I begin with mentioning the beautiful asma’ of Allah, Ar-Rahmaan and Ar-Raheem.
An illuminating quote worth mentioning about travelling reads:
Travelling – it leaves you speechless,
then turns you into a story teller
~ Ibn Battuta
We all are travelers in this world are we not? We have traveled through several phases in life; from the day of covenant1 before Allah, The Almighty, and will travel until the day we are called upon to return to Him. This I remind myself first and foremost.
On a lighter note, I have embarked upon a serious traveling series since September 2008. I wasn’t really sure at the time what the point was for my traveling. It might have been due to overlapping factors, such as a sense of urgency to release the overwhelming state of mind that I was in from my father being called upon his Creator on March 23, 2008. It might also have been due to the curiosity about an outbreak of ‘Islamophobia’ that spun off from a certain part of the world. Some of us may have thought that the situation occurred out of Islamic circles, but the more I traveled the more I realized that it was also happening among the Muslim community. I was not exempt from the idea, either, however.
Several months prior to my departure to United Kingdom, the major highlights in my thoughts were about Islamophobia.
‘Could it be that bad?’
‘How would I respond to any given situation?’
‘What would my experience be like when moving around my fellow citizens on earth if some of them entertained this phobia notion within them?’
Nothing compares to hands on experience. My level of curiosity surged every time that I laid my eyes upon the highlights that appeared on mainstream newspapers. At the time I worked in the customer experience and strategy division of a multi-billion dollar fund management company where we were required to be kept abreast of what was going on around the world so that we could strategize in managing our investors’ expectations. Hence, the first thing in the morning that we must come in contact with is internal and external monetary and financial reviews.
I was on my 12th year of establishing a career in the corporate world, along with playing the role of a wife, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a colleague, a friend, the eldest grandchild in my family and hoping to become a mother after losing my twin boys during a 7th month pregnancy back in 2004.
Perhaps, another driving factor of my UK trip then was to gain a fresh perspective of how to look at life while revisiting priorities. This trip took me not only to the UK but also to Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France. It changed me in ways that I never imagined.
The biggest impact was that it called for a deep deliberation on my purpose as a Muslim in this world. Insyaa-Allah, in time, I will share my experiential learning with you and I hope to learn far more as I write and reflect. I would also love to hear from you as well.
I’d like to share with you one of my favorite photographs that was taken at Hyde Park with a beautiful creation of Allah. I named it: Mr Squirrely.
1 Surah Al-A’raf [7:172]
And [mention] when your Lord took from the children of Adam – from their loins – their descendants and made them testify of themselves, [saying to them], “Am I not your Lord?” They said, “Yes, we have testified.” [This} – lest you should say on the day of Resurrection, “Indeed, we were of this unaware.”
