Enemies of Allah

The Tools of the Oppressor

It is impossible to read the Quran (and really any religious text) and not come to some very clear realizations, such as: a) God is the Creator, b) we were designed to worship Them, c) They live outside any binary that we could come up with, in our limited human knowledge, d) the only enemy to God, is the person who partakes in riba, and otherwise mistreats, oppresses, or is a tyrant to others, e) He is All Aware f) They are the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.

With these universal truths, it strikes me as an insult of the highest order to present Allah as anything other than in alignment with the above.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Allah says: 'I am just as My slave thinks I am, (i.e. I am able to do for him what he thinks I can do for him) and I am with him if He remembers Me. If he remembers Me in himself, I too, remember him in Myself; and if he remembers Me in a group of people, I remember him in a group that is better than they; and if he comes one span nearer to Me, I go one cubit nearer to him; and if he comes one cubit nearer to Me, I go a distance of two outstretched arms nearer to him; and if he comes to Me walking, I go to him running.' "

We know that Allah doesn’t create without intention. We know that Allah is the Only One that has knowledge of what has been, what is, and what will be. We know that Allah creates with the intention of goodness, and even in the harm, there is good that we may never understand or know because we don’t have the knowledge of the Divine Creator.

We also know that the enemy of Allah is outlined rather explicitly and with clear diction throughout the religious texts, the oppressor, the person that partakes in harm of orphans, the person who thrives in riba, and the person who knew God but then turned away from God.

Which is perhaps the reason why it breaks my heart to hear fear doctrine from Muslims, much like the doctrine that I grew up with in the church. The reality is that fear doctrine isn’t the doctrine that even the Most High God abides by. More often than not in most religious texts, Allah is clear about the threat, then provides the balance by reminding others of the light, and then often provides the mercy that we are often seeking from the Creator of All Things.

Why then would we assume to be people that can inspire fear in others? We are no better than any one else upon the earth. If we are lucky our sins are hidden from the world to only be held into account by God who knows us, if we are blessed our sins are available to the world so that we can be held to community account. Allah is ever the Best of Planners, and only He can know what the expectation is, and the intention is, that we all must abide by within the parameters of the book that we are written in.

One of the first khuthbuh that I heard after becoming Muslim, was from a famous sheikh (of which I will not be naming, because over-all I adore this person and think that they have a very beautiful faith mashallah), but this khuthbuh really fundamentally upset the foundation that my faith was being built upon.

“…you cannot call yourself a friend of God, if you are not making your daily prayers. You cannot reasonably call yourself a friend of God, or assume that God is your friend, if you are not praying all of your prayers.”

This devastated me as a revert, when the concept of ritual prayers, five times a day, was foreign. The idea that I had always known God, had always spoken with Him, had regular conversations with the Divine, and suddenly, now that I was part of a new faith – the fact that I wasn’t having the conversations with Him in the exacting new way – meant I could no longer call God a friend, was destabilizing.

It has taken a year of hard work, dedication, community, and fantastic religious leaders in my life, to begin to undo the harm that one sentence caused at the beginning of my Islamic journey, and yet even then I find myself caught up in the echoes of that quote.

Has anyone heard of ruhksa? The idea that we have been given dispensation, special dispensation from Allah. Not to mention the idea that the Quran was sent down over the period of 23 years, the first 13 of which the prophet, the sahaba, and the followers didn’t know the official acts of prayer… the intention was very much to bring people into the love of Allah.

Imbue them with an everlasting light and love of the Divine, before they were given the rigor of ritual and obligations….?

Should we not be treating everyone as if we are welcoming them home? Is not their conversation about obligation and responsibility, between them and their most trusted mentors and Allah Himself?

Last year, I was blessed to be able to go to Colombia on a retreat, and while there I met some amazing shayuk who were able to talk about prayer with me, the ritual, the worship, the act, the commitment – and through that, I was able to find the beauty in it again. Yet, I think about the fact that had I not been given that – had my mentor not run after me like a dog with bone to get me to sign up for the retreat, I would’ve been struggling to still decide if Islam was for me; as the prayers were next to impossible and if I wasn’t doing them, then clearly I wasn’t a friend of God and He could never be called upon to love me.

I was speaking with that same mentor this week about the act of expansion and contraction and how we are always in some era of one or the other. Last year, I took that to mean that if I was struggling in any area of my faith it was representative of my faith as a whole – meaning, if I was struggling with prayer, it meant that I was in a period of contraction and therefore my whole relationship with Allah was not as strong as it should be, or as it was.

But then suddenly that logic wasn’t working for me. Not this week.

This past week I have been smoking again. I went nearly 10 weeks without smoking, and then I entered a depressive episode, and all things went to shit. Well not really… or not in the way they have gone to shit in the past.

For instance, I am not suicidal (ALHAMDULILAH) this is truly growth that I never imagined I would experience in my life. Being in a depressive episode, and not having intrusive thoughts of self-harm, has been monumental. The issue is that in order for my brain to work, I need help – and the help that is getting me through, is smoking.

The harm, is that I know that smoking isn’t overall a good commitment to care of this body that Allah has given me, and I am also very aware that we are not allowed to pray while intoxicated, and as such – smoking is a double-edged sword of benefit and harm. It is neither haram (for there is filq for pain of the physical and mental that gives it jurisprudence to be a medicinal tool), yet it is not loved by Allah (as it can and does have the capability of distracting us from the Glory of the Divine, and calling us closer to the harms of the world.)

I am no fool to think that I am in full control of all that I can and should be doing within the confines of my relationship with God; and yet that is precisely why I am sharing this and have been more open about smoking in general.

Because I believe that most sins are hidden not in the way that the prophet or Allah intended them to be.

Meaning – we shouldn’t be proud of our sins, we shouldn’t share them in hopes that we can bring others to sin with us. However, we should share with a sense of community, that we may find others that are willing to help, have survived the same oscillation between haram and Allah’s love.

I wonder at the weight of responsibility that we have in pushing people away by choosing to be critical of them, when we wouldn’t want anyone to be that critical of us; and if Allah is as we think of Him, and we believe that He can forgive us, if we believe that He can love us, if we believe that He is our Friend – then is He not that?

And beyond that, if we believe Him of those things, would that not then bring us closer to Allah? If we truly are striving, and if we are truly asking Allah to forgive, to love us, then wouldn’t that naturally mean that He will be writing us to become someone that Allah loves?

Someone that Allah has forgiven?

Would we want to risk pushing someone away from Allah, who otherwise might have walked into His open embrace?

Would be chose to be critical of others who are striving? Would we want to risk becoming the tool of the oppressor that pushes people away from God rather than to Him? Would we want to bear the weight of explaining to Allah, why we told others that they were unworthy, as they fall into the fire we ushered them toward?

Do we believe that we wouldn’t also be welcomed into that same fire for a time, for how many people we told were unable to find worth in the embrace of God?

Do I believe that Allah may experience disappointment, may experience some level of anger at disregard? Yes, absolutely.

Do I believe that He is so petty that He doesn’t love us anymore when we forget to pray, or when we forget to do something religiously profound? No.

We apply these binary logics to the Great Creator that seem antithetical at best to the intention of the Divine.

A friend of mine is a new revert, and she’s had a Muslim man in her life for some time. As is wont to happen, they are circling each other – but he says things that harm her tenuous and beautiful new faith. “That because she isn’t praying five times a day, or because she is struggling to give up her vices, that he cannot be with her because he ‘wants a pious wife.’”

It makes me seethe and foam at the mouth, that we would put critiques upon others for their journey, for their expansions and contractions, for their hopes and desires.

As if we do not know that Allah is in the striving.

Abu Huraira reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “A single endeavor or journey in the way of Allah is better than everything over which the sun rises and sets.”

If that is the case, then why would we ever make someone feel inferior for where they are in their journey? The way that this man has continuously called to question her faith, and her fitrah, has caused her to wonder if she really should be Muslim at all…

In his desire to make her more pious, he is pushing her actively away from God.

For all my Christians out there… is this sounding familiar? How many pastors, husbands, mothers, etc. have used fear doctrine to show that God is only waiting to be disappointed in us, in hopes that it brings us closer to God, yet it does the opposite? It pushes us away from the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.

We have to do better, and be better.

Imagine if you knew a believer was upon their death bed, who never made a prayer in their life – and suddenly they are praying on litany while the light of life leaves their eyes. Would you feel compelled to remind them that they are likely too late, and that Allah will likely not accept their prayer because they were unable or unwilling to pray when they were living?

No, of course not. What if that was the only prayer they ever made? And it was to call upon Allah to forgive them? Would you presume to speak for the Divine and tell the believer that Allah wouldn’t accept the prayer upon their lips as they died? Who are you and what gave you the right?

The same thing can be said for every single person that we come into contact with. We do not know if everyone that we are talking to, will leave us and get into a car accident, have a heart attack, choke on dinner, and die. We simply do not know that.

So why risk it? Why would we risk pushing anyone away as they may be walking into the embrace of God?

This came up because I am smoking, and I’ve missed a couple prayers this week. But my dhikr has been exceptionally more beautiful, my remembrance of Allah has followed me into my dreams and into my walking hours, I can feel Him in my life, I can see His works, I am grateful.

It comes up, as I sit at the heels of a Queer Muslim conference, where I heard many Queer Muslims talk about how they were pushed out of community, family, masjids, ummah because of the way that the Divine crafted them.

I sat listening to people who have never sought medical help, mental health help, because they are Muslim and want Muslim providers who can understand that vital aspect of their identities, while treating them - but they can’t because they’ve never known a life in which Muslims have accepted them, comforted them, provided a healing soothing balm to their souls.

At a Muslim owned cafe in Chicago, where the vast majority of the staff are queer; where all of the art is either an act of resistance or an expression of love for those who have died for the cause.

I have to sit with anger in my veins, and blood in my ears, and white on my knuckles from the rage that I feel as I see a people with fitrah to spare, good hearts open and willing to help others, grieving the communities that should be there for them, but making a community that is there for them – because they understand, that Allah is as you seek Him.

God is in the striving.

So I am contracting in some areas, but I am expanding in others, and I feel Allah in my veins, and I love Allah in my heart, and I am so very much overwhelmed with the beauty, even as I fall back on old habits, and forget myself.

Because Allah is as I seek Him. He is as I think of Him. He is as I know Him.

Can He be vengeful? Yes, certainly. And I do pray that the tyrants, oppressors, and those who enforce riba – feel the knifes edge of His vengeance when that day comes.

But I know that He is the same Allah who had the Prophet put “The Most Compassionate, The Most Merciful” at the beginning of nearly every single chapter of the Quran; a cogent and replicated reminder that we are to remember Him as such.

And if we are to remember Him as this, then it would be safe to presume that we are to bring that version of Him into the world around us. That our remembrance would be the remembrance to others in the world of where they come from, from whom they were crafted by.

I hope that I can call myself a friend of God. Not because I feel entitled to this title, but because I am always striving to be a better believer, I am always striving to seek Them, I am always thinking of Allah fondly.

And if He runs to me as I walk to Him, if He is as I think of Him, if He is in the very act of striving – then it seems to me, that He may Himself, call me His friend.

x o x o - Jacks