I’ll Remember, Insha’Allah

The other day I scheduled a long-overdue appointment for a dental cleaning. I had called a few days in advance and arranged for an early-morning slot so that I could arrive in the office before the workload got too heavy. Leaving my apartment about 35 minutes before the appointment, I imagined I left enough time to arrive on schedule.

That is, until I got into a small car accident less than 10 minutes later.

As I waited to turn right at an intersection not far from my apartment, the car behind me abruptly drove into the rear of my small hatchback, suddenly jolting me forward and setting back my initial plans.

I pulled over to the curb just beyond the intersection to assess the damage and the profusely apologetic young woman in the car behind me called the police so that we could file a traffic accident report. Once I knew officers were on the way, I called the dentist to reschedule the appointment for another day. My plans for the morning were swiftly unwritten and rather than visit the dentist, I took the police report to my insurance office to file a claim instead.

As the morning rush of traffic hurried passed, I thanked God quietly that the accident hadn’t been more serious. As I did so, I realised that not once the night before and earlier that morning had I said insha’Allah, the Arabic phrase meaning ‘God Willing’ or ‘If God so Wills’, when discussing my ill-fated plan to visit the dentist that morning.

The main reason for Muslims to say insha’Allah is to recognise that an event in the future will happen only if God wills it. So when I say  “I’ll go to the dentist this morning before work, insha’Allah,” I am acknowledging that what I intend to do cannot be fully guaranteed. I concede to the presence of God in my daily life, and His ultimate control over the coordination and course of the minute and substantial happenings of my life.

It is quite easy to forget to say insha’Allah in our everyday lives, partly because the phrase has strayed so far from its intended meaning in popular usage. Insha’Allah has in many cases become a slang way of avoiding commitment to anything. Especially when a person is too cowardly to say ‘no’, s/he will instead say insha’Allah in order to brush aside the reality: that they do not intend to do a thing, but can’t be bothered to be upfront about it.

In many modern contexts, Muslims and non-Muslims frown upon the use of insha’Allah because it carries with it the meaning that what someone is promising or intending is not reliable, always leaving the door open for escape.

This is quite paradoxical for me because growing up, I was taught that when I say insha’Allah, I am obligated before God to follow through with my word, save for some unforeseen circumstance beyond my control. By saying the phrase, I am giving my word that I will do what I say, unless God makes the event impossible to fulfil due to some unexpected event, such as the accident I was in the other morning.

Two meanings for this phrase, poles apart in their implications, have thus transpired. One very beautifully encapsulates Islam, a state of mind where a person lives in submission to God and respects the time and commitments s/he makes. The other, void of consciousness of God, gives a person a false sense of absolute control over their lives. It is easy to overlook how fragile the progress of our lives actually is. As an ocean has an unstoppable current guiding the movement of things beyond our daily comprehension, it would be egotistical to think that one single person has control over a force that guides the flow of their lives.  

Magnetism: A view of the Kaaba

I bought this print last month at the British Museum’s exhibition, Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam. It depicts Saudi artist Ahmed Mater al-Ziad’s installation "Magnetism".

I wrote a blog post a few months back about circling around the Kaaba. Mater's piece very simply and beautifully depicts the emotions experienced by myself and millions of other Muslims to travel to Mecca each year for hajj or umrah. The following, very-compelling description accompanied his installation:

"'When my grandfathers spoke to me as a child about their experience of Hajj, they told me of the physical attraction they felt towards the Kaa'ba, that they felt drawn to it by an almost magnetic pull.'

In the installation, Mater has evoked that feeling by using tens of thousands of iron filings placed within the magnetic fields of two magnets, only the upper one of which is visible. For Mater, Magnetism also conveys one of the essential elements of Hajj: that all Muslims are considered the same in the eyes of God whether rich, poor, young or old. As such, the iron filings represent a unified body of pilgrims, all of whom are similarly attracted to the Kaa'ba as the centre of the world."

A houseplant I named Hope

I woke up this morning and decided to name one of my houseplants Amal, the Arabic word meaning ‘hope’. This plant, a variety of yucca if I am not mistaken, has been nameless since the day I bought it from a moving sale more than six years ago. But today, I realised how much she deserved this designation.

For most of the last six years, Amal has seemed to be on her last legs. Her leaves would consistently wilt at the tips to a dry crisp or sometimes turn entirely yellow, even if I wasn’t over-watering it. Unable to re-generate, one leaf would die and another would not grow in its place, leaving the trunk unusually bare compared with when I bought it.

I tried various plant foods, all of which failed to give her a renewed lease on life. If I thought perhaps she was getting too much sun, I would move her to a more shady area of the apartment, and vice versa. Nothing seemed to work. If anything, the more attention I paid, the worse her condition would become. While my other houseplant has grown to become lush, this one seemed to remain limp, barely clinging onto life. She somehow managed to hobble her way through the years, dormant and unchanged unless to further deplete.

A few months ago, I thought her vigour had finally come to an end. Many of the leaves had turned yellow, then brown and within a matter of weeks I removed about a third of them. I tried relocating the plant from the living room to the bedroom, placing her on the sill of the window that stretches from the ceiling to the floor so she would get a good dose of unhindered late-afternoon rays. I was hoping a change of location would improve her mood – but it didn’t seem to be working. 

Even under the care of my mother--whose green thumb has over the years turned many a bud into tall, massive clusters of lush leaves fit for a rainforest--couldn’t seem to cast her magic on this plant. I continued to remove dying leaves from the plant. Affectionately, I would carefully clean the leaves individually with water and caress them, whispering the words ‘Bismillah’, ‘In the Name of God’.

So, to be honest, I stopped paying attention and with a heavy heart, assumed there was nothing I could do to prevent the plant’s inevitable demise. Every living thing has its life span and if it was time for her to finally diminish, all of my efforts would fail.

God sends down rain from the sky and with it revives the earth when it is dead. There is truly a sign in this for people who listen.

(Quran, 16:65)

Then, in my neglect, the plant discovered hope again all on her own. I didn’t really notice the change as I quickly watered it each week without inspection. My mom was out of town and my sister and I had been travelling, too, so the health of the plant wasn’t the focus of my attention. Yet, somewhere along the way, I no longer needed to pull off dead leaves and the ones that were left started to slightly perk up.

Tunes for a Lifetime

Long before YouTube gave us instant access to all of our favourite music, my older sister and I would wait for the videos of our preferred artists to appear on televised music countdowns and record them on a videocassette so we could watch them over and over again. We would replay the tunes on the family room VCR and, along with our younger sister, often try to mimic the notes and dance moves of our most-loved musicians.

When I learned of Whitney Houston’s death yesterday, my mind almost instantly turned to that videotape because there was a song of hers that we had recorded on it and, at one stage when I was about 13-14 years old, I watched it repeatedly. It was called “Miracle”.  The holding power a great song has over the course of one’s lifetime is remarkable. Hearing it, we instantly tune back to the moment its effect was most palpable.  

Whitney’s immaculate, powerful voice singing the lyrics as she sat in what appeared as a deserted auditorium, juxtaposed with photographs of young people in various contexts of struggle and success, left an impression on me at a time in my life when I was searching for guidance.

We were dealing with some very personal, tricky family struggles that led my sisters and I to become quite closed off from our surroundings. At times, the pressure was overwhelming and it wasn’t always possible for me to derive comfort from loved ones. This video in particular, I would view intently and frequently.

How could you understand the way I feel.

How could you relate to so much pain.

Seems as though nothing can comfort me.

So today, I pray, that someone should listen…

Watching the black-and-white scenes and listening carefully as though Whitney’s lyrics were written for me, I understood the song to be about embracing circumstances, overcoming obstacles and making choices that would change our lives for the better. The song helped me contextualise the struggles I faced against the grander scheme of reality. As bad as things may have appeared, everyone has a taste of anguish and is often faced cumbersome tests of resolve and faith.

Dilemmas of a Muslim shopper

(A version of this article was published by the Huffington Post)
 
Over the past couple of weeks my sister was in town and, along with my mom, we spent a good deal of time in Dubai shopping malls, taking advantage of discounts during a seasonal sale. Having lost a few kilos in the past couple of months and after starting a new job in December, I had no qualms about treating myself to some new clothes, shoes and accessories. Like many women, I find buying new items quite gratifying.

This is especially so because in the past two to three years, I managed to work toward having financial freedom for the first time. I can now afford to buy nice things for myself and my loved ones while sustaining a comfortable standard of living, building my rainy-day savings and giving charity more generously than I used to.

Courtesy Flickr

Reaching this stage took a great deal of hard work and patience. Growing up, money was often too tight to warrant excessive spending on material goods. My mom taught me and my sisters to steer clear of living beyond our means, and to find a balance between spending wisely and being generous while avoiding stinginess. Apart from the mortgage we took for our family home, I’ve never incurred debts. This meant I had to stay away from elaborate electronics and fancy fashion labels, as well as opt to work rather than pursue a Master’s degree I couldn’t afford.

Quite naturally, with my newfound financial freedom, I do splurge a bit more than I used to. This has been rewarding not least because I know that it is due to my own hard work and sacrifice that I found myself at this stage.

And yet, there I was with a few bags of new possessions and I couldn’t help but feel guilty and, as much as I loath to admit it, greedy. While that isn’t an adjective I would generally use to describe myself, there are moments when I become so focussed on self-fulfilment that it is difficult to decipher what I really need from what I buy/consume/collect out of sheer indulgence. It is so easy to fall into the trap of consumerism and spend wastefully on things we do not really need, an idea that is known in Arabic as Israf.

Dubai Mall's "Fashion Avenue", courtesy Flickr

Living in Islam, which refers to a state of mind where the believer surrenders to God, places a great deal of responsibility on our shoulders over how we handle our finances. We are called upon as Muslims to avoid extravagance, promote welfare and encourage fairness in our families and communities. As with all aspects of life, this is accomplished through moderation, with God instructing us in the Quran to “be neither miserly, nor so open-handed that you suffer reproach and become destitute.” (17:29)

Just one look at my closet teeming with clothes makes me realise how tough it is to strike the right balance. While the wealth we accumulate is a grace from God, it is also a test to see how we will manage, distribute and respect it. The more I earn, the more I am willing to spend to improve the quality of my life because I regard the wealth in my possession as a sign of God’s mercy. Yet it is crucial to always be aware that it is up to us to ensure that we set boundaries that we do not cross.