A New Muslim's Diary
What Losing Your Religion Feels Like
Losing your religion is a gradual thing. It creeps on you over the years, until one day you cannot take it anymore and say, "I need to do something about this." But losing your religion shouldn't mean losing your faith.
Somehow I was never God-fearing. My religion taught me that God loves me so much that He will forgive all my sins, so what is there to fear? Will that STOP me from sinning further, or if I do sin, would I feel so awful and want so badly to repent and be forgiven?
Gifts are meant to be temporary, yet, we treat them as if they are eternally bound to us. Guard our heart, because what is deserving of our endless thoughts and our expectations is the only One who isn’t temporary: the Gift-Giver.
Alhamdulillah, Ramadan is upon us once again. I sit here now, reflecting on my previous two Ramadans, and pondering about the one which I am about to face, insha'Allah. My goals have become more personal as compared to my first...
The Permanence of Loving Temporarily
Do I fear death, or that my loved ones will leave me? Does my love cause me to cling ferociously to them, afraid that something may happen once I lose sight of them? Everything in this world is temporary. What is the meaning of attaining all these, to lose it all in the event of my own death? What have I gained from all of these, when none of these follow me to my grave?
A Muslim in Allah's Eyes... but not in Yours?
"Are you in a rush to convert?" This will be a question forever etched in my memory. Do we, as revert Muslims in Allah's eyes, have to meet your institution's requirements to be recognised as Muslims in YOUR eyes?
The Pen is Mightier than the Sword
Someone told me it was unusual for Muslim reverts like myself to publish about their journey, about Islam, because they fear saying wrong things. I can't stop writing, though, because I could probably be someone else's only small peephole to what Islam is. But the pen comes with responsibility and a need for adab.
The Wait is one of the most challenging experiences of learning sabr- it is inevitable. But we can become blinded by the thing that we want so badly, and ignore the multitude of other blessings that Allah gives us throughout that Wait. And when we don't see it, we are indeed of the ungrateful.
The death of a seed is the onset of a shoot's life; the death of living fruits or animals in the human stomach is the beginning of their rising to the level of human life. As a seed sown in the grown becomes a tree in the world of the air, so a man who is laid in the earth will surely produce the shoots of an everlasting life in the Intermediate Realm.