FarQuest Fariha's Quest: Finding an answer to the question "Why can’t Utopia be a reality?" Wish to add some colors of Utopia to this world because I dare to dream and strive to turn my dreams into reality!

I have been getting fits of nostalgia for the past few days ever since I have watched the Olpers ad for Ramazan. We used to read this naat during our school days and I had al most forgotten it but watching the Olpers ad brought back all the lovely school life memories This naat was originally presented by Mehdi Zaheer in 70’s I guess when the OIC’s Islamic Summit was held in Pakistan. Lovely piece that gives a strong feeling of unity and solidarity calling the entire Muslim nation “Mustafavi” i.e. followers of Mustafa (Muhammad Peace be upon him).

Original Version by Mehdi Zaheer is this:

PS: I’m confused as to whether call it Naat or Milli Naghma or something else :S

Yesterday, I was sitting all confused, a bit frightened too, not too willing to trust people because of the few people I have come across and who turned out to be completely different from what they seemed to be or what they claimed to be. One thought that was circling around inside my mind was "Whom to trust and whom not to?", "Who is true and who’s not? ", "Shall I forgive those who turn out to be liars/hypocrites?" and it was then that I sat down to get my daily dose of Quranic verses and amazingly enough I got my hands on this verse:

 Show forgiveness, enjoin Al-’Urf (the good), and turn away from the foolish (don’t punish them). ) (200. And if an evil whisper comes to you from Shaytan, then seek refuge with Allah. Verily, He is All-Hearer, All-Knower.)

(Surah Al-Araf Ayat No. 199) (Web Reference: Tafsir.com)

(Tafsir can be found here)

SubhanAlllah…what a co-incidence…i said to myself but just then i recalled what I had read in the book "Your Sacred Quest" by Wayne Dyer just a few days back; that we live in God’s intelligent system where there’s intelligence behind whatever happens.So true! Once you accept this, you’ll enjoy experiencing co-incidences as with this new perception, you’ll get to see the intelligence behind them as well

Undoubtedly,  He(SWT) is GREAT!

For years I prayed Allah(SWT) for 3 things (along with several more ) which I thought I need as badly as oxygen but I just got 0.5 of the 3 things I prayed so hard for. When I came to know that I’m no way getting the 1st thing..I wept and mourned over it for months until I got the half of the 2nd thing; but when I didn’t get the remaining half, I cried this time not for months not even for weeks or days but for mere few hours. Today, when I came to know that I haven’t got the 3rd thing in the list as well, I at first felt a little down but this feeling didn’t last for more than 10 mins Sound of Azaan-e-Asr entered my ears, went to offer prayers and came back all refreshed. My faith tells me that He(SWT) has better plans for me and He(SWT) will never leave me disappointed. He is there to take care of all my problems and worries. Belief and patience is what brings peace of mind.

Has anyone of you ever wondered why children are so carefree? Out of many reasons, one is probably that they have this faith that their parents who are stronger than them are there to take care of them and solve all their problems. In a similar way, if we start believing that Allah(SWT) who’s the Almighty hence certainly stronger than us is there, and his love is 70 times stronger than that of our mother’s so, he’ll bring the BEST to us, life becomes a lot more beautiful and peaceful Alhamdulilah.

 "O you who believe! Seek help with patient perseverance (sabr) and prayer…" (al-Baqarah 2:153)

Web reference is this

I read once that believers seek goodness and beauty in every event.I now understand it well

Few years back in one of the social sciences class, our instructor asked us “Are you Fundamentalists?” Our instant reply was “No, Sir…no way”. Then he asked, “Do you believe that the Holy Quran is meant for all times and for all kinds of environments?” This time our instant reply was “Yes, Sir…Alhamdulilah being Muslims we do believe in this fact.” On that he showed us an excerpt from a book on sociology and the excerpt was as following:

In “Popular Conceptions of Fundamentalism”, anthropologist Lionel Caplan (1987) offers his readers one of the clearest overviews of a complex religious phenomenon – fundamentalism, a belief in the timeless nature of sacred writings and a belief that such writings apply to all kinds of environments”

After reading this from a book which was quite an authentic one and knowing that our instructor always checks the veracity of all the information he shares with us, all we could do was to say “Yes” when he asked his first question again.

Btw.. I would also like to ask the same question from all the readers of this post “ Are you a fundamentalist?”

Most of us believe that everyone needs to modernize in order to cope up with the dynamics of this world. We feel that its ok to change ourselves with changing times as long as we don’t compromise on our religious principles and so Mush came up with the concept of Enlightened Moderation. A huge number of Pakistanis except religious fanatics welcomed this notion since it seemed to lead to a neutral path…“deen aur duniya saath saath” I also supported it up until I began to formally study what “Enligtenment” is. Enlightenment in its real sense is an effort to humanize religion. Mr. M. J. Inwoods explains the leading doctrines of Enlightenment as shared by most of the spokesmen in the Oxford Companion (1995,236) and one of those doctrines goes on as ‘ Beliefs are accepted only on the basis of reason, not on the authority of priests, sacred texts or tradition. Thus Enlightenment thinkers tended to atheism, or at most to a purely natural deism, shorn of supernatural and miraculous elements and designed primarily to support an enlightened moral code and in some cases to account for the faith that the universe is a rational system wholly accessible to human reason.” This very clearly shows that Enlightenment leads to the replacement of religion by reason and rationality.

In order to modernize Pakistan, Mush also wanted to have this sort of "Enligtenment" but since it was too difficult to openly reject the supremacy of religion so he came up with a desi version of it giving it the name of "Enlightened Moderation". It is just a softer image of the original concept so we shouldn’t fall in the trap because initially this desi version may seem to be tolerant towards Islam but would ultimately lead to the rejection of it. In fact, even now we can see the repercussions all around in the form of the amendments being made to the curriculum and the demolition of Mosques in Islamabad which are just a few examples.