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From: SX43%LIVERPOOL.AC.UK@EVANS.UCAR.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Excerpt from USRA Family Magazine: (Forgiveness)
Message-ID: <1990Nov22.184249.12933@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 22 Nov 90 18:42:49 GMT
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Topic :                 Unforgiving attitude of muslims to each other,
                        cause of disunity.
Title :                 'Forgiveness' Editorial comment.
Source :                USRA The Family Magazine, Nov 1990, p1.
Organisation :          The Islamic Education Center
Contact :               73 Alston Drive,
                        Bradwell Abbey,
                        Milton Keynes,
                        MK13 9HG
                        England, UK.
Telephone :             0908-318633/319598
Fax :                   0908-322071
Telex :                 825094 & 82462
Price :                 FREE, excluding postage.
Frequency :             Monthly
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                          FORGIVENESS
                          ===========  --Comment.

You have arranged for guests to come to your house, but they dont
turn up. You wait for hours, the dinner gets cold, or you are late for
other appointments you had made. You curse oyour absent guests and
resolve never to invite them again, or to cause them inconvenience at
the first possible opportunity.

Someone makes some comment about you which you take to heart. You
feel mortally insulted, so the next time you see that person, you really
let them have it. They get their own back, and so it goes on until you
no longer have anything to do with each other.

A friend or colleague snaps at you, you snap back, and soon there
is a full-scale argument, followed by a stony silence.

Does this sound familiar ? These kind of events happen all the
time. But Muslims arent meant to be like that. We are supposed to make
allowances for one another. Or guests may have been held up by heavy
traffic, or their car might have broken down; the comment may have been
meant as a joke, not intended to wound; the irritable friend may have
not had much sleep last night, or may have worries on his/her mind, or
may be coming down with flu...

There are a hundred  and one reasons why there may be these
hiccups in our everyday dealings with one another. We shold all make
allowances for the fact that we are only human, and will make mistakes.
We should not allow these mistakes to become major issues: makeing
allowances and forgiving one another is infinitely preferable to seeking
revenge and embarking on an escalating spiral of tit-for-tat.

Sad to say, many muslims dont give one another the benefit of the
doubt. We seem to find it easier to think the worst of our brothers and
sisters than to think well of them . This non-forgiving attitude is at
the root of the problems that beset our comunity. We are so divided that
it is almost impossible for us to carry on any form of collective work.
Our organisations soon become fragmented because of petty matters which
are blown up out of all proportion. Sometimes we carry on a feud for
years, we take it from our homeland and keep it alive in our new
country, our children keep it going, and everyone has forgotten whatever
trivial incident set it off in the first place!

Enough is enough. We must change the way we look at and raeact to
things. We have to start forgiving our brothers and sisters for the
mistakes they make; we must make allowances for one another and think
the best,not the worst, of our fellow-muslims. Only  then will our
fragmented community begin to gel, and only then will we find the
desperately-sought unity which has deluded us for so long.
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                              USRA
                              ====

                  Editor : Sister Huda Khattab.

For the sake of sharing and spreading knowledge, other muslim
publications are welcome to reproduce articles from this magazine.
Please acknowledge USRA Magazine and send us copies of any reproductions
for our records. The views in this magazine are strictly those of
individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect  the opinions of
the Islamic Education Centre or of the Editor.

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