Three Kinds of people!

During my Eid celebrations I understood with an epiphany that there are three kinds of people in this world.

1. People who take from this world and give nothing back to it
2. People who give as much as they take from this world
3. People who only give to this world without taking much
I think that prophets lie in this third category because their sole purpose is to establish word of Allah on earth and for this very reason they spend their whole lives. Also in this category are people like Abdul Sattar Edhi who spend their whole lives giving without taking much.
Next are those people who are philanthropist and virtuous ones who care for other beings and spend from their earnings for others, they give their time to others and they try to be virtuous. But they keep a balance in what they give and what they keep. These are the people who are members of societies like Edhi center and Akhuwat foundation.
The people of the third category are the greedy ones who only try to fill their pockets from the riches of this world and fail to share with others. These are the ones who are tormented in nightmares and satisfaction/happiness eludes them.
It is the Aura of Muhammad's (p.b.u.h) religion (deen) that after Muhammad (p.b.u.h) no other Prophet is going to come. And Allah has put the responsibility of dawah (preaching)of His word on the followers of Islam - that is Muhammad's (p.b.u.h) religion.
So, it is plausible to say that after Muhammad (p.b.u.h) it's Muslims who have to just give to this world without taking much from it. It is for this reason Allah has again and again told us in the Holy Quran about the malignant nature of dunya (world's gains). He has warned us not to indulge in it so to forget about akhira (Day of Judgment) and the life after death.

In this context i believe we have to think and we have to ponder over our actions that what are we doing and why we are doing things we are doing.
May Allah forgive us and guide us to the straight path.

Earth Day!

My little cousin asked me to tell her something to write on “Earth” in 50-60 words. There were many things that wanted to come out from my jumbled up mind. But I stopped, wondered for a moment and reflected; that, I cannot outpour everything. But after a while it came to me to write everything down that came into mind.
Our earth is home for more than 6 billion people. It constitutes of varied splendor of Allah Almighty in innumerable forms and ensures the well being of humans. It has lush green forests, deep blue seas, barren deserts and vast fertile lands. It is in fact an unfathomable resource of tranquility for its habitants. It provides us food to survive, shelter to live, water to rejoice, desire to beauty, passion to struggle, challenge to overcome, compassion to love, fear to dread and many things which are the foundations of not only our physical world but composes the very fabric of cognition and conscience of human minds.
To this blessed life we enjoy for granted, we enjoy a bounteous time on this earth to “pursue our happiness”. Whether it is peace or frustration in our souls, our failures or success, the only thing that compels us forward and makes us think is our compassion and love for others. In this hectic pursuit of our very existence where ‘fittest one survives’ we don’t really bother about our fellow beings, ‘Earth’ which is home to us, weak who we have to support and to ‘might’ which has to be subjugated by morality. In our pursuit we end our lives in a box failing to think outside of it and thus fall into the pit of selfishness.
On this day let us revive that compassion that has been compelling us to evolve and has consumed the resources of our ‘home’ that is always the dearest thing of all. Let us be united, like in our homes, let us rejoice peace, like in our achievements and let us eradicate dread like we lend hands to our brothers and sisters in their distress. Let this ‘Earth’ be ‘home’ to us, let it be the epiphany for those who transgress and haven for those who care.

Altruism

What are the sentiments of caring? Why the act of doing something for someone beyond your interest is not something we encounter on daily basis? Why is it that we, the members of same species with the same origin, with same ideologies of values, borne by birth by every member of this race, has forgotten to care for others and for that unfathomable amount of love and service one can do for others. Why is it that we are loathed in a race for our own existence? Why is it that we do not have time to stop and think for a moment about our purpose and our responsibility as humans? Why is it that we have degraded ourselves to mere living organisms with no aims other than to strive for our own good and for our interest?
We pass by through wondrous creations of Allah Almighty. We are the ones with highest sense of dignity and honor. We have had valor and strength to conquer through the mightiest of the natural forces. With our intelligence we tamed the wraths of nature we have learned to survive and we have learned to lead our lives with civilization and it has been possible with Allah’s blessings alone. It is the higher sense of beauty and an insurmountable thirst for continuous improvement that lead to the wonders that we utilize every day. I was passing through a bridge in Lahore and I saw the sturdy pillars by which its structure was supported. I wondered in reminisce that it must have taken a large number of labor and a wealth of experience and understanding and calculations to build this structure. The world we see today is built pieces by pieces, deliberately, with planning, and sacrifice. This could not have been possible without the blessings of Allah, Who bestowed that unity which resulted in what we see. This cannot be possible without unity and unity cannot come except from care and love. This love is always without conditions and without bounds. The results can be achieved otherwise, but they will certainly not yield in increase of dignity and honor of human race.
It is altruism that is absent from our society. I see and I experience that everyone has some motives and it is these motives which shape the bases of relationships. It is these motives which compel any person to perform and persevere for anything.
I believe that this attitude excruciatingly extracts the humanity left inside humans. Without which we cannot exist. It is the need of the hour that we revive this passion of selfless service of others by giving what is required by others at the appropriate time at which it is required.

Mirage

“Contemplation is a curse that makes an old confusion worse” I don’t know who said it but whenever I remember these words I feel like I am living my life in a deception. What Einstein tried to prove mathematically I think that we are all a living proof of it, we are living in a relative world where nothing is absolute, not even time, space, people, emotions, feelings, desires, actions, behaviors, perceptions, conceptions, assumptions, presumption nothing, nothing is absolute. So, whenever we come across anything ‘new’ in our mind we stop and think what have we been doing before. Then we contemplate, then we ponder over our actions and then we try to come up with a relative ‘logic’ to satisfy what had been the driving power of our actions.
I wake up, I dress up, I pack my bag and go and attend the classes, I come back I again change my clothes, I sleep sometime and then wake up, I hang out with my friends for some time, study if I have to, and then what, I go to sleep again and then repeat this everlasting routine. This is what most of us do in UET. When some incidents (and surely they happen with everyone) make us to stop and think we just don’t bother and move on with our routines. We don’t want to ‘confuse’ ourselves from any past mistake, or I would say we don’t want to deny our actions our egos even when we know that they were wrong. Isn’t this a mirage, a deception, in which we are spending our lives? What does command our life and actions? What are all our actions about? What are we striving for?
A sapling (tree) when tied up in a particular direction grows into that very direction; it never goes out of the way even if it wants to. This is what our state is; we never want to go outside the boundaries set by the society. If you just try it yourself to take one step astray from the path set by the society and right away you are going to face grave and despicable circumstances and you can try it any time.
Like puppets of the society doing what everybody is doing and we say that the wisdom of mankind is at its apex and we are enjoying a free and liberal world in which we can do whatever we want to, think whatever we want to, and believe in whatever we want to, just think it yourself. We aspire for a life that is fabricated by proctor and gamble, Ferrari, Siemens, BMW, Google etc. we live our lives for the profit of these capitalists who hunt us down by their giant billboards, attractive advertisements and with offers that we cannot deny.
This is why when we have a glimpse of the true responsibilities of us and we try to contemplate, we discover our evilness, what we do is only that we ‘make an old confusion worse’. What is the society controlled by and who is the master of the puppets? I guess it is our instincts that are driving us. And we are giving freedom to ourselves to exploit these animal instincts, this is what some philosophers say, some have said that it is the ideals which control one’s perseverance, some say that it is the biological needs in control of literature, art, religion, music, culture etc. one way or the other in my opinion it is something that comes from within, it is the evil which wants us to be free from all bounds, for this very reason democracy is being hailed. It is the evolution taking place and we are exploring the areas of our conscience, by giving freedom to free lancing. This will prove nothing useful to us on the individual level and on the level of the society as a whole because it will unleash our animalism and there lies nothing good but only the wicked. For a proof of it I think I need no example West with its allies is an actual proof of it.

Infliction!

Infliction
In January,2010, Professor Mubashar the Vice Chancellor of UHS said while delivering a lecture on ‘suicide prevention’ that in Pakistan approximately one million people commit suicide every year. “This represents one death every minute, almost 3,000 deaths every day, and one suicide attempt every three seconds.”, and also he said that the suicide rates have increased by 60 percent worldwide over last half century, while suicide has been in the top 10 causes of death in every country. This is only the ecstasy of infliction, the obsession rates of infliction are far from imagination.
Everybody is in a state of war with everyone, against every one. Starting from individuals to the nations everybody is involved in inflicting pain and distress on each other. Whether it is the imperialistic wars, or the egoistic approach of individuals towards life, we see outrage and menace in people throughout. Being practiced by every group of individuals and races without any discrimination; infliction of pain, negligence, abuse, hatred and wickedness is now a very common and every day spectacle of one’s life in the present age of modernization.
Some things are there that we do knowingly and some we do unconsciously, today we practice infliction obliviously. In our heedlessness we inflict suffering to the whole of humanity by not doing something for it, by not acting for a change, by not doing in favor of human souls, by procrastinating everything important to mankind and doing everything that is just for the material well being of one’s own self. In serenity and peace of some, there is distress and havoc for others. Enjoying lotteries in Las Vegas or Dubai while nearly 11% of the world’s population lives on less than 1$ a day. Some are enjoying a tan in summer on beaches while people are being bombarded with bombs and weapons of mass destruction. Corn, wheat and rice is being used to fuel up the exclusive rides while people are dying of hunger in Somalia and Liberia, some are living in castles and homes that are worth billions while people are being dragged out and looted from their houses, the only heaven on earth. Enjoying your success in McDonald’s while many have slept without food. Leading a luxurious life is certainly not possible in this world without being ignorant of what is happening around in the world. This is the infliction, caused by some, that, when taken to an extreme level causes people to dispose off their lives by their very own hands, this makes them to cut and bleed themselves to relieve and weed out the vicious memories and experiences they had in their lives due to this very unbalanced life of so-called modern world.
‘Survival of the fittest’ is now a common saying and this itself represents infliction of pain and suffering for those who are not ‘fittest’. And without asking thyself, people are beginning to question God. This evolution of human fabric has left us to stop and ponder over our sentiments, actions and logic. ‘Rethinking the future’ is a phrase that is being associated with a ‘greener tomorrow’, while the need is to rethink and reshape the entire purpose of perseverance of humanity as a whole. This heedlessness is the strongest infliction of everything bad that is happening in this world. Starting from the individual and spanning over the nations, from the very minute abuses and fights to the severe words of egoism and individualism, humanity, standing at the brink of destruction, moving towards the third or maybe the fourth world war, captivated by corporatocracy and private enterprise, is in the tentacles of infliction being borne by every person without knowing, is declining without question until or unless humans don’t stop to ‘rethink the future’.
I heard about a suicide of a soldier who killed himself because he couldn’t manage to fulfill the queued and enormous desires of his mother who wanted him to send her money for the dowry of her sister and other unending desires of his family. Economic pressure, poverty, discrimination and absence of law are the common reasons of suicides. After hearing about a suicide, one thing that comes into the minds of people is that there must be an economic pressure on that person which compelled him to kill himself. The unequal distribution of wealth is causing the loss of lives in the whole of the world. And every individual whether knowingly or unknowingly is contributing in this racism of wealth and personal gain.
Without caring for anybody because of your progress and neglecting the ones close to you and being unable to understand and comprehend them is the root of the infliction that causes mass wickedness and mischief. This when exaggerated becomes the face of the society which reflects utilitarianism and Marxism. In its very basic, these ideologies inflict pain and loss to a certain group of people while giving a bounty of privileges to others. This is natural for the later group to experience infliction of pain, anxiety and depression. If and only if there is a sound machinery of judicial system in place and accounts for the ways of earning of the elite and stops them from exploiting the poor, it is possible for the society to move on with both the groups side by side.
“We often do not know why we do what we do”
This question must be answered by everyone while doing or thinking anything in his life. Spending 2,3 hours in watching movies, or spending a whole bunch of time on the networking sites, we must stop and ponder about the purpose of our actions. Have we thought about it that our actions might be hurting someone, our vain actions, that may have become one of our attributes. This confusion has led us to the loss of many hearts and minds of very talented people around us, who might have done important contributions to human knowledge and who might have brought important things to notice for humans. If we would just have given them a buck up of whatever they are interested in and had taken an interest in their aspirations, their fate might have been different. This is not only a spectacle experienced by me. Instead it is our common experience that people don’t appreciate others, even the virtuous ones who do something good. This behavior injects infliction of negligence in people who are not self motivated and who are not strong in their belief of what they are doing.
So, working for the world where ‘survival of every one’ is the slogan and where everybody enjoys tranquility without any classification, striving for good and standing against the wicked is a common practice, where removing differences and practicing patience is the daily meditation of everyone, is indeed required to root out infliction in all of its horrific forms. We must think and act to root out this infliction which must not be the heritage of the generations to come, where, ‘every body will be in peace with everyone for everyone’ InshaAllah!