Why do we search for skills?

Why do we search for skills?

I  once  visited  a  deprived  town  to  deliver  a  lecture,  after which there came to me a teacher from outside the town. He said, “I hope you can help us finance some students.”

I said, “Strange! Aren’t the schools government funded, and therefore free?”

He said, “Indeed they are, but we would like to fund their university education.”

I said, “Well, the universities are also government funded. They even offer student grants.”

He said, “Allow me to explain to you…”

“Go ahead”, I said.

He said, “Our students graduate from their secondary school with no less than 99%. They are so clever that if their intelligence was divided amongst the ummah, it would suffice! But when a student becomes determined to travel outside his town to study Medicine,  Engineering,  Islamic  Law,  Computer  Science  or  anything else, his father prevents him from going, saying, ‘What you know is sufficient! Now, remain with me and be a shepherd!’”

I screamed impulsively, “Be a shepherd?!”

He said, “Yes, a shepherd!”

And indeed, the poor boy stays with his father and becomes a shepherd, whilst all his abilities are wasted. Years go by and he remains a shepherd.  He may even get married and have children whom he may treat exactly as he was treated by his father.

Hence, all his children also become shepherds!

I asked, “So what’s the solution?”

He said, “The solution is to convince the father to employ someone as a shepherd for a few hundred riyals, which we will pay,  and  allow  his  son  to  take  full  advantage  of  his  skills  and abilities. Of course, we will also continue to fund his son until he graduates.”

The teacher then lowered his head and said, “It is inexcusable that such skills and talents in people are wasted when they long to utilize them.”

I contemplated upon what he had said and realized that we cannot reach the pinnacle except by taking advantage of the abilities we have and acquiring those that we do not.

Yes,  I  would  challenge  anyone  to  find  a  successful  person, be  they  successful  in  academia,  preaching,  lecturing,  business, medicine, engineering, or influencing others; or be they successful in family life, such as a successful father with his children, or a successful wife with her husband; or be they successful in their social life, such as a person who is successful with his neighbors and colleagues – and I mean a truly successful person, not one who simply climbs upon others’ shoulders! – I would challenge anyone to find me any such highly successful person who does not practice certain interpersonal skills through which he has been  able  to  achieve  such  success,  whether  they  realize  it  or not.

Some people may exercise such interpersonal skills instinctively, while others may have to learn them in order to be successful, and these latter people are the types of successful personalities whose lives we would like to study and whose methods we would closely seek to follow in order to discover how they were successful, and to find out whether or not we can take their route to success.

A while ago, I listened to an interview with one of the most affluent people in the world,Shaykh Sulayman al-Rajihi,and found him to be a mountain in terms of his manners and thoughts. This man owns billions, possesses immense real estate, has built hundreds of mosques, and has sponsored thousands of orphans. He is hugely successful. He spoke of his humble beginnings around fifty years ago, when he was a regular person who would only have enough money to feed himself for the day, and sometimes not even that.  He mentioned that he would sometimes clean people’s houses to feed himself and continue working at night at a shop or money exchange. He discussed how he was once at the bottom of the mountain, and how he continued to climb until he reached the summit.

I thought about the abilities and skills he possesses and realized that many of us are well capable of being like him, if Allah grants us the ability. If one learns these skills, exercises them, perseveres and remains steadfast, then yes, he can surely be like him.

Another reason for us to search for these skills is that some of us may have certain abilities, which we remain unaware of, or which nobody has assisted us in discovering, such as the skills of delivering a lecture, business acumen, or possessing general knowledge.

One may discover these skills on his own, through a teacher’s or a work colleague’s help, or even through a sincere brother, however few they may be! However, these skills may remain buried inside the person until his personality becomes as stale as anyone else’s, and this is when we all lose out on another leader, lecturer or scholar, or perhaps a successful husband, or a caring father.

Here we will mention certain skills which we would like to remind you of if you already possess them, or which we would like to train you in if you don’t. So come along!

A thought…

When you climb a mountain, look to the top and not to the rocks that surround you. Make sure of where you step as you climb, and do not leap in case you loose your footing.

Hijabed like Me | A Non-Muslim Woman Experiments with Hijab

 

 

Hijabed like Me |A Non-Muslim Woman Experiments with Hijab

 

I walked down the street in my long white dress and inch-long, black hair one afternoon, and truck drivers whistled and shouted obscenities at me. I felt defeated. I had just stepped out of a hair salon. I had cut my hair short, telling the hairdresser to trim it as she would a guy’s. I sat numbly as my hairdresser skillfully sheared into my shoulder-length hair with her scissors, asking me with every inch she cut off if I was freaking out yet. I wasn’t freaking out, but I felt self-mutilated.

I was obliterating my femininity:

It wasn’t just another haircut. It meant so much more. I was trying to appear androgynous by cutting my hair. I wanted to obliterate my femininity. Yet that did not prevent some men from treating me as a sex object. I was mistaken. It was not my femininity that was problematic, but my sexuality, or rather the sexuality that some men had ascribed to me based on my biological sex. They reacted to me as they saw me and not as I truly am. Why should it even matter how they see me, as long as I know who I am? But it does. I believe that men who see women as only sexual beings often commit violence against them, such as rape and battery. Sexual abuse and assault are not only my fears, but my reality.

I was molested and raped. My experiences with men who violated me have made me angry and frustrated. How do I stop the violence? How do I prevent men from seeing me as an object rather than a female? How do I stop them from equating the two? How do I proceed with life after experiencing what others only dread? The experiences have left me with questions about my identity. Am I just another Chinese-American female? I used to think that I have to arrive at a conclusion about who I am, but now I realize that my identity is constantly evolving.

My experience of being “hijabed”:

One experience that was particularly educational was when I “dressed up” as a Muslim woman for a drive along Crenshaw Boulevard with three Muslim men as part of a newsmagazine project. I wore a white, long-sleeved cotton shirt, jeans, tennis shoes, and a flowery silk scarf that covered my head, which I borrowed from a Muslim woman. [1] Not only did I look the part, I believed I felt the part. Of course, I wouldn’t really know what it feels like to be hijabed. I coined this word for the lack of a better term everyday, because I was not raised with Islamic teachings. However, people perceived me as a Muslim woman and did not treat me as a sexual being by making cruel remarks. I noticed that men’s eyes did not glide over my body as has happened when I wasn’t hijabed. I was fully clothed, exposing only my face.

I remembered walking into an Islamic center and an African-American gentleman inside addressed me as “sister,” and asked where I came from. I told him I was originally from China. That didn’t seem to matter. There was a sense of closeness between us because he assumed I was Muslim. I didn’t know how to break the news to him because I wasn’t sure if I was or not. I walked into the store that sold African jewelry and furniture and another gentleman asked me as I was walking out if I was Muslim. I looked at him and smiled, not knowing how to respond. I chose not to answer.

Being hijabed changed others’ perception of me:

Outside the store, I asked one of the Muslim men I was with, “Am I Muslim?” He explained that everything that breathes and submits is. I have concluded that I may be and just don’t know it. I haven’t labeled myself as such yet. I don’t know enough about Islam to assert that I am Muslim. Though I don’t pray five times a day, go to a mosque, fast, nor cover my head with a scarf daily, this does not mean that I am not Muslim. [2] These seem to be the natural manifestations of what is within. How I am inside does not directly change whether I am hijabed or not. It is others’ perception of me that was changed. Repeated experiences with others in turn create a self-image.

Hijab as oppression: a superficial and misguided view:

I consciously chose to be hijabed because I was searching for respect from men.[3] Initially, as both Women’s Studies major and a thinking female, I bought into the Western view that the wearing of a scarf is oppressive. After this experience and much reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that such a view is superficial and misguided.

The most liberating experience of my life:

I covered up that day out of choice, and it was the most liberating experience of my life. I now see alternatives to being a woman. I discovered that the way I dress dictated others’ reaction towards me. It saddens me that this is a reality. It is a reality that I have accepted, and chose to conquer rather than be conquered by it. It was my sexuality that I covered, not my femininity. The covering of the former allowed the liberation of the latter. 

This article was originally published in Al-Talib, the newsmagazine of the Muslim Students’ Association of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in October 1994. At the time of its publication, Kathy Chin was a senior at UCLA majoring in Psychobiology and Women’s Studies.

[1] This does not mean that it is the Islamic hijab.

[2] To be a Muslim, you must testify that “There is no god but Allaah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah.” (Reviewer)

[3] If you choose to be a Muslim, it should be because you want the right way of Allaah regardless any other intention. (Reviewer)

Witten by: Kathy Chin

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