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Heedless Preferences

MUHAMMAD AWAIS TAHIR

Muhammad.Awais.Tahir@gmail.com
 In the name of Allah the beneficent, the Merciful

Heedless Preferences!
The melodious azaan reached his ears. He was ready to take the free-kick in the football ground. The attractive voice
caught his attention for a moment, but he shook it off and preferred to go on with the match. A wayward free-kick
resumed the match.

'Son! Fetch me some potatoes from the market', his mother said in a loud voice. He was buried into the movie
scenes in the next room. The Oscar award winning movie had gripped his attention fully. He has been regretting
since the award day , ' Man! How come I missed this movie before '. He chose to ignore the mother's voice.
Moments later, the same melodious voice, forced him to pause the movie. On second thought, he pressed 'Play'
again. He decided to end the routine, instinctive pause at azaan.

'It's my life! I can choose to do what I want!...' , he yelled at me in response to my routine lecture on the importance
of Salah.

Your life? Who is driving you? Is it really you? Weren't it you who decided to change last Ramadan? Who made the
decision in the Friday sermon, not to commit the same sins again? Weren't that also you? … At some point in life,
you, or something within you, wishes to be a changed person but most of the times you, or something within you,
prefer being 'bad', knowing that it is bad. After these continuous battles, you have defeated your own self. You have
chosen to go after the ballistic, animalistic wants and are constantly ignoring what your inner self (soul) wishes. It
was your soul which guided you, which warned you when you decided to do something evil. The soul, that lives. It
was there even when you weren't even born. It'll be there when you die. It has already begun an eternal journey.
And you are letting this inexperienced, animalistic self drive you and are forgetting the divinely guided, experienced
soul.

Be careful about what you prefer. On that day of reckoning, you'll be judged on the basis of what you preferred
(Surah Al Qiyamah 75:12). The topic of preferences doesn't end here. It’s the very beginning. It’s the first step to
learn to choose the right from the wrong. A Muslim suppresses his animalistic wants and listens to the commands of
his Lord and the call of his soul. This is the very first thing, the most important thing, and the most important thing is
to keep the most important thing, the most important thing.

'A wise person is not the one who knows what to prefer, right and wrong, but, he is the one who knows what to
prefer out of the two rights'. If you haven't crossed the very first step of submitting your will to Allah SWT, even if
you are a doctor, an engineer, a person with an outstanding IQ, you haven't started the journey of wisdom. A new
born baby is wiser than you, for he is born on fitrah (true nature), and you have lost that true nature with time.

In the present world there are many Muslims, who recite the kalimah but they are the servants of their own selves.
And those who want to act upon religion, act on the negligible knowledge they have of religion. They do not
differentiate between the important and the unimportant. They are driven more by their passion, than their
knowledge. As a result, the religion which is beautiful in its essence, becomes a pretty difficult thing to act on. Islam,
from its very first day, has some mandatory actions, some additional ones, some basic rules and some extensions.
Some actions are physical and some are related to the heart. But few people are suffering from the strange disease
of extending a particular part of Islam to such an extent that it starts taking up the place of many other 'more
important' activities. Like chemical compounds, it is necessary to come up with a right combination of actions, in due
proportion, to represent the true spirit of Islam.

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