By Yusuf Aweda, Lagos
A curious young man asked me why Muslims don’t talk about their faith in public buses. Is it because they lack confidence to profess their belief publicly ?
This is a beautiful question and I think it is time I wrote a therapeutic compendium about it, as it has sunk many people in perplexing awe and deep mood of melancholy too.
There is nothing wrong if Muslims talk about their faith in buses, at bus-stops, or distribute pamphlets everywhere, erect huge banners at every corner in high institutions, places of work, or wake people with their preachings on the streets every morning and so on. This (preaching) is something the current generation should creatively venture into without disturbing the tranquility of the environment and other people .
However, Islam is beyond the activities of the vocal cavity that is driven by the tongue alone. Only the Muslims have the confidence and the unmatched admiring boldness to physically qualify their faith anywhere they are.
The Muslims connect with their God five times daily through a stipulated routine that can only be qualified through physical disposition. This connection is a direct reflection of their physical manifestation of their beliefs.
No matter the condition, restrictions and the societal lameness to God’s recognition. The Muslims would make a spiritually conducive ambiance from conferences, offices, schools, Airports, Vehicles, sport centers, cinemas, malls, super markets, planes, restaurants, car parks, roads, trains, forests, sea, sky, etc to pray five times daily. A genuine Muslim has his/her mobile mosque sitting in his consciousness always. The Muslims are natural structural architects, that physically manifest his/her mobile virtual mosque into a reality to bring forth a mosque when it is time to worship His Lord anywhere he finds himself. The boldness and courage to exude it anywhere in a precised time is overwhelming and distinctively unmatchable.
The Muslim women are the most adorable in this regard. Despite the scrupulously calculated war against their pristine apparel of the Hijab. They still wear their hijabs affirm their rights and their faiths in schools to excel, in hospitals as doctors, in firms as engineers , pilots, and programmers, they are administrators, entrepreneurs, academics, mentors, counsellors, teachers etc. The Muslim women for example would let go the worldly pleasure and the systematic coercions to lure them into compromising their faith and their religious beliefs. Only people of baronial confidence could put forth such firmness at the peek of societal pressure.
The confidence to practise your faith by turning your ambiance into a mobile cubic to physically manifest your belief in worshipping your creator without fear of any of His creatures is indeed the true and genuine confidence one should acknowledge and celebrate.
So, ” ariwo koni music”.
Aweda 1438AH.
