A Different Lens

I have been struggling for the past couple of weeks to pen down something. My mind boggled, my emotions fried and my life distracted. My insides are in turmoil. I have always been amazed by this miracle of Allah Suhanahu wa Ta’ala of how in fills our hearts with the love of other people, who are not our blood relations, not our friends nor our acquaintances. Every single person’s ordeal seems like etched in my heart, every person’s tears has moved me to tears, I know I can never understand their pain, anguish, heartbreak or the burden they bear, I feel something in my heart that these mere words can never do justice to.

I have the understanding of things now that I could hardly understand in the past. I remember how the Quran says to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), to not let these people denying the truth, consume you. And I always used to wonder why was the Prophet so consumed by that, why did he felt so… I only realized just now that when people can see the Truth as light as the Day and you know that they know it, and yet they don’t testify it or acknowledge it is very frustrating. In the current times, when people everywhere, don’t want to acknowledge that war crimes are taking place, over 7000 children have died, that IOF kills, kidnaps, blows up hospitals and time and again refers to turning Ghazza into a ‘football field’ or ‘parking lot’ and are in complete denial of a genocide and a holocaust taking place right in front of their eyes, makes you realize how heart wrenching the situation must have been for the Prophet (saw). He preached the Quraish and the people of Makkah for 13 years, and for 13 years, they knew he was telling the truth and yet they didn’t accept it. As the Quran says, ‘ it is not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts’. How can one see all these modern warfare tech weapons unleashed on civilians and yet turn a blind eye to the atrocities that the state of Israel is committing. So much so that these people think that bombing hospitals and doctors is acceptable. How sick and how much of a psychopath one has to be to accept that and not bat an eye.

The people of Ghazza were denied food, meds, water, fuel and basic necessities. In the current times, when human beings think that they are on the pinnacle of civilization and where human rights are for all, such behaviour puts a question mark on the intellect of the so-called human beings. The struggle they went through in the past one and a half month, is unquestionably, not only horrendous, horrific but it also raises questions as to what is this so-called-civilised world have come to. Are we even human to deny basic human rights to more than 2 million civilians. The human rights organization, the women’s rights organizations, UNICEF, UNESCO, feminists, children’s rights organizations, all were silent and are still silent. The hypocrisy of all these people, who wail at the fully covered women because they think their rights are breached, where are they when the women, pregnant women and girls were bombed to bits, when they were being amputated and when C-sections were performed on them, without anesthesia. Where is UNICEF, when the school board cancelled the year because all the kids were killed, and when the Israelis chanted that,’ There are no schools in Gaza, because we have killed all the babies’.

The insanity has cross all limits so much so that I can’t wrap it around my head. We feel angry , anguished, heart broken and depressed everyday. Why can’t the world see it. Why are people so heartless and so emotionless as to look at the atrocities and just turn a blind eye towards it. Everyday, brings new pain, new low and new destruction, yet the people, to whom Allah has given power, sit and do nothing except for paying lip service, doing extreme disservice to everyone around them. The respectable, don’t seem respectable now. There is NO freedom of speech, where people so proudly used to boast that they are the flagbearers of freedom of speech.

Blood on Their Hands

As the death toll mounts, and the world looks at it with horror, the insanity and the foolishness is revealed. I thought we have seen the low of humankind when they killed indiscriminately in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. But with the events unfolding with every passing moment, we realise that we discover that we were wrong and it’s a bottomless pit and these ministers and leaders are racing to show us how horrendous their insides are. Every time has it’s own Pharoah. Musa (AS)’s Pharoah killed babies too, then there was Abu Jahl, the Pharoah during the times of Prophet Muhammad(SAW), and today, it’s Netanyahu, Biden and Sunak. Their brutality knows no border.

When 9/11 happened, I was in school. The events that followed destroyed not only Afghanistan but Pakistan too. If you take out the interviews, the media, the news, articles, anything from those times, the words, the narrative, the propaganda is still the same. When Bush was asked to try Osama Bin Laden in a neutral country, he said that he wanted to go on a ‘Crusade’ and hence, bombed the country to bits. The soldiers there did every inhumane thing they could have possibly do; keeping parts of Afghan’s human bodies as trophies, raping girls, and killing off whole families at point blank, and all of this was during the ground invasion. They blew up houses and killed innocent civilians through drones in Pakistan too, claiming militants were hiding there. The Blackwater organization was on its feet working in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq killing whoever they wanted whenever they wanted.

The war crimes that happened in those days came to light years after they had taken place. The people were kidnapped, and abducted from various parts of the world, and were sent to Guantanamo Bay Prison, Bagram Prison and Prisons in Iraq. The pictures are still on the internet and the testimonies are there of how these prisoners were treated, and were kept in prisons for years and years without any charges and they were subjected to worst kinds of tortures that anyone in this world could ever imagine. The so-called harbingers of peace and the flagbearers of justice, turned out to be savages with no morality whatsoever. They didn’t have any humanity, they didn’t have any moral values, and certainly were not the best of the people as they claimed to be.

The so-called freedom of speech turned out to be a hoax too because in US now it is illegal to ban Israel and go for BDS but it is okay to condemn the people of Palestine to a genocide! They are now proposing bills to expel Palestinians from their country. So much for free speech and freedom and the American Dream and what not. If you want to expel them from your country then rid their country from the occupiers. But no, they can’t even do that. The very fact that these countries, the best countries in the world, who have the moral high ground, thinks that chanting pro-Palestinian slogans is also ‘hate speech’ and want to turn around the tables and are propagating that this is ‘antisemitism’! When you scroll around your social media, you come across these people, and the talking points only revolve around the events that happened on October, the seventh! And how appalling it is that there are no pictures on the internet whatsoever of ‘decapitated’ babies and children. But everyone turns a blind eye to the babies, that are not even days old and are killed by Israeli airstrikes, the pictures of children killed and mutilated by the bombs. Have you seen the father who was carrying parts of his children in a polythene bag?! Do they count for anything? But the most appalling thing was when the Israeli minister screamed in the cabinet that these children are not equal to our children. If this was a statement of any Muslim minister, the West would have bombed that place saying that these people are terrorists and are a threat to their ‘national security’ and their existence.

There in no moral background of the US or the West’s policies. The people, who caused Holocaust, dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killed millions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, everywhere, say that Muslims are terrorists and a threat to their existence. How ironic! As the world watches in horror and the leaders, be it democratic, or dictatorship or whatever, I have come to this conclusion, wherever there is evil in this world, US, UK and the West are in compliance with one another in abetting to those crimes and stand steadfast in those values that only harm other people mostly because they are not the same race i.e. white!

Now the West, and the world stands with Israel, with it’s so called notion of ‘right to self defense ‘. Imagine how comical it is that the only nuclear power in the Middle East, is wailing like a child over some stones that were thrown by some teenagers at their fully armored tanks. And in retaliation killed over 10,000 innocent civilians, most of whom are kids. Now their cultural minister is asking for a Nuclear bomb be dropped on the city of Ghazza, because carpet bombing was not killing enough of the Palestinians and they want that piece of land for themselves. It seems to me that the times have not changed yet, some people are always more equal than the others. The idea of being ‘white supremacist’, ‘white man’s burden’ and ‘others’ will always be there. The US and Europeans, the British and the Israelis have very beautiful notion that they are the supreme race. US President Biden saying that US is the greatest country and is responsible for the world (bully of the world). These countries have this notion that they are untouchables and will never be held accountable for the crimes they committed because all of them would veto one another in the UN and get away with everything.

The reality is that the supporters of genocide and ethnic cleansing that is happening in Ghazza, will face dire consequences in the future. You cannot do injustice in this world and sleep like a baby. There will always be consequences. And Insha’Allah we will see who will win in the Hereafter.

Ahlul Jannah

Have you ever wondered how the people of Jannah looked like? I mean you look at them, and you are in awe of their eiman, conviction and their relationship with Allah. I saw them. Weirdly, on my Instagram reels; thousands of them. I look at these people and I am amazed, shocked and inspired at the same time. These people have suffered great pain, they have lost everything; from their houses to their families, from their friends to their colleagues. Some have lost their limbs and have been burnt beyond recognition. But what makes them from Ahlul Jannah are the words that they utter in this calamity that makes my hands shake, my eyes tear, and my heart ache; they say ‘ hasbunAllahu wa Na’mal Wakeel’! (Sufficient for us is Allah and (He is) our best Disposer of affairs)

To the people of Ghazza and Palestine: You show us what it is like to be the people of Jannah. What ehsaan is like, what is resilience, what is sabr… Oh! People of Ghazza, when I see you holding the Quran and reading it in the hospitals, while injured, in the ambulances, and everywhere,, you teach me how my relationship with Quran should be like. Ya Ahlul Jannah, you show us how to be happy in Allah’s qadr. Oh my brothers and sisters from Ghazza, you have put all of us to shame.

Oh Ahlul Jannah! I have fallen in love with you though I have never met you. I love you even though I don’t know you. I love you for the sake of Allah. I love you for teaching me how to be grateful. I love you for teaching me what brotherhood is. You have taught me what life is and how transient these affairs are. Allah has given you so much respect that everyone loves you in this dunya and you are welcomed by the Angels in the heavens.