Our society is filled with hurt and despair. The sad part is that we, as Muslim youth, don’t make it any better.
Unfortunately, many people do not realize that any statement or action of hurt will hurt, regardless of what one may say.
Archive for the 'Community Activism' Category
All too often, we see individuals being raised up by their communities and then just leaving when they’re old enough.
When they were younger, they used to attend the full-time/weekend school, spend hours at the playground with other children, attend the after-school Karate or sports program, participate in the community festivals, get scolded by their wizened elders, and get loved and spoiled by their uncles and aunties…They were being raised by the whole village, by the whole community.
What do they decide to do?
When you look up at the night sky these days, in your own city, what do you see?
For me, all I see are a bunch of gloomy clouds. MashaAllah it’s a beautiful picture, but tell me, do you see any STARs?
There was once a politician who was gearing up to give the speech of his life. He spent countless months writing and reciting his speech, he spent thousands of dollars to rent the largest stadium in town, and spent even more in mass advertising through flyers, posters postcards, billboards, online social networks, television commercials, and every other conceivable method of attracting people.
The long-awaited day came, and the politician soon made his way to the stage, trembling with anticipation. He put on his carefully crafted smile and slowly turned to the crowd.
There was nobody there. Except for one person.
Just a few days ago, Algeria and Egypt had a neck-to-neck competition to see who would qualify for the 2010 World Cup. Players were stoned, people were held hostage, and there was general pandemonium…over a soccer game.
What was most striking about this game was that these teams were both representing Muslim-majority Arab countries but yet, we saw so much enmity. Even putting all the hatred and enmity aside, it is amazing just to see the millions of Muslims that tuned in to watch the show. Shaykh Muhammad AlShareef once said in a Khutbah,
“When a Muslim nation plays in the World Cup, over three million Muslims from that one country tune in to television to watch the game. Multiply that by the duration of the match, and you have almost five million hours of the ummah’s time wasted on a football game, in one sweeping night.”
It is interesting that we mainly tend to venerate somebody only after that person has passed away. That is when the tears stream down, the words come out choked, and the hearts ache. Magnificent memorials are conducted, grand accolades are read, and heartfelt obituaries are written. Now, what if we were to express our gratitude and love to one before their death? Better yet, why not make the love for only the sake of Allah?
Photo by Dev Null via Flickr
By Arif Kabir
Photo by gcraig3si via Flickr
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…
MYM Discussion