DO YOU HAVE A SENSE OF URGENCY?

The bombing of GAZA and the steady methodical extermination of the children in GAZA has created a strange urgency in me to give out what I have in wisdom, donations and what I have as skills …….

Do you have a sense of urgency as you watch the bombs fall on GAZA and child after child succumbs to the phosphorus burns? Do you have a sense of urgency as you witness the head trauma in children with shrapnel piercing the tender bones of their heads or being shot by a sniper as they head their last ball to a friend on the beach? Or is it just me?

Watching this incessant toll of life being snuffed right left and center creates an urgency in me to prepare myself for the ultimate end and to give out the message of Allah that life is finite and we will abide in the gardens based on our good actions in this world. The message and its transmission is for which Allah created me. It is a bouquet of flowers the fragrance of which I want to share with my friends.

My hesitancy in the past has stemmed from having a sense of ample time to give the message and the fear of being labeled “self righteous”

While reading posts about GAZA on Facebook, I come across a photo of “a Muslim friend” posing with her son. He is watching his mother, a Muslim who is dressed like a non-Muslim. I am struck with the stark difference between the photo of this friend with her son and the mothers in GAZA of the boys on the beach. Their mothers not only wear hijab in the day outside in the sweltering heat just to be in obedience of Allah but also sleep in hijab so that incase they died or had to evacuate in the middle of the night they would be found fully covered in obedience to Allah.

I am impelled to share this with my friend whose photo I have come across. She is representing Islam to the non-Muslims as the wife of a mosque official. She is raising sons and daughters who watch her trot around uncovered no different than a non-Muslim. At middle age one would think wisdom and Islamic education would kick in. In witnessing the human landscape of GAZA radically change in this week I would think it would dramatically change other Muslims to take ibrat and to take cover under the mercy of Allah, bow their heads in obedience to him in complete humility, understanding the fragility of life and lifestyle.

Looking at her picture uncovered, middle aged, yearning to ape the non Muslims I wonder as to when she will take out the Islam that she was given as a family heirloom, from her safe deposit lock box at the bank dust it and use it?

I make the mistake that many have made of advising her to change before the option is taken out of her hands. I ask her to be on the outside what she is claims to be on the inside. All of this of course turns out to be presumptuous. I had no way of knowing what she was like on the inside, other than that she was married to a man in a leadership position in a mosque.

My other presumption was that I considered her a friend but from her stinging response I was mistaken in that too. I considered myself experienced in both the fickleness of life, and the temporariness of happiness, wealth and sons.

Thus I felt I an urgency to warn her that time may no longer be a friend and might be snatched from her hands before she had submitted to Allah in full obedience.

Watching the children fall in GAZA, I realized all the naimah that Allah has given us. From the absolute basics of breathing air that is not laced with a mist of phosphorus which sears the inside of our lungs and throat, to healthy children and grandchildren who are alive loving and beautiful to be with. In addition all the luxuries of daily life, warm delicious food and lots of it, palatial homes to repose in even though they belong to the banks, palatial mosques to go to, and good friends to fall back on, security and love.

What is the best way to express gratitude to Allah except to obey Him? Which means to be present where he wants you to be present and absent from where he wants you to be absent. To dress, eat and talk in ways that please Him and to avoid dressing eating and talking in ways that displeases him.

The higher the status of a Muslim and the more visible he or she is in the non-Muslim and Muslim community the more it becomes their responsibility to practice taqwa, obey Allah, avoid arrogance, ostentation and control the Nafs, as they are the uncrowned ambassadors of our faith.

So I threw a sentence in, something I have never done before: I suggested that since she was flag bearer of the Muslim community that she may considering donning the hijab and covering herself. Which turned out to have the effect of a whip on her and she bit back attacking my family and me.

My observation in the last nine years of objective study of myself and my fellow colleagues in medicine and their wives is as follows: Nafs and arrogance are the evil twins that sit on the shoulders of the doctors and their wives. These two evils constantly wave the dollar signs in front of them egging them on to seek more and more wealth and power, and scaring them that they do not have enough. They also manage to instill in them the insecurity that if they do not dress, act and behave in an unislamic manner they will no longer be popular and may even lose their wealth and status and all that goes with it.

So I ate dust for my advice. Thus the friend I advised……….. told me I had no right to advise her, shot back at my family and advised me to stick them with my advice rather than her.

Wonder what my readership would advise me.

Should I have kept my mouth shut? Should I have controlled my sense of urgency to give His message impelled by repeatedly seeing the fragile thread of life snapping day after day in GAZA without notice, and thus forever closing our book of Deeds? Should I have just been selfish and kept the message to myself and my family alone?

I gave the message of Allah as a bouquet of flowers to my ex friend, she crushed the bouquet under her feet and threw the destroyed petals at my face, very much like what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians only with much more violence.