Reflection 29 – My Uncensored Message To My Extended Family

For someone who never liked confrontations, I have to admit that it is much easier for me to write many of those reflections compared to what I would have to go through in case these reflections were verbalized! Maybe it‘s Allah‘s divine plan and wisdom that I loose my speech and overcome this vulnerability through writing. At any rate, it has been too long for me to consider people’s feelings way more than what Allah might expect from me in certain circumstances. Now, imagine you’re in a building catching fire, and some of the people with you inside are not aware of it or they think it is a joke. In such a situation, what would a sane person who loves others do? He might tell them first lightly, but when push comes to shove he will probably push them out of the building. But then someone would ask, what is this fire you are talking about? So, let me begin first by addressing my family and then come back to this fire!
First of all, I consider myself a very lucky person. I believe one of the main strength points I had throughout my life, was having a relatively close and harmonious family relations on both my dad’s and mom’s side and especially more on my dad’s side given the narrow age difference. I have great uncles, aunts, and cousins, who have always loved me. But this tough ALS journey made this love to grow and this care and concern to simply burst out! They have all helped me in different ways and forms. In some cases, they exerted an enormous effort searching for potential clinical trials and communicating with different stakeholders to get me into these trials. In other cases, they provided me with valuable information on possible alternative therapies and the alike. They offered social support as well as financial that I will eternally be indebted for. All in all, I‘m very happy and proud to have them as my family. But what about the fire? For this, I will have to take you back around exactly twenty years ago (oh my God, time really flies by!).
Summer 2002. I’m literally fed up with my lifestyle! I began to get some of those existential questions ; what is the purpose of my life? ; what value does my life have? ; along with other similar questions. I began to find answers in religion, in what would later turn out to be the greatest shift in my life. The more I read and learned, the more my thirsty soul was being satisfied. Things began to fall in their places and gradually life began to be meaningful. The joy and happiness I found in religion was amazing! And once this spark gets ignited, the typical behavior would be to convey these wonderful feelings to your loved ones; and definitely this means both your nuclear and extended family members. A simple and easy task, right? Well, not really! I learned that what I would perceive as logical, others could see quite differently. What made sense to me, did not make sense to them! I would literally cry out of sadness as I saw some of them drifting away from religion! And this could easily lead to frustration and holding grudges towards others. I also have to admit that my expectations were pretty naïve at that time (this is my way to think of myself nowadays as being wise and mature ). It took me some time to realize and understand what was really going on. Hopefully, I can give you the gist of it. The last one hundred years witnessed great events and changes on the global scale with two world wars, the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate, the great rise of Western powers, as well as other significant events. Accordingly, within Muslim countries, there arose to my view two significant types of people (of course I am assuming here some major generalizations). On the one hand, we have those people that concerned themselves with the literal meaning of religious texts and focused more on the rituals thereby abandoning (unfortunately and probably unintentionally) many of the basics in ethics and behavior. On the other extreme, we have those who focused solely on ethics and behavior and totally neglected the ritual side as decreed in religious texts. Well, both are WRONG! And as you might have guessed, the right answer is somewhere in between. And this second group is where I see many of my relatives and old friends. And honestly, this really kills me!
Of course, I don‘t claim to be Mr. Right, who owns the truth. But my limited knowledge of religion has taught me that religion intermixes both dimensions and there must be a hereafter with heaven and hell as a way of assessment for people’s actions. We can debate and argue why would a merciful God create hell fire in the first place. However, our long discussions would not change the fact that it DOES EXIST whether we believe it or not and whether we take such an issue lightly or not. It‘s really a tragedy that we have created such artificial boundaries between the purely spiritual and practical aspects of religion. I hope this message from my side to act as a wake-up call for those who I truly love, admire, and look up to because of their amazing qualities! It‘s a message filled with love and concern for those around me to rethink some of these important and urgent issues and maybe view things with a different lens.
Do you still remember that horrible fire? Well, there is a hadeeth (saying) by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), in which he gives the parable of him and the rest of humanity as a man who lit a fire so that insects and moths began to fall into it. As the man tried to pull them out, they overcame him and rushed into it. By the same token, the Prophet holds on to our waists and belts but we still rush into the fire! As the carriers of the Prophet’s legacy, it‘s the role of each and every individual first to look out for themselves as well as others so that we don’t end up in that fire!
Sorry it took me so much to deliver my thoughts but it is a heavy topic. May Allah guide us all to his straight path!