December 19, 2010
COPING WITH FEAR AND GRIEF: An Islamic Approach [Part Two]
Section: WRITINGS | 250 reads
(36)
Social Conscience and Responsibility
At the same time, Islam also places a huge social burden on our shoulders.
For, fear and grief are not always individual issues. They frequently have deeper social roots requiring larger social approaches to their solution.
They often need cooperative and community-based efforts if we have to solve them effectively.
This requires people helping people to overcome their fears and grief at all stages of life. No human being can really do it alone.
As a result, social conscience and social responsibility are among Islam’s most important doctrines and teachings.
Islam offers its solutions at two levels.
On the one hand it makes it clear to individuals that it expects nothing but the best from them. On the other hand, it wants everyone in the community to pitch in to help solve the problems that people face.
Thus, whenever you are faced with a problem that is causing you grief or fear – whether that problem is personal, political, economic, moral or social – Islam wants you to try to solve that problem to the best of your ability and means. Islam encourages all individuals to make the best effort they are capable of.
Then Islam works at the other end of the equation as well. It asks Muslims to extend a helping hand to others – Muslim or non-Muslim – almost turning Islam into a system of social obligations and responsibilities.
Every one of you is a shepherd, says a Hadith of our beloved Rasool, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, and every one of you has a flock to tend, for which you will be responsible and answerable.
That is not all.
Ironclad guarantees of reward, support and help from God are then offered to those who spend their time, energies and resources in helping others.
How clear and beautiful is the Hadith which says that Allah himself is busy helping a person who is busy helping his brother – meaning of course both men and women.
How much more powerful or persuasive can it get?
From this point of view, Islam provides a perfect and most harmonious confluence of vigorous individualism and self-reliance on the one hand with equally aggressive social conscience and collectivism on the other hand.
There is no better panacea for fear or grief in this world than to be able to do the best you can at your end and, at the same time, to have the backing, support and help of the whole community with you.
Islam, thus, offers this world a blend of personal independence and initiative on the one hand and social conscience and responsibility on the other hand that promises to make human life on earth as free from fear and grief as it is possible for life on earth to be.
This is true not only with regard to Muslims but also with regard to the non-Muslims, so long as they believe in what Islam teaches and practice it.
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Death: Way to a Fear-Free Life
Death is misunderstood by most people, who look upon it as the end – end of everything they have; end of their life; end of their story.
Yet, death is really a beginning. It could be the start of a new life – free from fear and grief, if you choose to make it so.
It is a gateway to heaven and an invitation to meet God.
What most people don’t know also is the fact that death comes – or is embraced and practiced – in several forms and stages.
Properly understood and properly handled, death means ultimate triumph of the human being over all sources of fear and grief.
For an average human being, what fear could be greater than the fear of death?
Or what grief could be greater than the loss of someone you love dearly?
But those who attain the true state of liberation from fear and grief conquer even death – whether it is their own or that of someone they love.
And they use dying as a means to set themselves free from the tyranny of fear and grief over their lives.
For, death to them is little more than a state of the mind – a temporary lull in the vast journey that is life. A mere changing of horses at a stopover along the road.
While life to them was freedom of the body – for, slavery in all forms is anathema to such free souls – death to them means freedom from the body.
For, from a purely worldly point of view, dying may appear to be a certain form of nonexistence. But from a spiritual point of view, it is actually attaining a completely new state of existence.
Allah constantly mixes and transposes these two stages and states together – life and death, existence and nonexistence.
Life fades into death; and death morphs into life. It is a recurring theme in the Qur’an. The process is an ongoing dialectic in real time and space.
I find the following words of the Qur’an not merely clear, powerful and evocative, but spell binding:
Yukhrijul Hayya Minal Mayyiti and Yukhrijul Mayyita Minal Hayyi wa Yuhyil Arda Ba’da
Mauti-haa, wa Kadhaalika Tukhrajoon
(Soorah Ar-Room).
Which in paraphrase means:
Out of the dead does he bring out the living,
and out of the living does he bring out the dead,
and he makes the earth come alive after its death,
and so indeed shall you be raised up (30:19).
Thus, to a mind that has been awakened to the true knowledge of the self, God and the universe, death is simply living life in stages.
Such a person, when given a choice, may even choose death as a viable and desirable option. For, it is part of the process of reaching God.
Such a person knows full well that death is the train you take to meet God – to keep your appointment with him.
And people who have been set free from fear and grief in this world know that they have a date with the divine, and they eagerly look forward to it. Such people are most eager to meet God.
But no more eager are they to meet God than God himself is eager to meet them.
Thus, death to such people, far from being a menace, becomes the final gateway they have to pass through to keep their date with God Almighty.
What fear or grief could mar the life, muddy the joy or cramp the style of such people?
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Freedom from Material Relations
One way to die is to choose to be dead to the lure of material possession of this world.
Material ambitions, attachments, relations and possessions – and the desires, pleasures and promises of the flesh – are a constant source of fear and grief for most people.
And the stronger our worldly attachments, ties and commitments, the greater our sorrows, worries, anxieties, pain and fears.
Fear haunts us with regard to all that we want but may not have as well as with regard to all that we have but may lose.
The world has built a whole culture based on fear – mostly false fear.
Politicians scare us into voting for them or into going to war.
Businesses sell us products based on fear. Advertising as an industry thrives on the appeals that it makes to people based on fear.
So, those who seek freedom from fear and grief must choose to be dead to their material possessions and attachments, which they can do by conquering their blind and raw passion for them.
Those who truly understand God and his creation, and also understand their own place and role in God’s creation, must free their hearts and minds from subjugation to the love of material things.
They must realize that to live a truly meaningful and rich life, and to be free from fear and grief, they must choose death over life – death to the attachments and possessions of this world.
That is because death has several forms and stages. And they must choose to die, so they may live.
Those who choose to die in this way, do so progressively and in stages.
That is why the first stage of death for them is to disconnect all material bonds that chain them to the world.
That means to reach a firm, full and clear realization that whatever a person has, every particle of it, belongs not to him but to someone else – to Almighty Allah.
And that it is a loan in his hands from Allah – every little thing that a person may have.
And that it may be used only by Allah’s permission and only as directed by him.
That means, neither wealth nor poverty must make the slightest difference in the way a person perceives and carries himself or herself in this world.
Thus, neither should a person consider wealth as his own private property – and use it as he pleases.
Nor should he consider poverty a handicap and allow it to oppress and stop him from doing what he must in the path of Allah.
His total focus at all times must be Allah, who alone holds the key to all wealth and poverty.
To the extent such a person is not looking at the world but at its maker, to that extent that person is distant from and dead to the world.
And to that extent that person is closer – and alive – to the maker of the world.
From now on, that person is only a keeper and custodian of Allah’s things in his possession and no longer their owner and master.
Such a person has taken the first step to finding life in his maker and through him.
At some point thereafter, if he is fortunate and if he stays the course and keeps his focus, he would receive proper guidance to proceed further.
At that stage his pursuit of personal liberation from grief and fear will begin to bear fruit.
Next Article: Four Words that Changed the World! All It Takes Is You!
Previous Article: COPING WITH FEAR AND GRIEF: An Islamic Approach [Part One]
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