O you who believe! Enter perfectly in Islâm (by obeying all the rules and regulations of the Islâmic religion) and follow not the footsteps of Shaitân (Satan). Verily! He is to you a plain enemy. (The Holy Qur’an 2:208)

God demands that man should submit, without reservation, the whole of his being to His will. Man’s outlook, intellectual pursuits, behaviour, interaction with other people and modes of endeavour should all be completely subordinate to Islam. God does not accept the splitting up of human life into separate compartments, some governed by the teachings of Islam and others exempt.

“Give back to Caesar, what is Caesar’s and give back to God, what is God’s” – I think that’s what most of us, including me, practice contrary to the teachings of Islam. “Islam – tailored or waived” call it that way. Right after we get up from bed, provided Sun is already into your bedroom trying to penetrate through your walls, to the time when you go to bed we all practice “Islam – tailored or waived”.

Back when I was a child, I was forced to wake up for Fajr at least before the sky is complete white. Today I struggle to wake up hours late for work! I don’t bother to pray Zuhr or Asr since I don’t get time to do it or I am scared of my employer. Maghrib and Isha are at the mercy of the TV and my sleep. Forget about all that, how about talking Islam among our community? Something of a taboo! While the western society is turning towards some kind of spirituality, we are actually trying to assimilate to our heart dearly what they tried and dumped. Sometime I feel ashamed of myself while being a silent observer of what my dear ones do. I can’t open my mouth to help them out since it would be violating the “freedom to do anything I want”.

When you smile, it’s considered as a charity. How many of us actually consider giving that charity. Yes of course only if it profits me; otherwise I don’t bother even if I know it’s a fellow Muslim. Consider saying salam to those who you know; I need to look around and consider others before I utter it out. Those I see in the Masjid may be invisible to me at work! Talking about our children, how many of us spend time with them teaching some basics of Islam? We outsource that activity to either a teacher or a Madrassa. We don’t have 30 minutes of our time for that! We don’t have any respect to the time spent by our parents while we were children. They taught us so that we teach our children. Instead we are still running after this world, it may sometime be for monetary gain and sometimes not.

Our etiquettes at work are usually questionable instead of being an ambassador of Islam to the world. Not to mention the girlfriend and boyfriend concept at work. I am not surprised to see people living a “second life” at work!  Many a times we are scared to tell our colleague that we can’t attend a meeting due to Jumaa prayers or we need some time to break our fast.

Talking about family, how many of us spend quality time with our spouses. Unlike the westerners, who find a daily time slot spending time together after getting their children to sleep, we resort to our favorite TV shows or watching movies. We could have spend some quality time going for a walk or doing some house hold chores or even learning Qur’an together, instead of being hooked on to our world on either computers or TV.

We often save our vacation for Christmas or New Year, while not finding some time for Eid. Many a times, we end up working on Eid. How can our children learn what is important for us, if we cant demonstrate it.

Talking about our parents, how many of us considered supporting them while they get old. Some of us are tied up with our own commitments running after this world while forgetting our duties to our parents. They spent a lot of their prime time helping us grow and now we don’t even consider them when they need our help most. Our children are learning from us and they will demonstrate exactly what we taught them. That brings a question – why are we not doing what we are taught. That’s because we chose not to do the right thing! We can’t blame our parents for it.

We have lots of lessons in the Qur’an for most of these issues; however we tend to ignore them. We think they are not practical in this time! Well, consider this – do I have any guarantee that I would live the next moment. Islam teaches us how to behave with our Lord, our family and our society. Today, we either completely ignore the teachings or custom tailor it. While we ignore the teachings of Islam completely, we tend to use it for making new family relationships, getting our inheritance, demanding our rights from spouses, disciplining our children. The list goes on and we all know we are doing it.

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