Calm yourself, He says to me

If you play, you play for keeps

Take the gun, and count to three

I’m sweating now, moving slow

No time to think, my turn to go

And You can see my heart beating

You can see it through my chest

Said I’m terrified, but I’m not leaving

I know that I must pass this test

So just pull the trigger

Say a prayer to yourself, He says

Close your eyes, sometimes it helps

And then I get a scary thought

That He’s here means He’s never lost

As my life flashes before my eyes I’m wondering will I ever see another sunrise?

So many won’t get the chance to say goodbye

But it’s too late to think of the value of my life

And You can see my heart beating

- R -

Ever since she came into light in my part of the world, I have paid little attention, if at all, to her and what she has to say. Hirsi Ali, to me, is just another ex-Muslim now out to slam Islam and I don’t believe it makes her and those like her, an expert in my religion. To be fair, I don’t even believe any Muslim is an expert in Islam, nor spokesperson and police, for other Muslims. I could well be one of those people, thinking I’m all high and mighty.

I picked this book a few months back. It is well written, Hirsi Ali is a good storyteller. It took me an extra couple of weeks just get on with the last few chapters of this book, starting with one titled “Leaving God”. So poignant, I couldn’t bring myself to read further. When I finally got through it, it wasn’t nearly half as bad as I thought it would be. Apparently, I had gotten myself anxious for nothing. This entry took weeks more of procrastination. Check-and-balancing the whats and whys; and how I could present my comments. Honestly, I am not doing anybody any favours, but for myself. Moreover, her tone is rather meek, so I was not quite all heated up to start punching the keyboard.

This book brings you through Hirsi Ali’s childhood to her days as a Dutch politician and ends with her eventual move to the United States. Her abandonment of God is no different from the usual – it began with questioning Islam and witnessing discrepancies, double-standards and injustices first and foremost of the Muslims around her. Somewhere along the way, she lost her faith in God.

Don’t take that as the sum of the entire book. It is a biography so you will find the inevitable ups and downs of life. I don’t mean to oversimplify her life story, nor do I wish to take her to my breasts  – not that she cares for me to do so! Life is tough so get over it. I can be certain she understands that better than I do.

Apostasy is a big deal in Islam. Personally, I think religion is exclusively a personal choice. The Qur’an says there is no compulsion to religion. In my humble opinion, that is all there is to it. We can choose to hold on to a spiritual faith, whichever we are most comfortable with, or we can choose not to. I believe, the only thing we cannot deny is God, the higher being that is nothing like our wretched selves. Again, am I oversimplifying things? Must I get myself lost in some interpretation or another? I don’t think so, because we don’t know. We can make assumptions, but we cannot know for sure.

God is One. That to me, is Islam. The fact that I choose to follow the teachings of Muhammad (peace be upon him) is secondary.

Toward the end of the book, Hirsi Ali states:

The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.

…

I also don’t want my reasoning to be dismissed as the bizarre ranting of someone who has been somehow damaged by her experiences and who is lashing out. People often imply that I am angry because I was excised, or because my father married me off. They never fail to add that such things are rare in the modern Muslim world. The fact is that the hundreds of millions of women around the world live in forced marriages, and six thousand small girls are excised everyday. My excision in no way damaged my mental capacities; and I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.

My central motivating concern is that women in Islam are oppressed. That oppression of women causes Muslim women and Muslim men, too, to lag behind the West. It creates a culture that generates more backwardness with every generation. It would be better for everyone – for Muslims, above all – if this situation could change.

[page 348-349]

No one can argue with that fact. Maybe Hirsi Ali blames Islam for this. I blame the Muslims.

Women have little or no value, regardless of colour, creed and geography. We are for satisfying men’s animalistic lusts, or to be impregnated as a testimony that men’s reproductive organs are functioning at its full capacity. As if being taken by force is not bad enough, some of us have come to voluntarily feed men’s constant need for a hard-on (and it seems that their erections are not necessarily limited to the precursor of sexual activities). In the West, that is called liberalisation of women. So no, I don’t believe the treatment of women in the West is anymore superior than that of the Muslim world or anywhere else. Here, I say Muslim world as opposed to Islamic world, because I don’t believe that Islam the religion teaches the subjugation and oppression of women. People on the other hand, or in this instance the Muslims, are clever to take things further and then label it as original.

Surely we are not too blind or too stupid to see that a great portion of the atrocities and misfortunes in this world, since the beginning of time, is masterminded and perpetrated by the male specie. You may say that I am cynical. As a matter of fact, I too wonder if I am so. That I dwell on the negatives. That I am a man-hater. That I stretch the truth. There are a few good men out there who do great things too. But good things don’t need fixing whereas fcuked up things are beyond fixing. Gotta throw ‘em out and start over. Okay, I’m rambling. Shut up.

Just when I manage to push aside that ugly thought, I am slapped by another instance.

Watch this 60 Minutes clip.

I don’t know…

I would sooner lose faith in humanity than to denounce my Creator.

Buy a copy

Vanity

A Sufi sage once asked his disciples to tell him what their vanities had been before they began to study with him.
The first said: ‘I imagined that I was the most handsome man in the world.’
The second said: ‘I believed that, since I was religious, I was one of the elect.’
The third said: ‘I believed I could teach.’
And the fourth said: ‘My vanity was greater than all these; for I believed that I could learn.’
The sage remarked: ‘And the fourth disciple’s vanity remain the greatest, for his vanity is to show that he once had the greatest vanity.’

p47

Buy a copy!

Saying of Sheikh Ziaudin

Self-justification is worse than the original offence.

p153

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pride

Do not boast that you have no pride, because it is less visible than an ant’s foot on a black stone in a dark light.

And do not think that bringing it out from within is easy, for it is easier to extract a mountain from the earth with a needle.

p105

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reward

Child, look for no reward from A,

If you are working in the house of B.

p94

Buy a copy!

Self-justification is worse than the original offence.

The Way of the Sufi, p153

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here, I need to stop.

]]> http://bloophynix.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/stop/feed/ 0 bLooPhynix http://bloophynix.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/the-pay-and-the-work/ http://bloophynix.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/the-pay-and-the-work/#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 02:34:02 +0000 bLooPhynix http://bloophynix.wordpress.com/?p=202 Continue reading »

A horse once met a frog. The horse said: ‘Take this message to a snake for me, and you can have all the flies which surround me.’

The frog answered: ‘I like the pay, but I cannot say that I can complete the work.’

- Abdul Qadir of Gilan –

The Way of The Sufi by Idries Shah

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At this juncture, I feel like I am living in a world I don’t belong. Indeed, I have no choice but to be here. I am living in a limbo. My body is here but my mind and soul is rejecting much of what the world as we know it now stands for. What the world has to offer, I don’t need. What the world is going through now, I despise and it sickens me to my stomach even more knowing that I am just as much involved and guilty. But I have to assimilate because like it or not, here I am.

That’s what happens when you let your mind wander off and you start to overanalyse everything. I am a slave to my desires. My desire to step out of the comfortable little world normal people live and thrive in, going about their mundane lives. I couldn’t be content just living a simple life. I have to be complicated, sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. Concerning myself with matters that do not concern me. What I get is information overload, the facts and realities of “how things really are” is overwhelming, conflicting, mindboggling, heartwrenching. The evils of man - lies, deception, greed and cruelty of the human race. The abuse of our borrowed minds and bodies by God’s Mercy. The human soul, that which distinguishes man from animal blurs in the name of wealth and power. We happily set ourselves up for destruction and we are so damn thrilled about it.

I make du’a to Allah, to not veil my eyes, to show me only the truth, in both spiritual and worldly sense. The truth is what I get. Unfortunately, it also comes with a high price. So deeply has it affected me that I fail to see the good in people, doing much injustice to myself.

Suffice to say, I am not up to it. To stomach the realities of this world, I would either have to be utter ruthless or have a solid spiritual foundation to cushion the recoil.

Allah knows what I do not.

I long for the person I was upon my return from Saudi. And the tranquility I had failed to sustain.

]]>

-Al Bukhari & Muslim

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On that note, Aidil posed a question to me some months ago:

If you know someone who wants to kill himself and happened to walk in on him while in midst of a suicide attempt, would you try to stop him and call for help?

Later, I asked my Aussie friends. All three of them have the same answer – the only appropriate answer there is, I suppose. My own response was that I would let them be, if I am not going to be accountable for my acts. That is how hateful I have become. In my mind, those who are suicidal merely seek attention and deep in my putrid heart, I wish for them to do it right and get it over and done with if they want to die so badly. I dislike attention seekers.

Praises be to Allah for Riyad-us-Saliheen, which help counter these evil thoughts and evil whispers in my heart. It struck me how easily I wish death upon the one who has me vexed. How lightly I take my relationship with people, so much so that when it comes to a halt (rather, when I decide I’ve had enough – like everything has to be in my terms, gawddammits!), all memory is erased as if that person had never entered my life. How, if I could, I would flee to some faraway place where I have no attachment to anybody and be alone. How, in my fantasy (God forbids), I am a lone assassin or some Amazonian warrior princess (thanks to Xena). How unaffected I am to the loss of family and friends through death. I cry in fear for myself, but never for the loss itself. I fear that my heart has gone cold and hardened.

A Muslim sister once asked why I attend religious classes. I told her that I need to be reminded. Again, she asked why. At that point, she had lost me. Whether or not there was wisdom behind her why’s, I don’t know. I felt my answer was sufficient and I didn’t have the patience to find out. Her disposition and lifestyle had caused me to block out her queries pertaining to my faith. In short, I had judged her. And yes, I was defensive.