INTO D.C.

A man of middle years spoke of his dream, saying:
I dreamed the child of a young Muslim widow had been ill and hospitalized in Florida.  Instead of being returned to her mother, the child had been taken to the White House by federal agents.  The child was bait.  Going to the White House to retrieve her was a trap, and we all knew it, but we all had to go nonetheless.  I traveled with the child’s mother, aunt and grandmother.  We arrived at night, and stayed outside, watching the building until just before dawn.  Then White House staff, who’d known we were there all along, came out to greet us.  They took us inside and offered us breakfast.  They made it clear how much information they had about us by catering to our individual preferences in food.  But after breakfast, the cordial manners were dropped.  We were arrested.

Next I saw us all in a large, bare gymnasium-like room in the White House.  The four of us were now wearing atrocious orange prison jumpsuits.  A group of guards or police or agents—about fifteen of them—burst into the room and began beating us.  With fists, with clubs.  We fought back, but we couldn’t win.  They brought in hoses, and the force of the water pressure drove us back into the wall.  There was no purpose to the arrest or violence other than the enjoyment they got out of intimidating us.  And who knows, perhaps we would have confessed to something, named someone—it didn’t really matter.  It was all just an exercise to them.

Finally, I saw us dressed in our own clothes once more.  We were going to be released.  At the moment, though, the four of us were sitting on the floor of a small, otherwise empty room.  We had not broken.  We had not confessed to fictitious crimes, or betrayed innocent and unsuspecting friends.  The others felt the strength of their faith in Allah.  I felt it too, but it was overshadowed as I looked at the floor and saw we were sitting against an outside wall of the White House.  At its base where the wall and floor met, there was a crack perhaps an inch high and seven inches long.  You could see outside, see the people on the street very clearly from there.  And then I felt that I had failed my test.  My true test was not just to stand up to brutality, it was that I should have screamed. We all should have screamed loud enough, long enough so that the people on the street could hear us, could know and begin to talk about it–that inside this pristine building, something was very wrong.

I woke up then and thought about the ayats in Quran that mention cowardice.  That a coward’s place is in Hell because no one can protect you from death.  Death is from Allah and who can protect you from Allah?  You either believe, or you do not believe.  And I thought–Allah is showing me a different kind of cowardice–the cowardice of keeping silent–and it is just as wrong.

Making a More Meaningful Salat, Part 1

O you men! It is you that have need of God. But God is the One Free of all wants, worthy of all praise.  (Quran 35:15)

  

Many of us modern Muslims have a confused relationship with Allah and with our salat.  Salat often has little place within the hectic pace of our daily lives.  Often, it is an inconvenience that we try with varying degrees of success to fit into our busy work schedules.  Sometimes it is an embarrassment, as we don’t want to break up the fun we are having with our friends by mentioning that it is time for prayer.  And even when we are at home, we find ourselves  too tired  to pray or so harrassed by the demands of our spouse or our children that salat is just another demand upon us that we fulfill grudgingly or hurriedly.  

 Once it has become a burden–or a seemingly lost cause– it can be hard to reestablish salat.  The key is, first of all, to ask Allah for help.  Then it is up to us to do our part.  Salat can become more meaningful for us if we really remember that it is a spiritual and emotional lifeline.  Try doing these 6 things to help integrate salat into your life.

The Five Pillars of Faith

From the time I was first began to study Islam, I found the visual image of the five pillars of faith in Islam unsettling—that Shahadah (testifying there is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His Messenger), Salat ( 5 daily prayers), Ramadan (fasting), Zakat (charity) and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca)—were somehow holding my iman, my faith suspended in midair. 

I have come to understand that the reason the image is unsettling is because it so accurate.  Our Islam is indeed suspended above us as a shelter against the trials of this life, and it is only as stable and secure as our obedience to those five pillars makes it.  Whenever our adherence to any of the pillars falters, our Islam shudders.

It is not enough to rely on “being a good person” to sustain us in our faith or help us gain Allah’s mercy in the grave and on the Day of Judgment.  In fact, if we busy ourselves with the task of “being a good person” while ignoring or faltering in our responsibility  to maintain these pillars of faith, we risk falling into the trap of becoming disobedient and arrogant.

A Treasure Without Price

 

 

The greatest treasure in the world that Allah gives to Muslims is iman. Without iman, we are not Muslim. Being Muslim is a gift from Allah that we did nothing to earn and can not be worthy of having.  We can do nothing to give iman to someone else whom we love, or take it away from anyone we don’t like.  Yet we are oftentimes so careless with this priceless gift of iman. 

Our character as Muslims should be the best.    In America, it has become a cultural pastime to publicly proclaim ourselves to be a victim or a survivor of something, so instead of nurturing the best qualities in ourselves, we frequently excuse and  justify our shortcomings.

Salat is supposed to be the jewel of the day, each prayer glittering in pure, spiritual light–our closely guarded moments of connection to Allah.  Yet too often we will regard salat as a  inconvenience, an intrusion upon our work and play.  We end up making several prayers at once or even squeezing in a prayer or two during the tv commericial breaks. We treat salat casually like an old favorite t-shirt, we won’t discard it, but it is forever stained, buried in the dirty clothes or lost under the bed. 

Survivors, Winners, The Olympics and Islam

We all love heroes.  But we do not live in a mythical land of dragons and monsters.  We all love champions, but our age and culture do not lend themselves to chivalry.  Alas, we live in the age of public confessions.  We have survivors.  They get their 15 minutes of fame, and we get to love them.  And, of course, we have all manner of competition—in sport and in business—because everyone loves a winner, right?

 

We spend money on books and classes that tell us how to become survivors and winners.  We spend time and money—sometimes a lot of it—going to sporting events.  We may make going to the Olympics a priority over going to hajj, hoping to take on a patina of victory ourselves simply by being there.

 

We respond to the person who takes on the tests in life and achieves mastery over them.  Whether it is by becoming a stronger person after a terrible experience or by beating all opponents on the field; all of us appreciate the time, the sacrifice and the emotional endurance it takes to come out on top.  That is, we appreciate success in every arena except Islam.

 

Trying to Come Back to Faith

“I tried to make salat again, but I don’t feel anything anymore.” That was a statement of a Muslimah whose life, for a decade or more, centered largely on intoxicants and sensuality. She is like a lot of Muslims who are trying to come back to their faith but don’t want to declare repentance before Allah, because they are still in a lifestyle that contradicts the tenets of Islam. Maybe they will make salat occasionally. Maybe they will fast—or try to fast—a few days during Ramadan. But when they try to fulfill one of the pillars of Islam and feel no spiritual reward, their attempts become even more sporadic, or they give up.

Kauthar

       

I stand on the shore                 
Scanning the horizon
While the waters of sorrow
Lap at my feet

I feel the waters’ slow warmth
I ignore the soft desire to look down
To wade into them, to submerse myself
Or to drown

I look only to You
I look only toward the waters of Kauthar
That may one day replace the waters of sorrow
That are lapping at my feet

 ©  UmmUmar 2007