Skip to main content

What does it mean to be a muslim (for me)?

Image
By
It is Ramadan and I am asking myself this question. To me being a muslim is about finding myself. Finding my place in this world. Finding my purpose. It is about doing good. It is about following the examples of the prophet (saw) and the messages of the Quran. It is about improving and aiming to be a better person everyday. I am not perfect and I am broken in some ways but I found peace in my religion, in God and in the promise of heaven for good deeds that outweigh bad deeds. Islam for me is about believing in something that feels good to me. It is about following the straight path. The path of guidance and mercy. I am not in a position to argue which religion is correct and whether God is real but I can share what I believe and what feels good to me and what works for me. They say Islam chooses you and I believe that.

Life's journey comes with ups and downs. I struggle just like you. I struggle like everyone else. But I feel that with a guiding hand that is Islam and Allah and Quran and everything else that is part of being Muslim, the journey will be worth it. The truth (I think) is that none of us knows the full but we believe. Believing in God feels right to me. It is the glue that keeps me together. It is the source of the love in my heart. He is my creator. He is the Most High. I believe life is a test. I do not know why. I have not found that answer. One day it will make sense or maybe not but for now I believe. Maybe we all should have been sent to heaven directly without a test but then we will still probably question that. I think no matter how God creates us and where he places us as long as we have reason and can ask questions, we will. The alternative is to exist without reason. Can there be existence without reason? So maybe that is it? We are given free will and tested so that when we ask of God, why did You, he can turn to us and ask us, why did you.

This reminds me of something I had written before. "Why does God allow hunger, poverty, war, etc.? What if God asked us the same question? There is enough money, resources, knowledge, good people, smart people to solve our problems. Why do we allow it?" Reasoning and asking questions is the very nature of existence. I do not think there can be existence without questions and answers without testing. Maybe the ultimate question is do we prefer no existence or existence? And we could not answer this question without there being existence. So here we are, existing. This reminds me of what I have written on my about page. "I am exploring and learning everyday. Life is a test and there are so many questions." So maybe that is it in summary. To me, to be muslim is to be human and to be human is to be tested.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How do we fix this world?

By
It is 4:39 pm and I have decided to write. It is a peaceful and quiet day. I am thinking about God, and how this life is a test. There is so much happening in this world that could make us sad. But we do not have to remain in that sadness when we put our trust in God. God wants good for us. God wants us to experience peace, and even happiness, despite what surrounds us. How do we fix this world? My friend Chatty suggests that maybe a better question is: What kind of person do I choose to be in this world? Because when enough people answer that question well, that is how real change begins. I want to be the kind of person that God is pleased with. Someone guided by God, not by ego. Someone who chooses patience over anger, humility over pride, and sincerity over appearances. I am doing reasonably well, but I am not perfect. And maybe perfection is not the goal. Growth is. Awareness is. Returning to what is right, again and again, is. I want to grow, and I will keep adjusting myself when ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hobby project - Store and view exchange rates

By
The next step in my project was to test out being able store and display the rates in a database. I decided to use nodejs and supabase for this. Everything worked beautifully. Only hickup was the following error due to my package.json not being correct. SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module Added this to package.json   "type": "module" This works beautifully. Right now I am just testing fragments of what could be part of a bigger system to see what is possible and what works and how easy to code on a mobile. There is no fully functioning integrated end to end system just yet. This is also what I tested. A serverless append-only database using GitHub + Actions + Pages. That’s basically a lightweight backend system. This was the ChatGPT prompt I used. Guide me through each step. This is what I want. A manually run github actions that adds to docs/data.json with the current date and time. docs/index.html displays all the entries in data.json. Make s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mundane

By
It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise. A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an ...
Post a Comment
Read more