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Significant Life Experiences

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#1 [Permalink] Posted on 27th April 2018 16:18

I have always felt in this world like Alice in Wonderland.

 

It has been an uphill task comprehending and adjusting to the external reality, as much as I have managed to do.

 

In spite of being a perpetual misfit I might have stumbled upon some remotely useful things. I intend to record those in this thread.

 

You are not only welcome but requested to share your own significant learning moments.

 

This thread is not for Eureka moments - those are different things.

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#2 [Permalink] Posted on 27th April 2018 16:31
Maybe a better choice of words instead of Alice in Wonderland :) Just my opinion.

What I have learnt and continue to learn is that we are being brainwashed in every aspect of life to remove the deen from our hearts. forever. It is being done so subliminally that we just don't realize it, as above.

Brain washed in religion, politics, life, pleasure, and so on and Shaitan is doing well so far.
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#3 [Permalink] Posted on 27th April 2018 16:46
Alice in Wonderland is not a Christian metaphor. Though it is a western metaphor but it is secular in nature. Basically this thread is about understanding this world by personal experience. To understand it from the Prophetic point of view is the necessary step number two.
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#4 [Permalink] Posted on 27th July 2018 15:12
Secret of Smart People


All throughout my life I have been puzzled at the smartness of the so called smart people.

I am ashamed to acknowledge that it has taken me half a century to get to their secret.

Please underscore that I am talking about the so called smart people and not the really smart people.

Secret of really smart people became known to me long ago. They are really smart and that is it. Nothing surprising about them and nothing irritating about them. At the end of the day they are mostly a joy of life. (We got to leave out the nasty people from this discussion.)

The conundrum and enigma have been the so called smart people. What is their secret.

Ramadan is the usual period for me to get some insight about the world around me. Even after many a Ramadan I was clueless about the essence of the smartness of the smart people.

Only slowly I have come to the crux of the matter. This post is about the life experiences relevant to this puzzle.

First the social situations where I was dumb found about the smartness of the so called smart people. I have to include several of these episodes.

(1) I was, as a newly recruited lecturer, in a refresher or orientation course organized by the Academic Staff College of our university. The speaker in a particular set of lectures made a statement about some social condition. The statement looked reasonable to me but a colleague who was part of the course reacted very negatively to it.

Now this colleague was and is amongst the so called smart people. A man never to be caught on the wrong or the losing side.

And he had made this nasty remark. The social situation about which he was reacting could not have been familiar to my colleague for he has never been academically or intellectually too bright to put it mildly.

Yet he reacted very decisively.

What was happening?

(2) Another university colleague was in the habit of making taking-for-granted-remarks to me. You have to read more. You have to think deeply. You do not have the experience. Maulana Azad was cunning and nasty. All Maulvis are crafty. The snide remarks were endless.

Then people like him will call anybody smart who falls on side of the high and mighty and the powerful.

Does smartness mean to side with the might?

This colleague made nasty remarks about a friend who had taken ideology from this colleague and spent all his life on that ideology and ended up with zero result. What was the fault of this friend? Being a very qualified engineer this friend had spend a few years in a lucrative job and had set up a mineral water plant for himself - to earn his bread and butter. He made his both ends meet with difficulty.

But my colleague focused on this water plant and targeted this friend. Indeed they were friends before me coming into the equation.

How can people like my colleague get confidence, and smartness, to be so nasty about people close to them?

(3) I have a neighbour who was initially awakening the Muslim Millat and now is sitting in Narendra Modi's lap. In his first phase many professors from the university became his fans and followers and in the present phase they have estranged themselves but call this man very smart.

To keep the things simple these three examples are sufficient.

So what is the secret of smartness of these people?

(1) The first colleague is simply dishonest man and bent upon getting his due, or undue, by hook and the crook. But this is not about the smartness part. The question is about his reaction about a situation that could not have been very familiar to him and he does not have God given gift to fathom such situations extempore. yet he gave a decisive reaction. How and why?

The answer became known to me because I had asked him a supplementary question a while later.

He reacted negatively because similar statements about social situations were being made around that time by those people whom this colleague did not approve of. Hence anyone copying them or acting like them has to be bad. Situation be damned - the person was using words of those people who my colleague did not like.

He was acting simply out of selfish concerns and no depth at all.

There was no profundity, depth, insight or brilliance - just sheer self interest and that is all.

(2) In the second case it is simply the case of misplaced over confidence.

(3) This third person is a rank opportunist and completely an anti-social ( in fact anti-Muslim) person. People praising him are just covering for their stupidity for they were earlier duped by him.

So what is the up shot of this all?

Well the so called smart people are not really smart but simply outright selfish ones and cons or people acting out of misplaced self-confidence.

Very expensive lesson of life but I do find it significant.
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#5 [Permalink] Posted on 27th July 2018 18:15
Time is motionless. The same story is repeating again and again. Pharaoh and Nimrod are present even in the current times. Musa AS and Ibrahim AS are present as well. There is no past, present or future. Quran is always new. It is the key which unlocks the secrets of this universe.
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#6 [Permalink] Posted on 27th July 2018 23:57
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What you describe is hypocrites and the way to outsmart them is with words that are sweet and painful at the same time.
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#7 [Permalink] Posted on 28th July 2018 01:29
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Sir, do you also write posts in the vernacular? I would be very interested in reading those as well.
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#8 [Permalink] Posted on 29th July 2018 02:03
I was wrong


As an idealist, I have always tried to find perfection in my life. Perfection in work, in relationships, in deen. However, it’s a painful reality for me that nothing is perfect.

I have always left any work which I did in the middle because of lack of perfection. Friends, job, even the work of deen. As soon as I disagreed with anyone, I would completely leave the effort.

I was wrong…

I realized that we have to move along as long as khair is Ghalib over sharr.

For example, I don’t agree with the local tarteeb of Tablighi Jamaat. There is no room for learning the deen in the daily routine of tabligh. It is more about rituals, dawah and ibadah. After working one’s livelihood, spending time with family, taking care of one’s body and doing tabligh activities along the way one doesn’t have the time for even learning the essentials of deen. This doesn’t mean that we should leave tabligh altogether. I have just arrived a middle ground in that. Take part in weekly gasht and spend 40 days each year. Rest of the days, you learn and do dawah the way you feel comfortable.

Similarly, I don’t agree with those ulema who support democracy. However, it doesn’t mean that I stop acknowledging their achievements, status and respect. A single person can’t know everything and anyone can make mistakes in judgement (even a senior alim).

So, my point is, not to leave relationships or work completely but adjust according to your liking and sometimes we have to compromise. There are somethings which we have to compromise on and somethings on which we have to make others compromise. We can’t accept everything from others and we can’t make others do everything we like.

Also, I have finally arrived to this conclusion that it is dangerous in current times to become an alim or complete jahil. An alim whose tazkiya is not done under a shaykh which takes a lot of years and effort, can become arrogant and can justify his mistakes with daleel even if the other person who is less knowledgeable and is pointing out a mistake is on haq. Similarly, a jahil is sinning or even kufr without realizing that it is a sin which he is doing. However, a student is a person who is seeking knowledge. He is ready to correct himself, when he is convinced by someone more knowledgeable that he is on the wrong. Also. even if he commits mistake but till death considers himself to be a student and doesn’t commit shirk then Allah will pardon him.
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#9 [Permalink] Posted on 29th July 2018 10:39

abuzayd2k wrote:
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I was educated in Hindi medium ya akhi. I write well in that language but I do not use it. For years I translated the annual report of our research institute  into Hindi. I speak Urdu well but being from UP in India Urdu was denied to us as a course subject in school. Hence I lack confidence in Urdu spelling and hand writing. In spite of my reading being most in Urdu I do not use it for writing very much. In fact the only Urdu writing I have done is the Majlis of my Shaikh that runs into several note books that only me and my friends can read.


In summary as of now the answer to your query is in negative only and I feel sorry for saying that. But intend to do write in Urdu to reach my fellow brothers and sisters.
 
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#10 [Permalink] Posted on 29th July 2018 14:12
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 May be I missed the point in my attempt to make it lucid. Duplicitous people are very much there and they are equally irritating. I was focusing on those who know 'it' for sure and would like to have there way.

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#11 [Permalink] Posted on 10th October 2018 08:39
Even at the cost of repetition I shall recount the significant learning.

(1) After a lot of banging of my head against the concrete walls I have come to realization that though the world has a lot of intelligent and some very intelligent people but it is not that you are confound by their brilliance. You are confound by their sheer selfishness and the cruelty within them.

Not everybody is selfish but most of the people are. Not all people are cruel but many are. And some are very cruel. The most unnerving part is that sometime people close to us are cruel.

The book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Golemann narrates a very energy sapping incident. A man killed his little daughter by beating and ignoring her agony. On the third day, a few days before dying she asked him to loosen her dress belt because it was hurting her.

My point in this item is mainly selfishness, not cruelty. Mention of cruelty came just by the way but it never the less qualifies as a significant learning.

So when you feel confound by the world please understand that one of the causes might be that you expect people to be altruist while they are really selfish.

(2) The second point is about understanding Qurratulain Hyder.

(3) The third point is about understanding the Godfather story.

It took me a long time to figure out these things. A Delhi poet Iqbal As-har has a couplet:

Itni asani se milti nahin fun ki daulat
Dhal gayi umr to ghazalon pe jawani aayi

You get not this treasure of art so easily
When life entered old age, Ghazal became nymph

(Last two pints to be made more precise.)
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#12 [Permalink] Posted on 6th December 2018 15:49
Secret of Success and Progress


In Badar Muslims were out numbered by one is to three. They slew seventy of the infidels. This looks like a victory out of God's Grace. Such episodes of Grace are not a a day to day affair. These are rare.

In the battle of Uhud the situation was reversed.

Then comes the Battle of Ahzab - the Confederates. This time Muslims barely managed to hide behind the trench.

Then some where we have the Hunain Battle. There the situation of Muslims was really pathetic.

In all of this we realize that we were at the receiving end all the time.

This where the question comes to mind - where did we get the success and how did we end of on the top? The problem looks very stupefying.

My problem with the Sufi, Madarsa and Tabligh is that this type of questions are very relevant today when Islam and Muslims are under constant pressure from the external parties and yet these three sectors of Islam are completely oblivious to this very inconvenient reality.

As if doing massive amount of Dhikr will turn the tide for the good.

As if memorizing a huge number of Isnad will make the Saffron in India and Islamophobes the world over disappear.

As if going out for forty days or four months or perhaps one year will make Muslims safe from the machinations of all those who have the Ummah in their clutches.

As if worldly affairs are simply a delusion, a chimera and Maya as believed by the polytheists in India. As if Dua is all that is needed to alleviate our worldly misery.

Anyway my main point is to focus upon how beloved Rasoolallah SAW solved these problems - problems that were the biggest ones faced by Ummah.

Martin Lings tells us how Rasoolallah SAW took extreme care and very diligent steps to maintain an advantage over the enemy after the disaster at Uhud. This was his norm between the battles - not to allow the enemy to get any impression that the Muslims have been subdued even if there were serious set backs in the battles.

Rasoolallah SAW was always on his toes, from the worldly point of view, as far as the danger from the enemies was concerned. There was no time to relax once he, SAW, entered the Madina life. He was alert, planning, working, keeping all the requisite info on the enemy activities - even the peace time activities of the enemies.

Cut to the times after Aurangzeb Alamgir RA.

The historians tell about the scores of Mughal kings that came after him that these were, without exception, all incompetent, inactive and unassertive.

Cut to the present times. There is near complete encroachment on our life space and the people who should be showing us the light are telling us that Dhikr, memorization and forty days outing is all that it takes to put the things right.

I most humbly differ.
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#13 [Permalink] Posted on 8th December 2018 20:16
There are divine laws working behind every major or minor event in our individual lives and the life of a nation.Quran tells us those laws,sometimes by the name of 'Sunnat ullah', warning us that we will not find any change in the ways of Allah (لا تجد لسنة الله تبديلا), sometimes inviting us to learn from history,to think over the results of any particular set of deeds in previous nations,and telling us to draw lessons from the combined mememory of human race,because the outcome will be the same everywhere and for all the times.There are exceptions to the rule, called mujeza,but that is not a norm.....

Those who consider themselves 'special' and start defying the laws which govern the universe(by the will of Allah) and then expect positive results are ignoring the fact that even the chosen ones (the prophets) followed the law of asbab and then when Allah chose,mujeza also happened.The prophets lived their physical life like common men,they ate,they did business,they earned Rizqe halal,they used all the means available to them to prepare for wars (still sometimes they won,other times they lost).....

Allah swt could have helped them without asbab,easy for him,but the issue is IMAN BIL GHAIB,that is where humans are tested.Had Allah swt shown his help for them so openly,the element of 'test' would have gone out of equation......

We too will have to prepare ourselves for our wars,the way we should.....

We will have to educate ourselves with all the required technologies,raise teams of good scientists,develop arms factories,missiles,nukes; organise our societies,strengthen our economies,combine our resources.....and while doing so remain Muttaqi and keep our trust in Allah swt

In Islam Din and Dunya are not two mutually exclusive things.If a Muslim scientist is building jet fighters with the intention to fight the enemies of Allah,he is a mujahid; On the other hand a sufi sitting in khanaqah with his heart and his mind involved in money is classical 'dunyadar'.All depends on intentions.If our material earnings are for Allah,that becomes our investment in akhira but if our salat is for worldly reputation,that becomes dunya.

Let us educate our youth on those lines.....
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#14 [Permalink] Posted on 4th October 2019 13:05
Mahesh Bhatt


He is a film maker from India who has contributed to make Fahsha even more common than it was earlier. His father was a Nagar Brahmin and mother a Shia Muslim. He has very open and accommodating attitude towards Muslims but because of his other persona I detest him.

But in this clip he talks of a Hadith that had great impact on him.

The Hadith is about speaking the truth before a tyrant being the greatest G!h@d.

There are countless examples in Ahadith where the impact will be and is very drastic and very significant. In my view using this dramatic effect will be Halal to use in Dawah in spite of the fact that we are not allowed to use psychological tricks in Dawah.
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#15 [Permalink] Posted on 4th October 2019 13:25
People often quote that we should take advice as Allah has also instructed us to do in The Noble Quran. However, they forget or are ignorant of the "Ahlur Rae" factor.

It is my personal experience that if we want to take advice from someone in worldly or deeni matters then we need to consider two things.

1. The person whom we are seeking advice should be honest.
2. He should be an expert in the field for which we are taking his advice.

Ignore any of the above two factors and you are doomed to fail by following a wrong advice from a person who is either dishonest or is incompetent.
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