بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيم
Love touches
each one of us in its own way.
Whenever
we have programmes on the campus, the one that talks about love and
relationship will usually have the greatest number of participants. In one way
or another, it proves that my theory more or less makes sense – majority of us
has gone through the most crucial curve when it comes to love and relationship,
regardless of whether you were or you were not in relationship before – that
all of us coming to the lecture have our own question marks dancing in our
head. “How do I do when I fall in love?” “How do I actually interact with the
opposite gender?” I believe, all of us have our own definition of love, or at
least, we must have heard about it either from the movies or the novels. “Love
works mysteriously, you don’t see it coming and usually causes your life to be
a mess. You can’t escape it”. “Love is pure. Love is cure. And soothing, rather
than painful.” So, that’s how my classmate and my friend have it. Now, let’s
take a look at love from Islamic point
of view. How does Islam describe love, really?
Literally,
love in Arabic comes from the root word “ حـب ” or “hubb”.
If we learn the tajweed, every letter in Arabic has its own unique
characteristics and every word comprising of any particular letter follows the
letter’s similar, specific characteristics. Let’s take the letter
ش . If we learn
the makhraj of ش, it signifies “a spreading out.” Like, “ashhh”. Try to say
it. It is the spreading out of the sound “shhhhhhhhh”, right? Hence, all the
words that have the letter ش have the indicational meanings. Like شمس, the sun; the
spreading of light. شجرة, the tree; the spreading of shades. Same goes to ح and ب in حـب. The makhraj of ح comes from the
three levels of the throat, which is deep down from our chest. And the makhraj
of ب comes from the lips, symbolising the kiss, the symbol of love. Thus, حـب or love, is the
innermost feeling comes from the inside of our heart out to the lips; indicating
the greatest symbol and expression of love. There is even the ‘shaddah’ on the
ب – signifying the
strength – because love is a powerful and strong emotion.
Love also comes from the root word “habba”or the seed. Like the “habbatus sauda” or the black seed.
What do we do with a seed? We plant it, we nurture it, we want it to grow.
Same goes with the love, it is deep-rooted; it grows in our lives like the seed
grows to a tree and gives fruits to the world. It starts with the meeting of
two hearts and takes years and years of patience together before it grows to a
bottomless affection and fondness. It’s a sacrifice, it’s an endurance. It is
not as easy as we believe it is. It is not only about the excitement; the ‘butterflies
in the stomach’ or the ‘heart beats harder’ kind of things only. When we take
someone for his or her worst, when we go
through the ups and downs in life together, only then we can realize the true meaning of love.
And that is just the word, Subhanallah. Beautiful, isn’t it?
We all know that the place of the love is in the heart and
the heart changes. Since our heart changes, the love in our heart is not constant. I took more or less two months to finish this article,
every single day when I was writing, I always had something to alter. Yesterday
I felt like putting it this way, and today I don’t feel the same way anymore –
because the heart flips every day. That is why, our beloved Prophet s.a.w
teaches us the du’a, “O
Turner of the hearts, make my heart steadfast in adhering to Your religion.” (Al-Tirmidhi)
According to Abdullah Nasih Ulwan in his book ‘Islam and
Love’, there are technically three levels of love; the high rank love, the
middle rank love and the low rank love.
In the Quran, Allah has mentioned in Surah at-Taubah verse 24: “...if your fathers, your sons, your
brothers, your wives, your kindred, the wealth that you have gained, the
commerce in which you fear a decline, and the dwellings in which delight are
dearer to you than Allah and His Messenger, and striving hard and fighting in
His Cause, then wait until Allah brings about His Decision...” According to
this ayah, the high rank love is the love for Allah and His Messenger, and the
striving in his way. The middle rank love is the love between parents and
children and vice versa, husband and wife and vice versa, relatives love,
friends love, and so on. This type of love functioned as a tool to reach the
high rank love. Next, the third type of love which is the low rank love can
further be classified into several kinds; like the love of idols, the love of
Allah’s enemies, intense love of sex and such. Preferring the middle rank love
over the high rank love also makes the middle love fall under the low rank
love.
Another most commonly asked question
is, whether or not Islam recognises the love before marriage. Of all the talks I’ve attended, they
usually choose not to answer this question straight forward. “Never rush
into love before marriage!” “If only you know how sweet the love after marriage
is!” Yes, I got it, but this feeling
inside me, is it even recognised in
Islam, anyway? Is it therefore sinful? Now I’m going to share with you
another interesting story I’ve learnt before – jazakillah to Sister Tasneem
Ghouri. Narrated Khansa bint Khaddam that
her father gave her in marriage when she was a matron and she disliked that
marriage. So she went to Allah's Apostle and he declared that marriage invalid. (Al-Bukhari)
So, Khansa bint
Khaddam had been married to someone by her father and she didn’t want to be
married to this person. She later met the Prophet and told the Prophet that she
didn’t want to be married to him and the Prophet s.a.w annulled the marriage.
When the Prophet asked her why she didn’t want to get married to the person,
she told the Prophet that she was in love with her cousin. The prophet, instead
of saying something like “Astaghfirullah!” or “O woman of hellfire!” and such
for falling in love with someone she was not yet married to, he on the other
hand annulled the marriage – because he understood that sometimes it happens.
Hence, it is normal to feel this inclination in our heart! It’s normal when we
see someone with good character and feel like ‘liking’ or ‘loving’ them. This
is what had happened to Khadijah r.a – she saw the Prophet’s moving character,
how honest and truthful the Prophet was that she became attracted to the
Prophet – before she proposed to Prophet s.a.w!
The
love before marriage is recognised, OMG!
So,
to fall in love is not sinful. But
then, please note that the love is recognised, BUT NOT the relationship –not
even the unnecessary texting, dating, flirting, calling and whatsoever. Are you clear?
Besides, it is important to note that this whole test of love and relationship,
desire and attachment does not recognise our age and maturity as I mentioned
earlier. If you have younger sisters or younger brothers in primary and
secondary school, try spend your time talking to them and dig out their
interest. You’ll be suprised to find how some of them –the majority, I dare
say- actually do have a ‘boyfriend’ or a ‘girlfriend’, or if even if they
don’t, they do know about this boyfriend-girlfriend things – you’ve gone through that curve yourself
anyway, you know how the surrounding is and that means you should’ve understood
them better. Hence, don’t give that jaw-drop face if it happens that your
younger brothers and sisters are suffering from a broken heart. When
somebody accidently cuts his or her fingers, we don’t babble around and nag
them for being careless because we don’t want to increase their pain. We help
them alleviate the pain instead.
The same thing applies here, we shouldn’t
have this kind of criticising attitude without firstly offering them our words
of comfort, because they verily are in pain. Tell them how their heart is
actually wounded now, and as we do have the cure to the physical wound, let
them know that we also have the cure to the spiritual wound. This is the time
for us to play our role, to help them piece back their lives by telling them
how the true love –the love that is for Allah and because of Allah – works
instead of blaming them, “You’re too young for this thing, you should have been
studying, not falling in love!” This is too, a part of their learning process. It
is really depressing me to see how sometimes we tend to mercilessly blame the Muslim
children and teenagers here in Malaysia for being insensible, we compare them
to the children in Syria, Palestine and what not. I won’t argue how helpful it
is if we want to motivate our youths, but to compare and blame them in the end,
I don’t think so.
Think back and ponder, do we realize how the children and teenagers of Malaysia are
also tested? They are not physically tested, but they are being intellectually,
mentally, emotionally, and spiritually westernized and ‘invaded’, they are
being imbibed into thinking the wrong as the right thing including this false
illusion of true love – and that is the test of our Muslim youths here in
Malaysia. And do you know what is so worse and pity about this situation? They just
don’t know that they are being tested! Let’s pick the issue of baby-dumping in our
society in Malaysia today, I see all these misconceptions of the true meaning
of love as one of the most valid and strong reasons for it! Almost all the
‘windows’ for greater evil – by windows, I meant the media, the society and even
the family institution itself – are widely open for them and when they escape
through these ‘windows’, we blame them. What we have to actually do is let
them know when the time is right, the day will come when the ‘door’ – by door, I meant marriage – is widely open for them that they don’t even have to rush and escape
themselves now no matter how wide these ‘windows’ are open. Or perhaps, we can 'lock' these 'windows' first. We
prevent, before we cure. We educate, before we blame.
 |
| This is the time for us to wake up and do something to help the Muslim youths in Malaysia. |
Now,
we also fall in love for various reasons. We love because of the good akhlaq we
found in the person. We love simply because of the things we found in common
between us and the person. We love the way they care about us. We love them for
who they are even if the world indulges in uncertainty that they are not as
what we think. We love just because we love! Nothing is wrong to fall in love,
this inclination is not wrong; it is our fitrah. However, that is not just
about it. This love in our heart is supposed to base on and gravitate towards
His love; this love is the tool to take us closer to the highest level of love,
the love of Allah. It works just like the bridge providing a pathway for us to
cross to the other side. Often, the bridge is used over an obstacle; we need a
hanging bridge in a thick forest, we don’t need a bridge without the river to
cross. And the same thing happens here. So, here is where our next challenge
begins. It is now about how to make this love lawful in the eyes of Allah that
it can further take us to the next level. That
would mean, through marriage. But not all of us can afford to get married
at this age. So, in order to express this love, some of us have taken the wrong
step. We are accustomed to the a kind of life which the right is commonly
perceived as the wrong and vice versa that we tend to follow our desires and
the culture; we date, we attach ourselves in a relationship.
Have you ever
experienced this sort of thing before?
I
don't know your story, but I can tell you mine.
We all have stories we would rather keep untold, you know,
all those chapters from the past we prefer to keep unpublished. I
scrupled Allah knows how many times should I or shouldn’t I include this part
in my article, but I afraid I might face the trouble to give you a clear
picture if I don’t tell you a true story and I choose to reveal my own story.
The bitter truth here is, I had gone through the “aching, stinging and tingling
pain” after the relationship I had before didn’t work out and I had to detach
myself from it. I know how it feels, it is the worst in the morning. We wake up
with this one kind of pain in our chest, we’re suffocating, we feel like crying
all out. At times, when we feel like we’re so over it, the pain still once in a
while ‘pays us a visit’. You try not to think about it, but sometimes you just
cannot stop yourself from thinking, and there comes the pain together with the
thought just like the waves of the chilly morning breeze on a windy day; it
comes over you, you feel it, then it is gone. Just like that. Quick, sharp and painful. One minute you’re laughing with your friends,
the next minutes you’re freezing all of a sudden, enduring the pain taking
control over you. I’ve been there before, I know how it feels. The first time I
had a broken heart, it hit me so hard I began to seek an answer – again, on my own – to numb the pain.
When a drug addict is in the struggle to fight against his addiction, he is
verily in pain; his life goes entirely miserable and the world around him
crumbles, he is powerless until he finds the right medication. My situation was
as bad as that.
Have
you heard the story of a man with no legs and only hands who has been carrying
too heavy a burden in this journey of life, yet he pulls through all the
challenges? Do you know the secret to his success? A miraculously strong
spirit. Yes, a strong spirit. And how
about the story of a man who has everything
but ends up in a devastating and heart-wrenching death like suicidal,
have you ever come across this kind of story on newspapers or websites? Do you
know why such a wealthy and healthy man probably with high status and rank can
even kill himself? Because he loses his hope. When you lose hope, the spirit
within your soul is also breaking that even if you can own everything within
your grasp, it does not matter anymore. Nothing
hurts more than a broken spirit. And the
pain when the heart is broken is no different. Because when the heart is broken,
all your hope and spirit die together with it. And of course, as we can heal
the physical pain of our limbs, so can we heal this pain of broken heart.
So
I did whatever it takes to heal the wound of my broken heart, anything that
could make me feel slightly better. I discovered to recover; I grabbed the
books on the shelves, I asked for advice from my sisters. Until, along my
journey of recovery and discovery, I stumbled upon the publications by Yasmin
Mogahed before I finally understood the pieces of attachment and detachment and
the true love. It had dawned on me that the pain of a detachment is very much
depended on the deepness of the attachment. When we prick our finger with a pin; the
deeper, the more the pain, right? Thus, our deepest attachment
should be purely to Allah, our unconditional love should be strongly based on
Allah; the Creator of all the creations, The Most Loving of all lovers. “For Allah and because of Allah”. That
is how everything made sense, I’ve finally found the cure to my wounded heart. I
don't feel the pain no more.
But it doesn’t just
stop there. As I mentioned earlier, some of us
live in the ‘different’ and ‘maddening’ kind of life that we tend to surpass
the limit in interacting where there is actually bound to be a gap between boys
and girls. In the ‘unfamiliarity’ of the reality, we make friends, we get to
know each other, regardless of our age and gender. Just so you know, I was one
of them. ‘Lower your gaze’, at least in my surroundings, would sound so strange
and odd, that I first heard of it
when I entered CFS IIUM. I was already 18
back then, LOL. I never heard of it in my school times. So, life goes as the way it is and so does my life.
Sometimes, when we are walking, we fall into the same hole twice. Perhaps we
forget there is a hole two steps ahead of us, or, we are blinded by the thick
grass covering it. But don’t fall into
the same hole for the third times, okay? So, I fell for another person for
the second time.
But my
second attachment is completely different than the first.
Our pasts teach us lessons and the future is always a
mystery. And Allah also moves in His
mysterious way. This time it was different even. Unlike the first
relationship I had, I fell for this person because of his characters and his
Deen. We were friends back then before this person had beautifully influenced
me to see life from a better view. When to me it’s either A or B, this person
suggested C instead. When I told this person my biggest fear, he told me that
my fear is other’s fear as well, and if they can do it, so can I. Above all, he had taught me that my
fear, even he himself and I; we all come from Allah. If I was in my journey in
the ocean again, I had met someone who taught me the wonderful lesson : “That you, and I, the ocean and the storm,
even all the creatures in the sea; we are all under the control of the God.”
Of course, I was naturally enticed with him. As time marched
on, a feeling grew inside me that I later became to cling myself to this
person. I then thought I really love this person for His sake. I loved him for his
good and bad, I loved him for taking me closer to Allah, and I really, really
wanted to be with this person not only in the world but also in the hereafter.
Even so, I was not married to this person and was not yet ready though, we both
still had a long way to go; making it somewhat a
‘true but false’ or ‘false but true’ attachment. And
of course, however good you think a relationship is, no matter how close it
takes you to Him, if it is unlawful in His eyes, it does not alter the fact
that it is then unlawful. That’s it.
There is no point pretending and condoning this paradox as ‘unsinful’ if you
both don’t get married because it is sinful. If you are planning to get married to that person in the near future,
that’s a different story.
Nonetheless, still, I didn’t stop giving a
sense of meaning to this second relationship. I tried to find a way to solve
this ‘true but false’ or ‘false but true’ attachment. Well, I did think I love
him for Allah, I fought with myself not to love him more than I love Allah
–even I was not and am not sure if I ever succeeded–but when I knew it is
still sinful to get attached in such a relationship, I wonder what should I
be doing then? How do I in reality love for Allah and because of Allah in this
situation? Along the way, I had astonished at a beautiful hadith I came across
in Rhiyadus Solihin. It reads : “There are seven whom Allah will shade in His Shade on the Day when there is no shade except His Shade : a just ruler; a youth who grew up in the worship of Allah the Mighty and Majestic; a man whose heart is attached to the mosques; two men who love each other for Allah's sake, meeting for that and parting upon that; a man who is called by a woman of beauty and position (for illegal intercourse), but he says : I fear Allah; a man who gives in charity and hides it, such that his left hand does not know what his right hand gives in charity; and a man who remembered Allah in private and so his eyes shed tears.'” (Narrated by Abu Hurairah and collected in Sahih al-Bukhari)
I
began to have all the questions on attachment and true love linked together
with the hadith on the seven groups of people. The moment I read the hadith, I
fell in love with it immediately. It was the line “Two people who love each other for the sake of Allah; meeting upon
that and parting upon that” that attracted me the most. I hounded myself
with questions and I wondered, who are actually those people? Can I be among
them? What should I do to be among them? I was at a crossroad in my life. I was
torn in hesitation between doing something I was supposed to be doing and not
to hurt myself at the same time.
Somehow,
a voice inside me told me that I need to choose.
In
life, there are things you love to do and there are things that you have to do.
You have to make a choice when the two do not meet. They say, among the hardest
time in life is when you have to choose either to walk away or to try harder. It gets even harder when your desire
and your iman tell you two different, contradicting things. My iman told me to part from this
person but my desire, my mind and my everything told me to keep on trying and
improving – or else, I am going to hurt myself again. What
can I say about my second detachment is, the battle is totally different. It
was about detaching myself from the one who used to teach me so many wonderful
things and who had helped me to know my strength and weaknesses, it is about me
deciding to part from human being who had introduced me to the love of Allah.
Of course, I was afraid of what may come in my way. Can I do this, alone? Can I survive my struggle in the sea this time?
How about if the storm hits me and I don’t have the strength to survive alone?
But
deep down inside my heart, it told me that to love someone for the sake of
Allah would mean that you love that particular someone because of Allah and for
Allah, that The One Who placed the love between you two becomes the ultimate
objection and the centre of priority in your life. Hence, if you listen to the
voice deep down inside your heart, it will tell you not to let you, your own
self from tempting the one you love and distracting him or her from the Jannah.
Because you know it is safer to stay away from sin than to defeat it when you
meet it, you don’t want to take the risk to fall under the evil persuasion of
the Shaytaan together. You love and you are hoping only the best for the person
here and in the hereafter, you’re wistfully aware of the fact that sometimes
loving is neither about being loved back nor being together at the end, that it
doesn’t matter anymore whether or not both of you are destined to be together.
It is like “I love you so much that I don’t mind if Allah has a better someone
for you, I don’t mind if we don’t end up together because I know whatever He
plans for you would be the best.” It’s
about giving without hoping anything in return.
And
loving someone sometimes would also mean knowing when to let go.
So,
I chose to listen to the voice deep inside my heart. We parted soon after. We both opted to part from each other, it’s
mutual, to be precise. In our lifetime, we will reach the age when few
things inside us just change that only we and Allah know about it – probably
that’s how it should be – and we started to understand few significant things.
I came to view this as more than just about placing my deepest attachment and
strongest love on Allah. It is now about surrendering my highest degree of
trust and tawakkal to him. It’s about me believing, rather than just saying
“Allah is surely up to something.” It’s about submitting in full obedience, for
whatever He plans for me will be the best. You
don’t know what He plans for you, but you just trust Him, isn’t it wonderful? In a race, we don’t always win the
gold. Winning the silver is sometimes more than what we can ask for and it
happens when all of sudden we have to let it go. Of course, we would
wish we can take hold of it any longer if we can. But we let it go anyway because deep down inside, we
believe that The Giver of the gifts is planning something better for us that
only He can see. He may hold gold for us
in the future, who knows?
Of
course, I was sad even until the moment I wrote this – I could not put all
these into paragraphs if I didn’t feel it – but I chose not to dwell on it. It
is not the ‘letting go’ or the ‘moving on’ that pains me the most. You see, sometimes we choose to just
believe in Him something will turn up someday that our disappointment and our
dismay will peel away into a blessing, because we are more certain of what is
in His hand than what is in ours. I’m truly sure Allah is writing a better
future for me and there is a wisdom behind this, but because I am a human and
my mind is limited, I can’t see the future and I just couldn’t seem to find the
wisdom yet, and not knowing what is the wisdom is what pains me the most. If
you are attached in such a relationship that brings no good to you, it will
someday, – after a few weepy days or weeks – make sense to you that you truly
deserve someone better. You know, your close ones will someday tell you, “You
know what, I don’t see he brings any good to you since you met him” and such
that you, in all likelihood, will be all like, “Really? Thank God I’m no longer
with him!” But that is not what had
happened in my second detachment. When people say “Mr. Right won’t distract you
from Jannah. If he did, he is Mr. Wrong!”, for Allah’s sake, I think I’ve met
that Mr. Right!
We
are all tested. A test which looks bigger to others might looks smaller to us
and vice versa; a big test to us might on the other hand sounds small to others. Allah tests us to make us stronger but He never tests
us with more than what we can bear. Look around us. Some of our friends, they
can’t even afford to eat out. This is my test. And to me, it is not easy. What
are you thinking? I’ve done a mistake and I’ve ‘hurt’ my own soul more than
once that I’ve almost given up hope to keep moving forward. If the Prophet told
us to choose our spouse based on the religion over the wealth, the look and the
lineage, I think, throughout my 20 years of lifetime, I’ve found that person. The
person with whom I can be my true self and I can ask my most stupid questions
without the fear of being judged at all. Someone, with whom I always have the ideas on what to talk about
and what to share; my dreams, my worst nightmares, what have I learnt today
from the tazkirah in the class and so on. The chemistry is just there, no awkwardness and no everything! If there are people to know who I was before, who
I am today, and even who I dream to be in the future; he is one of them. And I
just have to let him go because I am not yet ready to get married, and I don’t
want to keep on displeasing Allah.
However,
at first, I thought my second detachment will pain me like the first did but it
magically didn’t live up to my expectation, Subhanallah. This time, the sadness
comes together with a tranquility in my heart leaving me drowning in this one
kind of bittersweet emotion. It’s hard to explain the tranquility I drew at
that moment and how much easier it makes this whole task of detachment. It
captured those strange mixed emotions of feeling whole again when I was
supposed to fall apart by just surrendering without accepting anything in
return. It displayed real sober, I just can’t put into words the inner
qualities I felt. It was something that moved me to the point of crying and
smiling at the same times. Can you imagine how beautiful it is when you thought
you are going to fall and shed some tears, but you keep on walking ahead and
smile instead? I was sad but I smiled. I was happy but I cried. It was
beautiful I couldn’t describe it. Indeed
it was. I felt like flying free, weightless and featherly, as if something on
my shoulders had been lifted. I felt peace in entirety. Subhanallah, how surreal
was that?
“When a thing disturbs
the peace in your heart, give it up.” Easier
said than done, no? I took almost 2 years to detach myself from my first
attachment and almost 4 years for the second, and I think that explains
everything. Do we want this to happen? No, we don’t. Have we even prayed to
Allah to let us meet at the first place? No, we never have either. Have we ever
wished to stuck with this kind of situation in our lives? What do you think? Of
course not! But it happened and it was taqdirullah
that it happened. And is it going to be easy? No, it is not. It is never easy but inshaAllah it will be
worth it. Why am i saying so? You see, the ‘love’ we feel now before
marriage is not the ‘love’ as we think it is. I don’t say so but Allah mentions
so. It is stated in Quran (30:21), “And of His signs is that He
created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquillity in them;
and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a
people who give thought.” The
‘affection’ or ‘mawaddah’ here refers to a different and somewhat a higher
degree of love Allah places between husbands and wives, it is not the ‘love’ as
we feel now before we get married. And if we can ask all those married couples
how do they actually feel about their spouses before and after marriage, they
will tell us how before marriage they are more like ‘liking’ them instead of
loving.
Avoidance of sin is lighter than the pain of remorse – ‘Umar
Al-Khattab.
There
are people who do not know that this dating-coupling thing is wrong and there
are people who disagree that it is wrong, these are two different
situations. It is important that we figure out which group of people we are
in so that we can further analyze the solution to this issue. I’d love to share with you a du’a I learnt before : "Oh Allah! Show us the
truth as truth and give us the ability to follow it and show us the falsehood
as falsehood and give us the ability to avoid it." (Tafseer Ibn Katheer vol.no 1 pg.no 292 verse 213). First and foremost,
we have to place Allah somewhere so high and special in our heart. When we do
so and it happens that we fall in love with someone or something, not only we
will be cautious to ensure this person and this thing will not in any way
compete and outplace Allah in our heart, but Allah s.w.t will also make it easy
for us to arrive at the solutions, InshaAllah. This battle of loving Allah more
than His creations does not only faced by unmarried couples, those who are
married also struggle in loving Allah more than their spouses.
There
are also people who know what they feel deep inside and they know what is the
right thing to do yet they are afraid to believe it because they know it will
pain them. They fantasize the consequences in a way they otherwise should not
have been doing, ‘what if this’ and ‘how about that’. They afraid it will turn
to be something of a rough, painful awakening. they think they don’t have the
courage to do the right thing. The secret
is, don’t always believe the fantasies our mind tells us. Because, it is
not always that worst a thing. Well, of
course it hurts, but not to the extend we are imagining. Bear in mind that at
least, getting there is not all that matters because sometimes, it is about
what you do to get there and whether or not you choose to take His path. Allah
s.w.t did not even revealed the Quran all at once, He did so gradually during
the Makkan and Madinan periods because He wanted to help the Muslims in those
days in implementing His commandments –He does not prefer hardship for His
servants, in short. If you don’t have much strength to do it, then take one step at a time. Of course, if you have the guts to detach yourself from
your current relationship right now and right here, go ahead. And of course, if
you can afford to get married now, then what are you waiting for?!
Hence,
I beg you to please, start giving a sense of purpose to your relationship now.
Ask yourself, is this relationship a surefire? Are you sure you will end up
marrying that person? When is it, now or later after you’re both ready? And how
long will it take until it happens? In the meantime, are you absolutely sure that
you won’t do any disgraceful conduct? Can you resist yourself from displeasing
Allah? Can you avoid those unncessary
calling and texting and such? Let’s say if you are both not destined to be
together, do you want to have a husband or a wife who used to love someone else
before he or she meets you? Even if you are destined to be together, do you
want all the sweetness of the love to wane later after you both get married?
For the long run, what matters most to you, the duniya or the akhirah? Is what
you are doing now taking you to jannah and even close to it, or the other way
round? If you trully love him or her, would you have the heart to take him or
her farther from Allah?
That’s
how we chose to do it. We both decided to stop seeing each other and we eventually
limited our calls and texting, after giving ourselves the ample time to reflect
and to act. It’s not like we really
technically plan and decide, it’s a mutual understanding, by the way. And
now, here we are, we’ve done with it – after quite 3 to 4 years of muddling
through with the help of Allah – Alhamdulillah. And if we can do it, so can you, inshaAllah. Now, what are you
waiting for? The time is now, right now! Change
now! Be the type of person you wish to marry, be the one whose heart is so
close to Allah that anyone has to seek you just through Him. Anyway, if you happen to be my friends and
you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and when you see me, please, don’t go
like “Oh my God, she comes! You know, she is not into this boyfriend-girlfriend
thingy. Better you zip your mouth shut or else she’ll ‘wash you clean’!”
Remember, I used to be in your shoes before –not once, but twice!– and because of that, I really do
understand you InshaAllah!
If
there one word I can give you is never stop praying to Allah because nothing is
easy unless Allah makes it easy on us. And
you just don’t doubt the power of dua. Look, whenever we do mistake, often
Allah corrects us through our surroundings. Maybe through our friends or
through the lecture in our classes, or even through the articles we come
across. When someone tells us what we are doing is wrong, know that it is
actually Allah trying to correct us. Probably when we watch the television, we
feel like the message been directed to us. You know, like, “Allahu, this is
what I need!” The similar thing is happening to the answer to our prayers but
oftentimes, we just don’t see. Hence, don’t only pray to Allah to show us the
way, but pray that we can understand His signs and that we have the courage to
do what we are supposed to do. When we place our absolute trust on Allah, when
everything is “for Allah and because of Allah”, He will show us a way when it
seems to be no way out to us, inshaAllah. So don't you worry, because when you
think you are weak inside, know that behind you is a strong God. Isn’t it
mentioned in the Quran, Surah At-Talaq
verse 2 : “...whoever fears Allah, Allah will grant him a way out of hardship”?
“Fall in love with Allah first before you fall
in love with anyone else”. That is what people always say. Even so, in reality,
it does not happen all the times. Sometimes, people go through different routes
before they fall in His love, maybe they fall for the creations first and only along
their way of blundering back to Him that they stumble upon His true love. To
some, you might have wished you could swerve everything had you known earlier how
things are going to turn up but not to me. Because I believe, when something
happens, it happened – and it happened for a reason. There’s no point in wishing it had not happened. Those sins have
left us the maps that lead us to Him. We’ve
once gone down the wrong path, but we’ve stepped into the road not often taken,
we have taken the road others fear they might have taken. And we have taken two paths overall. Take pride that along our way,
we have read the signs on both our right and our left before we turn around and
start walking on the right path – ready to relearn again. Don’t you think we are
just amazing?
He
let us go through things. He was The One who sent us those people in our lives,
to play a role, to mould us into a better person. They are the preparation for
our better future. We can either rise or fall from our past, but the choice is
in our hands. Don't give up just yet. We’re a bright spark, don’t let all these
things dull our sparkle. ‘Mein kamyaab hun gi. Aap taqatwar hein. Aap ye kar
sakte hein.’ (That is in Urdu, I had a
participant I met at Iflah Camp 2/2013 translated it for me. Jazakallah, I
promise you I’ll give you credit for this!) It means, ‘You’ll shine. You’re
strong. You can do this.’ Pray to Allah that He protects our heart from
becoming cold and bitter and that He replaces our fear and hesitance with hope
and wisdom. When the time is right, everything will fall into its place, we
will meet that someone Allah has destined for us. Don’t just keep on harping to
our past that we forget to see the new us with the changes inside us. Bear up! Seek
it in ourselves, take it out and make use of it to its fullest, there must be
something we’ve learnt along the way. I praise Allah for the fact that both attachments have taught me the
most priceless lifelong lesson - in their own, different ways. To me, this is my journey of unlocking my
heart.
Last
but not least, in case if you have been wondering the relation between my stories
with the hadith on the seven groups of people, Alhamdulillah I’ve finally found
my answer. Here you go.
“Two people who are in
love but not married, who push themselves away from each other for the sake of
pleasing Allah, and part from the other person, will InsyaAllah, find shade on
the Day of Judgement. True love means that you put Allah first, and save
yourself from wrong. That is showing how much you love the person! Where your
concern for their hereafter is more important than your current pleasure!” –
Brother Daood Butt, Desire.
“...two people who are
dating or doing something haraam, doing something that is not according to the
shariah; talking to one another without the permission of their parents,
without being engaged, without any sort of agreement whatsoever. If the two of
them fear Allah s.w.t so much that they part and go their own ways for the sake
of loving one another that, ‘I love you so much but I care about your
hereafter’, that ‘I love you so much in this life but this life is limited and
the hereafter is forever, and I would love to see you from among those standing
under the shade on the day of judgement’ and the two of them break apart and
they go their own ways, and they realise that the rest of their lives they may
never ever see each other, they may never get married, they may never talk to
each other, they might not even see each other, they may go to different
countries on the earth, but Subhanallah they do it for the pleasure of Allah
s.w.t. Those two people who love each other so much – ‘love’ as in we said
earlier, the love that you think, the love that happens before marriage– yet
they put the love of Allah s.w.t before their own love. And that’s really
unlocking your heart...” – Brother Daood Butt, Unlock Your Heart.
Take
whatever is beneficial for you and leave behind what you think is not. All good
comes from Allah, all bad comes from me. Thank you for reading. <3
