Islam in the Trenches

Author: Mustafa Mahmoud

People understand religion as a set of commands and prohibitions, rules of punishment, and boundaries of lawful and unlawful, all of which are worldly matters. But religion is something else, deeper, more comprehensive, and further-reaching. In its essence, religion is the ancient love with which we came into this world, the constant yearning that fills the depths of our hearts for the original homeland from which we came, and the spiritual thirst for the source from which we originated, filling every fiber of our being with longing and yearning. It is a yearning obscured by the illusions, distractions, and desires of this world. We only awaken to this yearning when ugliness, injustice, absurdity, chaos, and turmoil surround us in this world, and we feel that we are strangers to it, that we are not part of it, but merely visitors and passersby. At that moment, we long for that original homeland from which we came, and we spontaneously raise our heads to the sky with yearning, and every fiber within us whispers, "Oh God, where are You?"