An Essay by Arif Kabir

By Arif Kabir

Reading the Washington Post, I came across a first page article that really struck me; it was basically about an Amtrak engineer who had watched a dozen suicides happen in front of his eyes over the course of 20 years. People would be sitting in the middle of train tracks just waiting to be hit, and the train engineers would not be able to deter the person with their frantic horn blasts and their attempts to brake the 75-mph train. As the article mentions:

“When I looked in the mirror, he was tumbling in the air, just flying,” Evans said. “I can see it as clearly as if it was happening in front of me right now.”

Colorfast mental snapshots of horror, a sense of overwhelming helplessness, sympathy and sometimes anger — these are the aftershocks that engineers and subway train operators report from their special perch as unwilling agents of sudden death.”

Imagine yourself, witnessing a murder happening in front of your eyes, and there is nothing that you can do. Now imagine all those around you that are following the wrong path and are destined for Hell if they don’t change – are you in that same sense of hopelessness?

“Metro’s wide windshields are designed to maximize the engineer’s view. Unfortunately, that means train operators see tragedy unfold with widescreen clarity, a high-def horror they never forget.”

What better maximization do we have other than our eyes in which we get a full view of everything happening in front of us? We have become so used to seeing murder scenes, hearing reports of the amount of dead people in a war or earthquake, reading tallying scores of dead people on Facebook and Twitter, but yet, our feelings of sadness have ebbed away. Why do we no longer feel the ‘high-def’ horror of seeing someone practicing another religion other than Islam and paving their way towards Hell? Have we become so desensitized?

“…the flip side of not being responsible is the devastating feeling of not be able to do anything in the moments before impact. The driver of a car might at least have the option of swerving out of the way or slamming on the brakes. The driver of a train doesn’t steer, and it can take a half-mile or more to stop. Evans has conditioned himself not to hit the emergency brake, a futile gesture more likely to injure passengers or derail the train than protect the person out front.”

Have we had previous experiences that no matter how much we tried, our attempts were futile? Because of this, we just stopped hitting ‘the emergency brake’ and stopped calling people to Islam? This really shouldn’t be the case because we never know when someone will become Muslim and come back to the Straight Path.

“The operator’s sense of helplessness can be worse when the person on the tracks doesn’t actually want to die.”

Sometimes we see people that really don’t believe in their religion and are looking for a way out. However, a circumstance wouldn’t allow them, maybe because of family or perhaps because of cainotophobia (fear of change)? Prophet Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wa sallam) experienced this when Abu Talib refused to accept Islam because of his forefathers, so it definitely did happen. However, like the Prophet, we got to do as much as we can in hard times like those.

We’re not as hopeless as these train engineers that can’t do anything when a murder’s about to happen. Alhamdulillah, Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) gave us much more freedom to do something. We have a full view of the way people are living their lives and may sometimes feel a sense of hopelessness. But get over it. The Prophet did, and ended up making the whole of Arabia Muslim and the 1.5 billion Muslims now. Go help a Da’wah initiative. Be a true ambassador of Islam. You have potential to make somebody Muslim, so live up to that potential.

May Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) guide us, guide all those around us, and bring us together in Jannatul Firdaus. Ameen…