People Of Substance – A session by Bro Nouman Ali Khan, which led me to rediscover my lost orientation. It was indeed one of the most profound and promising sessions which engraved its impact deep down somewhere in my heart. The influence of this session was so intense that I’m pretty sure it will preserve in my memory for long, Insha’Allah.
The theme of his discussion revolved around, how we talk so much about reforming our societies, but when it comes to us, on an individual level we aren’t at peace with ourselves even. We’ve become oblivion towards the term self-improvement. We’ve buried our morals, ethics completely, and instead of reforming ourselves, we talk about reforming societies, forgetting the mere fact, that societies comprise of individuals. Spiritual and intellectual nourishment of individuals is the key to fix the society. His emphasis was laid on the significance of shaping one’s character and improving our dealings with our closest relationships. Fixing yourself means contributing in shaping a reformed society.
One of the most influential words I extracted out of his lecture was, that in Surah Bayyinah, Allah (SWT) told us about two significant things that we were blessed with,
1. Message (The Glorious Qur’an, The Ultimate Guidance)
2. Messenger
Quraish didn’t saw the message first, they saw the messenger.
Messenger of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had substance in his character, and this substance made people believe on the message of Allah that he imparted. So we as Muslims, need to work on our characters. This is the basic aspect we need to work with. Why we see Muslims being blamed for everything bad that happens on the surface of this earth? This is because WE have given them every reason to say such things about our religion. Most journalists, write about “Islam as a problem in Pakistan?” Sadly, we in a Muslim society are going through the worst kind of crisis. A crisis of a sort, where Muslims don’t want to call them Muslims. We see the animosity and arguments flaring between different scholars of Islam. These scholars constitute only 1% of the whole society, rest 99% of the population feels disconnected, because they think these 1% people are talking useless. This is how Islam is perceived in a Muslim country, let aside the western society.
In this hour of crisis, we need religious, educated minded individuals. We need to rediscover our lost glory, our substance, our vision and most importantly our purpose. We should focus on reeducating ourselves about Islam. We need to have firm faith that it’s Islam alone that solves problems of all sorts, be it social, economic, political etc.
Pakistan have had enough speeches. We are living in the times when speech doesn’t mean anything anymore to anyone out there! It’s about time that we teach people about Islam by setting example. For this purpose Islamic education, Qur’anic education are counted in the essentials. We should study Qur’an in depth, because Qur’an and Sunnah together define a complete outlook towards living. So we seriously need to work on it. Turkey is one of the vibrant example of this. Sometimes back a woman who was elected in Parliament was made to walk out of the Parliament, because of wearing Hijab. And today, several humongous Islamic Conferences are held in Turkey, SubhanAllah.
Garden Of Substance – A board that was allocated to sisters so that they could convey what they learnt from the session
So the gist is that change comes from within. It’s not an overnight process. The dream of changing a society will never acquire its real form until we don’t change ourselves on individual level.
On an ending note, I want to acknowledge the efforts put in by LIVE DEEN. Undoubtedly, it was one of the finest sessions I’ve been a part of Alhamdulillah. This session was a mirror. We aspire to do so many big things, but our standing is so poor when it comes to the basics. The stronger the foundation, the stronger the building. And because we are ignorant towards the basics that’s why we land in conflicts with our inner selves. LIVE DEEN is one of the most amazing platforms that is needed for the people of this country. The event was highly organized Masha’Allah and enjoyed every bit of it.
JazakAllah Khairan LIVE DEEN for your efforts towards such a noble cause. May Allah preserve this organization (Ameen Ya’ Rabbul Aalameen)
File folders provided by LIVE DEEN, for any questions/feedback
An amazing stall of Da’wah Books
And for all those who have missed this session, cheer up! There’s another great session, LIVE DEEN is working towards. Details are provided in the flyer attached below :) Hope to see you all there, Insha’Allah Ta’ala.
Author : Mina Kazmi
