A Muslim Perspective on "knowing the path and walking the path"

One of my all time favorite movies has a quote that stood out to me when I first heard it. In The Matrix there is a scene where Morpheus says to Neo:

"There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

The quote is said at one of the climax's of the movie when Neo rescues Morpheus from the government/machine compound against near all odds of success.

No this post is not about the movie but rather a Muslim's perspective on what that quote means to Muslims - or at least my take on what it means to Muslims.

I personally see this in context of my latest struggles with low points of eman. Alhumdulliah, my eman is higher now than where it was but we all know that our eman increases and decreases.

One thing I realized in my low points of eman was that as one of the reasons my eman decreased was that I was approaching my eman in the wrong way: I was only focused on the knowledge aspect of Islamic learning without much emphasis on practicing the knowledge I knew.

For instance, I found feeling low points of eman and I would just end up reading about different things of Islam like hadith or Seerah. The Islamic knowledge I gained I stored in my mind but still I felt down. I didn't understand why I still feeling down because I thought I was doing things to correct my low eman: increasing knowledge of the deen.

However, my failure was that I wasn't embodying the knowledge I was taking in.

To put it in a Muslim perspective...

'There is a difference in knowing what is Islam and living Islam.'

Even though I've always know that Islam is not just about intellect and there are actions that must accompany knowledge and speech, I somehow never manifested the final part.

Sure, I prayed and would read the Qur'an and thought that it would be enough.

It wasn't and isn't. At least not for me.

I needed to do more acts and study Islamic knowledge that I can actually implement into my life - not just study it purely as an intellectual pursuit.

I recently started to focus more of dikhr and small acts of Allah's remembrance that when I study, I know that I can implement these acts into my daily worship, thereby seeing an actual impact in my life as a Muslim.

Alhumdulliah, I know what it means to be Muslim and know for quite some time now.

But now, I'm living more and more of the Islam I know.

I hope that I will not only know what is eman but also taste the sweetness of eman.

A Muslim Man's Beard & An African American Woman's Hair

Chris Rock has documentary out at Sundance Film Festival titled Good Hair, navigating himself through the world of black women's hair.

Watching the trailer for it made me realize that there is a great amount of similarities between a Muslim brother who lets his beard grow in accordance to the Sunnah and an African American woman who keeps her hair natural.

For a Muslim brother, there is pressure to conform and be clean shaved or to have goat tee or have the 2 or 3 day beard shadow for two reasons.

1st reason is that well, it doesn't bring attention to you. You don't stand out without facial hair or a small shadow beard (especially in NYC).

The 2nd reason is that many (key word many) Muslim sisters and most other women want men with some facial hair but not really a beard.

Lets face it, many Muslim sisters who consider themselves practicing and want another practicing Muslim brother want him to have George Clooney's facial hair...



Rather than than Yusuf Islam ...





The point I'm getting at is that many Muslim men have the same experience of millions of black women in America when it comes to changing their hair.

For Muslim men its shaving or keep a shadow of their beard, where as for Black women it means getting a weave or using chemicals in their hair to 'relax' it or straighten it. Like the reasons I mentioned about brothers not keeping the beard because of it trying to fit into their jobs/careers in America or subtly motivated by the impression that sisters have put out there about their preferences for the beard, I find reasons about black women that there is preference for straight hair in corporate America or that their man wants them to look that way and gives them money to get their hair done.

Anyways, these are just some of my thoughts. I'd love some feedback from others - especially African American women.


I'd love a Muslim brother to go out there and make documentary about the beard.

Moments of Low Eman

Yes. I am at a low point in my eman. Have I rock bottom? Not sure but I have never been more low in my last 5 years.

I have tried to speak to good friends, family, and even an Imam of a local masjid and their answers have been very weak.

Two of my closest friends confided that they also had low points in their eman and after a while I got the 'deal with vibe' from them - although not in negative way.

I've come realize that there is no support group for Muslims in small communities - even large city communities. For Muslim men, we are told to be strong "men" and most take that literally and show little about their true feelings when they are are having eman problems.

The eman low problem is coupled with my loneliness. While not thoughts of depression - I do have feelings of emptiness. I've spent my time killing it with sports news and other things to distract me from realizing my emptiness but I don't think I can no longer do this.

Perhaps its because all my good friends have gotten married (no - I'm not a woman) but Muslim guys to feel that maybe they are missing the boat on marriage. I don't know.

For some reason I feel an emotional/spiritual pain. I don't know why. Its a feeling that has sat at the bottom of my heart for a while.

I tried to cry the other day to see if it would but I could not find myself to cry after salah. I haven't cried in the longest time. Perhaps years. I think it used to help me.

I saw a girl crying yesterday. I was prosecuting her (I'm a 3L) at my externship. I felt bad... she was a recovering drug addict. Hearing her talk about her addiction made me realize my own spiritual pain.

One of these mornings
Won't be very long
You will look for me
And I'll be gone

Have not been able to post much lately

life has got me on a short leash. Many things are stressing me out. That combined with fact that I've never felt more alone in my life - there are days when i rarely see or speak with anyone in person.

Gifs Of the Bush Shoe Fiasco

For those who missed it, here is the original:



Here are the gifs...

NOTE: These are not mine - I saw them on the web

Matrix


Austin Powers


Dragonball Z

Simpons continue to amuse me...


Wit x-mas coming...

It Took Me Over 5 Years To Come to This...


I posted the below in the Muslim Matter post "The Beard Story: Exclusive Interview With Yasir Qadhi"

I've come to a point in my life where I realized that I've wasted - yes I will use the word "wasted" - much of my time reading, researching, and discussing what is and is not acceptable of my beard.

In the end, I gained little piety or beneficial knowledge from a narrow fiqh issue.

As a Muslim teenager in college who decided to be a good practicing Muslim, the issue of the beard with thrust upon me by these "clear" rulings/fatwas by Great Scholars of the past on growing the full beard (I was initially under the impression that even trimming more than what a fist holds was not the preferred method).

This coupled with the "zealous" young Muslim brothers around me who emphasized the need for a beard so much that it shaped the way I perceived Muslim men who shaved/kept small beards as being open sinners for openly doing something directly in opposition to what the prophet told use to do (let our beards grow).

In fact, some even pointed me towards the likes of Shaykh Yasir Qadi is an example of of an intelligent American Muslim who held firm to his Islamic principles and let his beard grow in the Sunnah manner. Seeing and knowing that Shaykh Yasir was out there in America and doing great dawah work and even attending Yale later with his Sunnah beard gave me much hope and inspiration to pursue my own academic and professional studies with the feeling that 'hey, if Yasir is doing it with the full Sunnah beard - I should be able to pull it off as well.'

This helped me not to cave into all my other family members who regularly pressed me that I should at least shape up my beard and make it "neat and not unkempt looking" since my beard was thick, curly, and frizzy. This concern was further magnified by them when I (still currently am) began my graduate studies and went to job interviews looking very much like the Medina Yasir in terms of my beard.

Yet now, in this lecture I come to find that I had it all wrong: I should have made my beard "neat and professional" as Shaykh Yasir points out in lecture tape 1 (24:40 mark). I guess I was wrong and stubborn for trying to keep what I genuinely perceived to be a Sunnah beard (coming from the same scholars who I learned/read about hadith & aqeedah and the one's Shaykh Yasir quoted and referenced in his lectures/books).

In the end, all this emphasis on following the "correct sunnah" of the Prophet ended up distancing me for learning and practicing other important aspects of Islam - from memorizing more of the Quran, reading more Seerah, and making more prayers/adkhar.

After 5 years from my teenage years, I've come to to this point: I no longer care about what others do/ have about their beard or may think about mine. All of this has left me disillusioned about my Muslim identity and feeling like the narrator in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man - only the Muslim version.