The Pakistani Spectator

Greetings to you all on the start of the Holy month of Ramadan. It’s the month of testing of faith, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humanity, love for fellow beings and above all revival of true Islamic spirit that should have been there in us through out the year. It’s a reminder to us all who remained de-railed and de- tracked.

The Ramadan brings along with it a very regular religious and festive activity, we spend most of our time in prayers, people who could afford, they go for performing Umrahs to Saudi Arabia, people organize religious gatherings at home and host dinners/Iftars for their relatives and friends. It recharges the spirit of helping the poor and the needy, to feed the hungry and to care about the people in distress and disease. These attributes truly make us a wonderful nation with a totally changed out look for each other and for the world.

On the contrary, this month is a 30 day pass in heaven for the hoarders, shopkeepers, businessmen and the people who are always looking for excuses to not to work. Substandard goods are taken out from the storages and godowns and sold at a very high price, prices for shoes and clothes are made 3 times expensive as sales are guaranteed in this month. People use the Ramadan timings as an excuse to not to do work at public and government offices, mills and other production houses resulting in very low out put of work and less production resulting in lower volume and value of exports.

We may have forgotten that it’s never written any where that we should delay or postpone our official tasks during this month rather the routine activity should be carried on. Our Armed forces are there fighting and defending our homeland in the extreme of weather conditions and fasting as well, why cant we do our normal day to day activity proficiently in Ramadan.

Other aspect that is noticed is emergence of “One Month” Muslims, these are the people who offer prayers and study Quran in the month of Ramadan only. Rest of the year, they tend to appear at mosques for Friday afternoon prayers only. As a Muslim Nation we should join hands with our government to encourage an over all atmosphere of a Muslim Country in general through out the year rather than realizing and remembering its importance in this particular month.

Our general business ethics and life styles should reflect the ways of a Muslim society, I can understand that we are now far off from where we should have been but there should be a will from all of us to improve the scenario. We blame government of corruption and don’t let any chance go for taking bribes, we blame our leaders that they are not good sincere Muslims, we send sub-standard goods as exports by not taking our customers in picture, We hold government responsible for over all turmoil of economy but our selves don’t plan and organize our spending on the un-necessary and use less spending on luxuries just to maintain a false and un-real status amongst the people we know. We blame government of not spending much on the social welfare, on the other hand we don not pay zakat and income tax properly, we high light corruption in government sector organizations but we our self bribe people to get our un-lawful work done with a cover of the law. We raise our voice for social injustice and lack of speedy justice to the poor but we don’t miss any chance to fool and dodge the system and send innocent poor people who are not well connected at all in the elites and higher ranks of the society, so a poor man is convicted and the real culprit walks away even with a murder.

We spend millions on weddings and parties but are not willing to give education to one child or to bear the expenses of wedding of a poor man’s daughter. We complain about our monetary reserves of the government but send our earned wealth to foreign accounts in an illegal manner. We highlight the need of Islamic education but send our kids to west oriented schools and send them abroad for schooling even.

We choose to adopt the Islamic principles in life which suit us; we do not accept Islam in totality. We go for interest based banking, we forget hijab, we forget to lower our eyes in presence of ladies and we forget to give respect to elders, ladies and love to kids cause every body else is doing it and its a norm of our society. Wrong Norms are made when every body decides not to raise voice against any wrong doing in the system or in the law, when people are made silent with fear of dictators and their allies, when we decide to live indifferently and tend to focus on our own monetary goals in life, when we think that its only State’s task to improve the over all economic and social set up with in the country, when we think that Islamic principles were made 1400 years ago and are not in accordance with modern day complex life situations, when we consider that its our basic right to dodge and loot around as our leaders are doing the same, when we lay down our resistance against the evil practices prevailing in the society, when we save our son who has committed a crime and hang an ordinary man when he does the same.

All of us have completely forgotten one thing, at the day of judgment every human being will be judged and prosecuted individually on the good and the evil acts that one has committed during the life time and will not be spared as there would be no body to save you, no phone calls to get us out free, no directives to let go mass murderers and rapists, no help from parents, brothers, sisters, wife, husband, sons and daughters …… the only things that can save our skin there is our good deeds.

It’s up to us now how we avail the blessings in the month of Ramadan and keep on performing the good deeds through out the year and in future as well. We need to work hard individually first to regain the status of the best Society having the best religion and best living guide line in the Shape of the Holy Quran. We should consider every month as Ramadan and every day as a fasting day in which we are strictly following our religion’s teachings to become the members of an Islamic family whose foundation was laid down by the Holy Prophet Mohammad May peace be upon him.

 

 

 
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