Its simple...

Believe in the Oneness of Allah, in His messengers, His books, angels, the day of judgment and life after death, do good deeds and abstain from evil, that is pretty much ALL that Islam wants us to do, speaking in extremely general terms, obviously.

Seems simple enough, right? Our entire “deen” summarized in just two lines; so then why is it so hard for us to cope up?

Now here is where our twisted sense of morality jumps in, we get bored easily, we get distracted easily and then there’s the shaitaan who surprisingly, or rather annoyingly, never gets tired of doing his job. And yet we tire ourselves all the time by doing what? Good deeds? No. We tire ourselves in claiming to believe in One God, Allah, and then “brilliantly” deceiving our very own selves and following the footsteps of shaitaan. Look around, is shamelessness common? Yes. Is corruption everywhere? Yes. Is killing common? Is robbery common? Is injustice common? Do people give respect to people with wealth even if they have earned it the haraam way? Are haraam ways of earning common? Are opportunities (doorways) leading to sin common? Are pre-marital and extra-marital relationships common? The answer to ALL these questions is yes!

Why? Because we have been following shaitaan and we have been aiding shaitaan. We have been befriending our own enemy; an enemy who has challenged God that he will make most of us ungrateful and he won’t rest till he does his best to land us into hell! Well I guess it’s time to congratulate him because we have made his job a whole lot easier. It’s like self-control and self-righteousness are unheard of terms. And somehow our generation is ahead of the game, you’ll find kids who probably don’t even understand the meaning of love completely claiming their love for the opposite gender. The cartoons these days show things which weren’t shown in adult dramas in the earlier days. The entire system is as if aiding this sense of zero accountability, drive for desires, lust and greed etc. Religion and goodness are literally pushed out of the entire picture, people actually feel uncomfortable if you talk to them about religion too much because they are not accustomed to hearing such things.

Despite the fact that we are drowning in a pool of sins and we are so lost in it and are so deep down in it that we have learned to breathe in it and live in it. We have forgotten the joy of breathing into CLEAN air, we have forgotten what it actually means to love and what true love is, we have forgotten that we will ALL have to stand in front of Allah one day and that that day our OWN body will bear witness against us. If we have walked to a place of sin then our legs will testify against us, if we have done sins with our hands then our hands will testify against us, if we have done sins with our eyes then our eyes will be testifying against us and we will be crying out to our OWN body to keep quiet but that day it won’t.

So miserable will be our fate if we don’t make an effort to change ourselves, there’s always time, think of everyday as one more chance, every second as a blessing, don’t just waste it away. Because we only get to have one life, to do good or to do bad; there is no middle line despite what many people might say. Yes, Islam does teach us to strike a balance but by that it doesn’t mean that ok do a few sins but also do a few good deeds so you’ll have a perfect balance. In fact it rather means to keep a balance between deen and dunya, like giving enough time to family, relatives and friends alongside taking out time for ibadah.

So repent as often as you can and truly and honestly ask Allah for guidance, He is after all Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem, Ar-Raqeeb, Al-Kareem, He is our Rabb, He is the One Who loves us SEVENTY times more than our mother loves us, He is the One Who is closer to us than our jugular vein, He is the One Who is our Creator and He is the One to Whom we all have to return one day In shaa Allah. Never despair of Allah’s mercy, in fact when shaitaan swore to Allah that he will keep on luring us to bad deeds till our souls remained in our bodies, Allah swore on His Own “izzat-o-jalal” that He will keep forgiving us till we keep on reciting istighfar to Him. SubhanAllah.

And so Allah awaits our turning back to Him despite the fact that He does not need us nor our worship, in fact it is us who need Him. So how long will we take to turn back to our only God?