The following YouTube video invites us to redirect the endless questions on who loves who, today to a more beneficial set of questions for ourselves and others.
Why?
People are blind to the boundaries that protect others from their harm or the boundaries they can set to protect themselves from others’ harm, whether the boundaries are physical, emotional, or psychological. The interpretation a person places on others’ actions and words are based on the light that dominates their heart. If you listen and observe, people tell on themselves.
What might they be disclosing and unconsciously confessing?
Throughout history, shame or shaming is the tool of oppressors, imperialists, and supremacists. A case in point, I refer to the interview Toni Morrison breaks down racism in sweeping 1993 interview with Charlie Rose.
If you can only be tall, when someone is on their knees, then you have a very serious problem.
Toni Morrison
I call it egoism.
I begin my YouTube video with a quote by Imam Ash Sharaawy: “Love who you want, Hate who you want, do not oppress anyone.”
This quote raises the bar to a more critical and reflective question(s) we should be exploring. Am I oppressing myself or others? In order to center ourselves in that question mode, we can use the supplication:
O Living! O Sustainer! I call upon Your Mercy for assistance, and from Your punishment I seek refuge! Make good all my affairs and do not entrust me to myself or any of Your creation even for the blink of an eye.
Prophet Muhammad, upon him peace and blessings
I commented further on this lesson in a FaceBook post on Prophet Abraham, upon him peace and blessings: an ummah or nation all by himself.
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Fadwa Wazwaz
Fəd-wə Wəz-wəz is a Palestinian-American born in Jerusalem, Palestine and raised in the US. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. She is an author of God Intervenes Between A Person And Their Heart: Key Lessons From The Prophets.