Ramadan Reveries: Part 1 - Dawah

Dear Reader,

A belated Ramadan Mubarak if you are participating in this holy month of fasting. May Allah azza wa-Jal accept all our fasts and prayers and bless us with success in this life and in the Hereafter. Ameen. As it is Ramadan, the month in which the Qur'an was first revealed to Prophet Muhammed (saw) [2:185] about 1443 years ago, I thought I'd write a series of blog-posts about my thoughts and contemplations on Qur'anic verses, as Allah (swt) asks as to think deeply about what He has revealed to us: "Indeed, in that are signs for those people who reflect." [30:21] 

So on to today's topic: something to note when giving dawah. I've noticed that, often when talking to non-Muslims, especially Christians, they always seem to be surprised to hear that Islam is not a "new/isolated" religion but rather the further development/amendment of the ideals present by Judaism and Christianity. The "next evolutionary step" as some might put it. These three major religions actually stem from the same original source.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I can get into the true depths of this discussion, there are a few definitions that need to be clarified:

1. Allah is the Arabic word for the One God, while illah (as in La illah ha) means God. If you, dear reader, were to read an Arabic translation of the Bible, you'll see that the word illah is used in the place of God. So when we talk about Allah, we are not referring to some "Islam-centric deity" but rather to the same God as the one that Christians and Jews believe in. (Aside: the language that the Bible was originally written in was Aramaic, the ancestral language to Arabic, in which the word for God is rather similar to illah - though I'll have to get back to you on what exactly that word is.) 
2. The word Islam means complete submission to God, i.e. submitting our will, our soul, our lives, our wealth, our everything to God. Therefore, Islam isn't just the name of a religion, but is a way of life.
3. a Muslim is someone who submits to Allah. Therefore, in the Qur'an, the Prophets Abraham, Jacob and Joseph etc... are called Muslims, because they submitted their lives to God, and not because they were 'others' or belonged to this particular sect rather than another.    

Now that that is all cleared up, we can go back to our surprised Christian friend who asks "How can Islam be a development of Christianity, when we look so different and believe such different things?" There are, in fact, several ways to answer this question. But the best way I think, is the one I found last night. In Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 136 where God, Allah (swt), has told us exactly what to say when asked something like that question:

Say: "We believe in God and what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and the Twelve Tribes of Israel; and what was given to Moses [the Torah] and Jesus [the Bible] and what was given to the Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are in submission to Him."   

Click on the picture to read what it says.

So you see, we as Muslims - people who submit to God, believe in all the Prophets including Moses and Jesus (AS), with the singular addition of Mohammed (SAW), the final Prophet. And we also believe that all these Prophets bought with them only 1 Message: there is no God but the One God, or in Arabic, La illah ha ilallah.    

And as for looking different, I would in return pose a question: "Say you were walking down a street, and there was a nun and a women in full hijab/burka walking side-by-side in front of you. Would you be able to tell them apart from the back?" Most probably not, because the dress code of devout Christians and devout Muslims is rather similar. (Aside: I would have probably added devout Jews to this statement as well, but I am personally unsure of how devout Jewish women dress, and so I don't wish to make any assumptions.)
The only real difference here is, and I'm making a rather educated guess, that the number of Muslim women who chose to wear hijab or burka or niqab, far outnumber the number of Christian women  in the entire world who are nuns.    

  

Nida

Life as I see it: my Space edition - The Third

Dear Reader,

I think I'm going to turn this into an annual thing, and let see how long I can keep it up. If you, dear reader, are new to my blog and don't know what I'm talking about, I suggest you click on the links for my 2011 and 2010 "my Space editions". But you don't have to, it's entirely up to you. 

1) So I thought that this year, I'll start with my favourite part of my bedroom: the Fantasy Corner.  

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"You cannot Afford to Ignore It"

Dear Reader,

As Ramadaan is fast approaching (Hurray!!), I just thought I'd share a video with you, dear reader, that I saw a few years ago. Subhanallah, it had a profound, almost life changing, effect on me. And all because I decided not to ignore It. Please watch, it'll only take a 3 minutes of your life. Thank you.   

Since watching this video, I have been making a slow but continuous effort to,Inshallah,memorise most of the Qur'an. But not just as it is, but with it's English meaning too. So that when I recite a Surah or ayah off-by-heart, I know exactly what I'm saying. And I think that, even if one does not know the Arabic language, it is at least better to read/learn a reliable translation of the Qur'an, in the language you are most comfortable with. 

The importance of this struck me most, during my recent visit to Pakistan, when I stayed a night in my grandfather's village. It is the custom of all the village girls, to come every morning and learn the Qur'an from my grandmother. As noble as this deed is, and I pray that she gets rewarded for it, I couldn't help but notice that these 15 or so girls (between the ages of 3-10 years old) were reciting the Qur'an as if they were sing-song nonsense-words, with many mispronunciations and no love/understanding of what they were doing. It was a thing they did because their mothers did it before them, because it was the custom, because they had to do it or they couldn't go out to play. 

This made me incredibly sad. When these girls grow up, what are they going to teach their children about Islam? If their husbands beat them and treat them badly, then say its permissible in Islam, they will have no way to fight back and tell them that it is not, because they do not know what the Qur'an or hadiths say. If someone with some standing in the community tells them that it's part of their religion to go and put flowers on the graves of their ancestors and pray to them. They will do it, unaware of how wrong that is. All because they do not know, for themselves, what the Qur'an or hadiths actually say.

And this isn't just a problem in that particular village. No. It's a cultural problem in the entirety of Pakistan, that arises from ignorance of the religion and ignoring the religion. 

But lets look at it this way. Say your signing a contract, whether its for a loan, a house, a job etc.... We always read the terms and conditions so that we know what is expected from either party. Just like that, the Qur'an is our contract with God (swt). And just like any other contract, it clearly states what is expected of us, what the benefits are for fulfilling the conditions and what will happen to us if we break the terms of the agreement. But this is the ultimate contract as it quite literally concerns our entire lives, where the rewards are extremely bountiful and the consequences dire.    

That is why we cannot afford to ignore it. And if we do not ignore it, we cannot afford to keep it to ourselves

Nida      

six Styles of Writing, and Me

Dear reader,

1) When is comes to writing - a thing that I do a lot of - the easiest form for me is, believe it or not, poetry and verse. Subhanallah, sometimes I find that even my thoughts are following some sort of rhyme scheme or meter, trochiac pentameter (with a lot of causurae) seem to be my subconcious' favoured style. (Aside: if you didn't understand anything from the last sentence, click on the links or over here.) When I confessed this to my mother the other day, she gave me such an odd look, as if I was a person she didn't recognise. Kind of heart breaking, given that she is the person I love second most in the world. But, in order to show you, dear reader, how natural poetry is to me, I present to you a poem that I wrote about Writing Poetry: 

Sometimes the most beautiful things

Are those with no inherent cause

Are spontaneously inspired

A single thought that brings

Words upon words without a pause.

So that is when these poems

Emerge and grow out of my brain

They take on life and flutter around

And align like gems upon a chain

But in my mind they cannot remain,

So I cease and caress the words

Nurture those seeds into a stem

Then my pen begins to caper

As I coax the words onto paper

That was bland and lifeless without them... 

2) The next style of writing, that I suppose I'm modestly good at, is description, in particular scenic description.I believe that description forms the majority of a piece of fictional writing. Without it, the piece would be only half-imagined and only half-conveyed. I know a lot of people who struggle with writing description. I often struggle with it myself. For some people, it's difficult to take exactly what they see in their minds and put words to it. For that, I recommend reading a dictionary and thesaurus, keep one close when writing or try thefreedictionary.com. For me, where the problem mainly lies is that my descriptions become far too long and wordy. Trust me, this is a BIG problem, because then the reader either loses interest or gets lost in the convoluted sentences. Which is the last thing any writer wants. And also, it diminshes the power and meaning of what we're trying to say. Here is a piece from Life in Conversations that, ironically, I struggled to get just right.    

She sat there,in her comfy corner seat, gazing out through the right-angled French windows; the precarious ones that over-looked the front of the house. Today she was looking out onto a silent Saturday-morning street. The summer sun causing everything to radiate with a warm glow. As she watched, a strident gust of wind swept through the yawning trees, pulling petals away from blossoms and across the sapphire sky, so that they resembled snow falling upwards. It was a perfectly inspirational moment.

Yet Nabiha’s normally spry pen hung over the page, stalled mid-sentence.

So she just sat there, her face serene, her skin soaking up the sun, her hair swathed over her neck like a blanket of silky scarlet-brown flames. Her shinny new note book lay open in her lap, with only the first page and a half filled with stunted-but-serpentine scribbles. The shaky tapping of her foot was the only indication of the frustration pent up inside her. Her brain sprinted and scrambled through hundreds of possible solutions but none of them fitted comfortably, seamlessly into the dilemma she had created. She was stuck. 

3) Then comes dialogue. I love to read dialogue. I love writing dialogue even more. Probably because it allows  the writer to reveal a person/character's personality without saying banal things like 'she liked to read the news' or 'he was witty'. Also, dialogue is one of those places where, as a writer, I can explore and develop characters and their relationships. Most of the time, when I'm in the flow of a conversation, I find that it can lead me and my characters to places I had not realised/planned, Alhumdulillah. I'm actually, at the moment, experimenting with dialogue within poetry, since I've finally begun working of my epic ballad(which I talk about here). It's called The Legend of Sirene and is the fourth "book" in fantasy quartet Chronicles by Anamika. Here's a sample from the first chapter: 

“I am one of the Sultan’s elite guards.

What you’re doing could be seen as treason.

Meddling in my mission will leave you scarred.

So it’s time for you to find your reason.”

That’s when Conla felt a prick on his chest,

And saw the knife she had pulled on him.

He had to admit, he was quite impressed,

And his language she had spoken to him!

He faced her fully, her arm he held tight

So that she could not try to escape him,

Though, he had not the will or strength to fight.

Asking how she knew his tongue, on a whim.

“How and what I know, is my own business,

Now please, will you kindly let go of me.”

“I cannot, for that I ask forgiveness.

But I must take you to MannCarh, you see.”

At his words, her round eyes were all ignite,

She suddenly stopped struggling to be freed.

Overcome by an idea so very bright,

Those pretty eyes, shone with something like greed.  
...

Please, please, dear reader, let me know what you think. I really need feedback on this to see if my experiment is working well or not.            

4) I suppose the next style of writing for me, has to be informal, non-fictional writing, like this blog or e-mails/comments to friends. I really enjoy this sort of thing because here I can just be simple-old  me, just someone who is speaking thier thoughts, if not out loud, then in at least in virtual ink. I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy writing it. And even if you don't, it okay because your opinion on this probably won't stop me from writing, though I might try harder to improve.
  

5) Truth  be told, I'm pretty bad at writing action pieces where there is alot of movement and snap decision making. I think that this maybe because actions are not a verbal/wordy thing, and are much better seen than read. Take comic books, for example. They are well known for their superheroes and action-packed story lines mainly because they are so visual. In a comic book, you don't expect to find a long debate on the purpose of life and love, using metaphorical examples that hold little true meaning. But you can get action in novel form and, more often than not, it's vital to the story line. As I'm just beginning to realise, myself. Before, most of my novel ideas avoided action, preferring dialogue and conversation as a means to an end. But the fantasy quartet that I just spoke about, requires a lot of action. There's wars, spies, demons, pirates, chase scenes, flying dragons and hand-to-hand combat involved! So, yeh, I'm attempting to write action, but taking slowly, one step at a time. As an example, I give you the opening paragraph of the first novel in the quartet, called The Legend of Sharon: 

That regal buck had no idea what was coming to him, as he sipped away at the stream, his branching antlers skimming the water. Out here in the foothills of the CahnineCarh, a tall mountain range in the southern lands of MannCarh, the green woodland rang with its own music, oblivious to all that went on in the world at large. And as Sharon nocked an arrow in her long bow, she too was oblivious to everything but the buck. She held her breath, took aim, and let it go as the arrow flew from her fingers, and straight into the throat of the animal. A quick and painless death was her preferred style... 

6) Yet the style of writing that I am the worst at, is the one I have to do most of all: non-fictional, scientific/medical writing. It is the antithesis of poetry. And I absolutely hate it. My words don't flow out easily like they do with all the other styles. It just does not come naturally to me, for some reason. I have plenty of friends who can write fantastic scientific treaties and earn the best marks, whereas I'm always struggling to scrape out the right words from my mind. And I've been told by my professors an unaccountable number of times, that my writing is just too "flowery" or "unscientific" or "round-about".   

And really long essays are the even worse, because I quickly lose focus and my mind ends up wondering towards my next poem-in-the-making or an idea for a blog post (in fact, this is exactly what I'm doing at the moment). I think this might be because, scientific writing is just so bland and clinical; you have write very to-the-point sentences, bound in rigid structure, with no space for creativity. I'm not saying that scietific writing itself is bad. It is very important in this modern world of constant innervation. And I greatly admire those who can write scientifically and do it well. Probably because it is something that I can't manage to do. It's something that just does not sit well with my vibarent and flowing personality.

I truly have know idea how I've managed to get through medical university and to have done well! To have almost completed an MSc!! Sometimes I can't help thinking that maybe there are two different Nidas existing in this one body. One that is calm, studious, religious and shy; who wants nothing more than to curl up with a good book. She's the 'Nida' that most people meet on a daily basis. The other seems to be quite crazy and cheeky and loud and creative; who wears bright colours on dull days and wants to run around in green fields and empty beaches. But most of all, loves to paint, sketch and write about the made-up things she sees in her mind.

How they two seem to co-exist so harmoniously, is a mystery to me.

Nida 

P.S. - Please don't forget to tell me what you think about my experiment. You can do this by clicking on the comments bottom below. Thank you.