Out of the Tragedy
Bismillahirahmanirahim
March 15th 2019 - The Day of the Christchruch Massacre
The news I woke up with this morning. Thinking I was still dreaming. But then I wondered, why shoul I dream about such weird news. Turns out, it was real. Totally confused after the voice said "shoot down at friday prayer". What jumat prayer? It was still 7am. After I could think clearly, the first thing I did when opening my phone was to look up if what I heard some moments ago was true. It was.
Scrolling through news and Social Media, a mixture of sadness, anger, disgust, confusion but also tranquility, hope and gratefulness flew through my veins. I probably don´t have to explain the negative emotions, that should be obvious. Why trangquility, hope and gratefulness?
Let´s start with hope: Hope that whatever cruelty happens, how much discrimination and racism exists on this world, that there are a looot more people that stand against it with love, compassion, loyalty, peace and humanity.
Why gratefulness? Maybe not that hard to imagine. Being grateful to still have the opportunity to start in a new day. The opportunity to improve myself, the opportunity to spend time with my loved ones. The fact to live in a safe environment. Okay, probably no one of the victims in Christchurch, families or anyone affected by the act might have thought before they would live in a dangerous environment. This on the other side is a reminder, how fast all can be over. A reminder to use every second we can to do good and not to just let it past.
Another thing that came into my mind, I reall wanna say everyone who is important to me, how much they mean to me, how grateful I am to know them, to have them in my life, no matter if we meet often, rarely or maybe are not even close anymore. Cause you never know, when will be the last time you have the opportunity to tell someone what this person means to you. And I wonder would I regret if I never took that chance? If I never have the opportunity to see that person again? Difficult question, but actually leads to another topic.
Last one, tranquility: To everyone who feels sorry for the victims, especially to the Muslim fellowers, actually, why? Of course the act itself shows total cruelness, hatred and is just despicable. But dying in an act of ibadah in the house of Allah on the sacred day of jumu´ah, dying as a syuhada, what could be better? So I hope and pray that everyone of the victims return to Allah with a pure heart and a strong iman and Allah honors them with the best place in paradise. It will definitly be hard for all the families left behind, but what can be a better comfort than the probability that they are at a better place right now and left in rightous state, adding the hope to meet with your father, brother, son, uncle, whoever it may be over there.
It´s 11pm now, and the topic didn´t leave my thought, maybe because it´s the main content of the Social Media I am going through. Two comments that especially caught my attention and are somehow connected thought through broadly.
1.”Being Muslim is hard nowadays. What has been antisemitism before, now turned to Islam Hostility.”
The quote is from a German publicist and former politician who deals a lot with Islamic issues and shows a very positive attitude towards the religion and its fellowers. I wanna take a look at the first part of the quote: "Beign Musim is hard nowadays." This statement bothered me. If you really think that it would be hard to be Muslim only nowadays, you have no idea about the Islamic history. If you think Muslims had not to face life-threatening struggles before, and with before I mean looking back and the last few 1.000 years, you have missed some essential key facts.
Being a sincere believer and living out your faith has never been easy. How many sahaba had to go through the cruelst ways of tortures, how many have left their life to life out their religion and fight for it? The time of the prophet saw. and his life itself shows that standing for your religion in public with your head high (in the sense of proud not arrogant) has not been easy from the first moment of its proclamation. Not only in regard of the life of prophet saw. but also former prophets like Yusuf a.s. who was put into jail, like Ibrahim a.s. who was thrown in fire, like the companions of the cave who were haunted because they stated not to believe in Allah and I bet there are cases of just ordinary people who suffered because of their faith towards the only One God.
Although the comment was made by a Non-Muslim, I often feel that it represents the mentality of many Muslims nowadays - to put yourself in the role of the victim, to fall into self-pity because we have so difficult struggles to face with discrimination and Islamophobia when we mean that teachers give us worse grades than our Non-Muslim classmates, that we don´t get proper places to pray at school or public places, that we have to be afraid to go out with a headscarf, that people see us as terrorists and all the other stuff. Of course those things are challenges, especially when it comes to severe facts about life and death it is crucial and frightening. And it should motivate us to fight even more for our rights. But we should stop to complain about the "burden" that we carry. It should not make us think that we had it harder than others, than we had it harder than the prophet who was thrown with stones until he bled all along his body, but He never saw himself as a victim, he never argued people had to be more understanding or show empathy. Or Sumeya r.a. who was tortured until death for believing in Allah. But she did not deny it, although hiding her faith could have saved her life, which leads me to the second comment:
“It´s so heartbreaking I can´t help but to feel scared, as well as for showing my religion.”
A status comment of a friend. To everyone who feels the similar way: It´s understandable to feel scared after such a tragedy, especially when you live in a Non-Muslim environment and maybe have already experienced hostile behavior. But don´t forget, Allah is always by your side. He will guide you, always.
"But what about the people that died? They were in a mosque, praying to Him. Why did He not protect them?"
Taking a look to my former words, dying itself is nothing we should be afraid of. But dying without Iman. A strong reminder we should keep in mind:
If you don´t want to die at that place, don´t be there.
If you don´t want to die while performing that act, don´t do it.
If you don´t want to die in that state, distance yourself from it.
Honeslty, I don´t remember the exact wording but the message is to reflect about all our deeds in beforehand. Is it something that brings us closer to Allah or distance us from Him? No matter how careful we are, even if we would lock ourselves in our rooms, we never know when death will catch us. So, prepare yourself in the best way possible. It can be the simplest acts you perform in the way of Allah, but if you do it out of sincerety and hold onto it, it may be the one that saves you from the penalty in akhirat.
“We will die in the habits we perform our lives in. So make sure you acquire good habits.”
-Ahmad Zainudin
In the end, it doesn´t count what you achieve in this dunya, but where you stand in front of Allah.
Another thought that is running through my head, it are not crazy gun shooter or racist fellow citizens that destroy us as Muslim ummah as well as individuals but ourselves, with a mentality that got so low that we really think standing away from Islam alias hiding our faith could "save" us. Another topic I wanna take up on. But I leave for the next time.
Allahu a´lam bishawab
