Untethering faith: Jummu’ah reflections
I have been reading Elif Shafak’s book ‘10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World’ recently. In it, there’s a character, Haroun, a middle-aged Turk with two wives in the town of Van in eastern Turkey. He’d married the second wife, Binnaz, after it became apparent that his first wife, Susan, was unable to conceive a child. It turned out that although Binnaz could conceive, she suffered from miscarriages almost every year. As with most turks, Haroun was nominally muslim, but his characterisation suggested that he wasn’t strictly adherent — he drank everyday, for one. But every time Binnaz got pregnant, he’d abandon alcohol and abstain from sins and excesses, hoping that Allāh (SWT) would reward him with the sons he so desperately wanted. As soon as the wife miscarried, he’d return to his old way and the cycle continued. Now this is a fairly mundane and I’m sure there are many Harouns in our societies. Maybe we are the Harouns ourselves. But his behaviour made me reflect with something that I have struggled with for a long time.
For the past few years, I have desperately prayed for something. As with most of us of faith, when we desire a change in our lives, I resolved to increase in worship and prayer, hoping that Allāh (SWT) will grant me my wish. I forsook sleep to stan in Tahajjud in the blessed last third of the night every day. I increased the number of voluntary fasts that I offered. I bit my tongue to prevent gossip and idle talk, strived to dress more modestly, and committed to more charity… any vice or sin that I identified in my behaviour, I worked to eiminate. At first, this was both physically and mentally challenging, but with my mind focused on the blessing that I sought from Allāh, I persevered. The early Tahajjud mornings started out difficult, almost painful, as my body yearned for those lost hours of sleep during my afternoon meetings. In Abuja’s sweltering heat, the fasts were more burdensome than usual. But after some weeks, I began to establish a routine, and feel the spiritual elation from the sacrifices. After tasting what felt like my first true connection to divine mercy, I was convinced that I would maintain these habits for life. But as weeks turned to months, and months became years, I found that the special blessing that I sought from Allāh (SWT) remained elusive and unattainable.
A series of occurrences soon made it clear that what I had spent the past few years praying for, I would not get. Faced by this new reality, I was torn between two paths forward. The first was to continue praying because, after all, Allāh is Al-Fa’ālu-l-Limā Yurīd (‘The One Who DOes What He Wills’) so He can undo what has occurred, and make possible the impossible as He has dominion over the entirety of creation. He can make my wish come true even if reality suggests its impossibility. The second path was to abandon that particular desire, because perhaps Allāh (SWT) has withheld it from me because it is not in my best interest. Maybe He is trying to send a message that what appears good to me, is actually a source of much pain and sorrow. Allāh (SWT) says in verse 216 of Surah Al-Baqarah:
But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allāh knows, while you know not.
As my mind deliberated on which of these paths to follow, I noticed a lethargy set into my daily worship. The euphoria of the last third of the night quickly dissipated, and was replaced by a mind drifting away from its reflective purpose during Tahajjud salāt. The eyelids became heavier as the 3.30am alarms echoed around my room. The feet dragged on their way to the bathroom for wudū. The voluntary fasts became purely dietary exercises as the mind refused to purge itself of impure thoughts, thus failing to align itself with the body to realise the spiritual practice that the fast should have been. This decline persisted until I was back doing the bare minimum: the five daily prayers. Even the highly-encouraged adhkār after the obligatory prayers were almost entirely abandoned.
It took me months to return to a deeper level of spirituality and even now, I don’t think I’ve returned to the historical peak. I couldn’t figure out the reason for the deterioration of my worship clearly unitl I read Haroun’s story. I was similar to him in the sense that our faiths in Allāh’s mercy were contingent on getting our prayers answered. I spent those long nights in prayer and deprived myself of sustenance for days because i hoped that they would serve as some sort of spiritual currency that I could exchange for my wishes. I had to ask myself some incredibly difficult questions, but perhaps the most difficult of them was: ‘was my faith purely transactional?’ Have I only managed to maintain it because Allāh (SWT) has given me many manifest blessings? Would I have maintained the levels of worship that I did if I hadn’t received the blessings, successes, and accomplishments of recent years?
Shame and disgust aren’t sufficient to describe the wave od emotions that followed this realisation. Yes, I was deeply ashamed to discover that I might be of those that Allāh (SWT) has described in His holy book as the munāfiqūn (hypocrites) who pretend to be faithful for wordly gain, and abandon their faith after. But I was more taken aback by how stark this finding was to my self-conception. Had the fact that I resorted to more worship to get something been proof that I had submitted to Allāh (SWT) as Al-Wahhāb, The Supreme Bestower of all blessings? I spent the following months on what felt like a tightrope, trying to prevent myself from falling and get to the other side. The sheer disappointment in my low levels of ’īmān were like a violent, destabilising wind threatening to not just delay my crossing but to throw me off the rope entirely and guarantee that I’d never reach the other side.
Relief came on a night flight over the Mediterranean. The other passengers were asleep and the cabin had fallen into an eerie silence. Looking out of the window, I saw the stars shining brightly as we drifted above the clouds. In the distance, I noticed flashes of bright light which I realised were part of a thunderstorm. It seemed to be getting closer but I was yet to feel any turbulence. Out of nowhere, a feeling of anxiety overcame me. I knew that the storm wouldn’t engulf us, otherwise an announcement would’ve been made by the pilot. But the sudden awareness that something potentially catastrophic and fatal was so close must’ve brought up thoughts of death and put me in a state of panic. I sat still and tried to reflect on what I should be doing if these were my last moments on earth. I asked myself what state I would want to be in to meet Allāh (SWT)? My answer caught me by surprise.
I wanted to meet Him in a state where I had submitted to His will. That’s it. Everything else was irrelevant: my good deeds, mu transgressions, my intentions, my uncertainties… It wasn’t that I suddenly didn’t care about my past decisions. Instead, I acknowledged them and understood that no action of mine could’ve resulted in them not occurring, as they were part of Allāh’s Qadr, His divine ordinance. And I realised that the best way to ensure that I lived a wholesome, spiritual life was to free my faith from the past and the future. It shouldn’t be tethered to what was, or what is going to be.
I had been thinking about faith as if it was an additive process. If I did more ‘good deeds’, it meant that I had more faith. But the reality is that one can spend a lifetime completing good deeds and yet fail at the last hurdle if they die in a state of dishonour, and their afterlife would be one of despair. And vice versa. Allāh (SWT) made this clear through His forgiveness of a prostitute for drawing water from a well to save a dog dying of thirst. The key to faith is to strive to submit to Allāh’s dominion and what He has obligated in the present, even if you’ve failed to do so time and again in the past.And even if you continue to fail to do the right thing, there is another present to focus on.
