Dislcaimer: this blog entry is like serously all over the place. It's very late at night. I have no idea why I ended up staying up this late. Ok I do in fact. I just got sucked into reading more and more. ahhh. my kids are going to drive me insane with this lack of sleep. and i have my arabic class. what am i going to do??
an-e-way
My blog is seriously sucking and I'm not even talking about the part about having no visitors or many comments =). Actually, seriously though, that doesn't bother me. I get this feeling of just going to the roof top of a tall building and talking loudly and feeling like I can say anything(almost). The best part is that when you're not too worried about 'visitors/readers' you don't consciously censure yourself.
I mean this is my blog. I have a right to spell words wrong, be happy, be cranky. Whatever. =) I think I mostly find my way here when I'm cranky though.
Anyhow, life is good. no complaints. Allah has been merciful to me and I feel like I've gained just minute grains of wisdom in the past year that have made a big difference in my life.
This blog is about a topic(among others lol) which I normally keep to myself and don't discuss often unless the need comes up. I do need to flush out some thoughts and what better way than to just vomit them onto my blog. :-)
So I'm going to go back in time. When I first became practicing, I would sit and comb religious websites and soak in as much as possible, and there was a lot to soak up since I knew zilch. I didn't know the basics. I didn't know jack (but i knew sally...har har har). Moving on...
So sometimes during this reading frenzie I got hooked up with a really beneficial dars at college. And it was through that class that I feel like I was able to develop a more nuanced(that does not mean liberal) understanding of topics in Islam.
Had I just learned from books and the internet, for sure, I would have become a neo salafi. 'You have to call yourself a salafi'. "niqab is fardh and that is the only correct opinion". "What! You accept knowledge from sheikh qardawi but such and such sheikh said he's misguided and off the manhaj'. 'oh my lord. beware of that innovator. he's the scum of the earth. Nay he is more pathetic than the scum of the earth'..er wait aren't u talking about someone who's like served islam for like 20 years and wait how old are you again? oh yur 22! Hey how about trying to at least use respectful language. Sure, go ahead and 'disagree' but let's do it respectfully.
I remember reading some 'refutations' on some of these websites. I swear to God I don't think normal people even talk about their enemies like this. These guys were spewing fire. They were so incredibly bad mannered, forget their opinions. This was cult language, cult group-think mentality.
Like they say, if you argue with an ignorant person, you are bound to loose.
The thing that's well known about this group is that alot of these brothers and sisters(may Allah have mercy on them and us) who belong to this group are new muslims, don't know arabic and somehow get pulled into this very black and white understanding of things. They want to somehow take away even legitimate difference of opinion.
Just this past month I met a wonderful sister. May Allah make her better than what I think of her. We have some differences in fiqh - we sort of laughed over it =) There's a certain act of 'worship' which I believe to be an innovation. She doesn't. But it's not the kind of thing that a Muslim is supposed to avow another over and get all harsh and uptight over. At the end of the day, what we have in common is like a mountain. and if yur reading my blog, assalama'laykum =)
You can intelligently and respectfully discuss a topic but I am DEAD against calling people out in public, getting all agitated that they didn't see eye to eye with you, get all harsh with them, start labeling them.
There was a time I used to get more involved in these back and forth exchanges. But you know what I've realized. If someone has bad manners, I feel like it is better to leave that conversation PERIOD with your integrity intact and little words. Or maybe that's just my pakistani side (there's many things i love that are pakistani believe me..even though my other posts would make u think i just spit venom any time i think of pakistan lol)
One thing mash'allah benefited me as well. Before I got married, when I was in college, I did have the sickness of labelling others and wanting to know the label of others: 'salafi' 'ikhwani 'sufi' etc. When I got married, my husband had been studying with shuyookh and he wasn't into this labeling thing at all even though it was clear to me what 'label' he fell under lol.
Over time, its so obvious that the most of the time people who get all worked up, and caught up with very huffy puffy emotional exchanges over petty issues (not fundamentals) with seriously bad manners are people with little knowledge AND VERY BAD MANNERS(wait i already said that but its ok i can say it again, its my blog remember?). =)
On a completely different note something interesting, a pattern, caught my attention.
For those of us who are sensitive, the more sensitive we are, the more defensive and aggressive we can get in 'argument/discussion'. It's almost like our sensitivity makes us do that because if we didn't, our feelings would get hurt. And its ironic that sensitive people(including myself) want others to be all nice and gentle, but they aren't able to see how instigating and insensitive their own language can be. (lesson to self). I think the harsh language they use is kind of like the thorns(?) on a porcupine. It's their shield to the very vulnerable feelings inside.
I think one very good cure to that is to seek approval from Allah, that will lessen our sensitivities. A dear relative of mine, whom I have had the pleasure of building a relationship with overtime, the other day commented on how I needed to dress my daughter more 'chic' (thats my word but thats what she meant) even though I do dress her pretty good many times(according to her heh). Anyway, if I had been told this in a passing comment a year ago or two years ago, I woulda been so upset and irritated about why some of us cannot keep our OPINIONS to ourselves?
Now, this didn't bother me much. My husband also got the same dars from this individual when I was away for a bit and I even witnessed it lol. We laughed over it afterwards. lol. And mind you, this individual in general has ABSOLUTELY IMPECCABLE manners and they mean well. And we know that. We weren't laughing in terms of making fun of them, either. It was just funny. It's a whole mind set and you can't change it even if you talk till you are blue in the face.
Anyway, mash'allah I felt like I was able to take her conversation(that felt special that she was like so open with me now and could have a whole conversation about it lol) in stride. Before, i think I mighta flipped over and died in horror hahaha and alhamdulillah she also never said more than a few words to me before. But now she also realizes things are different.
Anyway, ALHAMDULILLAH, it didn't bother me. We're still going to dress our daughter like we do. If one day she was wearing a plain shirt with jeans to the naadi, I don't care if the whole world thinks that's not chic enough. That's just plain fine. In Egypt, in "certain" Naadis, people have some kind of tradition of wearing their Eid clothes to the naadi. Sure, by all means. I don't care. But if my kid is wearing something so NORMAL as jeans and a tshirt, I'm not going to allow anyone to make me feel guilty about it haha.
Anyway point being, if you are dead confidant in your own 'way' and are not seeking approval from others, their different opinions about you don't bother you so much. But if you seek approval from them in your heart of hearts (which is what i realized i was doing earlier this year) you get all torn up inside if someone so much as 'looks' at you the wrong way lol.
Normally, people comfortable in their skin and in their opinions aren't so easily hurt. I remember a friend of mine mash'allah whom I met in college. This sister was really amazing. Mash'allah her temperament was so rock solid, may Allah bless her. She was in fact the second oldest(first daughter) of an imam(who I personally feel is a super duper wise brother, mash'allah). You could tell her tarbiya was amazing. She was in fact a niqabi and because of her demeanor, she exuded so much confidence mash'allah and got treated very well.
Many niqabis complain of being treated badly and it does happen, ofcourse! But, there's also an ingroup mentality that develops within 'niqabis' that says 'niqabis vs the other muslimahs' and somehow in your interactions, people pick up on this vibe of 'other/outsider' and it influences the interaction.
That's obvously my own analysis and I've been niqabi myself and most of the time I felt that I was treated very well because internally I always felt like just a Muslim, not a 'niqabi' muslim. I didn't have an internal need to classify myself as such. Not meaning to say im superior somehow, but that I noticed this over the years. Allah knows best.
Anyway, going back to neo #salafism and sensitive personalities...Every issue is not a life/death 'lets fight over this'. Why is it 'ok' to poke fun at others, while you hate that for yourself? Why is it ok to label others while you hate to be disagreed with? I think in argumentation, and especially when you disagree, many people's manners speak louder for them than their words, sometimes so loud that you can't hear their words.
Part of it is that people simply bring their natural personality into 'islam'. It can also depend on who you learned from, whether they taught you that manners in discussing, critical thinking and agreeing to disagree politely are valued in Islam..etc.
May Allah beautify my manners and grant me friends with beautiful manners.
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