There is this really cool hangout. All my friends go there. It is the meeting place of the youth. We chat, we laugh, we meet, we share; we socialize round the clock. The only problem is, this cool hangout has no serious ethics. One day, as I lounge on one of its sofa-seats, I see the cartoons of my Prophet Muhammed Pbuh displayed on its walls. I get very angry. I go to the reception table and insist to talk to the ownership. The owner is called around. I complain. The owner tells me that he has not put up these cartoons but some of the visitors have done so. He cannot stop them, because it is freedom of thought and speech. He tells me to be cool about it. This happened on May 20, 2010.
Very angry, I quit the place.
I quit the hangout for about ten days or so. Then I crawled back to it.
While I was out, I got to know that some commendable boys from Lahore-Pakistan have countered the insult to the Muslims by launching the Millat Facebook. I signed up to it. In a few days, I got bored because it was not that populated, yet. And I did not have the patience to wait for people to catch on. So I crawled back to the blasphemous Facebook. I had registered my protest and made my point by quitting for about ten days which made absolutely no difference to the owners or other malicious users of Facebook.
Do you see in me, a chivalrous Muslim? One who claims or should be claiming…Fidaka Ya Rasooluah, Abee wa Ummee. It means, ‘O’ Prophet Pbuh, may my parents be sacrificed upon you…’.
What?! Yes, exactly.
Prophet Muhammed Pbuh once said to Syedna Umar RA, ‘You cannot be a true Muslim until I am dearer to you than your wealth, family and yourself’.’ Syedna Umar RA said, ‘Yes, you are dearer to me than my wealth and family…but not myself.’ (They were honest people!) Prophet Muhammed Pbuh repeated, ‘You cannot be a true Muslim until I am dearer to you than your own self even…’ Syedna Umar RA thought for a while and then said, ‘Yes, you are dearer to me than my own self!’ (They changed priorities for the good in an instant!) To this Prophet Muhammed Pbuh said, ‘Now, you have become a true Muslim’. [Hadith of Bukhari, Book of Faith]
How can this be? How can another human being be more important than ourselves? And why?
Is it really that difficult to understand? Ask a PPP jiyala what he would do for Bhutto? Ask a PTI member what he would do for Imran Khan? Ask a Mujahid what he would do for Osama bin Laden? With due respect, they are only leaders of the 21st century, and people are willing to die for them, while Prophet Muhammed Pbuh is the final prophet to mankind till the establishment of the Final Hour. Should not the reverence for him exceed all reverences?
The greatest of revolutions of history have originated from a personality. Islam wants to keep these personalities alive in the mind and revered in the hearts so that the energy emanating from them is not fizzled out. Imagine that you rise to pray Tahajjud and a piece of that wretched cartoon or movie about Prophet Muhammed Pbuh comes to your mind, and you start laughing. What will you do? Sober up and continue to pray? Imagine leading a battalion in war after studying the war strategies of Prophet Muhammed Pbuh, and a piece of that pathetic cartoon or movie comes to your mind and you start laughing. Are wars fought by following comic figureheads? Imagine conveying the Holy Message of Allah and his Prophet in a classroom full of students, and a piece of that blasphemous cartoon or movie comes to your mind and you start laughing. Are comic figures at the source of spirituality and education?
Imagine making
cartoons of such revolutionary personalities. Imagine the personalities being
laughed at. Imagine revolutionary personalities turning into comic characters.
Imagine laughing at Gandhi of India. Imagine laughing at Khomeini of Iran.
Imagine laughing at Mandela of South Africa. Can you digest these laughs?
Why with Prophets then?
As Muslims, we should be protesting not just the blasphemy of Prophet Muhammed Pbuh, but all prophets. If the Christians are cool about making fun of Jesus Christ, that is not okay with us either. Mind you, to protest does not mean harming innocents or destroying public property, although unfortunately some governments do not understand the language of a peaceful protest. I am sorry to say but I do not think that YouTube has been blocked in Pakistan out of respect for the Holy Prophet Pbuh, but only to protect public property.
It has been three years since Facebook hosted ‘Everybody Draw Muhammed Day’. It has been almost a year since YouTube hosted the blasphemous movie ‘Innocence of the Muslims’, and it is still up there! Why cannot we switch? We have a good alternative in the form of Millat Facebook (www.mymfb.com). Why cannot we hang on to it till it becomes crowded like the other Facebook. That was empty too, once upon a time. People like us filled it up. We can do it again.
Why cannot we shift to MetaCafe (www.metacafe.com) or other such video hosting websites, instead of crying over YouTube? Some insist that the said website is most populated, most informative and hence cannot be quit. Well, how come China today is faring well without YouTube? For in the world of God, there is a force superior to technology. Why else would the superpower America be receding from Afghanistan after a ten-year-long full-of-technical-support war, unsuccessful?
Why not quit the source culprit G-family altogether, who hosts Youtube, Google, Gmail and Blogger? We have ‘Yahoo’ and ‘Bing’ as alternative search engines, ‘Yahoo’ and ‘Live’ as alternative email providers, ‘WordPress’ and ‘MillatFacebook’ as the alternative blogging spot and so on.
I ask you. Would the addiction still be there if the humiliating cartoons and videos were about you, your parents, your children or your leader? Then how can you become suddenly so ‘cool’ and ‘broad-minded’ for your Prophet Pbuh? Do you not give him at least as much respect as you give to your children? If you do not, then you should immediately quit all your extra-curricular activities and contact a spiritual guide on an emergency basis. Treat yourself, before death meets you in a sudden moment and you meet your Lord as a back-bencher Muslim.
“Has the time yet not arrived for the believers to submit with fervent hearts to Allah's warning and to the reality He has revealed, so that they may not become like those who were given the Book (The Message) before this, even though their term was prolonged for them, but their hearts became hardened? Today, most among them are transgressors.”
[The Holy Qur~an, Surah Al-Hadid (57), Ayah 16]
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