how do I deal with the stupidity of certain local muslims activists supporting the struggle in palestinian? what follows below is just me trying to get some thoughts straight. i write just to get the confusion out of my mind....
*bismilla... over the past year and a half, the more knowledge i seemed to gain of love and beauty, the more i "saw" the absence of it (possibly the other way around - things happened that opened my eyes to ugliness which caused me to understand beauty) or maybe i've just become delusional. anyways, forces of hate, anger, injustice, stupidity (ugliness) have become more visible in my eyes. and i become increasingly confused and frustrated whenever i can’t figure out how to respond, especially to the ugliness in myself... (manditory self criticism for desired effect of humbleness, negated by this parenthetical addition)....
**the architect in me is trained to design – create beauty. and the activist in me is trained to react and respond to ugliness. to fight it, eliminate it, and replace it with "beauty"....
*a thought: working as a building inspector, i AM responding to the ugliness of shody construction. so i guess, since i AM responding to ugliness i should relax. but why am i not satisfied, had the movement folks influenced me to the point that i no longer see being professional at my work as good enough? but wait: there is always ugliness to deal with outside of my chosen profession, at home, with friends, at my masjid....
*where do i begin to deal with that ugliness? HOW do i begin? do i have any business RESPONDING to other's ugliness if i'm a little ugly myself. i hear calls to do zikr and dua by folks all the time. can it really be that easy? i read that beauty can envelop my essence and environment by midnight crys to that Ultimate Beautifier. it worked for the Masters of our Way regardless of school of thought, it should work for me, right? i pause to make a dua for a clearing of that fog that blurs my vision (reference to abou el fadl’s fog of self-deception tape) and that whispering in my head that causes zikr hesitation. help me ya allah...
*while praying for that fog - that mystifying hooqa smoke - to clear, my thoughts turn to activism... is the beautiful simply the opposite or absence of that ugly thing/action/idea? maybe. or maybe just ONE small part of what APPEARS to be ugly is the CAUSE of its ugliness. and if i target that small part and tweak it a bit, i would be helping to beautify the whole. think of a nose job or liposuction. with cosmetic changes, is the ugliness still there? maybe the problem is a deformed skull that a nose job can't correct, it probably needs major skeletal re-construction. either way, isn't a little more beauty better then before, even if it is just superficial or major physical modification. no? i hear that oft-repeated statement "a real beauty is that which is beautiful on the inside" (hinting that the problem is not with what can be seen and felt, it exists in another dimension). so what a waste of time all that activity is if in the end it didn’t lead to "real" beauty...
***screw it, the uglyness is probably allah's will...
and i should use my time building my trust in allah,...
damn that fog...
clear already so that i may understand trust....
patience asad. patience!
watawasobilhaq watawasobisabar...
*forget this pathetic attempt at a philosophy of activism. i’ll get to the point...
No comments:
Post a Comment