By Mecca Donna
And let there be [arising] from you a nation inviting to [all that is] good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and those will be the successful. 3:104
Each day in school as a child, I was taught to pledge alliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all even before I knew or understood exactly what pledging myself to anything meant or required of me.
I was also taught to memorize the preamble of the Constitution. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In theory, America’s statement of principles is similar to what Allah has made a duty upon all Muslims who profess to believe. Enjoin the good and forbid evil.
However, we are inundated in the daily news with reports of profound violence, unjustifiable homicide, infanticide, sex crimes, war and a total lack of accountability enforced by those sworn to uphold the law, serve and protect our communities. Seemingly, each crime report increases in egregiousness.
The next report is commonly more horrific than the previous and with this growing escalation of evil everyone is asking the same question. How did this happen? How did we get here? These answers come from Allah in the fourth Juz and the first three words in the preamble, “We the People.”
We the People are consistently fed spoonfuls of hate. We the People are desensitized to crimes against God and ourselves. We the People are numb. We the People don’t care. We the People are paralyzed. We the People are all…responsible and guilty. Human beings love to expiate themselves from fault. We’re placating ourselves in any way we can to take the reality of our being responsible away. We are using deceptive reasoning to justify our failure to remedy and to quell our guilt. We the People are forming these massive constructs of delusion that enable us to invalidate the ugly truth that we see right in front of us in broad daylight.
In doing so, we painfully learn the consequences of rejecting the divine instructions by God Himself. Our instructions are clear for the world to see, “If anyone among you sees something bad then change it with your hands. If you are not able to change the evil with your hands then speak against that wrong. If your words cannot correct the evil then reject that evil in your heart and be devout in not committing the same evil you have tried to change.”
Our silence makes us complicit. Our disobedience to divine commandments makes us responsible. Our inconsistency makes us culpable. Our inability to unite as commanded by Allah to protect and defend OURSELVES as opposed to expecting the children of slave masters and recipients of white privilege to protect us has us burying our children before they even reach puberty.
We continue to be uncommitted to educating ourselves about the laws we live under. We continue to allow our children to be exposed to, shaped by and traumatized by white supremacy guised as “standard education” in public schools.
Our mission as Muslims is two-fold. We are to enjoin the good and forbid the evil. In order to make our mission a successful one we must first feel responsible for and care about people. We must care about what is happening in our communities. We might be able to explain why others are apathetic but what about the Muslims who say la illah ila Allah?
Ramadan is an opportunity to seek Allah’s forgiveness and mercy. Allow your hunger and thirst to remind you of the suffering of our people. Ramadan is only 30 days but there is so much we can do. Help make our neighborhoods decent places to live. Take the light of Islam to the people who need it the most. One of the characteristics of a community committed to enjoining good and forbidding evil is that they don’t give up even after a hard failure. The Battle of Uhud is an excellent example to follow in this regard.
Remember Allah’s words, “You are the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah . If only the People of the Scripture had believed, it would have been better for them. Among them are believers, but most of them are defiantly disobedient. 3:110
Mecca Donna is a Charlotte, North Carolina native. She is a voice for Muslim women, a Pundit, public speaker on women in Islam and graphic artist extraordinaire. Mecca Donna is the creative force behind MeccaDigitale Graphics. www.meccadonna.com
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