When I head to university, I am bombarded
with images on standees, notice boards, large banners and on pretty much
everything imaginable. These images are the pictures of the panel standing up
for the upcoming student council elections. And with all this hype, it is not
surprising that every other person is talking about the same thing- elections.
This isn’t just the case of our university in
the time of elections but this is the case with people and their lives. People
create obsessions and then they create hype about it. And the obsessions are by
no means limited in scope; they range from addiction to music to movies to
technology to money to sitcoms and the list goes on forever.
Yet, in this endless
list of obsessions people forget their real purpose of living, they just base
their existence on extremely vain and superficial things and then they are
surprised when they experience a feeling of emptiness. However, these people are not entirely to be blamed for being distracted
and deluded, either.
We live in an era where we
are continuously exposed to irrelevant information; where the advertising
agencies have not even left us alone in our homes. We are succumbed to a system
based on selfishness and materialism. We live by the dictates of the society
yet we claim to be “liberated”. We get educated not to benefit from knowledge,
but instead to get good jobs. We, once in a while, study fancy things like “business
ethics” or “corporate social responsibilty” but that too just to give
businesses a competitive edge and ultimately higher profits.
However, many people are
unaware of their own slavery to the society. They are so attuned to the idea of
doing what everybody else is doing that they don’t stop and think for a second
of what this life is, what is our purpose of being and what are we supposed to
do. This, my friends, is exactly what our society does not want us to think
about. Our society wants us to be SO preoccupied with all the fancy things that
it has to offer so that we don’t do the one thing that we are actually supposed
to do and that is to please our Lord, Allah. And Allah Ta’ala says in Surah
Dhariyat, Verse 56:
“And I did not create
the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.”
But that does not in any way mean that we cut off from
society or from people but, in fact, to worship Allah i.e. to be a Muslim means
to live in society and with people in a way that benefits everyone and not just
our own selves. The teachings of Islam are based on concepts such as
brotherhood, honesty, equality etc. In fact, Islam is not just a religion but rather
it is a way of life. Where society has been wrong time and again, it has seen
the failure of a purely capitalist system, it has made various blunders in the
field of science, it has destroyed lives in the name of democracy and the devastating
mistakes of society do not just end here. Yet the teachings of Islam brought to
us fourteen hundred years ago still stand corrected.
Allah Ta’ala says in Surah
Al-i-Imran, verse 103:
“And hold firmly to
the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided. And remember the
favor of Allah upon you - when you were enemies and He brought your hearts
together and you became, by His favor, brothers. And you were on the edge of a
pit of the Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus does Allah make clear to you
His verses that you may be guided.”
So how exactly will we attain the purpose of our lives? We
can do so by minimizing distractions and by praying to Allah Ta’ala for
guidance. And Allah Ta’ala does not just leave us alone here; He EVEN shows us
how to ask Him for guidance in verses 6-7 of Surah al-Fatiha:
“Guide us to the
straight path (6) the path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of
those who have evoked [Your] anger or of those who are astray. (7)”
And through these verses it is also clear that the straight
path is the path of those on whom Allah has bestowed His favor and these people
are the Prophets (A.S.), the companions of the Prophet S.A.W.W. and all the
righteous Muslims.
The question is whether we are ready to leave these insignificant
and temporary things for something everlasting and worthwhile? There is one “happily
ever after” that is possible even outside Disney and that is the one you will get
from following Islam completely.
Anything good herein is from Allah Ta'ala and any shortcomings are from myself.
