iqra'.

I've read this meaningful literature written by firuz, a musleem in America which I found was addicting &; pretty good reminder for us to think at. Read it, if you do care for the Ummah.

We should be out there speaking of Him, instead I hum within me, trying to make up for all the un-prayed prayers, the times my idle hands late at night learnt masturbation from Cosmopolitan instead of picking up the Book. The hum is where my jugular vein is(1). It's breathing out loud, bursting through my ribcage, but staying below my skin because the McDonald's fat I have procured myself holds it in. The McDonald's fat I build instead of His House.

We are the second generation. We write in a's and b's and read translated Q's. We hear of and listen to Nations and 5%s but we don't do that, no(2). No Sunni, no Shiite...just Him. We did the teenage rebellion thing against our parents, to whom we should not huff and puff, because they live under the Attic of the house(3). But it did something good. We did not want Him through them. We wanted Him through Him, in Him, in the unity of the Ummah's spirit(4). Breath. Breathing. Wind, "toiling thanklessly for the good of all, day after day, seven days a week, and why everybody knows it"(5).

Don't feed us your S&S candy, no. We eat M&M's and know no Ali's - just John's. It's all shit to me. We have liberated the Ummah from the Land, the Word from the Language(6). We hear through our hands, not from others; just how can you resist temptation when you're alone in the desert? You doubt us on account of our doubts. In the other World the young are pounded on account of their pounds. The Jews have wound you on account of their wounds.

It's okay, we know you didn't make this shit up. You just gave it your body. I didn't write the book, I just bought it, read it, and did what it said. Listen to yourself. It's not you, it's the hum they installed that is now hard to drive out.

Iqra, bismi Rabbika. Read, in God's name. Not one or the other. Or neither, that is.

My atheist friend is here too. But we both know no one can not believe in God, and it has nothing to do with Pascal(7). Once you can't believe, you can believe too; they go hand in hand. Once "it doesn't exist" is said, it is alive. He calls Him, "Bob". Whichever way you look at Him, He is the same, and within Him you find the womb that completes you.

I asked myself a question. "What is I?". Not "what am I?". The latter is only me, the individual, the doctor, the lawyer, the student. What is I? What is the self?

The self is bacteria. You cannot see the one. You can only see the whole. Like the Ummah. There is no such thing as a Muslim. There is only Islam. Not the Islam you hear of, but the one that comes from salam, peace. I don't care what you do Friday, Saturday or Sunday, because I have met Him in the House which no one built. Not one, the whole.

History is revolutions, booms and slumps. That is why we don't belong to it. We will never be indexed, because our revolution has no boom or slump. Our revolution is not in the dictionary, where it says "a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new one"(8). The spirit is no democracy, there is no choice, A or B. "B. is better"...no. Our revolution is air. You want the oxygen but you breathe everything in. Not one, the whole. The good, the bad. He is in both Heaven and Hell. And we take the infidels with us.

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(1) Derived from the metaphor used by several Sufi writers of God being as close to our hearts as our jugular vein.
(2)"We hear of and listen to Nations and 5%s.." is a reference to the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Muslim sects, to which many hip hop artists belong.
(3)"To whom we should not huff and puff....the Attic of the house" refers to the Qu'ran in stating that ones parents come after God and that not even "uff" should be uttered to them in complaint.
(4) "...through Him, in Him, in the unity of the Umma's spirit" is a modified version of the formula used in Roman Catholic mass "through Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit"
(5) the quote comes from the play version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", spoken by Dale Harding, sarcastically speaking of Nurse Ratched (the Big Nurse), who represents the 'system' of which the characters in the play want to be freed with the help of R.P.McMurphy.
(6) "Ummah" refers to what is commonly translated into "nation (of islam)". In this context it is argued to be the "spirit".
(7) "Pascal" refers to Pascal's Wager, in philosophy a arguments for the existence of/belief in God. Blaise Pascal argued that there is more to be gained from believing in God, than not believing in Him, in case He actually does exist.
(8) Definition from the Oxford American Dictionary.