The Mystery of Hijab–Veil Unveiled

What is Hijab anyway? Headscarf, veil, whatever anyone wants to call it. It’s not mentioned officially in any religious texts, it’s not mentioned in the old books. It’s this idea that has become more cultural that religious, mainly imported from gulf countries, although adopted by so many Muslim women all around the world out of piety and modesty. In Egypt, a girl is decent if she is covering her hair, not necessarily dressed decently all over, but there is a higher level of respect for a girl wearing a piece of cloth over her hair and a tight pair of jeans than there is to a girl not covering her hair, even if she is dressed more modestly. In my opinion, this isn’t right, and there are huge misconceptions around this area.

Hijab in itself is a representation of modesty. A girl can be modest by wearing wider clothes, longer sleeves, showing less skin, and maybe, if she wishes, to cover her hair. She could be wearing a pair of jeans and showing a bit of her hair or she could be wearing a long incredibly baggy Abaya. She could wear a headscarf that covers her bosom or she could tie a small scarf around her head and her neck could be showing. It’s not 0’s and 1’s, at the least perspective, it’s a wish from the girl to attempt to be more modest. We are not here to judge anyone, lest they be better than us with their faith. a girl could be wearing very modest clothes and always wears her hair in a ponytail or a bun, never wears makeup and she could be more pious than a girl who covers her hair but let's a few strands loose, wears a lot of makeup, and tight clothes, because she believes that society forces her to wear Hijab to maybe fit into the norm or escape harassment on the streets. And the girl with tight clothes, makeup and a few strands of hair showing could be more pious than a girl covered in a black Abaya from head to toe. Even though Hijab is an external demonstration of Islam, it is still something between a woman and her God, so as God Almighty says “O ye who believe! let not some men among you laugh at others: it may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): nor let some women laugh at others: it may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used of one) after he has believed: And those who do not desist are (Indeed) doing wrong.”[ Al-Hujraat (THE PRIVATE APARTMENTS, THE INNER APARTMENTS) 49:11]

“ياأيها الذين آمنوا لا يسخر قوم من قوم عسى أن يكونوا خيرا منهم ولا نساء من نساء عسى أن يكن خيرا منهن ولا تلمزوا أنفسكم ولا تنابزوا بالألقاب بئس الاسم الفسوق بعد الإيمان ومن لم يتب فأولئك هم الظالمون” (11) سورة الحجرات

For a muslim woman to wear Hijab in a non muslim country would mean she would look flashier and attract more attention to her than were she not wearing Hijab. But that’s the thing, she’s still dressed more modestly, which is something no one can argue, so in the end, she is fulfilling her duty and following her heart and her faith.

Do some people force their children/wives to wear Hijab? Yes they do, out of the feeling of obligation that they will be held accountable for the people in their families, which is correct (the belief not the forcing), but I believe in two things; the first being that a parent should raise his girls to be modest and shield them from the temptations of the glittery glamorous world, and that a husband should pick his wife according to the same concept that she is stronger than falling prey to the glittery glamorous world around her, so it shouldn’t be that hard to convince her to be modest, which doesn’t necessarily mean cover her hair with a piece of cloth, or to be harsh on her, forcing her into a state of religious hypocrisy, where she and the person who forced her would both be held accountable for that state. After all, we can’t lie to God when He sees into our hearts.

As for my personal experience, I wore Hijab right before my 14^th birthday. My mother wouldn’t let me at first because it was a huge responsibility; it was commitment to a higher level of religiousness which I admittedly wasn’t at. One day, I woke up, and I told her I’ll go to school wearing Hijab and borrowed one of her scarves, I even remember that it was a Monday, it was before Ramadan, and it was completely weird and I didn’t know how to tie it, but it felt right at the time. I wanted to take it off that same day because it was difficult for me to commit to. I fought that urge off though. My family kept asking me later when they saw me during Ramadan if it was only during Ramadan, if I was trying it out, an American cousin who so normally used to grab me and toss me on the couch out of playfulness told me that he wouldn’t speak to me when I was wearing it. I stood by my decision, probably out of stubbornness, but I held on to it.

I had my reasons too, which I think were very sound for a 14 year old. First, I was not that committed religiously, I didn’t pray regularly, and I definitely didn’t do all the Amr Khaled tapes and seminars that preached Hijab, with all due respect to him. But I believed that to wear Hijab would bond me to a higher level of religiousness that I would need; how could a girl wearing Hijab not pray regularly? How could she walk around gossiping all the time? She didn’t, and I tried my best to abide by those rules. It didn’t work so well, but by time it did. I wasn’t a model muslim girl, nor am I now, but it definitely was a strong incentive. For a 14 year old girl, Hijab is God’s gift to women. Beginning of puberty, body changes, and huge self consciousness issues make a teenage girl feel like it’s time for her to go invisible for a while as this transformation is complete. This is where Hijab comes in. it gives her permission to cover up, she is no longer worried about how people see how her body is changing because she is dressed modestly. She can so bravely hide behind her religion and continue –more –normally and less self consciously with the rest of her life. Most importantly, she can focus on growing up instead of growing into a different type of body. The other side of me wearing Hijab at 14, which probably made it a lot easier for me, is that I was a bit of a tomboy already, I didn’t wear skirts or tight clothes, I didn’t care about my hair being tied into a braid or a pony tail, and I knew I was changing, I knew that at some point the life of a young adult would get glamorous. I’ve seen it with my friends; the makeup, the tight clothes and short skirts, and the false notion of looking good to be noticed, maybe by boys and maybe just to look good in the eyes of society, and I didn’t want that. I tried to resist it as much as I can and so at that point I believed that to wear Hijab would be the best option. The best thing is that it didn’t mean I don’t have to look good or wear elegant clothes, it just meant I do it for me, not for the world to look at me, judge me, and make comments I don’t care about. If they admire my clothes, then they admire my taste and things I own, they don’t look beyond it, they CAN’T look beyond it. I am still a human being.

So why do I still wear my Hijab, since I’m far older than 14? Because once, I went to meeting (wearing my Hijab) or a volunteer thing with very decent people, wearing a tight blouse, and two or three men, whose ethical behavior is not in the least questionable stole a glance at my chest before looking at my face. They had never done that before, nor did they ever do it again. At that moment, I understood what it meant to be modest in my clothes, and that’s not to prevent people from checking me out, rather to have them see as who I really am; a human being. I wear Hijab because my Hijab makes me feel more human and makes everyone treat me as a human, no objectifying me there. It makes the world seem less important. Even if every once in a while when I am preparing to go to a wedding, I wish that it would be just easier to wear a normal evening gown without going through all the trouble of fixing it to fit my Hijab, or when I have a good hair day and would like to show it off. It is nice to be admired for the way I look sometimes. But then I think, I have covered myself in order to be me for so long, to wear Hijab has become a part of my personality, it defines me that I am not someone who shows off her hair or her skin or her body, so why ruin it all now to be admired for a day? The floral skirt isn't really worth it that much, effort lost is the worst feeling for me, doesn’t everyone just hate something when it goes to waste? I wear it to please God, because God asked us to be modest, and I think to come to that belief is the greatest thing about it.

Flickr Tags: Hijab,Islam,Religion,Modesty,Compulsion,Choice,Teens,makeup,glamorous,clothes,human,rights,Allah,God,muslim

Keep the Faith

I am a follower of a religion that is misunderstood by so many people, sometimes they are other people that follow it. I’m not much of an optimist, I don’t think I’m a pessimist either but my religion tells me these things, and they feel too right not to follow:

1. Follow your heart even when other people tell you different.

2. Repent for what you know you have done wrong, even if you have done it over and over, and even if your wrong doings are as many as the foam on the sea, and you will be forgiven.

3. When in doubt, ask for God’s guidance, and God will grant you what is good for you and light your path to what is right.

4. God will help us change but only if we start changing first.

5. Smile! It’s counted as charity and you actually get points for it!

6. Humans weren’t created on earth to suffer, but to be tested, guided by Quran. In this test, we discover humanity.

7. Don’t hate something – like eating your vegetables – for it might be good for you, and don’t love something – like cigarettes – for they might be bad for you. (think grander examples in life J)

8. Do not fall into despair, for despair is losing faith.

9. You are always accountable for all that you do, but the good is always counted in multiples of what it really is, and the bad is just counted as one, can even be erased by the good, or maybe just get scratched out with a word of repentance.

10. There is always doubt that you may be doing the wrong thing, thinking that you’re doing the right thing, so it is always good to revisit your beliefs, maybe they’ll get refined.

I follow Islam, maybe not as well as I hope I do, but I do so proudly. Thank God for faith, and that God for those friends who remind us, in the most unusual ways, not to lose it.

Sources:

1. “The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: Righteousness is in good character, and wrongdoing is that which wavers in your soul, and which you dislike people finding out about. It was related by Muslim. And on the authority of Wabisah bin Ma’bad (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: I came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and he (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “You have come to ask about righteousness.” I said, “Yes.” He (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Consult your heart. Righteousness is that about which the soul feels at ease and the heart feels tranquil. And wrongdoing is that which wavers in the soul and causes uneasiness in the breast, even though people have repeatedly given their legal opinion.”

2. “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Whoever says, 'Glory be to Allah and with His praise' (Subhana'llah wa bi-hamdihi) one hundred times in a day will have his wrong actions taken away from him, even if they are as abundant as the foam on the sea."

3. “The Prophet (p.b.u.h) used to teach us the way of doing Istikhara (Istikhara means to ask Allah to guide one to the right sort of action concerning any job or a deed), in all matters as he taught us the Suras of the Qur'an. He said, "If anyone of you thinks of doing any job he should offer a two rak`at prayer other than the compulsory ones and say (after the prayer): (O Allah! I ask guidance from Your knowledge, And Power from Your Might and I ask for Your great blessings. You are capable and I am not. You know and I do not and You know the unseen. O Allah! If You know that this job is good for my religion and my subsistence and in my Hereafter--(or said: If it is better for my present and later needs)--Then You ordain it for me and make it easy for me to get, And then bless me in it, and if You know that this job is harmful to me In my religion and subsistence and in the Hereafter--(or said: If it is worse for my present and later needs)--Then keep it away from me and let me be away from it. And ordain for me whatever is good for me, And make me satisfied with it). The Prophet added that then the person should name (mention) his need.”

4. “For every one (from among you) there are angels replacing one another, in front of him and behind him, who guard him under the command of Allah. [QETafseerComment] Surely, Allah does not change the condition of a people unless they change themselves. When Allah intends evil for a people, there is no way to turn it back, and for them there is no patron other than Him.” [Quran, The Thunder 13:11]

5. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "Charity is prescribed for each descendant of Adam every day the sun rises." He was then asked: "From what do we give charity every day?" The Prophet answered: "The doors of goodness are many...enjoining good, forbidding evil, removing harm from the road, listening to the deaf, leading the blind, guiding one to the object of his need, hurrying with the strength of one's legs to one in sorrow who is asking for help, and supporting the feeble with the strength of one's arms--all of these are charity prescribed for you." He also said: "Your smile for your brother is charity." [Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 3, Number 98]

6. We have not revealed unto thee (Muhammad) this Qur'an that thou shouldst be distressed, (2) But as a reminder unto him who feareth, (3) [Ta-Ha 20:2 – 20:3]

7. but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not. (216) [Quran, Al Baqarah 2:216]

8. and despair not of the Spirit of Allah. Lo! none despaireth of the Spirit of Allah save disbelieving folk. (87) [Quran, Yusuf 12:87]

9. Establish worship at the two ends of the day and in some watches of the night. Lo! good deeds annul ill-deeds. This is reminder for the mindful. (114) [Quran, Hud 11:114]

10. Say: Shall We inform you who will be the greatest losers by their works? (103) Those whose effort goeth astray in the life of the world, and yet they reckon that they do good work. (104) [Quran, The Cave 18:103 – 18:104]

Flickr Tags: Islam,Faith,Charity,Smile,Despair,Worship,Doubt,Allah,God,Istikhara,Humanity

Fajr Prayer

The fajr prayer is one of those amazingly beautiful things in Islam. Muslims have to pray 5 times a day, one of those prayer is at dawn or fajr. That's about 4 am as I write this. It has to be prayed between dawn and sunrise which is from 4 to around 5:30, not a very large time span to fit into the normal day like the rest of the assigned prayers, and also out of the usual waking hours of most people, which makes it quite the challenge.
I am not one who prays fajr regularly, although I should. I don't know why we are required to pray so early, but I have some ideas about it, and some I quote from other people. Firstly, it may have been set to pray at dawn because it is the start of the day, before sunrise, to prepare for something new before it starts, and how better to prepare than by praying! Another rationale I heard that seems very sound is that waking up early out of the normal waking hours of most people is something we do because we love God; if a lover asks us to do something difficult, we'd probably do it for them, we love God above all, then why not do it for Him; it's proof of our love and devotion. Moreover, it is a higher level of required discipline. I have mentioned before how discipline is part of Islam, especially in the required acts of worship like prayer. It is only fitting to have different levels of discipline that in turn become habits that are no longer such a challenge.
So there, I've analyzed the fajr prayer as I always seem to try to make sense of everything, but that's not all there is to it. Imagine waking up at 4 am, everything is quiet except maybe for some early birds chirping away. You're sleepy but it's too early to consider how the day is going to start yet. You do wodou'; wash up for prayer, and stand there in this very quiet and serene environment facing the Qibla; Mecca, the beautiful house of God, with His throne right above it, above all the heavens. Right then, you are standing in the hands of God, like you always do, only you've given up the precious hours of sleep, there is nothing on your Mind yet, no work, no school, no family, just you standing in the hands of God. You begin praying, "Allah Akbar" God is greatest. God is greater than sleep, than any other worldly issue that keeps us from really concentrating in our prayers, God is greatest so we sacrifice sound sleep for Him. You pray in the quiet, while the world has not waken up yet because Allah never sleeps. It is a brief prayer, barely takes 10 minutes, but it challenges us to get out of our way of the world that sometimes seems like it's all we consider in life, and we give 10 minutes of pure discipline, obedience, and total surrender to our Creator. What we get in return is an amazing moment of spirituality; to know that we have conquered our demons, and to have some peace.

P.S. I don't think I would have written this if it weren't for this video; amazing work, very inspiring, and may God bless all those who worked on it :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_XIbqKZxqg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The Road to Heaven is paved with Good Intentions

I’m a strong believer in the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. In Islam however, everything is about intentions, what’s in your heart is what will make you do good or do bad. In Islam, the road to heaven is paved with good intentions.

I sound like I’m contradicting myself, don’t I? well I’m not, not really. The road to hell really is paved with good intentions. People do what they think is right, I cannot stress enough on the word right because it is such a tricky little thing, and we’ve been living with its tricks in everything we do or say. it’s in our culture, our fiction, in the stories we tell to our children. Doing the right thing is a very subjective act. In the fairytales we tell our kids, it was right for Cinderella to sneak out of the house to attend the prince’s ball, Snow White to live with seven strangers, and Ali Baba to be a thief (the above are borrowed), and we must also never forget Robin Hood; the king of thieves and good intentions. It is noble to fight injustice but not quite so when you play dirty. USA dropped atomic bombs on innocent people in Japan, not only killing them, but maiming generations and generations to come with the aftereffects of those weapons. The atomic bombs ended the war, which is a very good intention, but at what price! Was it right to use them to get to that noble outcome? God only knows, but I don’t believe it is. How many decisions do we make every single day with the purest of intentions that end up hurting people deeply? Worse yet, how many actions do we take thinking they are the right thing to do under the circumstances while we would condemn them when we see other people doing them? The road to hell really is paved with our own good intentions.

But that is not right! In Islam, everything we do in life should be done with a certain intention, the most noble and most important of which is to serve God and do good. Yes, that was what the church was doing in the middle ages when they were burning scientists, but that’s not how it works in Islam. Islam sets the rules on how to live your life as an honest human being. The rules of Islam are the rules that govern humanity; justice, equality, compassion. In Islam, we can’t do bad things with good intentions. We can’t kill a man because he might possibly murder someone. We can’t lie to someone so that they would make a decision that is right but based on wrong information. In Islam, we cannot do an act that is abstractly wrong like stealing with the intention of doing good. It just doesn’t work that way because Islam’s guidelines give us a moral compass to lead our lives with, and when we stray from the right path, there is always redemption and forgiveness, which is also the way to heaven.

There is however something more interesting to the intention in Islam. The intention of serving and pleasing God can be set in every little detail in our lives, and they add to the score too. Something as simple as smiling in the face of someone is rewarded as charity. Working against one’s temptations counts as Jihad, and is actually stronger than Jihad at war. Saying a nice word, washing the dishes, helping someone out, all of these actions, little as they may seem count as long as they are done with good intentions. Even the failed attempt to do something with the correct intention counts. And the best part, it doesn’t necessarily count as one point. So maybe writing this, and you reading it counts too because I made you remember God, think about Him, and maybe I was of some help, so thanks for the score… May we all keep going with good intentions at heart and meet in heaven.

Technorati Tags: Islam,Muslim,Allah,Moral Compass,Jihad,Intentions,Atomic Bomb,Japan,Redemption,smiling,the road to hell is paved with good intentions,heaven

The Discipline of Islam

Islam is full of rules. We have to pray five times a day and fast for a whole month every year. We have a long list of things that we should do and a long list of things that we shouldn’t. As far as I know, we don’t have as many rules as in Judaism and our rules are not dictated by an entity like the church in Christianity. Our rules come from two very specific sources; Quran and Sunnah.

I’m sure everyone wondered at some point; why so many rules? Some have obvious reasoning like not drinking because getting drunk makes you lose control of coherent thought. The reasoning of others may not be as clear to us mortals. Any explanations are attempts to understand that which is divine. Those attempts are welcomed because we have always been required to think, meditate, and contemplate the world around us; that’s the way to strengthen our faith. I am not a religious scholar or a philosopher, but if it helps me reach a certain point where I feel my faith is stronger, why not share it?

Our faith is the most important thing to us. It sets our moral compass, tells us what’s right and what’s wrong, and eventually, takes us to heaven. Islam specifically is a way of life; it’s a set of morals that define human rights and ethical behavior. When we say we’re practicing Islam, we don’t mean praying and fasting, we mean living by it in everything to the extent that work is considered an act of worship. Higher states of faith in Islam are not growing beards and praying in mosques, they are applying Islam in every act of a Muslim’s life with the intention of worshiping God. For example, if I wash a dish to spare my mother the trouble would mean that I would get rewarded for it because it is an act that pleases God.

So why is it we have all those rules? Because to be able to live by Islam in everything in our lives, we need to be disciplined. To be disciplined, we need to learn discipline. So when we commit to praying five times a day at specific times, we pay attention to the time, we try to be punctual, we learn how to manage our time so that we don’t end up missing a prayer or missing a meeting to pray. When we fast from daybreak till sunset, we learn how to control our urges to eat and drink even though we get hungry and thirsty so that we learn how to get what we want at the right time, we learn patience, we learn how to not follow every whim and instinct like animals, we learn how to resist trouble and temptation. When we pay Zakah, we give money to God. We give it willingly to those less fortunate to learn that our livelihood is in the hands of our Creator, we learn how to consider others, that we live in a community, and we learn sharing. Every action that is required of us, every ritual that we absolutely have to do teaches us above all to commit to something. In this case it is our faith and our God, in addition to the other lessons. We are taught to perform these rituals as children in order to grow up with them as habits that we stick to and can never drop. The commitment to these rituals fluctuates and oscillates. It goes up at times and goes down at times. My personal observation is that when it goes up, it is at the time when we are the most disciplined in our lives, when we are in control of everything we do and are fully capable of handling the world around us. When it goes down, when I miss a prayer or break the habits of reading Quran regularly, it is when I seem to “lose it” in other points in my life as well like work and other activities.

To be disciplined is to be focused, to be in control of our lives and to handle the outside world. To be disciplined is to know when to accept that some things are beyond our control because they are the wish of God. To be disciplined is to live life to the fullest and to be the best of humanity.

Technorati Tags: Islam,Muslim,Prayer,Fasting,discipline,habit,God,Allah,Faith

Quran: unchangeable and divine

I've heard this over a lot of forums and even from some non Muslim friends: why don't you remove some texts from Quran because they seem outdated, obsolete, and I even heard "bloody" as a comment? My reaction would be the same every time I heard or read something like that: FLABBERGASTED! I don't get how any human being can think about replacing divine words by ones written by mortals? How could they even think of omitting something that is divine in the first place? It's like "let's see how the world is like without the sun or the moon or PHYSICS!"

Now, I am perfectly aware of the fact that non Muslims believe that Quran is not divine text, so I've been thinking of ways to get them to understand how their "requests" are not possible. First, when it comes to one of the most controversial verses, the one that allows the beating of wives, the Sunna, which, if we consider the Quran to be the textbook of Islam, is the workbook or the manual on how to "act" according to Islam, has demonstrated that it is like a tap on the hand using something resembling a pencil, nothing major, no brutality involved, and by all means no disrespect or belittling of the woman. Since pain has always been known as a behavioral stimulus to the extent that there is a well known exercise to snap a rubber band on one’s wrist as stimulus for the brain to stop doing or thinking about something negative. Since excessive pain has been known to have negative side effects, wouldn't God know THAT?! On the other hand, if we disregard the Sunna for a second, and look at Quran only, how many other texts opposed to that one that actually promote mercy and compassion? So if we assume the man that beats his wife is using Quran as his only reference, then he is not doing by it because he's using it selectively by disregarding the mercy texts which outweigh that one single verse. What he is doing seems very similar to those promoting the removal of some verses because they are using something that is divine selectively, how wrong is that?!
I will not go into each "controversial" verse and explain it, I don't need to. I'm sure if someone wants to research the verse instead of lashing out, they'd find very sound explanations by people who are far more qualified than I am to respond to them. I want to tackle however the concept of time in a divine sense. People say Quran is obsolete and outdated, that it was meant for a certain period of time which was the time of the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. As a side note, I don’t understand why this is not being said about the Torah, but this not the issue. Throughout time, there have been prophets and messengers of God sent to people. Those prophets were human, their time on earth was limited, whether it was 900 years like Noah for example, or 30 like Jesus, they were sent for a limited time on earth. Even Muhammad, being a human, lived for 63 years only, 23 of which were the actual time he spent spreading the word of God through Islam. God sent Islam through Muhammad. Quran is a series of verses, words, a book. The words did not die with Muhammad, Islam did not die with Muhammad, they kept on living. And wouldn't God, the creator of time as we know it, KNOW that? So would the "Entity" that created time, create a book that would survive through 1500 years (up till now) and not know that it would become obsolete? Now that sounds like a bad developer creating a software that works for a specific version of an operating system and forgetting how the word moves on ?(apologizing for the software analogy already). That mentality would make sense if we were talking about a human, a mortal, not a god, and definitely not THE GOD who created the world in 6 days. So God must have known that times would change and that the book would live on. God, being the creator of everything and who knows all, who, since He has created time, probably understands how it works better than we mere mortals do, would probably know beyond doubt how time would progress, and how technology would be so and so. If you were someone who created something such as time, wouldn't you, as a human with a limited brain such as ours, consider building a time machine at least? Or maybe something to view how time progresses? Or maybe even have it all planned out on the outside and have humans see only one dimension of it (like the tail of an elephant which seems like a rope) without being able to view the entire thing and how it functions? Those are just some thoughts coming from a limited mortal mind of someone who is neither philosopher nor quantum scientist.
I mean, how many years of experience do we actually have in quantum science in the first place to go into a debate about time in the divine sense?! From an engineering point of view, you can't use a few lines of code and ask them to work alone without the rest of the code to have it actually work, this goes for machines, chemical formulae, and cooking recipes, so why are we asking to apply that on Islam as well?

Technorati Tags: Islam,Quran,Time,Divinity,unchangeable,Quantum physics,Muhammad

The Fear

وَلَنَبْلُوَنَّكُمْ بِشَيْءٍ مِنَ الْخَوْفِ وَالْجُوعِ وَنَقْصٍ مِنَ الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَنْفُسِ وَالثَّمَرَاتِ وَبَشِّرِ الصَّابِرِينَ

{البقرة:155}

“Be sure We shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil), but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere.” (2:155)

I was reading Quran and came across this verse. It’s definitely not the first time I read it, but it always seemed so obvious that loss of money, lives, and fruits in the sense of losing the harvest, was all a test. It all made sense that these things be tests to devout Muslims so that when we are patient, we get rewarded. After all, isn’t everything in life a test of faith? But it really struck me that fear is also a test. And I never realized it until I actually experienced it.

I don’t mean I’ve never been afraid, that would be just silly, especially for someone as neurotic as me. But it’s always been so easy to overcome my fear. So I’m afraid of an exam at school? Well I’ll just study the best I can and God will reward me as He sees fit. I’m afraid of not getting a job? It probably wasn’t meant for me anyway. This was how I handled my fear and Thank God it worked wonders because (again Thank God) I trust Him. This was all fine and dandy until I started experiencing fear of everything and nothing. I was afraid! That’s it, nothing more to it, no particular reason for my fear, there was nothing wrong. I was just afraid, and since I couldn’t figure out why, I was never able to find something to tell myself to make my fear seem irrational. That is by all means NOT a good feeling!

So when I came across this verse, it was like that cartoon light bulb for an AHA moment. I am a rational person that always seemed to rationalize everything. I always found out why I was afraid and always tried as hard as possible to make that “why” go away by rationally thinking it through. but this was not a test of my rational thinking techniques, this was a test of my faith. This is where I pray that God takes away my fear and just be patient. Some time later, another verse jumped at me:

الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَتَطْمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُمْ بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ أَلَا بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ

{الرعد:28}

"Those who believe, and whose hearts find satisfaction in the remembrance of Allah: for without doubt in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find satisfaction” (13:28)

This really was a test of my faith. I am supposed to be a believer, so the remembrance of God would be the only way to take my fear away. I am someone who believes every word of Quran and if it says that I will feel at peace with the remembrance of God then this is what I should do. It is also worth mentioning that at the time of my “fear”, I wasn’t very spiritually active. There was no doubt in my mind that this is what I should do.

It’s said the best method of remembrance is reading Quran, and that is exactly what I did. This makes so much sense since remembrance is about keeping God in our hearts and minds, and Quran is not just about mentioning Allah, it’s about all those stories and words that make us feel His divine power in everything we experience. I think I finally understand why fear can be such a huge test to everyone; for the believers who need it to find their way back to their spiritual side, and for the non-believers who will feel the true loss and void of not having a spiritual side in the first place; they will try so hard to find something rational to reassure them while the only thing that would take away their fear is the belief in God’s divine power.

In my case, was it really a test or just a divine reminder that I’m drifting and that I should pay attention? Probably a bit of both. My fear lead me to explore an idea that hadn’t occurred to me before, and to find a part that, at the time, was missing from my life. This was an important chapter in the journey of my spiritual growth (still in progress), but, God willing isA, it is a lesson well learned.

 

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