Striving in the path of Allah

We as Muslims believe in dogma. But ours is a strange believe unlike any other religion. We do believe but what we are really taught in the Holy Qur'an is a belief solidly based on revelation supplemented by faculties of sense and reason. Most other religions base their belief on blind faith only.
In Qur'an chapter 3 verse 190 Allah says:

اِنَّ فِیۡ خَلۡقِ السَّمٰوٰتِ وَ الۡاَرۡضِ وَ اخۡتِلَافِ الَّیۡلِ وَ النَّہَارِ لَاٰیٰتٍ لِّاُولِی الۡاَلۡبَابِ

 "Surely, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for the people of wisdom"

Similarly in Chapter 88 of the Holy Qur'an:

اَفَلَا یَنۡظُرُوۡنَ اِلَی الۡاِبِلِ کَیۡفَ خُلِقَتۡ0 وَ اِلَی السَّمَآءِ کَیۡفَ رُفِعَتۡ 0وَ اِلَی الۡجِبَالِ کَیۡفَ نُصِبَتۡ 0وَ اِلَی الۡاَرۡضِ کَیۡفَ سُطِحَتۡ 0فَذَکِّرۡ ۟ؕ اِنَّمَاۤ اَنۡتَ مُذَکِّرٌ

  "So, do they not look at the camels how they are created,and at the sky, how it is raised high,and at the mountains, how they are installed,and at the earth, how it is spread out?So, (O Prophet,) keep on preaching; you are only a preacher."

 And there are many many other verses in the Holy Qur'an asking mankind to think,to see and to hear what is inside and around them.

" In the earth, there are signs for those who (seek truth to) believe,And in the heavens, there is your sustenance and all that you have been promised.So, by the Lord of the heavens and the earth, it is a reality, as sure as the fact that you (can) speak"(51,20-23)

What Qur'an teaches us is the reasoning that leads to divine knowledge and to Allah in the guidance of Qur'an and Hadith.Allah asks us to see this world with wonder as His creation and to find His reflection in His own creation.

But the path from the realms of sense and reason to Allah is full of danger and peril. Many who seek this path are lost and perished and many return more disoriented then before and with a weakened belief. Allah says:

 "By this Qur'an He lets many go astray and many find guidance. But He does not let anyone go astray thereby except those who are transgressors"(2,26)

The most common mistake that people make in seeking Allah is their uncompromising belief in reason which stops them from going beyond a certain point. There is no doubt that Qur'an teaches us to think and to reason but there are many things of vital importance that are part of faith and must be believed in uncompromisingly without any reason. This is not to say that we are encouraged to believe in things blindly. What we are taught is that many important things in our faith are above reason. Reason cannot comprehend and reach them. Allah says in Qur'an:

"Believers are those who believe in the unseen"(2,3)

Allah,angels,judgement day and fate etc. are the unseen which are to be believed. What we need here is Love. A strong attraction towards the divine. You can call it a spiritual feeling, a feeling unlike any other that man experience in his whole life. It cannot be described. It can be just felt.

But the question arises that love is not something like reason inherent in our mental makeup. It is related to our hearts and comes and goes uninvited. No doubt, it comes and goes uninvited but there are some acts which attract this 'Love'. When you live your life according to the norms of shariah(Way of the Prophet[SAW]),when you keep wondering and thinking about Allah and His creations and when you constantly make du'a to Allah for guidance Love may open its arms for you and embrace you.

Some people may ask why this hard and long striving for a thing you already know? Why this difficult journey? Why not just blindly believe and be done with it?

In order to live this life in a real way as a Muslim we have to open our minds for knowledge.We have to open ourselves to questions. We have to seek true and justified answers. We have to purge and clean all the doubts roaming in our hearts. We can not achieve all this by blind belief. We cannot taste the true sweetness of faith by blind belief.So we need to strive and we need to find the truth to be a better Muslims.    

تنھایؑ

بچپن میں جب ھم سردیا ں گاوؑں میں گزارتے تو اکثر رات کو محفل سجتی۔ کیا بڑے اور کیا چھوٹے سبھی آگ والی کوٹھی میں جمع ھو جاتے۔درمیا ن میں آگ جلا دی  جاتی اور سب ارد گرد دا یؑرے میں بیٹھ جاتے۔ پھر باتیں شروع ھوتیں۔ پرانے قصے ،کھانیاں ،گیؑ گزری باتیں، بڑوں کا بچپن غرض ھر چیز پر بات ھوتی۔ اس گپ،شپ میں نجانے گاوؑں کے کتنے زندہ اور مردہ لوگوں کو یاد کیا جاتا۔ یوں محسوس ھوتا جیسے کمرے میں صرف ھم ھی نھیں بلکہ وہ بھی موجود ھوں جن کا ذکر کیا جا رھا ھو۔ ایسے میں جب گرم کمرے سےباھر رات کے اندھیرے میں نکلنا پڑتا تو عجیب ھو کا عالم اور خاموشی مجھے گھیر لیتی۔اندھیرے میں دل پر عجیب دھشت طاری ھو جاتی۔ یوں محسوس ھوتا جیسے آگ والی کوٹھی میں زندگی ھے اور جیسے جیسے میں کمرے سے دور ھوتا جا رھا ھوں میرے اندر سے زندگی کی شمع بجھتی چلی جا رھی ھے۔

آج میں جب بچپن کی ان یادوں پر غور کرتا ھوں تو بے اختیار میرے دل میں خیال آتا ھےکہ ھماری دنیا کی مثا ل اس آگ والے کمرے کی سی ھے جس میں آگ کے گرد طرح طرح کے قصوں سے محفل گرم ھو اور یہ کاٰٰٰیؑنات اس کالی سیا ہ چپ اندھیری رات کی طرح ھے جو کمرے کے باھر زلفیں پھیلاۓ ھوۓ ھو۔

میں سوچتا ھوں کہ ھم اس دنیا میں کتنے اکیلے ھیں۔ بعض لوگ کھیں گے کہ ھو سکتا ھے کہ ھمارے علاوہ بھی کویؑ اور مخلوق اس خلا میں موجود ھو۔ اگر کویؑ مخلوق موجود ھے بھی تو وہ اتنی دور ھے کہ اس کی بازگشت بھی ھم تک نھیں پھنچتی۔    

انتظار

کتنی عجیب بات ھے کہ انسان جس کی عمر سو برس سے زیادہ نھیں ھوتی وقت ایسے گزارتا ھے جیسے اسے ھمیشہ یھیں رھنا ھے۔ جبکہ یہ  پھاڑ ،یہ چٹانیں اور یہ زمین جنکی عمر ھزاروں لاکھوں انسانوں کی مجموعی زندگی سے بھی زیادہ ھے کتنی خاموشی سے وقت گزار رھے ھیں۔ یوں محسوس ھوتا ھے جیسے وہ کسی شؑی کے انتظا ر میں ھوں۔ اک ایسی آنے والی شؑی جس کی دھشت نے سب کو خاموش کر دیا ھو۔ یہ دریا، یہ سمندر اور یہ ھوا یؑں بھی اپنے شور کے ساتھ کسی آنے والی شؑی سے دور بھا گنا چاھتی ھیں۔ شا ید ان سب کا خوف ایک ھی شیؑ کے انتظار میں ھے۔

Selflessness

In addition to other great qualities that a civilization needs in order to survive, selflessness is of the most vital importance.
Family, the smallest and most basic unit of civilization is built on a bond where two individuals nurture and
protect each other and their off-springs for a lifetime. A great deal of personal sacrifice and selflessness is
needed to achieve this goal.

At a critical juncture in the age of civilization when old systems and values become worn out and dated civilization needs innovation.It need to evolve. So new ideas purporting new theories about systems and values are born in the minds of individuals.But in order to experiment and practice those ideas great sacrifices are needed. Reformers and prophets preaching faith and duty mobilize people for these sacrifices.The new ideas are almost always resisted by the conservative forces of civilization and so need a great deal of devotion and selflessness for success.

In every civilization heroes are always part of the local culture.Greats tales of legend are woven around their personalities.Their stories are almost always about great feats of courage. A strength of character shown in the face of great danger to protect something or someone. Putting their own lives in peril heroes protect others and hence their selflessness is the universal moral that civilizations teach their future generations.

On Optimism and Hope

When the world becomes dark and all that you believe in  is gone,you see yourself standing at the edge of a precipice asking yourself a question:
"Is this life worth living?"
Only one thing stops you when there is absolutely nothing that can stop you from committing the 'selfish and unrepairable' act.
A fierce and blind hope.  
Born in the dark realms of hopelessness is the hope of a better tomorrow. The hope that tomorrow I will feel better when there is nothing to make you feel better about. The hope that you will forget when deep down you know you will never and the shear foolishness to think that the sun of tomorrow will shine on something that will give a new meaning to life when you know that there is no tomorrow and there is no meaning of life.

You find yourself caught in a maze sulking in some blind alley, tired and exhausted.You know you have missed all your chances and you will never find the way.
In that moment , at that exact moment when you are in midst of making a decision to stop, to end this madness you hear some voice speaking in some forgetful corner in the dark depths of your existence. It says:
"Why not take another step?"
The shear foolishness of the suggestion makes you laugh. But you take another step. May be to prove the voice wrong or may be for some other reason. You yourself may never know.
And Behold! You are in a completely different world.
Where there was darkness there is a bit light.Where there was nothing there is something.Where there was a blind alley.....there is a way!
With every step your hopes rise and with ever step you become more and more ready to get what you wanted.
Many of you might be saying:
"NO! its not like that.....we try and we pathetically fail. As simple as that."
But what I am saying here is about trying and trying again and again.and failing using every drop of  optimism
in your heart and soul until you feel absolutely exhausted.
At that moment you try once again and BAM!...you have done it.

Ignorance and Knowledge

Everyone remembers his childhood.It is a period of eternal bliss far from the maddening crowds of the world.A child builds his own world around him full of fairies and strange creatures.He builds his own fantasy from the butterflies of life.He sees the world from his own lens;The lens of a child pure, simple and clean from the biases of the adult world.The world looks so beautiful and sublime from the perspective of a child.Then adulthood arrives from nowhere with all its burdens and responsibilities and the world changes.
It is the ignorance of the child that makes the world seem so beautiful and it is the knowledge of the harsh realities of life that make adults so miserable.With comeing of age as man becomes more and more knowledgeable about the world around him he becomes more and more pessimistic.A time comes when he asks himself a question which Hamlet of Shakespear asked himself:
To Be Or Not To Be....
The world then looks like a dark place full of dark deamons,ready to engulf you whether you do or do not make a mistake.

But the question arises that if ignorance is so wonderful,why,animals are the most ignorant or even more so are the trees and rocks!
Knowledge may bring with it those undeniable harsh realities but it also helps us to look at the deep mysteries of the world.It makes us curious to aks questions like:
 Who we are? Where we are? And what is the destination of this journey?
It makes us wonder,It wakes in us the senses which see beauty no one else can see and it invokes in us the pleasure which none can even dream of.
It may be a burden but it is a burden worth putting on your shoulder.