Born Confused

Times where I feel listless and in a daze
I want to encounter venture and exploit escapade
stalks are high bravery and cowardice adjacent,
fear intimate and peace hastened,
to culminate in principle rigor
instilling in a taciturn assured identity of humanity within your being-
and I lay on my bed upside down trying to forget the common
up comes the day dream reel-
and realization dawns that without change,
what is begotten is begot,
stagnate water accumulates the sot,
and it really does matter if I do my homework or not.

There’s this wholeness, a sweetness in milk, a nirvana that tickles your eyes with impact of it’s subtle beauty.
An atom’s drop of this lissome feeling is panoramic.
Scared to breath, scared to construe it as you struggle grasp this light mist of peace and pathos in your hands, in your tongue–objects limited by lingula; the second degree away from the true self, as Plato would say, it as you struggle to transcribe the unboundless feeling of the heart.
Will it always be a struggle to decipher such quiescent into utterances? To translate the majestic waterfall, the jungle around it, the soul–the soil beneath it teeming with life, then death and then life again–would it be possible to translate it a frail bird? A bird outlined with symbols?
I hope the Omniscient just makes this feeling shared between others as a benevolence of love–regardless of the eloquence of ones quantum. Just there.
Ask a people praying in congregation, with meaning, for an extended period of time. The peaceful aura is there within them; however, at a hermetical level…
Can it ever be shared?
Coping without it…
It’s an acquired taste, met often with yearning, sleepless nights, pining, as a dull pang takes over the emptiness within; sometimes listless tears are your only tiny release of no relief and other developments–the more afflicted occurrences–there is no release, it just digs deeper, the silent scream deafens.
People try and close off instinctively, not knowing where this alarm means or lends to. They busy themselves with technology, ipods, phones, e-communities, promoting themselves–scared to live in the present, build a quality of life and of the enlightening lonely rumination…
Never feeling, never knowing this–that is the blindness to the heart.
Living is striving for peace.

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” - Cesare Pavese

it was probably 2 in the morning. still warm. i wanted to walk until no end but instead i was sitting on a bench with a friend beside me. across from us were more benches surrounded with companions of a passed out individual who would later start puking in doses.

“alhumdullah –inshAllah. but it can get lonely. but loneliness doesn’t bother or scare me.”

–

i think about this dialogue now. loneliness does bother me. it’s why i travel so much; am so restless.

or maybe because i don’t fit in.

i once read a quote by Ibn Battuta, after he finally arrived in his birth place, that went something like this: “being a traveler makes one a stranger in his homeland”

earlier today outside, drawing in the gardens–trying to meditate…

my heart is yearning
i don’t know what to say
inside it cries, boxed
tears melting it like clay
i feel listless and unsound
restlessly trying anonymity in a big town
hoping i’ll be so lost
it wouldn’t find me
in this holy time
blessing me with clear vision
to know my peace is a frighten pigeon
community provides the only consul
praying together seems to widen my soul
but i wonder if there is some personal disease
that i lack kushoo when i am alone on my knees

Oh the heart calls, the tears flow. Striving mentally but can it be translated physically? or only metaphysically? Lying in the field, dew damp– inside use to be steel–but what’s this? to weep so easily, to laugh joyfully and to see so much beauty it hurts. I try to close my eyes but the light reaches within between eyelashes with excellence of artistry coming at me at lashs. What can I do? I have fallen so deeply in this trap and yet inside enlight a match, a flame–fully blossoming without control or shame. Coming alive, coming strong–oh look at me what have you done? You’ve effortlessly have broken down my will to fight and run–but somehow I feel I have won.

waits for buses that never came , singing other religions religious songs for Ramadan–fun and lame, a reverts first time to the mosque, praying together gave us a peaceful shock, Aunties stuffy us with food–eating so not to be rude, feeling so alive and well, laughing like bloodly hell, goras speaking bengali and chomskey, as I arrive home happiness surrounds me

What is logic? Certainly not truth…

It’s almost midnight and it’s so quiet. My heart sings! I have no idea why.

Bismillah … ISNA-ing
When I personally look at the issue of self betterment I see two aspects which are interwoven and interdependent on each other and one cannot be fulfilled without the other: one being the personal relationship with Allah and the relationship with my community and Ummah.
Ramadan is our chance to build community. To build bonds. We should take advantage of this time and try to connect to each person individually and build the bonds of love and friendship until we love each other for the sake of Allah (swt) inshAllah. That’s what leadership is. Loving and caring for each other is leadership.
Last year’s Ramadan, at school, I met a woman named Emily. The year before she had studied abroad in Senegal and to this day is overwhelmed and madly in love with the country and the people she met there. During Ramadan she was so excited and was almost moved to tears as she said, “I love fasting. It’s something that connects me with my family in Senegal. I know they are all fasting and we are all fasting at the same time.” This simple statement was so grounding and made me realize that perhaps I wasn’t really milking Ramadan for all it’s worth by simply focusing on myself.
You see, too often—myself included—people are obsess=ed with worship and their own relationship with Allah—it’s all about me me me– essentially we are being selfish and self-absorbed. As Muslims moderation is the key and the way of the Prophet peace be upon him. As human beings we’re naturally social beings. As Muslims we’re discouraged from being hermits. What we forget is that striving for self-improveme vnt is synonymous with striving for altruism. As Albert Einstein once said so eloquently, “One finally starts living when one is able to live for something other than himself.”
And as the our beloved Prophet peace be upon him said in a hadith narrated by Abu Hurarirah and collected by Saheeh Al-Bukhari and Saheeh Muslim: “There are seven whom Allah will shade in His Shade on the Day when there is no shade except His Shade: A Just Ruler, a youth who grew up in the worship of Allah, the Mighty and majestic; a man whose heart is attached to the mosques, two men who love each other for Allah’s sake, meeting for that and parting upon that; a man who is called by a woman of beauty and position but says “I fear Allah”; a man who gives in charity and hides it, such that his left hand does not know what his right hand gives in charity, and a man who remembered Allah in private and so his eyes shed tears.”
If we look at the seven people in Allah SWT’s shade it is obvious community and the way we deal with people is interconnected with the state of our Iman and relationship with Allah SWT. It’s not excuseively one or the other. If we reflect on this hadith today we see it reflects in strong contrast to the condition of our community. For example when we look at the characteristics of the person whose heart is attached to the mosque, most people focus on this is evidence as someone’s closeness to Allah—Forgetting that the masjid is the center of the Muslim community and community activates. and such an individual, since they love the masjid and being often near to it, thus forth prays in congregation and starts to love and have their heart connected to other Muslims who also love the masjid—and in this way they love and are connected to the community.
We need to reach for that state of Imam where we no longer have to conciosly have to remind ourselves of the reward of reading Qur’an but instead we feel incomplete without it and yearn to read it.
And one should not degrade the importance of the relationship to one’s community in comparsion to the personal relationship with Allah (swt) for one can beget another. Like my friend Emily, being with a Muslim family in a Muslim country spurred her love of Islam and Allah. When we go to our masjids, we should be aware of this. You never know how you will affect someone’s personal love of Islam and the love of Allah. How many times have we heard of stories of people, Muslim or not, coming to the masjid and being reprimanded “haram this haram that, your scarf or your shorts are haramoobobi” and after that encounter they never come back again?
Community, our Ummah does impact our iman, our faith and our relationship with Allah. How many times have we heard “Those who are grateful to people are grateful to Allah” and the famious hadith that the ummah is like a body, if one part is afflicted, we all suffer.
Today we often forget that the companions would weep when they were chosen for a position of leadership. Because they feared the added responsibility. Today we often forget that our duty as leaders is service to our community and not as a noche in our belt or one more line to add to our resume. We are here to prefect ourselves and learn the most precious lesson in life: selflessness. Let’s start this Ramadan being true leaders!
Ramadan, 30 days of togetherness—just enough time to build habits to strengthen your deen—and don’t forget!—strengthening the people around you too, with your kindness, mercy, love and gentleness. You’ll find it becomes second nature. Your heart will grow soft, understanding, wise and forgiving. “Understand all; forgive all,” says Buddah.
Do that and your relationship with Allah swt whose greatest name is Al-Rahman, The Mericiful, which is the only Name He chooses to use interchangeably will Allah, will flourish, inshAllah.
Jazakullahkhair

oh ISNA

Bismillah
“In A Light of a New Moon” is the MYNA theme of this weekend consistant with the overall theme of change underlying this gathering. Change, like a cold sweet river keeps the water from becoming stag-nAt and foul. It allows us to be transparent, and clear. Change like the river allows us to discover new heights and lands. Change allows us to grow and like the river to it’s companion plants, it allows us to nurture others so they may grow too.
We’re born in a world of movement and change and I don’t mean that we have TV or cell phones. I say that because as soon as we are born, we are in a world of motion, of movement. The globe revolves faster than any plane or jet but we are simply unaware.
That’s the thing to change, in order to that you must acknowledge the need to modify—or you must simply acknowledge the change first in order to transform.
That’s what happened to MYNA, born out of the need of the changing face of the Muslim Youth in the west.
Change is such a befitting theme as we look on the renaissance of MYNA National. It was almost two years ago when the board of MYNA National was appointed right after ISNA strived to create a youth development program while they appointed good friend and advisor to MYNA, brother Iyad our fearless leader, Youth director of MYNA.
I am one of the newest EC members coming on at the beginning of this year. I have been given the tremendous task with representing the Executive Committee of MYNA. I feel very humble and privileged from the depth of my sincerity.

Alhumdullah, through Allah’s grace MYNA to me has nurtured my soul and widened my scope and depth; though it may be expressed in different ways, though it may take subtle signs to be reflected afterward—this is most certainly a sentiment mutual amongst the EC. MYNA is a labor of love, of expression and a facilitator of opportunities and growth for anyone that has been involved with it. However, don’t allow me to paint a romantic or melodramatic picture of the EC. We are all your peers, do homework, struggle with parents, image and identity. The only reason we were apart of MYNA in the first place is because we believe in it or we would never have the passion to get us through our weekly 3-hour conference calls.
You would have thought we had extricated poverty already with how long our meetings get. And certainly sometimes I take a step back and think to myself, why have I been in a two hour debate about things I think are very obvious? I remember at the EC retreat at ISNA headquarters which consisted of meeting after meeting deliberating every single step; considering the future and pseudo metaphysical manifestations to the identity of MYNA, I would feel intense unrest until I had to go out to the hallway and vent my energy.
And then there are certainly many, many, many times where I am struggling with my patience and then someone brings a such a new perceptive to be brought under consideration and it humbles me. It truly humbles me. In Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s slim volume, in which he translates short but profound statements of the Prophet (s). I quote from my own faulted memory the very first quote in the book: “Haste is from the devil and consideration is from Allah.” This is the unofficial theme of the EC, as we self-critic and even frankly critic each other and the EC as a whole. We struggle. And I have learned what may seem as an apathetic silence is actually time and consideration for intense reflective of concern.
Your current EC is of various and very different personalities, backgrounds and considerations. I personally have had to strive to understand each and everyone of them personally; whether it’s Zaki’s idealism, Shad’s thoughtful silences, Omar’s declarations, Amal’s sweetness or Sarah’s quiet passion.
Love. That’s what motivates us. And as we struggle through our dark moments in our relationship with MYNA—tenderly trying to keep the balance between a movement and an organization we see it’s identity constantly changing unable to confide itself any one box.
It’s time for a New Light, a New Moon. And with this in mind I feel honored to announce the fruit of the love of change, reflection and concern—of checks and balances—that this December MYNA National will be holding elections for the EC from amogst regional reps and subcommittee members.
We are also putting the gears in motion to have regional reps elected as well, to increase the transparentsy of MYNA National and to be inclusive of everyone.
And how you can involved and be apart of this movement is by contacting your regional reps and being involved with your local camps and activites. And also don’t forget to attend the MYNA National Leadership Camp in Texas this Winter Break—You can find out more details in our new magazine The New Dawn.
And please remember MYNA is not for one particular type of youth. MYNA is not for youth with parents of a particular income. MYNA is not for one type of Muslim.
MYNA is for you!!!