. Because I feared judging my brother or sister and because I despised backbiting them, I made the decision to shut down my facebook. I soon realized that without my facebook, I was saving a lot more time, sometimes even hours on end.
Currently, my facebook is back. I tried to stay away from it for as long as I possibly could, but life was much too dificult without it, especially with the community work that I do, its very hard for me to get in contact with people in my community without the convenience of simply typing in their name and searching it. Nonetheless, I am trying not to aimlessly browse through others' facebook pages for fear that I will find somethng that will require 70 excuses and for fear that it will cause me to pass judgement on another Muslim.
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