Sometimes in life we learn things from the least expected places. Today, 13th of February, my father asked me to drive him to his friend's village because our family driver wasn't available. I didn't want to go but understanding the situation I had no choice. This guy’s son died few days back. Today was his Qul (two days after the funeral relatives and friends of the deceased get together to offer prayers for the forgiveness of the deceased). This friend of my father, to whom I would refer as Mr. X, is a very well known politician. It was expected that a lot of well known big names of Pakistan would be there.
When we get there, the whole place was crawling with people, people belonging to different circles of life like Politician, Bureaucrats, farmers and some local Villagers. The reason I am mentioning this is because there was no remembrance of Allah or asking for the forgiveness of the deceased, on the contrary everyone was busy in gossiping.
There were over a hundred people in that back yard sitting in groups. Each of these groups was representing a social class of Pakistan. I was sitting next to my father and he was part of the so called elite class and that included Mr. X. The whole time I was there, these people, including my father, were talking about politics and bad naming their rivals in politics. There was this one guy who started discussing the weather in Washington DC with another. Later my father told me that the other guy just came back from a trip of USA. These two were busy arguing if the weather in US was worse then last year. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. No wonder we as a nation are suffering so badly. I felt so bad for MR. X after all he lost his son.
The point I am trying to make is that people in Pakistan have become so insensitive to other's feelings and have totally lost respect of death. It is so disturbing that these people forgotten that every one of us has to face death and there is no guarantee that if we would even get a chance to repent for our sins, so under these circumstances would they then want their relatives and friends to gossip at the time when they would need their prayers.
From this I can only conclude one thing that we need to get back to Islam. Only then we will take death seriously and would work on preparing to face it. We are so lucky to be born as Muslims and to be born in a Muslim country. Just go to a non-Muslim country and ask the Muslims living there. They will tell us that we are so lucky be able to be living in a Muslim country. I ask myself this question all the time, are we really that lucky? Being in a Muslim country we should be able to practice Islam with full freedom but are we able to? And the answer to this is No we are not. This only happens because we make it impossible for our own selves. We teach our children to be successful in their life no matter what the price is. We feel ashamed if any of our kids don’t read English literature but we would never encourage them to read Islamic literature. No wonder they don’t feel proud ness in what they are and so badly want to copy other cultures like west. I ask everyone just one question, what makes Shakespeare writing more important then our prophet’s?
I ask Allah (swt) to guide us to the righteous path and to forgive us for our sins.