Today I had a bit of an insight. I’ve been working on trying to become more self-aware, more present if you will, in my life.  One of the things thrown up in the mix, is I do seem to need a lot of external validation (please, feel free to externally validate me tomorrow if I make it onto the Brass Crescent awards, but I digress…). Anyway I have been encouraged to remember that ‘not everyone will like me and everything I do.’ 

It’s a rather revolutionary statement for me, people-pleaser that I am.  Coming to grips with my humanity.  As someone was pointing this out to me, it struck me that I’ve been prancing around pretending to be the Deity - wanting everyone to worship and adore me and everything I do.

So I am now thoroughly repentant of this shirk.

I accidently Googlewhacked looking for an example of how ALA-LC transliterates the shahadah. Woohooo am I cool or what.

[Update: apparently I didn’t quite hit it - for a valid Googlewhack you need to do 1 result of 1 with just two words, not three - ahhhh well.]

The road to surfdom has a hilarious roundup of the pity-party that is certain right-wing blogs in the US mourning the loss of HoWARd.  Just goes to show, intelligence is not a defining characteristic of right-wing warmongers.  My favourite was:

And anyone who doesn’t think librulislamofascists hacked into the voting machines down in Oz is nothing but a useful idiot.

Ha ha *snort* LOL, we don’t USE voting machines!!!!  Can you hear the violins?

Seems Jesus isn’t quite so omniscient after all.  He wrongly predicted the outcome of the Australian election.  Hmmm… there goes his Divine record.  Oh wait.. maybe it was the folks on the other end of the phone line to heaven.

I shouldn’t be gleeful, but these are crackpots who think that Muslims are under the sway of Satan and all that.  If they’re so wrong about their prophecies and prayers, maybe - just maybe - they’re wrong in their statements about Islam and Muslims.

And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. (Matthew 24: 10-12)

You know Allah , subhanahu wa t’ala works in your life in ways that sometimes… well they’re like a train with headlights coming towards you and you’re wearing sunglasses and facing the other way.

This apostasy business has had me in knots for a few days.  I’ve run the gamut of emotions: ‘why me?’ ‘why now?’ etc. I’ve been so inactive with anything Baha’i and the domain bahai-religion.org I haven’t touched since 2003.  I started to think ‘maybe I should resurrect the site and put more content in it’ and then I thought ‘I’ll get back onto Wikipedia and start editing’ (because the Baha’is have their Wikipedia entries run like promotional pamphlets) and then I stopped myself and realised - there is a reason all this is happening to me, and to me now.

It cannot be coincidental that just as I have started to deepen my iman, to develop my spirituality through tariqa all of this is floating to the surface.  Shaytan (a`udhu billahi min ash-shaytani-rrajim) would like nothing more than for me to re-engage with all the Baha’i angst of my past, and distract me from the sirat and the tariqa.

So I’ve decided to surrender it to Allah , subhanahu wa t’ala.  I don’t need for the Baha’is to accept me.  This is a perfect opportunity to surrender my past and stop feeling like a divorcee from a bad marriage. 

He it is Who sent down peace of reassurance into the hearts of the believers that they might add faith unto their faith. Allah ’s are the hosts of the heavens and the earth, and Allah is ever Knower, Wise. (Al-Fath 48:4)

Alhamdulillah.