Fwd: Lailatul Qadr: Qadr is Our Self-Worth, Our 'Value'

[huzaifa shakir]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mufaddal Zainuddin <muffi...@gmail.com>
Date: 28 July 2013 14:29
Subject: Fwd: Lailatul Qadr: Qadr is Our Self-Worth, Our 'Value'
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"Your net worth is not the same thing as your self-worth. Your value is not based on your valuables.” (Rick Warren)

http://www.ted.com/talks/rick_warren_on_a_life_of_purpose.html?quote=109

Lailatul Qadr (LQ) is a lot of different things to different people. For some, its a night to use that fancy, padded, Burberry-designed masalla with its matching hafti covers; for some its a night to consume 10 almonds one by one to keep track of the number of salaams in washek; for some of the less-rested, its a night to gulp down inordinate amounts of coffee to keep going till dawn. 

LQ is one single night, whose 'qadr', worth and value are greater than a 1000 months. Its 'qadr' is intertwined with the one whose worth only her father knew, her husband understood and her children ensured, whose true value has been lost on those who chose to venerate those we refer to by mere numbers (awwal, saani...LA) as they are not even worthy to be addressed by their names. 

As every mumin will testify, LQ passes by with the brevity of a blink of an eye, yet its impact lasts a lifetime and more. Moulatena Fatema's life was altogether brief, just a few years, yet her every breath profoundly changed the destiny of every mumin. Her words, delivered in one brief instance of righteous fury, firmly rooted Amirul Mumineen's right to succeed Rasulullah; her tasbeeh, although a brief utterance, garners endless hasanaat for mumineen. Could any brevity be more underestimated? 

Rasulullah once said that, "One who doesn't realise or understand his 'qadr', self-worth/value, has perished". He used the past tense - not will perish, but has perished. Self-belief, the one essential ingredient to achieving anything meaningful in life, comes from acknowledging one's self worth - the sum total of all the talent, capabilities, skills, education, ideas, upbringing and creativity which gives value to our existence. Those who are oblivious to their self-worth, are doomed to fail in life, as they will never capitalise on the resources which they have been endowed with. Instead we tend to aspire to others' notions of what perfection is. To look a certain way, to speak in a certain way, to be a certain person. In reality, it is not through lack of inherent capabilities or because of a vacuous nothingness that we are compelled to look outwards; it is because we choose to ignore what we intrinsically possess. 

In LQ, from dusk till dawn, during that brief interlude, we transcend these self-inflicted notions of "I am nothing; he/she (not me) is something". We are reminded by Moula of our self-worth, our true value. Put simply, can one ever value a single tear shed by Moulatena Fatema? Can one ever calculate the worth, the qadr, of a single drop of blood of Imam Hussain? Yet, each drop was shed for every one of US. 

Every one of us, whether it is the man whose callous hands toil labouriously with his tools or the mother whose home is no larger than her bed and earns no more than a rupee for each roti she sells, the unknown child who yearns to memorise the entire Quran or the adult who struggles with even the shortest verses, the Indian village farmer or Silicon Valley entrepreneur, is valued thus and no one and nothing in life, no matter how herculean the obstacle or insurmountable the challenge, can make us any less worthy than these drops, which for over a millenium and for many millennia to come, define us and will continue to define mumineen for generations to come. 

LQ is then an introspective journey of self-realisation, a wake up call to who we really are and what makes us tick. The recounting of the sacrifices of Moulatena Fatema and Imam Hussain in LQ, is not just an emotional response to a tragic tale; each tear a mumin sheds is a reiteration of our cries for help when we became 'naadim mustaghfir', an unspoken acknowledgment, stemming from deep within his core, of who he or she essentially is - the result of so many sacrifices. Otherwise tears would just be, well, tears. The worth, the qadr of our tears is no less than that of eight jannats. Ultimately, for those who can grasp its significance, those tears are jannat. For as that realisation surfaces, as that sense of self-worth is reborn, a mumin asks himself, "What do I need to do to be truly worthy of these sacrifices?" and as the night of LQ turns to light, a new chapter dawns upon him; he now knows who he is and what he must do. Every moment that will follow from 'mat la il fajr', will be worth the lifetime of others, as he now understands that what he has, nay, what he is, is invaluable and his self-worth dictates that his life and all that it encompasses, is worthwhile. 

As LQ sets upon us and as Mufaddal Moula's Milaad is celebrated, who was worthy to be born in LQ and by naming him 'Aali Qadr', his grandfather hinted to the innate greatness he was born with,  I cannot imagine a more worthy gift than to realise what he have, understand what and who we are and sacrifice wholeheartedly the entirety of our efforts in bettering the lives of our mumineen brethren, by not just contributing every last penny to niyaaz in LQ but through empowering others to become what Moula wants. If we do this, we may just about hope to be worthy of the invaluable Dua of Moula. 

....and for what its worth, a humble request to spare a thought in your Duas in LQ. 

Abde Syedna wa Mansoosehi TUS

Adnan Abidali

Jamea Nairobi