Sometimes we stress so much on the wickedness of sin that we forget to emphasize on the limitless mercy and forgiveness of a loving God. We become trapped in a bog of self-condemnation while trying to limit the mercy of Allah to our own narrow dimension. In reality, we are not building up repentance but a whole load of neuroses in ourselves and in others we are trying to help.
Sometimes we are so slavishly afraid of Allah that we are afraid to love Him. Fear is basically a lack of hope. Living in fear of Allah (not out of His Bountifulness, but out of despair) only makes us wallow in bitterness and trapped in a cycle of depression and anxiety. But faith, hope and love of Allah give us the courage to face up to ourselves and to life.
The Qur'an and hadiths teach us how to love Allah, our family, our neighbors, our friends and ourselves in the way He wants us to; and the deepening of this capacity to love is a continuing, never-ending process. In order to love others, and to respect them as that love requires, we must recognize their special relationship with God. Things are never quite as they seem to us. We think we know everything about everyone, that we know best. We don't.
Allah calls each individual and puts the desire to be accepted by Him in his or her heart - but before we can recognize this in others, we must find it in ourselves. We have to experience the faithfulness of Allah towards us, no matter how unfaithful to Him we have been! If we wish to see those around us as we should, we should try to see them through the 'eyes of God'. Only then can we truly love them.
That is why it is also necessary to see ourselves through the 'eyes of God'. To bear witness to Allah and to help others to know Him and come to Him, we need to live with Him and stay with Him. This is what we call Taqwa; God-consciousness. This is why we accept the discipline of the five pillars, and try to get closer to Allah's mystery and love by it.
You may have been born a Muslim, but what you've heard and observed is useless unless you belive it and act on it for yourself. No one can do this for you, on your behalf, because each one of us has to make his or her own response to Allah - first hand! We can not be second hand Muslims.
It we feel lonely or isolated, our prayer is the end to our isolation. It means living our daily life with Someone. He is the only One we can find in our own heart, to Whom we can tell anything that is in us. He, of course, is always present, even if we do not realise it. Our prayer hopefully makes us aware of His Presence, which we might not realise if we did not pay attention.
It is the living Presence of Him who knows everything about us, and from Whom we recieve everything. That is why we should be humble - not because we want to concentrate on our weakness or helplessness or poor talents, but a joyful humility because He is so great and yet so close to us. It does not matter if we feel like a nobody or we have nothing - our love for Allah is a love that gives us everything. We know God by being aware of Him in ourselves, surrounding us, guiding our lives. Our prayer is the acceptance of Someone who has a plan for us.
Even if our faith is small and incomplete, we can grasp as much as we can of it, and live by it through all manner of adversity and trials. Allah allows us to guess and glimps His will, and our faith in Him becomes our support. Even if everything seems empty, We can be certain that Allah is there. He cannot fail us, however badly we fail. If we live simply with this certainty, we will be at peace.
- Adapted from 'The Problem of Evil', by Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood.
