“When did Islam become a series of hurdles and challenges”
I’ll never forget those words. It was the unexpected response I was given after asking for advice on some difficulties I and others had been facing.
So often, we reduce our faith to a set of rules – do’s and don’ts. We obsess with it, so much so that we forget about the ultimate purpose of our actions and life as a whole; to connect with Allah.
- We so much about how to pray that we forget to remember who we’re praying to.
- We fuss so much about the rules of how to engage that we forget to bring a smile to people’s faces which Allah wants
- We concern ourselves with how to buy a house in a halal way but never ask how to build a home of devotion to Allah.
Rules have their place; they are the boundaries we stick within. But if we confuse them for the objective itself, we waste our time building the fence rather than nurturing the ground of life.
Perhaps that’s why a president was elected on the manifesto of building a wall… it distracts from the real problems that need fixing inside.
