THE ROLE OF WOMEN

supreme concern. This, in religious terminology, is known as making God one’s deity, (mabud). By making God our supreme concern, we make God the object of our worship and then we are involved in the continuous remembrance of God. When I drank water, when I ate food, when I breathed in oxygenated air, I thought of how God had not only created me but also gave me all that I needed. And all that He wants in return is acknowledgement and thankfulness (shukr) for these blessings and voluntary submission to Him. This is truly a very small price. Although I personally feel that I have not achieved even an iota of the level of acknowledgement and devotion that God deserves, I constantly seek forgiveness from God for my shortcomings. And I pray to God that He will help me develop the sort of personality out of His mercy that he can find eligible of inhabiting in eternal Paradise. What is your message to the women members of CPS in particular? I had mentioned earlier that during my seeking phase, I asked whoever I met, be they Islamic scholars or people associated with Muslim organizations, to give me an opportunity, be it minuscule to come to the service of Islam. Receiving no encouragement, I felt that there was no real scope for women to stand for Islam. Maybe God only wanted men for the Islamic mission. Though it saddened me, I accepted it. Receiving an open invitation from Maulana to take his mission to the world, I realized that it was not God who had closed the doors for women to get involved in the Islamic mission, it was Muslims who were standing in the way. Later when I read Maulana’s book Islam Rediscovered, I realized that what Maulana called Islam was what is mentioned in its original sources, Quran and Sunnah. He called for a distinction to be made between Islam as presented by the Prophet Muhammad, information about which is available to us in the Quran and the Sunnah and Islam as practised by later Muslim generations— both in theory and practice. Maulana gave us the formula: differentiate between Islam and Muslims. I recalled another guidance that Maulana had given me soon after I came to CPS. Once we were sitting with him. After listening to my life story Maulana told me that I have to change. He told me that this change would alter 99% of the learnings I have had. I was shocked when he said that. But he explained that I had received Islam from Muslim culture. I must unlearn this understanding of Islam and learn what is given in the Quran and the Sunnah. From then on I decided I will strive to decondition myself and try to apply the real teachings of Islam in my life. It has been a long and ongoing struggle.