Becoming a Muslim Again?!
Assalaamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh to my dearest readers...
Sharing with u all a story with many lessons..
Posted as received
JUST A LITTLE SOMETHING
HOW I FOUND MY RELIGION AGAIN
I am a Muslim. My parents are Muslim. I grew up in a home where quraan and salah were read daily. My grandfather would recite from his Quran daily, his melodious voice filling the house, so I don't have the excuse to say that my family life was not Islamic, but for a long time in my life, I'm talking years here I simply was not a Muslim. I had a Muslim name. I even attended a Muslim school. The same way I hid my depression, I simply hid the fact that I was not a Muslim in anything but name.
"And whoever puts all his trust in Allah (SWT), He will be enough for him | Surah At-Talaq 65:1-3
That was just it. I was at a point where I simply didn't trust in Allah. I felt that I was overlooked. If He was so merciful and loving to his Umma, why was I suffering like this? Tormented daily by images and thoughts in my head that would bring me to my knees. I would sit day and night and simply say please let me die because death will be better than what I face now.
I did absolutely nothing as a Muslim. Ramadan came and went, I got up for suhoor ., pretended I was fasting the entire day, and when everyone sat down at iftaar and was making dua, my mind wandered. I could not understand how these stupid people in front of me couldn't see my suffering.
Salaah, what was that? Those mechanical actions of dropping to your knees and lowering your head in supplication to what I believed was a vengeful God that showed no mercy. Reading a tasbeeh (prayer beads), what were you doing besides playing with beads on a string? Reading the Quran, why would you read a book you could not understand?
I can hear the astaghfirullah's falling as you read this.
I did nothing!!!!
I partied like an animal, dressed like a hooker, and I felt that this life was perfect for me. The haze that fills a nightclub was enough to blur the reality of my life. Dancing with strangers, surrounded by alcohol, strangers eyes on me, and I could simply escape for a few hours, be numb and blind to the confusion that was my life. Stumbling out of a nightclub at 4 am, hearing the Fajr azaan going and it did nothing for me. I simply got into a car and looked for a 24-hour breakfast place.
I can't remember the exact date that this changed, but I do know it was after my failed suicide attempt. I was laying on my bed after yet another night of insomnia. The sun was streaming through my window, and I was watching the dust particles dancing in the light. And it dawned on my, that I was alive. I wasn't dead; I wasn't buried in some ditch somewhere in non consecrated ground, I was alive and breathing. I wasn't living, but I was alive.
I laid in bed and waited for everyone to leave the house. I went to my mother's room and got out one of my old madressa books. I had forgotten how to make Ghusl (cleansing bath). I read the book and went to take a shower.
I felt cleaner, probably made a few mistakes and left things out, but it was something.
I got my musallah ( prayer mat) out, and I swear on my life I was terrified to step onto it. Scared witless, because I was utterly convinced that if I took one step onto it, I was going to be struck dead. I can't even explain this fear; it was overwhelming. I was almost on the verge of a full-blown panic attack.
This heathen, how dare she step onto something as precious as a musallah and even attempt this. I stepped back and sat down on the edge of the bed. My eyes focused on the prayer mat like it was some foreign object I had never seen before, or worse yet a carpet full of poisonous snakes that would strike me dead. This was pure unadulterated fear.
I don't know how long I sat on that bed, in some sort of weird standoff with an inanimate object.
Eventually, I stepped onto the mat and lo and behold I was not struck down, but now I had another problem. I had forgotten my surahs. I knew Surah Fatiha, but other than that, nothing at all. I stood there, forcing my blank brain to throw something up. The only surah I could remember was Surah Ikhlass. Nothing else, I wondered at that moment if I had forgotten how to read the Quran.
I remembered all that I needed to read between sajdah and ruku, but I wasn't a hundred percent certain. There was no concentration in this Salaah, I was too terrified that I was doing everything wrong, but I persevered, and I made it through two rakaats without a lightning bolt killing me.
Then I just sat down, and I lifted my hands, and I had no words. My heart was in pain, but the words wouldn't come. Nothing, I was speechless, and then the tears came. They wouldn't stop, and that's when it hit me.
For every day that I wished for death, Allah kept me alive, giving me another chance every single day for years and years to see Him, find Him. "And He found you lost and guided [you] | Surah Ad-Duhaa 93:7
My refusal to accept and see the chances I had been given blinded me to anything but my pain. I was looking for a quick fix that would magically make the darkness and pain disappear with one swish of a wand. Let me give it to you straight; THERE IS NO QUICK FIX!!
I didn't find my Imaan after that one day of deciding that I needed to do this. I didn't even find it a year later, but I didn't give up. I had to relearn all that I had forgotten. It was like being a revert and having to learn even the most essential things. Duas long forgotten, surahs, the correct way to make wudu, the proper way to take a Ghusl, even the right way of reading salaah. I also had to relearn some of my Kalimas and I had to do it alone.
I was too embarrassed to go to anyone and tell them that I needed help to be a Muslim again, so I taught myself. I pulled out all of those old Madressa books that grade 1 and grade 2 classes use and I learnt again. Deep in the night when everyone was asleep, I would read and practice and recite.
The one thing I hadn't done as yet was pick up the Quran. I really thought I had forgotten how to read. My Quran was at the top of my cupboard, and every single day that I opened my closet, I would pretend not to see it sitting there, covered in a layer of dust.
I was still struggling with depression. I was on meds, I was in therapy, but slowly I was finding myself, and now I was hiding one more thing from my family. I was hiding the fact that I had no idea how to be a Muslim. I wasn't going to pull a 360 and suddenly dorn an abaya and niqab and claim myself healed and religious and start spouting off on how religion helped me survive.
Finding my Imaan didn't cure me, but it truly helped me. I carried on reading my salaah reading Surah Ikhlass for every single rakaat. I read so slowly that two rakkats took me about fifteen minutes. But I didn't stop, and then one day my mum had a ladies talk at our house. How I hated those things, they drove me insane. These fully covered women who spoke about how everything just falls into place when you believe. I always wondered what would happen if I showed them my scar ridden legs and arms, but there was one lady who said nothing. I would watch her, and she would always be playing with her fingers, and that's how I discovered a tasbeeh counter. No long string of beads that I might strangle someone with, this little thing that fitted on your finger and was no hindrance. It was like wearing a huge ring; I love big rings.
I asked her what she was reading. "Astagfirullah," she said. Was that all I wanted to know. She said most of the time, that's what she read. She pulled one out of her bag and gave it to me. Something else I had to learn. I kept it with me like a talisman, never read anything on it for months, but I kept it in my pocket. Anytime I felt that overwhelming urge to reach for a blade, I rubbed the counter between my fingers until the feeling passed.
The day came that I finally took my quraan down. It was covered in dust, a clear indication that it hadn't been opened in years. I don't use years as hyperbole. I mean years. How I stumbled and read, the words so foreign on my tongue, words that years before had flowed like water. I had to sound out so many words, reread so many lines and I probably made a thousand mistakes, but like my salaah, I persevered, and I found that the more I read, the better I became at it and the better I started feeling. I'm by no means a perfect Muslim, I am a flawed being, but that doesn't mean I am lost and dammed to purgatory or Hell like our so called learned Ulema quickly told me. I was trying. "Verily, with every difficulty there is relief. Verily, with every difficulty there is relief. Qur'an 94:5-6
What I'm trying to say here is that your Imaan has never really left you. It's just buried under a multitude of hurt and anger and mostly pain. And for those of you who say your imaan was weak, that's why you suffered I say this in response it's not my Imaan that was weak it was the human shell that held my imaan that was weak.
Your imaan is not your physical self; it's your soul, your Ruh, your spirit and when you cleanse that, the physical self becomes cleansed and you finally find that elusive piece of you that you never even knew was missing.
You feel that you are so dirty if you don't read this or do that and people make you feel like that, but come the Day Of Judgement we will each stand on our own and those peoples words will fall away, and then there is only you.
It wasn't an easy road for me, and I am still learning every day, but now when the azaan goes, I reach for my musallah, make wudu and read Salaah.
Your Imaan is your journey. I needed more help than my Imaan could give me, but I can't sit here and write that finding my way back didn't help me because it did. Finding my religion again, seeing what it is to be Muslim again was the final steps that I needed to begin genuinely healing. It's still a journey, one that never ends but the key is to persevere and never give up if yourself faltering.
It's at that moment that Allah will lift you. "And He found you lost and guided [you]" | Surah Ad-Duhaa 93:7
I found that the more I read my salaah, the more I read my Quraan and the more I used my lovely tasbeeh counter, the lighter I felt. I left the medication, simply because I could not handle the way it numbed me, again I'm not saying finding this path healed me fully because there are some illnesses of the mind that you have to take medication for and nothing else is going to help you. I know some of you will disagree, but, Anas ibn Malik reported: A man said, “O Messenger of Allah, should I tie my camel and trust in Allah, or should I leave her untied and trust in Allah?” The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Tie her and trust in Allah.”
Source: Sunan al-Tirmidhī 2517
The main point of this whole rambling piece is that even though my overwhelming fear that I would be struck dead if I even tried was that I did try and I carried on trying, and I am still trying because Imaan is not something stops at a certain point.
Strive for your Imaan till the day you die, and In sha Allah when we do die, you die with the Shahadah on your lips and your Imaan intact.
To all of you out there that haven't read a Sallah in years, haven't kept a fast in so long, haven't opened your Quraan I just have this to say. Start small, start somewhere, start anywhere, but DON’T ever think for a single second that Allah has deserted you, I promise you He has not.
“Allah (SWT) does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear” | Surah Baqarah (2:286)
*From a flawed individual who learns daily.*
*Love and Light*
*Binte Nazir*
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