My sharpened pencil

I'm taking part in an online exhibition called "Muslim Women's Arts & Voices," which is being organised by the San Francisco-based International Museum of Women and is set to launch in early 2013. Muslim women from around the world will be engaging in monthly workshops and discussions in different cities and contributing works of art/writing/poetry/photographs/video, etc, for the exhibition.

We had our first workshop in Sharjah, a city in the United Arab Emirates, earlier this week and I felt so enlivened and inspired by the richly diverse and talented women I met. We were asked to bring one object to represent our identity. I had jotted down some ideas on what I would like to say about myself -- as well as the object I chose which was, simply, a sharpened pencil -- prior to the workshop. Thought it would be relevant to share these here, too!

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My name is Daliah Merzaban, I have Egyptian roots, I was born and raised in Canada and I’ve lived in the UAE for seven years working as a financial journalist, analyst and editor. In my current role, I’m an emerging markets editor at Bloomberg News covering finance in the Middle East and North Africa.

That’s my day job. But what I have become most passionate about in the past few years is uncovering the layers of my faith in God through Islamic spirituality, and I write about this journey on my blog, which I started almost two years ago, as well as for the Huffington Post.

For my object, I wasn’t very complex, I chose a pencil and the notepad that accompanies it. If I am to choose one thing that I have carried with me throughout my life it is this item: I’ve been a journalist since I was 17, and before that was always very interested in creative writing, poetry, short stories, from a very young age. So the written word is what I spend most of my very long hours in the office and my free time working with.

I also chose a pencil because before I truly embraced my Islam, I perceived faith as something I needed to enter into with my eyes closed, without rationale, analysis or intellect. To my surprise, as I have investigated Islamic teachings more thoroughly in the past three years, I realised that it was through the acquisition of knowledge and use of reason and logic that certainty of God’s existence becomes most palpable. For me, the pencil is a very simple representation of the acquisition of knowledge, which is a fundamental right for every human being.

In the Quran in Surah 96, God reveals to Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, a verse through the Angel Gabriel whereby he orders the Prophet to "Read!" Saying: “Your Lord is the Most-Bountiful One. Who taught by the pen. Taught man what he did not know.” I think these words underscore our responsibility as Muslims to acquiring knowledge to gain a more thorough understanding of our faith.

A pencil is not permanent, it needs to continue to be sharpened and it represents my understanding that I’m on a journey of discovery and I don’t have all the answers. I need to always keep an open mind, and a blank piece of paper in my notebook.

(Read about how studying Arabic reignited my love of pencils and the written word here)

The 40-day spiritual challenge

When I decided to get my spiritual routine on track more than two years ago, I did it in 40 days.

Drawing from the example of an acquaintance who was following a Sufi-inspired programme for attaining consistency in prayers, I decided that I wouldn’t miss any of the five daily prayers ordained by Islam for 40 days, or about six weeks. I wrote the start date on my BlackBerry’s digital calendar, and kept virtual track of my progress each day.

Under the challenge described to me by this individual, if you miss a prayer –because, for instance, you slept through the alarm and missed the pre-dawn prayer known as fajr, or the mid-afternoon asr prayer passed you by because of a long drawn-out business meeting – you have to start back at zero.

I was determined not to let that happen since, to my surprise, the prayers weren’t as tedious as I’d always imagined them to be. They were, rather, a much-welcomed, regularly timed respite from whatever pressures the day had in store for me. I was told that once one completed the 40 days, with the right intention, s/he would never willingly miss a prayer again.

Whoever devised that programme was perfectly right because, give or take a few days of sleeping through my alarm, I haven’t allowed a prayer to pass me by since June 2010, when I started the 40-day spiritual drill.

Courtesy Flickr

It’s difficult to describe just how, but reaching the milestone elevated me to a higher stage of spiritual understanding of my obligations toward our Creator. Life began to revolve around my prayer schedule, rather than a previous strategy of squeezing them in here and there when possible. I am now able to detach from even the most hectic of schedules for quiet prayers like clockwork every day.

During the 40-day prayer course, I read the Quran for the first time and recall being struck when I came upon a passage that described how Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, received the 10 commandments during a 40-day retreat on Mount Sinai.

That sparked my curiosity about the significance of 40-day spiritual workouts in the history of our faith. Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, too fasted for forty days and nights in the Judean Desert. The Last Prophet, Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him, spent the same amount of time meditating in a cave on Mount Hira when he received, at the age of 40, his first Quranic revelation.

Moment of clarity

When endeavouring to explain to someone how I uncovered my spirituality, I usually say it happened quite suddenly, in a moment of clarity.

Throughout my childhood and young adult years, God remained in the background of my consciousness. I believed in Him, and performed some rituals of worship to express this belief. Yet He rarely crossed my mind during day-to-day life, and I felt it was more important to focus my attention on intellectual advancement through academic and professional avenues.

I held myself to an elevated standard in work and study, always getting high grades on exams and maintaining a diligent work ethic that opened many opportunities for advancement. I sought happiness through ties of family and friendship, and on a couple of occasions, came close to forging a sincere commitment in marriage.

However, as it turned out, life was full of all kinds of mishaps and disappointments. My professional success was overshadowed by office politics or ill-intentioned colleagues who managed to drain my enthusiasm. Love relationships that seemed to be headed for marriage would unravel due to dishonesty and lack of integrity. And family ties would be put to the test by financial and health difficulties. The belief in God lurking in the background of my life wasn’t sufficient to help me deal with what was flooding in its foreground. 

With my lack of attentiveness to the practice of faith, I was unable to understand why God constantly placed hurdles in my path and left me to wallow in despair. It was as I was passing through one of these hurdles – frustrated, anxious and impatient to discover an answer – that I came to that moment of crisp, unhindered, spiritual and intellectual clarity.

In the Quran, which I hadn’t read up to that point, there is a description of a veil over the eyes of those who aren’t receptive to God’s message, a barrier that makes it inconceivable for them to understand faith in the true sense. Only by seeking answers with an open mind can one overcome this barrier. God refers to a divine light that, when it shines on the heart, lifts the veil and illuminates a holistic understanding of belief in God and the purpose of life. 

In my moment of clarity, it was as though I was moved from the former state to the latter state, from the “depths of darkness into light.”

“He will provide for you a Light to help you walk; He will forgive you your past: for God is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (Quran 57:28)

A break in the clouds, photo courtesy of Flickr

It happened one morning before dawn more than two years ago. Unable to sleep I sat in my living room trying to decipher how to cope with the latest predicament; trying to understand why I deserved it. In a moment of inspiration, I knew the answer. What I perceived as a disappointment was actually a blessing, for it prompted me to question my state of existence, preparing me to be more receptive to God’s message and mercy.

Finding Islam with no time to spare

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Sometimes my job makes me feel like a programmed machine. Working as an editor in a high-paced news wire environment means that when I say I work 10 hours or more each day, I mean that I dedicate 600+ minutes every day toward tasks that demand uninterrupted concentration and precision. It can be draining and quite frankly, mind numbing.

I often envision what I would rather be doing because, while I do gain fulfilment from my work and the success I’ve achieved over the years, it isn’t my passion. Writing on this blog is the closest I’ve come to discovering what my passion is. In the past 19 months, this page has given me a platform to express my discoveries of what it means to be Muslim in my very typical, often repetitive and banal daily routine. I strive to write in a simple, accessible manner, using the skills for expression that I gained as a journalist. I always wish I had greater time to dedicate to it.

One of the main reasons why I’ve had to cut back on my blog entries this year is the incredibly hectic pace and long hours that my day job demands. This has left me with very little creative energy in the evenings and weekends, so I sometimes daydream about a time when I will be able to commit my days to writing about Islamic spirituality. I imagine devoting all of this energy toward writing books or short stories that would enrich both my faith and productive life.

In the midst of these thoughts and wishes, however, I sometimes stray from the truth: that the very sources of my inspiration are indeed the circumstances of my life here and now. It is, perhaps, because I scramble through most days for brief pockets of time to self reflect, that I am better able to describe how Islam is applicable within the real, modern-day struggle to strike a work-life balance.

I’m not writing from a bubble, I don’t have countless hours to reflect and pause each day, I don’t claim to be a scholar or an expert, nor am I secluded from the world. I am, in fact, a very hard-working professional who struggles to perform my best in the workplace, care for my family and maintain some close friendships. Being Muslim means I try my best to do all of these things with God at the centre of my consciousness at all times. So, when I open a feature article to edit tomorrow (Insha’Allah), I will call on Him first for guidance: “In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy.”

Islam, a state of mind where the worshipper lives in complete devotion to God, gives an order to, and an escape from, my daily toil that I appreciate. It’s a thread that weaves all of the chaos together and keeps me balanced through a combination of regular prayer, fasting, giving charity and continual remembrance and thankfulness of the Almighty.

My hectic days must never interfere with my prayer schedule, to the extent that a non-Muslim colleague will sometimes remark if I delay my 20-minute break for the noon prayer, duhr, that I should head down soon. Since I also pray the optional sunnah prayers, I rarely take a lunch break because it wouldn’t be feasible with the volume of work I have to do. Instead, I save another 10 to 15 minutes for the asr afternoon prayer. 

Al-Ghazali’s lessons on patience

 “Truly, God grants breezes in the days of your life. So place yourself in their way.”

I’ve been making my way through a few books that are part of the Revival of the Religious Sciences, a 40-part series regarded as one of the greatest works on Islamic spirituality, written by Islamic theologian-mystic Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali in the 11^th and 12^th centuries.

           

A few days ago, I started reading The Book of Patience and Thankfulness, hoping to benefit from Al-Ghazali’s gems of wisdom on how to bear burdens and grief with greater steadfastness and contentment. One can hardly pass 10 pages of Al-Ghazali’s words without being blown away by a precious jewel of insight that I am compelled to read and re-read several times in order to absorb its beauty and understand its applicability to my life.

Patience is considered to be half of faith according to Hadith, the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace. I’ve found this to be true in my own spiritual journey of embracing Islam, which describes a state of mind where a believer strives to live in complete devotion to God by recognising and guiding daily activities around core principles. Aligning oneself with the divine enlivens a powerful spiritual balance that transcends circumstances, and makes natural activities of prayer, fasting, charity, remembrance of God and good deeds. Having faith in practice is not simply a belief, but an embodiment of a way of life. 

Attaining Islam for me has gone hand in hand with sharpening my patience, broadly describing the ability to maintain clarity and presence of mind in times of trial and consistently being thankful to God for the blessings He grants. This is no easy feat; I find the effort to attain patience to be a most difficult daily struggle. As humans, we’re often driven by our desire for success, love, wealth, praise, power, offspring, etc. When we desire a thing and it is not granted to us quickly, or is denied to us entirely, it can become a source of disappointment and despair.

It is at these times that honing our patience is most important. Al-Ghazali reminds us, by drawing on Quranic verses, Hadith and Biblical references, to place our trust in the Almighty and be content in times of trial, knowing “that the reward of those who endure patiently what befalls them is greater than the blessings of being spared a misfortune.”

I read the following excerpt last night and it has been whirling in my mind ever since because it reminded me that there is no time limit on patience.  There are certain blessings I pray each day for God to grant me, members of my family and friends. Some of these prayers have continued for months, if not years, in hopes that Allah, as God is referred to in Arabic, will bless a loved one relief from a disease, or a friend a new job after a long period of unemployment, or grant me a virtuous marriage.

“We do not know when God will make the means of sustenance easy,” writes Al-Ghazali. “We must empty the place (the heart) and wait for the descent of mercy at the appointed time. This is similar to preparing the earth, clearing it of weeds and sowing the seeds. And yet, all this will be to no avail without rain.

“The servant does not know when God will decree the means of rain, but he has confidence in the bounty of God and His mercy, as there has been no year without rain. So, in like manner, rarely will you pass a year, a month or a day without an attraction from God or one of His ‘breezes’. The servant must have a heart purified of the weeds of passion and he must sow the seeds of will (irada) and sincerity (ikhlas) and expose it to the blowing winds of mercy.”

I was moved by this excerpt and found it to be relevant because it reminded me, at a time I truly needed reminding, that I must trust God’s plan and have genuine faith in His benevolence. Only God knows what is good and right for us, and this includes knowing the right time for mercy to be granted. 

What is important is that we prepare ourselves for God’s mercy by strengthening our bond with Him and being sincerely content with the blessings He has ordained for us, as difficult as this may be with the multitude of distractions surrounding us. We should not, as it is so easy to do, become preoccupied with “worldly attachments and desires” and think ourselves self-sufficient. When we are driven by our desires for instant gratification, a veil shields us from true enlightenment and knowledge of God—the highest form of knowledge a human being can attain.

“All that you need is for desire to abate and the veils will lift, so that the lights of knowledge will shine forth from inside of the heart,” Al-Ghazali writes. “It is easier to draw water to the surface of the earth by digging canals than it is to bring it from a distant, lower place. As it is present in the heart yet forgotten through worldly preoccupations."