latest read - I am Muslim by Dina Zaman

Fuh, what a week!

The drawback of having too much fun - work piles up sky high!

I still managed to squeeze a book in between catching up with work during the day and nightly dinner outings with my sweetheart.

TGIF!

Anyway, this book was brought to my attention after seeing it on Chedd’s blog (here) but it was Kak Ruby’s blog (here) that made me seek out the book. I mean, since she appreciates Sean Ghazi as I do, I'm sure we share some mutual taste.

Just a few pages into the book, it had me in stitches already. And I was either laughing quietly or out loud at almost every other page until the end. At times uncontrollably and had to stop reading completely!

Some of the situations she faced were what I faced myself. The thoughts that were running through her mind were those that ran through mine when those situations happened to me.

There were also certain things Dina wrote about I did not even know were happening right here in KL, right outside my window. Truly shocking! I have indeed been living a sheltered life. And to a certain extend, I’m glad that I have, cos God knows what these things might have done to me mentally and emotionally.

The things Dina did in order to fully appreciate being a Muslim, some were quite impressive and some were "what the hell do you think you're doing?!" situations. She really did put herself out there.

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A passage from the book reads,

"If God has preordained our fate, then is there any point in hoping?"

Whoa!

That felt like reading my thoughts but written by someone else.

That statement struck a chord with me the moment I read it and stayed with me.

It is actually a question that I’ve been asking myself from time to time.

What is the point of hoping and praying when everything is preordained by God and God knows best right?

In the book, it then went on to mention that we can change our destiny if we pray and work on changing it.

Now the thing with praying and hoping and wanting things to change, it is normally, typically, to make better something that is not going right. In other words, it is about asking to change something bad to something good. I mean, you wouldn’t pray and hope for a change if you were rich and happy would you?

Now, what if this something good that you think is good for you is really not?!

The book mentioned that say you get cancer. Then you should not just do nothing since you think it is preordained. You should pray and seek treatment to fight the illness.

Ok, so, let’s say you do have cancer. And you prayed and prayed and hoped to get better and you go for every treatment there was. Then you prayed some more, hoping that the treatments will work.

After all that praying and hoping and putting all that effort, you do get better, the cancer is gone and you get to live.

But what if with life - it filled with challenges - you find that you feel empty, depressed, alone and heartbroken, because in the pursuit to get better during your sickness, you used up all your savings and owe money from almost everyone you know who are now hounding you and the partner that you thought will stick by you, left you after realizing that you were not the person for him?

So is your life now - being financially rundown and without a partner - also preordained? Or was it your own doing since you prayed to be healed from your illness and healed you did?

Would you not think that if you have let cancer take you, then you would not have to face all this?

But you tell yourself that allowing cancer take you would have been a weak person’s decision. That you must have faith.

So you prayed some more that you will get a raise soon and find someone else to share your life with. And with prayers and hard work, you do get a raise and also found someone.

You think you have hit jackpot.

But with the raise comes more expectations and you have to put in more hours at work and that is putting a strain on your relationship. You are torn between the two – to financially better yourself and trying to keep your partner happy.

Did you not prayed hard and worked hard to get financially better and to find a partner?

Would you not think again, that if you have let the cancer take you, then you will not have to face this emotional turmoil?

Is having these problems one after another, your preordained life? That after praying for things to get better, it does for a while but ultimately gets bad again?

So should you have prayed for things to get better in the first place?

Or have you messed up what was originally preordained to you by praying for a change - by praying and hoping for something better?

Faith - it's a funny thing...