IN THE SHADOWS
Deliberately rejecting truth or guidance deadens the spiritual faculty and blocks it from more profitable influences.
How do I fair when my proclivities stumble from the shadows into the light? Do I embrace the unveiling or scuttle vampirically back to the mansions of my vaulted heart and continue to endear the irresponsible life?
When I persist in using falsehood as a bulwark, I save myself from addressing the myths within me and continue living an inauthentic life.
To shield myself from this ignominy, I can pray, ‘Our Lord, indeed You know what we conceal and reveal, and nothing is hidden from You on the earth or in the heavens.1 Our Lord, let not our hearts deviate after You have guided us. Bestow upon us from Yourself mercy. Indeed, You are the Bestower.2 Our Lord, grant us from Yourself mercy and prepare for us from our affair right guidance.3 Our Lord, perfect for us our light and forgive us. Indeed, You have power over everything.4‘
PURE JOY
We may strive for big-ticket dreams and defer joy and contentment once we attain them.
But deep joy is not fettered to achievements. Neither is it the joviality we see on display in our natural world that has turned superficial: people sold on advertisements with A-Grade practised smiles and choreographed happiness. Joy is intrinsic to gratitude and our willingness to acknowledge it in all circumstances, whether the moment is simple or pleasant, wrought with pain or grief, or rapturous.
It is on anvils of struggle and the forges of life where pure joy is hammered out deep within our marrow. When we recognise we can mine it whenever and wherever we trek on life’s journey, the result will be faces ornamented with authentic smiles powerful enough to weather adversity and deposit hope in the world.
The Prophet (s) carried this joy within and expressed it with a smile to everyone he passed by. He did not postpone it until the end of his mission or when God revealed the final verse of the Quran to him.
Throughout Muhammad’s life, especially during the twenty-three years of his prophethood, he (s) carved joy from life’s ebbs and flows and forever cast light on our world.
‘Last summer I spent ten days traveling the lands under Israeli rule. What I saw was hauntingly familiar. For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel is a state where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person.’ Ta-Nehisi Coates, African American journalist and author
For nearly ninety per cent of the South Africans who lived during Apartheid, Mr Coates’ account of his ‘Enlightenment Travels’ was their reality too, and for many, it still is.
I can’t help but juxtapose Apartheid South Africa and Apartheid Israel and the South African white minority’s attitude towards both. For me, the picture that has emerged is deeply unsettling. It is evident that a large percentage of white South Africans, even thirty years after the dismantling of Apartheid and one year into a Palestinian genocide, still choose Israeli Apartheid. Their position reveals that if South Africa relapsed into olden times, they would again be on the wrong side of history and morality.
The realisation that there exists a subversive white element sympathetic to the Apartheid Israeli state is frightening for a non-white like me who has been a victim of the same tyranny by many of these sympathisers. I have struggled with PAT (Post-Apartheid Trauma), and white South Africa’s position on Palestine has forced me to deal with the trauma all over again.
Nonetheless, Gaza has lifted the veil, and though I must again confront PAT, I am grateful that the Palestinian question has exposed the true face of post-Apartheid South Africa like never before.
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Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority, the award-winning 2006 documentary film, is an eye-opener for anyone ignorant of the history of the lands under Israeli rule. Watch here
Until next week, InshaAllah
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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