On humanity and being religious..

Salaams to dear readers, This post forms part of an email conversation between me and one of my friends. After typing a reply, I thought it could be a good reading for everyone. So I am pasting it directly here..

“I am more of a spiritual person than a religious person.” – nowadays the term ‘religious’ has become a misnomer which people can take in any way.. “Spiritual” is the right word. I have read a similar reply from A.R.Rehman in one of his interviews in The Hindu. When he was asked if he was a religious person, he told he would describe himself as spiritual rather than religious as that word has come to have wrong implications these days.

But in the true sense what is religion other than the connection we have with Almighty? What is it other than the bondage and relationship enjoyed between Almighty and His friends. And how are we going to experience it if we put aside the world we live in?

take away your face which gives you your identity to the world
take away your body which always works for you as your most loyal servant
take away your heart which always beats so that you may live take away your parents through whom you came and grew up
take away your friends who fill your life with joy and comfort
take away your job through which you earn your bread

take away the air you breath and the water you drink
take away the rivers, the mountains and the seas which controls the weather
take away the earth, the sky and all the heavenly bodies

take away all that you got from creations
take away all the creations together
If you do so, then where is the connection left between you and God?

Allah says in Qur’an, “East and the West belongs to Allah”. Again He says “wherever you turn your eyes, you will see My Face”. We should be able to see His face on any one regardless of he is a Muslim or a Hindu. We should be able to see his face on all that you can see and percieve.

Ahmad Kabir Rifai(May Allah be pleased with him) was a great saint of Islam. Once while walking with his disciples he heard a cry of a dog. When looked back he saw a badly wounded dog fighting with its infections. One of the disciples had thrown a stone or something and that was what made it cry at that time. He stopped there and asked his disciples to proceed. He took the dog with his hands (notice that dogs are considered dirty, but that doesn’t stop you from helping it) and walked back to his home. He cleaned it, applied medicines and took care. Once it regained its health, he took it and dropped at the place where he had originally found it, as that was the most familiar place for it and it would be more comfortable there.

Ahmad Kabir Rifai(May Allah be pleased with him) did this out of his love towards Allah, not out of any fascination for the dogs. The verses from Qur’an that were mentioned above had got into his life. He loved Allah so much so that all His creations became his too. May Allah make us too like such great people.

But the majority is not like that. Allah says, “they have eyes but they see not, they have hearts but they percieve not”. Islam lets you see that which we see not. If u had truly understood the beauty of islam, u wouldn’t have said “My religion is Humanity first and then Islam“. You would have found that the latter is more than enough a word for the former.