What Your Mom Never Told You

 

 

Her face glowed with excitement as she handed me a very colorful (and may I add very tacky) invitation card.
“My friend is having a party this weekend! Can I please go?” My daughter asked, her heart beating so loud with anticipation I literally felt the walls crack.
“No” I answered calmly, my eyes still on my book.
“OMG why? It’s like THE party of the year! Mommy please!”
“I said no”
“This is so unfair!” My daughter ran to her room, trailing gigantic tear drops on the floor. “I’m never allowed to do anything I want.” She mumbled before locking herself to write about her miserable, prison-like life in her pink diary.

I sighed and closed my eyes… and the memories sneered back at me with a mean smile.

This is the part where an image of me today is distorted in a wave-like motion with twinkling background music and the title reads:

 

Twenty Years Ago…

 

“Mommy can I please go to my friend’s house this weekend?” I pouted (And I had mastered the puppy dog face at that time if you’d like to know!)
“No” My mom said calmly, still reading the newspaper.

“Everything is ‘no’! This is so unfair!” I cried as I ran to my room, trailing tears on the floor before taking my anger out in writing.

 

Dear Mrs. Diary…
Another horrible day in this prison my parents call ‘home’! Being a teenager sucks! I can’t wait to grow up and have a daughter of my own and believe you me, I will never raise her the way I was raised. I’ll be a fun, hip mom (like TOTALLY!) I’ll let her do everything and anything she wants! The rule in my house will be ‘there are NO rules!’. She’ll go out with her friends and have no curfews coz HELLO! I’ll trust her! We’ll stay up all night gossiping and eating chocolates and I’ll make sure her life is one amazing adventure! I’ll never badger her about grades. I’ll buy her everything she asks for and let her watch cartoons till her eyes fall out! I mean it Mrs. Diary so mark my words!
And then years later something happened to me. I became a mom…

 

Listening to my daughter cry in her room today made my heart bleed. But I know even if I explain till I’m blue in the face how I’m protecting her from bad influence, she will never understand. When I was her age I didn’t get it either. I guess by the time you realize your mother was right you have a daughter who thinks you’re wrong.

 

Oh mom, why didn’t you ever tell me…?
You never looked up from your newspaper coz you didn’t wanna see the hurt in my eyes. It wasn’t because you didn’t care…

You took the role of the ‘bad guy’, putting rules and making sure I’m disciplined because you were preparing me for the real world. It wasn’t because you enjoyed having all this power. In fact, it was heart-aching and tiring and the easiest choice would have been to say ‘yes’ to everything and hope for the best.

 

I wish you had told me how you stared at me while I slept, and how you begged God to give you my pain instead when I was sick. I wish you had told me how you masked your worry with an angry look when I was late, and secretly locked yourself up to cry when I was sad. All these strict rules make sense now. I wouldn’t have become the person I am today if you had let me do what I wanted to do back then. I just wish you had told me that you wanted nothing more in life than to enjoy me, but you put your needs aside and endured my resentment, because you had a bigger purpose; to raise me right as a proud, ethical and responsible Muslim who will keep your legend alive. I see so many men and women struggling nowadays and blaming their parents for their failures. I see confused grown-ups unable to differentiate between right and wrong, lost amidst vague principles and zero ethics. It scares me, but it also makes me fall in love with you even more, thanking God He picked you to be my mother, even though I didn’t deserve such a blessing….

 

Oh mom… Every time my daughter feels like a victim when I’m being too stern I just wanna run to you, go down to my knees, kiss your feet and cry ‘Mommy please forgive me”. This is so beyond hard! And with all the non-believers, peer pressure, social Apps, perverted Internet and shameless TV content that poison the youth’s minds, it’s even much more brutally challenging! I’m raising a beautiful unique gem who will one day make a difference in this world (inshAllah) and I will not allow the media, the spoiled ‘diva’ group of friends, the fear of being resented or even chocolates ruin that for me. I just WON’T!

 

To all the sons and daughters reading this, you’ll never know how it feels to have a part of your heart walk around in the form of a human, whom you’ll love unconditionally with every cell in your body. You’ll never understand it until you become a parent. Cherish your moms while you still can before time steals her away and you’re left with a void that no human on Earth can ever fill. Your mom is the only person in the universe who will love you no matter what you do and where you go. She’s the ‘safe home’ even when she seems hard on you, there’s nowhere to run but back to her warm embrace.

 

And for those who have said goodbye to their mommies, I will not pretend I understand your pain… but I do know that out of all people we Muslims know this: Just because you can’t see her doesn’t mean she’s not there watching over you…

Cheering you on and praying for you to stay on the right path….
It’s time we let our gratefulness to those great women in our lives bloom beyond their imagination. It’s time we drape our moms with love and prayers, and let them see how it was all worth it. For what your mom never told you is that she never really wanted anything in return… Just for you to be safe and happy… and given the chance she’d do it all over again in a heartbeat…

Happy Mothers’ Day to our guardian angels… May we never let you down, and may your whispered prayers never come from sadness or loneliness, but from joy, love and a lifetime of being magnificently proud of us…

I love you Mommy…

 

Lilly S. Mohsen

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ATTACK: “KILL Them Where You FIND Them!”

Published on Muslim Words
September 30th, 2015

“I don’t get this weird video game! I mean is it really necessary to shoot the zombies? That’s not very nice, you know!”
“Mom! If you don’t shoot them, they’ll eat your brains out!”

So yeah, let’s pretend we have two groups here:

The Zombies:

 They wear black shirts
They carve rocks in the shape of dolls and force people to worship them.
They make A LOT of money from selling those make believe doll gods
They think the concepts of ‘equality’ and ‘peace’ are ridiculous
They’re powerful, aggressive, violent and very stubborn

The Peace Makers:

   They wear white shirts
They’re sick and tired of being bossed around by the biased zombies
They worship an unseen God and follow His messengers and book
They call for equality, charity, compassion and forgiveness

So when the zombies found out about the Peace Makers’ new beliefs, they fought them left and right. They tortured them, killed them, starved them, abused them, seized their assets and tried to assassinate their messenger many times, until the Peace Makers finally decided to escape the city after ten years of patient suffering. Once they spread out their call in neighboring cities, more and more people joined and the Peace Makers finally established a considerable existence.. Ten years later, 100,000 Peace Makers marched back into the city, conquering it completely yet without shedding a drop of blood. Of course the zombies ran to hide like wusses! Now you’d think the messenger, Prophet Muhammad, coming back as a victorious king, would want to punish them and have his revenge! I mean he’s human after all! They tried to kill him. They starved him and his followers for three years till his beloved wife and dear uncle died! They threw garbage at him and called him a lunatic. They asked him to split the moon in half to prove he was a Prophet of God, and when he did, they called him a magician! They killed his uncle Hamza and a woman mutilated his corpse and ate his liver (gross!). No Prophet had ever been hurt, insulted, abused and pained as much as Muhammad was by his own tribe. But when he gained immense power the Prophet, peace be upon him, simply asked his former persecutors a question…

“What do you think I’m going to do to you now?”
“You are a generous brother and the son of a generous brother!” They replied (Suck ups!)
“I will tell you what Joseph told his brothers” Prophet Muhammad said, “There is no blame on you today. You’re all free to go!”

Wait. What?!
No punishment at all? Oh my God! One time I forgot to do my homework in school and I was punished for two whole weeks! Homework not cold-blooded murder! This is so unfair!

But then again, this is why he’s the ‘beloved’, because he was forgiving, caring and merciful. Oh how we love you Prophet Of God….

The Peace Makers and disbelieving zombies coexisted peacefully in the city of Mecca for a whole YEAR before the Qur’an came down with a new command of clearing the city out of the polytheists, after more than ten years of ordering Muslims to stay patient and refrain from war. So this is when the Muslims killed all the disbelievers, right?

No… Allah gave the zombies four months to enjoy themselves, think about their options, pack their bags and the handmade dolls they worship, throw farewell parties and move to another place if they wanted to. The warning was announced publicly and the punishment for their evil deeds was paused for FOUR whole months!

“And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful” (9:5, Holy Qur’an)

Did the revelation stop there? No sire, it did not… Here’s the next verse…

“And if any one of the polytheists seeks your protection, then grant him protection so that he may hear the words of Allah. Then deliver him to his place of safety. That is because they are a people who do not know” (9:6 Holy Qur’an)

So even after the grace period is over, if one of the zombies stays behind and cries for help, then it is the Muslims’ obligation to grant him or her protection, which clearly means that the ‘killing’ must be a form of self-defense and not of those who have no idea what is going on! But you know, when people use the above verse to attack Islam, it slips their mind to mention that part. Are we allowed to do that? Translate the verses the way we want without researching the reasons behind the revelation? Coz if context doesn’t matter then why stop there? Here are some incomplete and out of context verses that give a totally different meaning…

“O you who believe! Do not go near prayer….” (Qur’an 4:43)
“And give tidings to those who disbelieve…” (Qur’an 9:3)
“So turn in repentance to your Creator and kill yourselves…” (Qur’an 2:54)

Can we now argue that the Qur’an commands Muslims not to pray, and that they should instead congratulate the disbelievers and then go commit suicide?! Do you see why ignorance is dangerous and toxic? Now you know why Muslims must educate themselves about their own religion?

If you read and analyze chapter nine of the Holy Qur’an you’ll see The “Kill them where you find them” verse only applies to the polytheists in Mecca at that time ‘on the day of the greater pilgrimage’, who attacked the Muslims first, expelled the prophet, refused the peace treaty, refused all options and insisted on transgressing. Those are the people this verse refers to! And thank God they’ve become extinct…. Mecca is solely for Muslims now, so the only zombies we are allowed to kill today are those in ‘Call Of Duty: Black Ops III’ for Play Station 4!

Islam is so beyond misunderstood! Our religion teaches us that ‘guiding one non-Muslim to Islam peacefully is better than owning the whole world and what’s in it! It’s the gateway to Paradise’. So what? We’re supposed to kill them and guide them at the same time? It doesn’t make sense! (I’m actually laughing out loud at this point!)

Well, I went to Mecca for Hajj this year, and as I stared at the millions of white-dressed Peace Makers I was suddenly grateful for the above verses. I’m grateful Muslims have a safe place to unite them, poor, rich, black, white… we all worship the Lord at His house, unthreatened by the zombies. I’m grateful the Ka’bah did not end up like the Aqsa mosque, under attack every three minutes! I’m grateful for the love and submission to the Great Merciful Lord….
Seeing the confusion, doubts, hatred, racism and atheism dragging many people down into the darkest pit of misery, I prostrate to Allah, grateful for the precious gift of guidance…
But I guess not everyone is as lucky as you and me…

If only people understood the true essence of Islam… they’d fall head over heels in love with it and find peace….

Beautiful, consuming and heartwarming peace….
Lilly S. Mohsen