Ramadan Mubarak to all of my readers.
Here’s a link to last year’s post on the subject, nearly all of which still applies.
In previous years, the fasting period (from dawn to dusk), was short enough for me to keep some fasts. This year, Ramadan has shifted towards the back end of summer and therefore the fasting period is a challenging 16 hours. Given my diabetes, it would be crazy for me to try and keep the fast and then wrestle control of my condition in the 8 hours that remain of the day (or rather, night). So I’m disappointed, but I won’t be fasting.
Ramadan didn’t used to mean much to me as a Qadiani, but since I have been a Muslim, it has been an uplifting experience. I feel connected to every Muslim on the planet, of every race and background. (Qadianis are connected only to a Punjabi subgroup, because despite their best efforts and the support of Western media and governments, Islam and even other groups are highly resistant to this heretic creed). Of course, Qadianis do fast, and I do pray that those who love the part of Qadianism that takes its core from Islam, will be guided to truth and revert to Islam when they realise just how divergent Islam and Qadianism are.
Islam is vibrant today, because despite rampant Islamophobia, more and more people are drawn to Islam and indeed, are becoming Muslims by the day. The dark(!) picture painted of Muslims in the Western media doesn’t very often tally with the reality. For starters, Islam is way too diverse and confusing for most people to grasp. Sure, modern-day Orientalists, some of whom are faux-left-wing bloggers thrown up to media-stardom level by a system that clearly hasn’t a clue, have tried to pin this label and that on us, completely missing the point – that despite many differences, Muslim people have more in common with each other than their rulers and dividers would like to portray.
In this holy month, Muslims will be fasting and doing their best to be as “good” as they can. We will be reciting Al Qur’an, we will be praying taraweeh, we will make dhikr, we will attempt to minimise our bad habits and increase our good ones. We will be kinder to neighbours, we will be more loving to our parents and our children. We will call for peace and denounce oppression and tyranny.
What is it about my Islam that you still find threatening?
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Ramadan Mubarak to you too, Shahid Bhai. May this month bless ourselves and bring peace not only in our lives but in the world also. Ameen.
Ramadan Mubarak bruv
Ramadan Mubarak Shahid (and fellow readers/commentators).
Islam is threatening because:
1) The Islam haters have created and spread a false and fearful image of Islam
2) Muslims (amongst the diversity you mentioned) do little to counter the image in 1)
3) Muslims sit on loads of oil and strategic bits of land.
4) People want to be their own masters not Abdullah or and to follow rituals.
5) Related to 4, Peoples arrogance and total belief in physicality, has made them think:
if it can’t be explained physically, then it’s a fairytale.
5) They believe man can independently create the best practices/code for a good life.
6) Almost any tyrant can call himself a Muslim, as can any tyrranical leader.
Thats my opinion anyway, but what’s amazing is that in light of all that, is that more people relaise
how miserable, meaningless and empty atheistic (and even to a point agnostic) life is, and come home
to God.
A thousand salams.
I think my original post got lost in cyberspace.
Anyway Shahid, a very warm Ramadan Mubarak to you and all your readers.
Assalamualiakum wbt
Ramadan Mobarak Shahid. May Allah give you courage and infinite blessings to you and your family for your brave step to revert back your original Deen.
May you become reason to spread Islam further to others?
As an atheist I don’t find myself or my life miserable, meaningless and empty as one of your posters clearly thinks, based on nothing of course. You have no proof of god, merely words written by men. You have your ‘faith’ that god exists, but no evidence other than stories.
I see a wonderful, beautiful world created from evolution, an intricate ecosystem that self balances in time just like a pendulum coming to rest after being disturbed. It doesn’t need a creator, and if it had one, do you really think that something so powerful as to create the whole known universe would be concerned with individual lifeforms inhabiting a small speck of matter on the edge? Concerned with you? That says to me monumental arrogance and ego.
We are none of us more important than the smallest scrap of life, we are all transitory and will die and be recycled back into Earth’s sum total of nutrients, and then pass into other lifeforms. I find that much more satisfying than the delusional ideas of backward people who think they are going to join their creator in paradise and have them some virgins. What of the virgins, are they not loved by this god, but are mere playthings for men as part of their reward for reciting so-called holy verses while nodding vigorously? Dieing for one’s religion seems a high price to put on conjecture.