The past few days at work have been more of a juxtaposition of oddly communicated sectarian thoughts by some failures and some triumphed colleagues . Ironically , im surrounded by couples with fairly successful inter-sectarian and racial marriages . This leaves me with no or little room to maneuver .Take Naushaba for instance .she is a wahabi married to Naad-e-Ali , a shia .And successfully if I might add . They make it work every day . I meet her husband everyday and it all seems fine to me . The fact of the matter is that now we have such a diverse groups of people working together that the topics during lunch or during the wee hours of the morning when we’re all just getting used to the stale air-conditioning bears on issues of sect and racism .


One day naushaba caught me by surprise . She had spoken to me about achievements and life and love and marriage . She claimed that she could’ve not have done so much if she hadn’t stood up for her marriage and the man she loved . This same unfaithful evening , she interrogated me about my thingy . I had shared with her a one liner about the situation I found myself in a few months ago .I told her that things didn’t work . She belligerently exclaimed ; “Ali , how can things not work out if both of you wanted them to work out”? . And im like there were things which were out of my hands . According to her , things are never out of our hands . Especially when our religion scorns at sectarianism and refuses to acknowledge any discrimination based on beliefs pertaining condiments . Islam in truth stands only by the notion of One God and His Prophet . All the rest comes latter and cannot be used to demarcate boundaries .


I understand what you mean gurl , I thought but I just couldn’t say much . She is right . One Prophet . One God . Isn’t that why the Prophet himself encouraged marriage outside family . Yes I nodded again . These were things that I once told people around me. She said something else and she had a point . The fact is that I don’t have answers to her questions . She took the plunge and came out nice and fine . As an end note , I supported her notions which were my notions once . This had been the most abysmal downside of sectarianism . People have time and again used this biased concept to their benefit and generations have come and gone without any enlightenment . The world is talking about mars colonies and today we talk about not letting women participate in a protest walk yada yada yada . What’s the point of such an expensive education and morally ‘crisp’ upbringing when we cannot see beyond these fatally fabricated blatant boundaries . This is why todays musalmaan finds himself on the back foot . The purity of my religion has been polluted by these so called sects and thus we find ourselves shackled today . The history of Islam is infront of us and we have failed to learn anything from it . We read the Quran everyday . Without understanding it one bit . Sects were prohibited in our holy book and we still today after more than 1400 years fail to combat this insidious syndrome that has plagued out families for ages .


The Book says that on the Day of Reckoning we’ll be called along with our prophets and Imams . Christ will stand there with a long queue of apostles behind him .Mohammed would be there as well with a long line of believers . What would we say when confronted by Him .What if he asks us the same question that the troubled few of us ask ourselves almost everyday of our morbid mortal life . About contribution . About making a difference .About reading between the lines . About following the precedents blindly . What would you say when you’d be reprimanded that day about reading the Quran just as a ritual and not following it as a beckon of light that was sent to guide us through our tacit itinerary of life. When I die , what would I take along with me . A freaking film-making career with a bunch of offspring blindly following the five time a day custom of crashing their foreheads on a rock infront of them without thinking about the true meaning being God is Great … There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Prophet. .. True ive contributed to others in ways even they cannot imagine and as vain as I might be about it in this life , I am afraid that this wont get me off the hook . And I know I’d be the one responsible for not showing my kids the other side of the coin . For how else would they find . My parents brought me in a manner unlike any one of your upbringing . I was constantly searching for the truth . I still am on the same path . Here I am surrounded by people who are constantly running in the opposite direction . It’s a battle everyday . It’s a never ending crusade .