Grateful To Allah

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Rahiim

Asalaamu alaikum.

This past week, I have talked at great length with three wonderful friends. I don’t use the term “friend” lightly. I know it is common discourse to refer to anyone you spend any time with as a friend, but I am a bit more cautious. My co-workers, while I may like them, are my co-workers. An acquaintence is still just an acquaintence. Even those I consider my brothers and sisters in deen are still not always necessarily “friends”. Afterall, you can love a sibling, know that you’d do anything for them because of your bond, but have to admit you still don’t particularly like each other. Thankfully, I don’t have to say that about my own brother, who really is one of my best friends, LOL, but you must concede that is not always the case with siblings.

To me a friend is someone that I have let in to a certain level of depth within me. They know some of my less desireable traits. Though certainly I am ashamed that they would ever become aware of them, I realize that they accept me flaws and all. More importantly, they call me out when those flaws are taking over, they gently push me towards growth and improvement. They do not lie to me to make me think I am better than I am, and yet they do not shame or mock me for being imperfect. On the other side, I hope that they feel that I provide that same level of support to them, inshaAllah.

To me a friend is the person who calls me to good. The one with whom remembrance of Allah is frequent and natural, the one with whom the Sunnah is understood, and the one who is a reminder of higher character. I am blessed to have five friends like that. FIVE! SubhanAllah, can you even imagine?

Where the age old joke is how lucky we are to have one true friend, I have five, mashaAllah. Five people, who are very different from each other, but who all share one important element: Islam. They don’t all follow the same madhab or the sit in the company of the same shaykh, or even have the opportunity to sit in the company of a shaykh at all. We don’t “hang” together like teenagers who feel safer in numbers. These are blessed, one-to-one friendships for the most part, though their paths may cross and they may know of each other. They are not scholars, nor celebrities, nor anything so “popular” that would bring me prestige by naming them as my friends. They are just humble, everyday Muslims who exemplify brotherhood and sisterhood, naturally, perhaps without even realizing it.

These are five people I have been blessed to know, to learn from, to share my heartbreak, drama, and happiness with. Five people who may not even know how much they impact me. Five people for whom I will say du’as regularly, even should they fade from my life at some point, should we go our own ways, who I will never forget inshaAllah. Five people for whom I am forever grateful to Allah for having allowed to enter my life. Five people who are gifts and deserve to hear that they are loved for the pleasure of Allah.

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Rahiim

In life, in one’s job, in one’s family heirarchy, in distance from one’s teacher or other loved one…

Being pleased with where we are, knowing this is where we are meant to be…

This is hard for me, I really struggle with it. I yearn to have a better job that uses my skills, isn’t so stressful, pays better. But what lessons am I missing by thinking only on how much I want a change? Perhaps this job is supposed to try my patience so that I will improve.

I yearn to be near my Shaykh, but what awesome opportunities for growth am I missing right here in my own community?

In so many facets of our lives, we are worried for trying to “get past this”, to move on, to move up, but what are we missing that is right in front of us?

So instead, I complain about what I am lacking, complain about my situation, complain about wanting something more, something better, something else…

How ungrateful am I that I deny the blessings that exist in my life, as it is, right now?

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Rahiim

I don’t think I express it often enough, but I am so grateful to be a Muslim, so grateful that Allah opened my heart to this beautiful path.

This evening I went to my son’s school concert, which was at the Catholic church where he attends school. Now, I know there are alot of Muslims who would say that I shouldn’t have gone to begin with, but I support my son just as he supports me, and I go as a Muslim. I wore my abaya and niqaab and very few people haven’t gotten used to seeing me that way already from his basketball games and other such events.

They are celebrating the church’s 120th year. So it was a bigger event than my mother had realized it would be when she asked me to attend, just thinking that the children’s choir was going to sing a few “end of the school year” songs. The children’s choir and bell choir performed, as well as the adult church choir, the “contemporary” adult choir (can I just say that I find it ridiculous enough when kids do motions during songs, but it’s really too much when the adults are doing motions and jazz hands while singing? Ick), and a smattering of other little groups. Some of the songs were Catholic and some were secular (the appropriatness of singing purely secular music in a church is actually, I confess, another thing that makes me glad I’m not Christian anymore - is nothing sacred anymore?).

A young woman who has been singing in the church since she was 10 performed one of my favorite songs from The Phantom of the Opera. Then a very talented young man played a song from a Shakespeare play. I haven’t heard the violin in so long and it really is one of my most favorite instruments… I confess that I cried during the Phantom song (which is very romantic, but could as easily be about something other than losing a human lover), and closed my eyes during the Shakespeare song. Listening to the violin with my eyes closed, I pictured myself in a beautiful natural setting, with flowers, trees, my bare feet touching the grass, the smell of the earth close, butterflies and birds around. As I imagined this nature scene, all I was thinking was “subhanAllah, You have given us such beauty, such blessings, in Your creation”.

When they sang Ave Maria and Salve Regina, both songs I loved when I was young, I thought of the high status that Mary has in our Islamic tradition. I wondered if I might find an opportunity to talk about this with my parents, to do daw’ah in this regard. We were not Catholic when I was a child, but I was very attracted to Catholicism and one reason was because of Mary. But in our Islamic tradition, we have so much more “meat to her story”, and such a beautiful understanding of who she was and why she was chosen to be the mother of a great Prophet (peace be upon him). I love that in Islam we actually talk about who she was besides just being a mother, that we recognize her traits and devotion to Allah as a woman and sincere believer, not just “some random woman who was chosen”, which is often about as deep as some Christian tradition ever gets. In Christianity, she was just a vessel. In Islam she is a role model for all women. Even as they sing her praises for giving birth, we honor her for so much more but within a limitation that does not set her up next to Allah either. I was so at peace sitting there listening to the songs but thinking of the reality of her story, and trying to find a lesson for myself in it.

Anyway, throughout the program, I was reminded constantly of Allah, and how being a Muslim makes me different from those sitting around me. How although they all appeared happy, even excited, in their worship, it didn’t make sense to me. I cannot any longer remember why I ever did believe that Jesus (peace be upon him) was the “son of God” because it is such a foreign and almost laughable (no disrespect meant) concept to me now. All I could think was how much more beautiful the ilahis are that are sung in the dergah, than the hymns sung in this church, how much more sacred our worship seems than the secularizing of programming within the church. And I made it home just as the Maghrib adhan was going off and felt so much more where I belonged, so much more appreciative of hearing the adhan and its call to pure worship.