He will give you something better than what was taken from you.
Yesterday I submitted my application to study Finance MSc at the university of Edinburgh. Well, I wouldn’t deny my effort or exertion to learn, take exams, and pass them. However, getting to this point was impossible then. I am in the mode of let’s see how much my efforts will pay off. It’s the first time in my life I feel relieved before knowing the results and it is not easy to get there at all. Once I have decided to make the change, endure people’s dirt in front of my face, eschew ignorance, accept being an outcast in my close circle of friends and acquaintances, and persist. Making choices is by far easy, but executing them is an epoch full of lessons.
“Allah does not charge a soul except with that within its capacity. It will have [the consequence of] what [good] it has gained, and it will bear [the consequence of] what [evil] it has earned. “Our Lord, do not impose blame upon us if we have forgotten or erred.”
An Egyptian woman who is single has decided to adopt a child and bring him up singlehandedly! She is an author, a well-known figure in Egypt. Ironically, her fame is based on a blog called “I want to be a bride”. She created this blog 15 years ago introducing herself as a single woman belonging to a group of other women aged from 25 to 35 years old whom are their society’s scrutiny and pressure to get married. I think I am one of them now as a thirty-year old! This coincides with an unbelievable video of a husband who stabbed his wife because she wanted to get divorce. News of a wife killed her husband unintentionally because he bought her one air conditioner not two as she desired! An accident of a doctor who was suffocated by her husband before her children as he usually abused her, but this time the result was lethal!
Women do not need wombs nor sperms to be real mothers within the lukewarm wedlock! It is an instinct we do have from the Almighty Allah, so children don’t ask for titles, lineages, nor names. They only need a shoulder to lean on, a cuddle away from judgemental people, a guru to teach him/her how to dust off themselves when life thrusts them. They will be also their mothers’ crutches in the future. Marriage is a blessing but it is not a hindrance to experience life as long as we don’t perform something prohibited or offensive! Alha for being a monotheist belonging to our forefather Abraham, Adam, and Eve. Alhamdulillah for knowing that we are mortals and everything is transient!
They are dead, we are dead! Therefore, we are woven into the same tapestry of life voluntarily and peacefully! Do whatever you want to do. Be whoever you want to be! Life is beautiful.
Congratulations Ghada and Adam! I wish you all the best here and in the hereafter together, ameen!
No human being can be more human than another human being. I liberate you from my ignorance!
I am so grateful for having such a job which allows me to mingle with those wonderful women. Those women have been deprived of education and that air of independence and freedom I currently enjoy. These feelings did not happen overnight as I had to pay upfront and stand lonely during the last seven years. I have tribal roots, but I usually have that feeling of being rootless. Maybe it stems from being single so far. Girls who do not get married at age 25 considered leftovers and spinsters, but people show me respect and courtesy while I will be turning 30 after three months. I have discovered that we convey the message to others about the methodology of decently treating or mistreating us as WOMEN. We are the preys and the perpetrators.
Where I live, women care much about gold, banquets, dowry, and trousseau! we have to buy such and such not to make others belittling us. we should buy twenty bed sheets, ten quilts, four kitchen gadgets, two kids’ rooms even before consummation, mats, spacious flats, etc even if you are insolvent since you have to do so!. Egyptians usually say ” الجواز ستر” which means marriage is a protection for women, but those are mere restraints.
Marriage is a bundle of clemency, love, unwavering support, and equality. It is not an arena to wrestle with others or to show off while you are paraplegic and suffocated with debts and ignorance. Recently. I get used to witnessing such situations and gladly I have met Mona. Mona is a divorced woman and a mother of three-year old child. She can read and write but she is living on the dole for divorced women and it is pittance unfortunately! Mona and I had many conversations together as we are at the same age but with different priorities and standpoints. She has experienced bitterness as he ex-husband was thrusting her daily for months. Now, she is living with her parents and siblings serving them without any attention to her needs nor pain.
If I did not know Islam well, I would curse my religion! But Islam came down to eradicate the customs and traditions of Arabs. We were objectified as we were goods and chattels inherited to anyone. I think our bygone is insurmountable as those traditions defiantly and forcefully encase our religion and deliberately obliterate it! In Islam the most sinful things are taking orphans’ rights and wrongly smearing women’s reputations. I have also met Fatima with her broken fist as her father kept beating her until she gave him money. Should we bear any filial love towards our parents without receiving their paternal compassion in the first place?? Should I feel loony and offbeat as I do not think much of being married or having a child? I am not an ostrich inclining to bury myself under any circumstances. My relationship with human beings is neither trustworthy nor sustainable. I enjoy being woman from the upper with those tribal roots as they are gurus to stand up against such superfluous superficiality.
Life is lived only once. but experiences are perennial. We are mere portable memories and we voluntarily choose whether to discard or to carry all the way. We are blessed to be WOMEN as we are equals only walk side by side and go hand in hand. Thankfully, my goes have come in handy and I finally feel success and contentment.
That picture is taken from another fellow, so excuse me my friend 🌻
Saudi women are finally allowed to travel on their own. In a place where relics and traditions overshadow religions and its essence. Before Islam, women were goods and chattels inherited after their master’s death. They were concubines, dispossessed, dependants,etc, until Islam came down. However, it sounds nomadic lifestyle outstrips even holy scriptures.
Can I travel alone with no mahram?
It is permissible for a woman to travel without a mahram “guardian” provided the way, destination, and return journey are safe and provided she does not meet with any harassments jeopardizing both her safety and religion. It has been narrated through Aidy Ibn Hatem that the prophet told him, “And if you live a long life, you will surely see women traveling from Hira till they circumambulate the Ka’ba, fearing no one exceptAllah“.
Imam Ahmed’s report of the hadith includes: ” By He in whose hands is my soul, verily Allah will bring this mattar (Islam) into completion till women travel from Hira and circumambulate the Ka’ba without being accompanied by anyone”. From this hadith with its different chains of narration, some scholars have derived the permissibility of a woman traveling alone if her safety is guaranteed. Moreover, they have used this hadith to restrict other prohibiting hadiths which, according to them, referred to the lack of security associated with travel in the distant past.
The majority of scholars have permitted a woman to travel for obligatory hajj without a mahram if accompanied by trustworthy females or company. They based their opinion on the precedence of the Mothers of Believers (may Allah be pleased with them) who went on hajj after the prophet’s death and the caliphate of Umar was accompanied by Uthman Bin Affan.
Allah create us different to know each other and witness his phenomenal creation on earth. I am so glad and looking forward to hearing more pleasant news about Saudis and others!
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
When I remember who I am, I read the prophet book, Gibran Khalil Gibran with the song, https://m.soundcloud.com/haydarhamid/dnlywl3n7wvy
“These displaced persons are mostly unwanted where they fled from; unwanted where they are, in refugee camps; and unwanted where they want to go.”
“With the exception of those born in refugee camps, every refugee used to have a life. It doesn’t matter whether you were a physician in Bosnia or a goat herder in the Congo: what matters is that a thousand little anchors once moored you to the world. Becoming a refugee means watching as those anchors are severed, one by one, until at last you’re floating outside of society, an untethered phantom in need of a new life.”
I think this book shows only a sample of refugees and immigrants and how they are living where they are now. As someone who was born and raised in Egypt willing to live in a better place someday; the scene does not sound beautiful, but my humanistic instinct is prompting me to flee at least to keep it safe.
BRAINCHILD 