It’s not for me……. Stupid
By Umer Raza
I called a person the other day to remind him of a promise he made to me to deliver me something. He promised me a number of times that he will call and let me know the latest status but never did. When I called him and whenever I call I listen as a ring tone a Beautiful Quranic Verse. The verse is giving the moral guidelines to conduct yourself.
There are a number of such moral ring tones. We usually listen to these when we call someone and before the other person picks the call you have to listen to that. Some tones are in the voice of Junaid Jamsheed’s Naat (Stanza in praise of our Prophet PBUH), some are moral guidelines by Mulana Tariq Jameel sb. or from some other religious scholar. All these are fabulous material. They simply help you rejuvenate your spirit of Islam and help you keep on the path.
However, when I repeatedly do not see the person on the other end of the phone to follow anyone of these I wonder why. Then there is another thing that bothers me about the social media feed of many people. On WhatsApp specially and on other media generally the sharing of the religious codes, guidelines etc. in the shape of quotes, videos, pictures etc. There is so many of these and most of these messages happen to be powerful, inspiring and touchy. But why is that person sharing this at the first place, while i can observe that he himself is somehow not following many of these guidelines.
The answer I tried to find and what I could get was, obviously written in Quran in Sura Asr verse 3 “……advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience” . Yes that is brilliant and indeed Allah is asking us to do so and by this token we are duty bound to do so. We have to advise each other of truth and of patience. So it justifies for everyone to share such guidelines of truth and patience with others and of course the modern medium of sharing this advisory material is Mobile ring tones, Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp feeds.
But the same sure also states one other thing which interestingly just precedes the above. So the complete verse 3 of Sura Asr is like this “…..Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience”. This complete verse in fact makes it compulsory to first DO the righteous deeds ……..DO.DO.DO…..meaning first practice and then preach.
While wondering as to why the person would place it on the ring tone, why putting moral guidelines on social media…..i somehow now have the answer. The person who shares in fact says that I don’t need it…..it is not for me…. Stupid…..it is for you. You are going to hell and I am here to save you going there.
Abundance 