Ramadan Night 6

And obey Allah and His Messenger;
And fall into no disputes,
Lest ye lose heart
And your power depart;
And be patient and persevering:
For Allah is with those
Who patiently persevere
S.8 A.46

This is a very important verse for me, as I dispels some misconceptions and brings home a very singular lesson for me. Islam is not a violent, contentious religion. I knew this living in the Muslim world for so many years.  I saw few arguments, no fights, and some of the gentlest fathers I have ever known.  It is a faith that is grounded inside your heart, therefore cannot entreat violence and hatred.  If one in every thousand Muslims was a militant with hate in his/her heart, there would be more than a million of these people to contend with. We know that just isn't the case. 

The Good Fight is an internal one.  There are times, however, when one must defend himself, his family, his faith.  Like all religions born in brutal times, there is always an emphasis on protecting oneself, an emphasis on the specific behavior of conflict. But I have never read in my Koran, or heard from the lips of my hundreds of  Muslim friends, any call to combat, any senseless appeal to violence.  I have heard and seen, more importantly, quiet lives lived with dignity and respect.  I really don't understand these pundits here in the states who so definitively call out Muslims as terrorists, doubting they know many Muslims at all.  There has never been anything in what I have read, heard, or witnessed that would inspire me to take an innocent life, or any life for that matter.

The second implication of this verse was written specifically for me I think.  I am prone to dispute, to fight, and to struggle - a legacy from my youth.  I don't even conceptualize it as a bad thing, sometimes it just feels right to struggle over things, to test the will of others.  Ironically, at least for the media gadflies, Islam councils me to put aside these behaviors, these detractors of my strength.  It is an important lesson for me, as I have been a advocate for others for so long, sometimes literally in the midst of battles.  I fought my step-father physically for the welfare of my mother and sister, when all other means failed.  I have seen people brutalized and neglected around the world, and my outrage is not a personal allowance, but genuinely felt for others.  Often, I am far more willing to suffer insults and injury to myself than others, even strangers. But I am often wrong in this, and it is a difficult lesson to learn.  That passion, that empathy burns in my blood, sanctified, so I believed, in the welfare of others.  I know now that this is largely wrong.

There are other ways to advocate, other ways to ameliorate the wrong I see around me.  It is about my power, my ability to affect positive change, without damaging others, and more importantly, damaging myself.  For each battle I fight diminishes me, makes me a lesser man, corrupts my heart.  I want to exercise positive power in the world, and I want to do so while abating my list of enemies, surely not doubling it.  This is a good verse for me, a very good verse.