YasminFuckingBegum

Stripping away the layers 
can reveal your soul.
You’ve got to give yourself up before you become whole.  
We are slave to ourselves, and we don’t even know.
Want to live the fast life, but your brain remains slow.
If we are trying to stay high, we are bound to stay low; we want God, but can’t deflate the ego.
But if we’re already there, then there’s nowhere to go; if our cup is overflowing, then it’s bound to overflow. 
If you’re drowning in the waters and you can’t stay afloat
Ask God for a hand, he’ll throw you some rope. 
Looking everywhere for God, said he couldn’t be found. ..searching up the sky, looking beneath the ground.  

complexximperfection:

I have no power to change you
or explain your ways
Never believe a man can change a woman
Those men are pretenders
who think
that they created woman
from one of their ribs
Woman does not emerge from a man’s rib’s, not ever,
it’s he who emerges from her womb
like a fish rising from depths of water
and like streams that branch away from a river
It’s he who circles the sun of her eyes
and imagines he is fixed in place

by: Nizar Qabbani 

I was talking with a friend earlier over various aspects of Islam and its culture within the UK; you know, I was throwing liberal Islamic propaganda at him, and he’d hit back with some orthodox teachings about this, that the other.

Then it hit me; why does it matter if one practice is specifically ‘this’ or that? The Pakistani tradition of the three to four day wedding is originally a Hindu practice. I don’t see any Pakistani or Indian Muslims going for Saudi weddings. Sure, and you get the pricks trying to destroy shrines in the name of the “purest form of Islam”; I’m not naming names, but we all know the one who tried to destroy the Prophet’s shrine in Mecca. 

The name of which has been adopted from his practices into the ultra-orthodox Islam. The ultra orthodox Saudi Islam that funds Madrassahs in Afghanistan to supply cannon fodder of the next generation of young minds that ARE assets to humanity. They are not worth less than anything; they are the next generation, they are our generation. These kids are signing their live away. The Wahabi Islam that does this, that does that, that allows for extremists who manipulate religion as a political tool for political means.

Khomeini. Gaddafi. Al Haq. Ahmadinejhad. The giants of dictatorship in the name of Islam.

Those with the Islam, which has been homogenised. And on the other side? Muslim apologists like Irshad Manji, author of “The Trouble With Islam” and ‘Hi, I’m a Muslim Cowgirl and I like Muslims for Bush’ Asma Hasan.

I refuse to stand with either of these. If Islam is a choice between shoving it into a box with lots of plastic Styrofoam, having to sift through all of that to find the true product…you know, they said that the Qu’ran is the only word? Try telling that to the local Mullah with books like “Shariah Law Ethics for the Modern Economic System” and a shelf lined with all 15 books of Bukharis. Modern Islam is drinking diamonds that are overflowing from that plastic cup. Islam is too big for one interpretation and the seemingly sameness of orthodox Islam. If it’s a choice between that, the Islam that fits in with the overflowing middle classes, uniformed and consistent middle of the road answers for everything ‘Well, that ayat isn’t strictly about beating your wife” and “Allahafiz is better than Qudhafiz because Allahfiz has Allah in it”. Do you know how many fucking times I’ve heard those conversations? 

Fuck those sterile fucking conversations. I’m out man. The idea of Sufis in small villages using unorthodox communications to reach the creator is so far out there that it doesn’t fit in with the western Islam. I’m out. I’m all for using drugs for mind expanding consciousness. I’m all for using Buddhist techniques for prayer and meditation. Liberal Islam needs to shed this inferiority complex it has about being shunned ‘cause innovation is a ‘swear word’. That Amina Wadud is wrong and is heretical and Five Percenters aren’t real Muslims and the Nation of Islam is blasphemy. Fuck that mentality. If someone reaches God and they say it’s through Islam, that’s totally fine by me. Seriously. I’m DOWN with that. It doesn’t even have to be Islam… if you ain’t religious, that’s cool too. If you are, cool. Whatever, as long as you’re happy. 

The Qu’rans interpretations are as vast and as wide as the population of the Ummah throughout the ages; each person with a separate brain, a separate heart internalising a whole book, making it their own. Qu’ran has different meanings for everybody who reads Qu’ran; why is the Islam I see on a daily basis so small, if we have possibly got billions of interpretations of one book? Qu’ran is word. If you have a different interpretation of the word, I think that’s great, even if I might not personally agree with it. I admire you because you internalised it, you made it your own so it’s tailor fitted to what you believe, think and feel.

Why do we overlook the wild teachers before us in favour of sterile ones? Each one of those interpretations was from a person who God personally sent to be put upon this earth. He meant for it to be, so all these ultra orthodox Muslims on my dashboard, calm the fuck down.

And for more open minded views that go somewhere between Muslim apologists and not looking women in the eye because you’re so pious, check out Eric , Caitlin’s and Juthika’s blogs.

Just keep at it. Better to have your own view than the one of millions.