This Islam Thing:
What on Earth Is It?
(Bringing Islam to the World One Concept at a Time!
Taking the Qur'an to Every Home and Heart that Needs It --
And which One Does Not?)
Muslims are happy, Allah bless them. Doing their own thing and thinking their own thoughts. Often, without a care about what is going on in Allah's world.
And all the time they seem to be thinking and believing they are doing the right thing and they are on their way to Jannat.
But my own personal never-ending pain is this Islam Thing.
For, Islam seems to be one thing in the Qur'an and in the Hadith.
And Islam appears to be quite a different thing in the life and in the thinking of Muslims.
And then Islam appears to be an even more different thing -- a third thing almost -- in the preaching of Muslim Professional Clerics.
And there is a whole bunch of them now in America and growing by leaps and bounds all the time.
At the top of Muslim Professional Preaching is the Jumu'ah Khutbah -- the speech from the Pulpit during Jumu'ah Prayers. No one seems to care how the Jumu'ah Khutbah is done, or what gets said during the Khutbah?
As a result, I don't know which Islam to follow. Or where to turn for help.
I see waves of melancholy, if not actual depression, lapping at my heart. Is there no light in this tunnel? Where does this tunnel end, and how do we get out of it, if we ever do?
It seems to me we Muslims do two things:
First, no one tells us anything. We just don't like that. Right is what we say it is and Good is what we do. You are our friend if you join us and say what we say and do what we do or tell you to do.
But if you choose to speak or act different, then you are the enemy. Well, enemy may be a strong word. Let us just say, you are then not one of us. You are out of the fold.
This basically makes us our own God. Basically, doing whatever it is that we feel ling doing.
No one or nothing can put this predicament better than the Qur'an:
A-Fa-Ra-aita Manittakhaza Ilaahahu Hawaahu!
And then the second thing most Muslims seem to have figured out is that they are their own ultimate guides and advisors and counselors. That is each Muslim is his own Shaikh or whatever the title one prefers.
So, on the one hand, we are all God, and on the other hand, we are all Shaikh.
As for Qur'an and Hadith, those can wait. We are too busy marching to Jannah.
So, where does a fellow like me go then? Because I not only want to know what Islam really is, I also want answers why things are the way they are with Muslims.
And with the rest of the world.
It can be quite a painful thing to live like this, and quite lonely too, if you want to put it that way.
Let me leave you all with a Hadith, whose Arabic wording, to the extent I am able to recall it at this time, is as follows:
Bada-al Islamu Ghariban wa Sa-Ya'oodu Kamaa Bada-a.
Paraphrasing it:
"Islam began as a stranger and it will soon become a stranger again."
Is this all part of the return of that Ghurbah of Islam, meaning the period of time when Islam will once again become a stranger, unknown to most, and unrecognized by most?
Wassalam,
Husain Pasha
