Exile, Balanced Attitude, Repentance
Issue 382 » June 9, 2006 - Jumada-al-Awwal 13, 1427
General
| Living the Quran |
Al-Nahl
(Bees)
The Emigration, al-Hijrah, is the objective reality of believing women and men who were not free to practise and express their faith and who decided to make a clean break for the sake of their beliefs. Because “God’s earth is spacious”, as the Quran recalls, the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his companions decided to leave their homeland, to break with their universe and habits and to experience exile for the sake of their faith. This revelation was to praise the courage and determination of those believers who, by taking such a difficult and humanly costly step, expressed their trust in God. Exile is, then, another trial of trust. All Prophets have, always most intensively, experienced this trial of the heart, as all believers have after them. How far are they prepared to go, how much are they prepared to give, of themselves and of their lives, for the One, His truth and His love? Those are the eternal questions of faith, which accompany every temporal and historical experience of the believing conscience. Hijrah was one of the Muslim community’s answers, at the dawn of its existence. In effect, exile was also to require that the first Muslims learn to remain faithful to the meaning of Islam’s teachings in spite of the change of place, culture and memory. Medina meant new customs, new types of social relationships, a wholly different role for women (who were socially far more present than in Mecca) and more complex inter-tribe relations, as well as the influential presence of the Jewish and Christian communities, which was something new to Muslims. Very early on, after less than thirteen years, the community of faith, following the Prophet’s example, had to distinguish between what belonged to Islamic principles and what was more particularly related to Meccan culture. They were to remain faithful to the first while learning to adopt a flexible and critical approach to their original culture. They must even try to reform some of their attitudes, which were more cultural than Islamic. Hijrah, exile, was to reveal that one must question every single cultural practice in order, first of all, to be faithful to principles, but also to open up to other cultures and to gain from their wealth. Hijrah was also, then, a trial of intelligence, with the need to distinguish between principles and their cultural manifestations; it moreover implied opening up and confidently welcoming new customs, new ways of being and thinking, new tastes. Thus, the universality of principles merged with the necessity to recognise the diversity of ways of life and cultures. Exile was the most immediate and profound experience of this, since it implied cutting away from one’s roots while remaining faithful to the same God, to the same meaning, in different environments. Half-way between historical teachings and spiritual meditations, Hijrah is also the experience of liberation. Moses had liberated his people from Pharaoh’s oppression and led them towards faith and towards freedom. The essence of Hijrah is of exactly the same nature: persecuted because of their beliefs, the faithful decided to break away from their tormentors and march to freedom. In so doing, they stressed that they could not accept oppression, that they could not accept a victim’s status, and that, basically, the matter was simple: telling of God implied either being free or breaking free. Henceforth, a broader call was addressed to the Muslim spiritual community as a whole: faith requires freedom and justice and one must be prepared, as was the case with Hijrah, to pay the personal and collective price for it. Hijrah is the exile of conscience and of the heart away from false gods, from alienation of all sorts, from evil and sins. Turning away from the idols of one’s time - from power, money, the cult of appearances, etc. -; emigrating from lies and unethical ways of life; liberating oneself, through the experience of breaking away, from all the appearances of freedom paradoxically reinforced by our habits; such is the spiritual requirement of Hijrah. Physical Hijrah, the founding act and axis of the first Muslim community’s experience, is now over and will not happen again, as Aishah forcefully explained to those who, in Medina, wanted to renew the experience. What remains, and is open to everyone through the ages and for eternity, is the experience of spiritual exile which brings the individual back to himself and frees him from the illusions of self and of the world. Exile for the sake of God is in essence a series of questions which God asks each conscience: who are you? What is the meaning of your life? Where are you going? Accepting the risk of such an exile, trusting the One, is to answer: through You, I return to myself and I am free. Source: |
| Understanding the Prophet's Life |
| Balanced Attitude "Beware, do not adopt extremism, because your predecessors got annihilated by adopting extremist attitudes in deen." - Muslim Islam enjoins wisdom, balance, moderation and tolerance in all affairs, and it condemns excessiveness, extravagance and fanatical attitudes. To achieve a balanced attitude, Muslims need to understand the objectives of Islam, stay close to Islamic guidance, and give as much weight to an aspect of Islam as the noble Prophet of Allah (peace be upon him) and his faithful Companions gave, no more and no less. Extremist attitudes, practices and customs, make their entrance into an organisation, community or groups, through various ways:
Extremism is bred when certain verses of the Quran, sayings of the noble Prophet or certain of his deeds are exaggerated or understood out of their context. It even arises from exaggerated love or hate of someone or something. Extremism is a disease and leads to intolerance, disrespect, inflexibility and cause conflict amongst people. These, in the long-run, destroy communities and are, therefore, alien to Islam because Islam is the "middle" way. Source: |
| Cool Concepts! |
The Rich Meanings of Tawbah Scholars interpret tawbah (repentance) to mean all of the following: (i) immediate rejection of the
sin, These are known to be the conditions of tawbah, or repentance. However, in the words of Allah and His Messenger, peace be upon him, tawbah has a wider meaning, and includes not only the aforementioned conditions, but also generally carrying out all the commandments of Allah with persistence. Tawbah also requires disliking and renouncing those people who refuse to repent, encouraging them to repent and advising them against ignoring the practice of repentance. So repentance is the opposite of committing sins in every way, and, in its general sense, does not consist merely of renouncing the sin and regret over it. The essence of tawbah is to return to Allah and to adhere to what He loves and renounce that which He dislikes. Tawbah is a journey from the disliked to the liked. Source: |
