The most difficult thing
to do today is to be a Muslim, or is it? If you are a woman trying to observe
hijab and exhibit modesty, you are likely to be judged as being subservient
to the men of your family; your talents, your skills are more or less to
be predetermined by a stereotype of a veiled woman as being home-specific
only. And mind well, this challenge is not only going to emanate from non
Muslim women, nay, your own colleagues, seen or portrayed as more progressive
in society, will be there to assess you first, partially and premeditatively.
Furthermore, for those who keep an Islamically visible beard (and that means
not a small, light-trimmed beard that probably does not fall within the
boundaries of the Islamic beard), may be subject to judgments of very clean
shaven individuals of society that could make it more unacceptable for you
to be a man of forward vision.
If you are a young male or female, the period of your transition into
adulthood, will come into constant comparison with the lives of your more
sophisticated friends who are both Muslims and non Muslims.
Of course, the above are mere descriptions of physical traits and how
society deals with them today. There are, of course, more intricate innate
traits that actually determine the changed manner in which people, and
especially practicing Muslims are judged today. The entire broad band
of this euphoria is that it is important to be “good” (the
definition of good being material, etc), to be social, to be fast paced,
and to be what one wants to be. And it is held, rather contemptuously,
that to adorn such physical baggages as hijab and the beard, are retroprogressive.
Why? One may aptly ask. The answers are hardly related to any social or
moral scale. It is the physical and sexual appeal of individuals today
that overrides their other traits. So, do you see why it is more difficult
to be a Muslim today?
Our brothers and sisters all over the world, draw volumes of attention
when they seek recognition and acceptance outside the community. Some
socialize to extremes just to be seen as role model contemporary Muslims
within the scope defined by non Muslims as being acceptable Muslims. In
recent times, such deliberate attempts to gain social acceptance has also
emerged due to the arrival of questionable mercenary Muslim cultures that
are telling the world that to be Muslim is to know how to kill, for some
god forsaken higher object.
But it must not be denied that the essence of being a Muslim or a Muslimah,
is not in trying to associate or dissociate oneself with the practices
of other cultures or faiths. What is essential now, more than ever, is
to be the true followers of Ahlul Bait (AS), and to hold our heads high
up for being Shias in a world, that is corrupt, and downright immoral.
Baltasar Gracian, a Spanish Writer, put this in good perspective when
he said “Do what is easy as if it were difficult, and what is difficult
as if it were easy.”
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