The weather was kind to us. The sun shone brightly as our hijabs danced a slow dance with a soft breeze that accompanied us the entire day. Laughter would erupt every few minutes from a group of children trying to dunk a man into a tub of water, or as an arrow intended for the bulls eye landed on the patch of grass behind it. Around me, people of all ages were busy buying and selling little knickknacks that lined the booths set up in front of the Al-Mawaddah mosque.

I began to tune out the surroundings of the huge tent as Ustaz Farid Ravi stepped on stage. With his usual flare and charisma, the dark-skinned ustaz with a neatly trimmed beard began to speak of the pillars of Islam to the crowd of middle-aged ladies, but what particularly attracted me was when he shared with us about his conversion:

“At eighteen when I finally could convert, I went back home and declared my religion to my Hindu family; none of them could accept it. Stubbornly holding on to my faith, I was thrown out of the house and so I went off, all alone, save for some of my belongings packed in a couple of bags.”

I started tearing the moment the words reached my ears. 

You see, it suddenly struck me that there must be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people in this world who had converted to Islam and suffered much pain, physically and emotionally because of their want to search for the light.

From the days of the Prophet s.a.w., countless stories have been related to us of the trials that the companions had to go through in holding to to their imaan. For example, Bilal r.a. who persevered in saying “One! One!” even when he was pressed under a huge rock, the scorching heat of the desert sun in his eyes, as the people of Quraysh tried to get him to renounce Islam. 

As we fast forward to today, around the world as the number of Muslim conversions begin to rise, there must be throngs of new Muslims thrown out of homes, ostracised, just like Ustaz Farid Ravi. All alone in their new world, apart from the family who once loved them endlessly, it would have been so much easier for them to renounce Islam and just return home. Yet, they held on firmly to the rope of Allah.

You see, I cried, because if there are Muslims like them who are willing to give up even the ones closest to their hearts, their FAMILY, for Allah, who am I then with Allah compared to them? To think I used to think that giving up my relationship was that big a deal. Astaghfirullah…

Truly, I feel that most of us born-Muslims are too complacent with our deen; we take Islam for granted. In fact, we take Allah for granted!

A man who has been given sight since he was born would never truly appreciate seeing, or his eyes for the matter, while the blind man who was suddenly given a pair of eyes would guard his new found senses with his life and truly appreciate being able to just SEE. And as for the first man, it is only when his sight is taken away from him would he then be anguished over its disappearance. 

Really, how many of us actually do place Allah above all? When we say “Iyyaka na’budu wa iyyaka nasta’een”, that is “only You we worship and only You do we seek help from”, in our Al-Fatihah, do our actions truly reflect the words that carelessly spill from our tongue?

When we have food on the table, do we thank Allah for the rezqi He has given us? When we dress to impress, who really are we trying to impress? When we moan when asked for donations to build the house of Allah, and happily swipe thousands off the card of riba’ to purchase our next swanky bike or handbag, have we even for a split second thought of the rights of that rezqi the Ar-Razzaq has given us? Or when the Qur’an is left to become a decoration on the table as we find ourselves too busy to read it, can we then even deserve to be called Muslims when we have turned away from the words of Allah?

When was the last time we have actually sacrificed something we love with abounding love, in our want to gain Allah’s love?

Allahu…

We born-Muslims, many of us, we have failed to find this burning desire to reach for Him; we pray our five prayers, we fast during Ramadhan, we pay our zakat and we go for hajj when we have the money, and we feel that this is enough, that we are already good Muslims. 

Although I cannot deny that yes, those basics are enough, but why do want to settle for ‘enough’ when it comes to attaining Allah’s love? We never settle for ‘enough’ in matters of the dunya; we want a bigger house, a bigger car, a higher education, a fatter pocket, but why does this want of BIGGER and BETTER fail to materialise itself in matters of the deen? 

We do the bare minimum, we settle for enough, and we assume that because we are born Muslims and surrounded by Muslims, we will eventually die as Muslims. But what if we become that first man who gets his sight taken away from him? Naudhubillah…

We born-Muslims, we need to learn the art of syukr from the converts like Ustaz Farid Ravi. We need to learn to be thankful to Him for having chosen us to be Muslims, and we need to find that passionate love for Allah swt and the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. in us so that our hearts can be cleansed from the hubb ad-dunya. We need to remind ourselves again and again, that Islam is not a given, but a privilege that may be taken away from us at any time. 

Islam needs to be like the air we breathe; it needs to course through our blood, from the tip of our (covered) hair, to the tip of our toes. Every new breath brings a reinvigorating freshness, an awakening for our entire body, to the extent that if for a split-second we realize that Islam is missing in our thoughts and emotions, we struggle to breathe and we seek desperately for that air.

You see, my sisters and brothers who are blessed to be born into Islam, we need to realize that Islam in not just something that we have in our life, nor is it just something that we have to live by… but we need to realize, just like the converts have realized in their search for the light, Islam is something that we live for.

InsyaAllah…