Societal Issues: Tools for Change by Yasmin Mogahed -27/11/2020

 First and foremost, I would like to thank my naqibah, Sister Syazana for assigning us to make a reflection of this video from Yasmin Mogahed's talk. It's really beautiful. I swear.

Yasmin Mogahed began her talk with the reason why she came late to the talk. The weather during that time was not good, and a girl she met said, "So what can we do? It's the weather after all." Like we can't control it. Then. Yasmin shared some quranic verse from Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 155 to 157:

"And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient,"

"Who, when disaster strikes them, say, "Indeed we belong to Allah , and indeed to Him we will return."

"Those are the ones upon whom are blessings from their Lord and mercy. And it is those who are the [rightly] guided."

From the first verse, we can see that Allah have told us that our life will be always tested by fears and anxiety. We will face some of losses in this worldly life. So what are we going to do when we face them? The key is Sabr.

However, we always mistakenly describe how being 'Sabr' looks like. Sabr does not mean 'not to do nothing'. It is not a passive action. The evidence is, in Islam, if we something is going wrong, we must change it. We must take an action. This has been told in a hadith by our Prophet Muhammad SAW:

“Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then [let him change it] with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.” 

                                                                           [Muslim: 49 (a)]

This hadith proves that Islam is not a passive religion and Sabr or patience that have been promoted by Islam is not a passive action. 

The story of Siti Hajar and Prophet Ismail who were left at the barren valley is the best lesson to be learnt. After she trusted to Allah's plans at the valley, and their food had none left, she did not stay quiet. She did saie from Safa to Marwah. She was not walking, she was running! And what most beautiful is, the word 'saie' in arabic means 'to srive' literally. She did not give up, she kept on going.

Striving is not giving up hope. Striving is keeping up our pacing even though we are struggling.

Yasmin Mogahed also said something that was very deep:

"We always ask Allah to keep us Sabr, but we never ask Him for ease."

The doa that I always recite whenever in hardship:

"Rabbi Yassir wa la Tuassir"

which means, "O my lord, make it ease, and do not make it hard"

We must always remember that, even the Prophet always chose the ease rather than hardships. Plus, we must aware with ourselves to not being arrogant to Allah SWT. Always, ask Him. Doa is wireless, we can do it anytime.

To Allah, we belong to.