Shadows & Dust

A reason why non-Arabs are treated bad in 'Saudi' Arabia.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم اللهم صلي على محمدٍ وآل محمد ولعنة الله على عدائهم أجمعين من الأولين والاخرين

'History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"- James Joyce (Ulysses) The quote from the lips of the character Stephen in the novel Ulysses have stuck with me for a long time, ever since reading the novel in childhood. Indeed one of the more problematic areas which has been disturbing to my own identity and faith as a believer is the somewhat problematic portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in the early Sira literature and the early tafseer literature. Allow me to elaborate as this can be slightly confusing. We as Shi'as have our own sources for Sunnah namely the reliably transmitted works of the Shi'a Imamiyyah such as al-Kafi and the three other books which make up the canonical kutub al-arba'a yet we find that in the area of history, our 'Ulema have become dependant upon utilizing works such as the Sirah-Maghazi literature and general historical (Tarikh) works of the Sunni masses. This is primarily due to the works of our pious predecessors of the Imamiyyah being systematically destroyed and avoided by the tyrants and their collaborators who went on to define Islamic Orthodoxy. Why is this problematic? Well let's see: http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/abu-afak.htm http://www.answering-islam.org/Muhammad/Enemies/asma.html http://wikiislam.net/wiki/The_Story_of_Umm_Qirfa http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/02/muhammad-and-the-torture-of-kinana-ibn-al-rabi-2898800.html Ok, I know, many of the well intended brothers and sisters may point out that:

In his name (Exalted he is);

I can remember the awe-inspiring feeling of my first Ramadhan; then the amazing feeling of most ramadhans after that. Particularly insightful for me was the amazing feeling of connecting to Allah (swt) through a living relationship with the Qur’an & the du’as of the Ahl al-Bayt (a). I guess there was an amazing winning streak that I achieved through following that course of action annually.

Sadly that changed in 2009; after being relentlessly driven into defending my beliefs constantly- I finally was consumed and vowed never to let my friends of the Sunni persuasion rest, frustrated largely at the fact that I couldn’t meet any of them without being subjugated to some verbal harassment from people in my social circle. I was accused of all sorts of beliefs which i knew my creed was free of, at the time without realising it, I let my anger consume me and the seeds of a fulltime Sectarian Shi’a polemicist were finally sowed in my now hardening heart.

Ultimately driven with a somewhat noble goal; I had allowed myself to deteriorate into the full time Rafidhi (I use this term in a double edged sarcastic manner) Refutation spouting and attack centric individual spending my Ramadhan nights going through Paltalk debate rooms and giving speeches to others on how to smash the ‘Other’ ‘Cult Reading’ of Islam…

Fastforward to 2012..gone were the Ramadhan nights of supplication and meaning and only after seeing how hatred consuming my heart was turning not only me into a cold fiend capable of ex-communicating and verbally attacking pretty much everyone in my own Sect let alone others; I realised I was in danger of raising the same seeds of hatred and void of spiritual light in the hearts of my two children too (still toddlers).

I miss out many details which are crucial here and have deliberately avoided coming across as a liberal, I’m certainly conservative and Shi’a to the bone… I’m just struggling to get back to being in the warm embrace of spirituality and remove the dark plague of polemical fire which burnt all spirituality and tranquility from my heart even a year after awakening from my deluded state (6 months after wrestling it away for good).