How certain are you that you haven’t injured the feelings of your brother or sister in Islam?
You know I have been in many situations where I have witnessed the hurt and pain of other Muslims that believed that they have been mistreated by their fellow sisters and brothers and for this reason I have made it a daily ritual to try to stay mindful of my words and my actions. Now I know most of you are probably saying to yourselves that you do the same and Allah knows best, however my question here is how certain could you be if you never take the time to correct yourself and seek refuge in the evil actions unknowingly as well as knowingly?
Now I am no scholar but I like many of you have common sense and the one thing that I find to be very disappointing within our ummah is the lack of support we openly show for one another, the manner and lack of respect we exhibit whenever we deem necessary and quite honestly how many of you even realize that the mind of child can easily comprehend, disrespect, isolation, separatism, ill treatment and ignorance; so how is it that most of us adults act as if we don’t or cant?
As a Believer I will fight tooth and nail to always ensure that I if nothing else I try to be better tonight than I am today and only by the permission and constant belief in My Lord! I openly acknowledge that this is so much bigger than my fellow sisters and brothers and by that I work at not allowing my suspicions or ill thoughts to deter me from doing what is better for me and my soul.
You know there was a situation with someone that I had known to be Muslim for many years and she in my opinion was always a good decent sister with her fair of trials. This sister was tested through her hard times and when she was blessed with better times, she openly walked away from Islam. I know this is and was the Qadr of Allah however this was devastated me; I never saw it coming and certainly now I realize that it was not meant for me to see it at all and for that I am grateful. Now bear with me here to get to the moral of the story I am trying to share with you.
In my questioning and concern for the soul of who at that time thought and truly believed was my sister in Islam because she still had not openly denounced Islam. I wanted to know why the sudden change in her character, her dress and her lifestyle. Needless for me to say that I recognized her sudden financial wealth provided her many means to her living situation and undoubtedly pleasures of this world. The struggles that I had personally witnessed her endure, viewed this as Allah giving her a just due ease, an ease that HE promises every Believer that experiences difficulty.
I decided to sit down with this sister and talk with her about her changes because naturally I was concerned about a sister that I truly loved for the Pleasure of My Lord. In the midst of our conversation which lasted all of two hours, and for me this was two hours of and emotionally charged and draining encounter; which turned out to be for me more enlightening than I could ever imagine and for that I too am very grateful. Because of my emotional attachment I still cry when I think about this situation and because of the impact and growth I believe Allah has blessed me with as a result of it is the reason I share it today as personal as this was and still is for me.
When I talked to someone about this they asked me why do you cry for her she is an apostate now and without a doubt my tears are not from her walking away from Islam, this is what Allah has decreed and for that I am content however what troubles me with this is the excuse she used as her reasoning and how I can tell you honestly that this has been something that I have run into and heard from others that are still Muslims and some who are no longer within the fold of Islam.... and it brings me to not analyzing their actions or beliefs but our actions and our beliefs and the impact of what and how we do one another.
When the sister decided it was time for her to share her newly found religion and life she did it with a real sense of accomplishment and made no qualms about her decisions or Islam she had practiced all of her life.
She said to me “Nafisa, when I needed help, the Muslims never helped me” she further continued on and shared her many stories and trials that she and her family had struggled through and with each situation her reaching out to Muslims within our community had always resulted in something other than them actually helping her, and then shockingly she told me that one of the last draws was that when her house caught fire and she and her children were out in the street outside of what a handful of sisters gave her, the rest of the Muslims in the communities she reached out to had all these reasons as to why.... they could not or would not help! And as she was taking a walk to clear her head and trying to figure out what she would do for her family which at the time was her and eight children, all raised as Muslims which at that time the youngest was an infant. She said she walked past a church in her neighborhood where there was a service going on and she went in and sat down. Still crying and dressed in the only clothes she ran out of her house in during the fire and all at that time she had to her name began to listen to the sermon given by the preacher; some of the women of this congregation saw her crying and felt her pain and they gave the sister their own dawa, and they supported her and helped her and her children with no hesitation, no suspicion and they made her for once believe and feel (in her words) as if someone really cared!
Since then I have had to really take a long hard look into my own actions and although I make it my business to help when and where I can, I have found myself on the receiving end just as others have shared with me about how we tend to make one another feel when they practice what I call “Separatism for those in need” my definition of this is for people who only give when and if they know a person, as opposed to just doing what is commanded by Allah!
Now don’t get my message misconstrued as I am sure some of you will, this situation can be viewed in quite a few ways and however you interpret it I pray that it is with the right intention. I am sharing this to show the impact (in short) of how our denial or isolation of our fellow sisters and brothers for no relevant reason is not saving us from harming our sisters and brothers. You and I never will know how deeply something can affect someone yet most of us understand how much we desire and love our inner circles and the support we give and share with one another because it intensifies the beauty of this deen and increases our Love for it.
Now for certain we all know the times we are living in people are more crooked and criminal minded than ever before and for some people this is simply a game, yet what I don’t get is that if we are all Believing in the unseen and are so righteous and we want to gain Allah’s favor then why when someone calls on the actions of the Muslims to help support and assist another Believer in need, do we question or outwardly deny them based on what we deem right when Allah says we are to stay away from suspicion. And that your charity should be given in secret. I have found that many of the practices and ways that many within our community that have taken on these sadaqah seeking task have in some ways made it downright humiliating for those in need and if you are a open minded well rounded person that is realistic about life and how things tend to go with people in trying situations with little to no support then you also understand the dangers that at times we actually encourage and push our brethren out to the wolves.
I know of another situation with a sister who is deceased now (May Allah have mercy on her soul and forgive her sins and grant her jannah, amin) I remember seeing this sister since I was child and when I speak of being a child, I mean this literally , my first encountered her in my life I could not have been any older than six, she was in her early twenties and by the time I was in my twenties I ran into her and all that I could think of was how wonderful it would be if this sister could enlighten me and help me to learn this deen my thirst and intake for Islam was at that time uncontainable.... I wanted to know all that I could because I wanted to be such a good Muslimah. This sister kept company with sisters that were older and established in their lives and most of them were married to very knowledgeable men. I at that time was like a sponge for Islam and I wanted more of what I knew was the haqq. I looked up to this sister and became close to her because as kind as she was she had the adab of a true Muslimah and she shined with her love for Islam; this sister had a speech impairment, however she was highly intelligent and talented, she was a good mother and she was always called upon by other sisters in the community to come out for one event or another, she was the one to call and that was because Allah had given her talented abilities that were exceptional in her own right, so anyway getting to the moral of this story is that the sister and I had spent lots of time together and naturally that meant we would pray together often. Whenever we would pray she would always ask that I lead if my husband or son was not around and so that was fine however this one specific day after our regularly daily routine I encouraged her to lead the prayer and she started to cry which at first was very confusing to me then she said “No I can’t” and again said to her it’s just you and I. I said this thinking she was embarrassed about speech impediment yet she began to explain when I question her about that being the reason, she said to me that it was because she didn’t know how to say the words; no one wanted to teach her because of her impediment. She then began to speak about how many sisters treated her as if she was retarded or had some other mental issues and not just a speech problem and they treated her differently because of it.
Alhamdulillah this didn’t run the sister away from Islam however it made her so uncomfortable that she practiced this deen for over twenty years not knowing how to properly pray because of how we, her Muslim family treated her. How devastating and hurtful this was for both she and I, I cried with her and I began to teach the person who I thought to be my mentor and who still is in many ways a strong source of inspiration for me. I admired the strength and courage Allah instilled in her to still continue the intentions and stand in the ranks faithfully. Subhanna’Allah. Her pain from the treatment of others in our ummah was deeply hurtful for her however her love for the Deen was much greater and Masha’Allah she Insha’Allah overcame the fears that held her back and began to pray fully before Allah called her soul.
So the moral to all of this is that we profess things quickly out of our mouths and we tend to do the opposite of the words and work that we are constantly encouraging and it can be discouraging to see the impact it can have on someone outside of our own lives if many of us just took the time to look and see. We have to stay mindful that our ummah is but one and we are representations of one another and we are obligated to facilitate and make things easy for the people yet we find the very small things that oppose this and we react on it and then try to justify it with our own petty reasoning. We have to remember that a closed fist never receives and that once a heart is black there is no good in it!
I met a sister who spoke every other word in Arabic which never bothered me in spite of the fact that her first language as mine is English. After several weeks of conversing with this sister, she became angry with me because she did and said something at times that I was uncomfortable with as a woman and how we are to carry ourselves in public. Her response to me became a comparison of who knew more about the Arabic language; who had more knowledge in the hadith, who could recite more Quran and last but not least who had a better body, now mind you all I am married and the sister is not.... but this was her defense. After explaining to the sister that I have studied extensively and had been blessed to learn to speak, write and read Quranic Arabic, My studies in Hadith was more than what most of my companions had learned in the many years they had been Muslim and then how I choose to speak English in my general conversation because this is the language that I speak. I speak Arabic when I pray and this is obligatory and that yes I am familiar with conversational Arabic as well. I don’t need to gain brownie points amongst my sisters by showing off what I know, I am who I am and keeping it real is how I do it. Sisters I am not knocking you who choose to do this Alhamdulillah, may Allah moisten your tongue always with the language of Arabia specifically (Quranic Arabic) if this is what you desire, but we need to be so mindful that what we say and what we do should always coincide for the benefit of Pleasing Allah.
This sister wanted to tear me down and although I can’t say this was not intentional, Allahu Alim however this was done to me and it hurt my feelings because she assumed and had suspicion about me and she used her assumptions to incite a bad situation between us and because of that she felt it right to mistreat me as a result of her exhibiting bad adab.
I don’t hold any grudges against my sisters and I pray that any other sisters who have experienced this can overcome this by being mindful of their real purpose and intention of doing all that we can as individuals to practice this deen to the best of our ability. How can we grow if we continue to stop the real growth in unity? Lets all work harder tonight to be better Muslims tomorrow Insha’Allah.
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