When I was asked by my colleague, at the high school I teach in, to come and speak to her Year 11 Religious Education students and share with them my faith journey and the ways in which the Holy Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h. was a role model for myself and other Muslims in my life, I got a chance to pen some ideas for my students. Although, I got to discuss a lot more about my faith journey with the students, here are a few reflections that I was able to share with them, in our session, in the college’s Chapel.
What is my faith journey?
How did I get here?
Where am I now?
And where am I going?
These are existential questions that I am sure all of us are continuously asking of ourselves and I must say, at the beginning of this session, that my answers to each one of them continue to evolve and grow. We are, and I am, a forever expanding universe.
Each experience of my life, like the rings of a tree trunk, has added multiple layers to the many concentric circles of my identity, making it impossible to separate one part of me from another. And while I will try my best to focus on the rings of my faith journey, I hope that you can see beyond any assumptions you may have about the exclusivity or otherness of my religious identity. I am sure, on closer inspection, you shall find, the intersecting network of beliefs that bind us together in the many rings of my faith tree. It is only then that we can truly honour the sanctity of where we stand today, together, as believers of the One true God, in the Chapel of St. Leo’s Catholic College.
Like Xylem and phloem tubes run parallel to each other in the trunk of a tree, my Islamic and Catholic Education ran through my veins and arteries in a complementary and conflicting network. The nights and weekends of the twelve school years of my life were spent, on one hand, exploring the many religious and exciting engagements with my traditional Islamic community in my grandfather’s Haveli in the Old City of Lahore, Pakistan, exclusively listening to Islamic scholars, reading exclusively Islamic texts in Urdu, hearing my father recite religious and love poetry in Persian and being trained to read and recite the Holy Quran in Arabic at home. On weekdays, on the other hand, all of those twelve years were spent being a part of a completely different Catholic community, that offered a different cultural, academic and religious engagement. I learnt to speak, read and write in English; pray in English at the beginning and the end of each day. I still remember the prayer that I used to rush through at the end of every school day,
‘O my God I love you, make me love you more and more’.
I sang with ‘full throated ease’, as Keats would say, in the many school choirs and felt the great hush and silence when I accidentally stumbled down the steps into the silent corridors and hallways that led to a beautiful chapel like this one with its stained-glass windows and pews.
It is always interesting how one is able to join the dots, when enough years have gone by and can look back at our past experiences and create a story for ourselves, a story that matters. And the story that I hold onto as I stand here in a Catholic School decades later is a story of evolution. Evolution, I always say, is never easy. It forces you to confront the divisions between your different identities and young as I was, there were a lot of them. My gender identity as a Muslim girl in Pakistan and as a student in a Catholic school was a tale of existing in two very different cities. And now, decades later, as a resident of both countries, Pakistan and Australia, I continue to feel the split of my divisions. How does one begin to reconcile the tugs of the different hearts that beat in different languages, cultures, cities, spread across eons and miles? Forever split into two worlds, how does one ever feel whole in any given place, at any given time? How does one rationalize the coexistence of connection and alienation, side by side, within the many rings of their tree’s trunk? And, more importantly, how long does it take for one to get to ‘own’ each split and division, transcend it and come to peace with it?
It takes time. To own it. To transcend it. And to come to peace with it. And it cannot be done without the grace of God.
If it wasn’t for the Grace of God no transcendence would have been possible and if it wasn’t for the shining example of my Holy Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h, no evolution would have been possible either. My own turbulent journey through my divisions has made me turn back, again and again, at his example and take inspiration from his journey, his life and his mission. I would like to share three shining attributes of his example: humility, compassion and steadfastness of faith, reflecting upon which have always brought me back to center, to evolution through acceptance and surrender.
The first is humility. I see my Holy Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h, as a servant of Allah, humble in prayer, crying in the deep of the night on his prayer mat, out of love and fear of Allah’s Grace and favour upon him. He once said, “Whoever humbles himself for the sake of Allah, Allah will elevate him.” And Allah did. He elevated the humble heart of Rasul Allah p.b.u.h and made him, Rahmat-ul-lil- alameen, a blessing for all worlds. I read somewhere, ‘Humility is a strange thing. The moment you think you’ve got it, you’ve lost it’. And so each time I stand on the prayer mat to pray, sometimes before Fajr, I think of my Prophet p.b.u.h. his humility and his love for Allah, and feel deeply ashamed at my own distracted mind, my composure and lack of awareness that makes me forget Allah’s blessings, His Grace and Love and Mercy on me.
The second is compassion. I see my Holy Prophet p.b.u.h. deeply driven by compassion and striving in his mission to help the poor; tend the sick, guide the lost; include the marginalised; free the oppressed and establish a rule of law in the State of Madina, based on care and justice and mercy for all. Hundreds of stories of the ways in which he lived to serve the people of Allah, make me feel embarrassed of the very little I have done to serve his people and has always made me step out of my own myopia of self interest.
And the third is steadfastness in faith. I see my Holy Prophet p.b.u.h. standing steadfast in the face of trials and tribulations and he bravely faced it all. I see him standing in shoes, drenched in his blood, as the same people of Makkah, who graced him with the titles of ‘Saadiq’, the Honest one, and ‘Amin’, the trustworthy one, turn hostile and cast stones on him when he declares himself to be the Last Messenger and Prophet of Allah p.b.u.h. And that is one example of the endless sacrifices he made for Islam, without complaining, with patience and grace. Sadly, I cannot hold that vision of steadfastness in the face of persecution for long. I have to lower my gaze in shame as I crib and complain over my own petty losses and the pain I feel as life takes away from me things I feel entitled to own. And as I try and lift my gaze back to the glowing vision of perfect surrender that my Holy Prophet p.b.u.h. emblematizes, I behold in my line of vision, not just him, p.b.u.h. but all the Prophets preceding him. Peace be upon them all. Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and more. They all stand still, humble, compassionate and steadfast, ready to surrender and submit their all to His Will.
And so must I. My reflections, over time, have made me become a little more clearer that I own nothing. I am entitled to nothing. Everything is a blessing gifted by Allah that I must be willing to surrender and let go of when He wills it. Without complaining. And with each loss that life has forced upon me, I have learnt a little bit more of what it means to be steadfast, of what it means to let go of all that I was never entitled to. And it is through letting go, again and then again, with faith in His Will and plan for me, that I have evolved.
And with each surrender
The distress of detachment has become
A little less
And the heart has emptied itself
A little more.
And set me free of the need to hold on.
And I feel light
As I rise above the divisions
Like a lotus.
Beyond the blue.
And so will you, my dear students, continue to rise.
And that is how our ‘exclusive’ religious identities come together, and our differences ‘melt, thaw and resolve into a dew’ as we surrender with faith in the Hands that carry us home. And it is this faith is His Grace that helps us transcend our divisions as Catholics and Muslims and rise above them. And when we do, we are at home. And at peace. Any where and everywhere. I am at peace when I pray on my prayer mat in my home and I am at peace here, at the college, where I start each work day by sharing an inspiring prayer with my students, during mentor, knowing that both prayers hope to make us all ‘love You more and more’.
And as I try and see the world around me as my Prophet p.b.u. h. would have wanted me to, a little humbly, a little compassionately, I continue to see the unity between us and not the divisions. And I felt this so strongly on my recent trip to Iran, during my Easter break from school, in the holy month of Ramadan. I felt a transcending peace when I stood before a Lotus shaped pond, in the courtyard of a beautiful mosque and saw in the crystal clear waters, the missing goldfishes of another pond in another Immaculate Garden of the Virgin Mary in a Franciscan Friary, near my home, that I spent many a summer evening of my holidays praying for humility, compassion and strength.
And as you and I continue to pray for it, on our faith journeys, with His Grace, we will be blessed with the Sakinah, peace, that descends on the hearts of those who choose to rise. Like the lotus. Above and beyond the blue.