I met Maulana Wahiduddin Khan in 2015 when he was invited by the UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE (Washington DC) as a tribute to his life long mission to promote peace in India and around the world. The institute recognized his efforts in presenting Islamic concepts in contemporary time as he took full advantage of science and modern civilization to translate Quran and Hadith in modern idiom and addressed the minds of people. He wrote hundreds of books, gave lectures and talks and engaged in interfaith outreach to promote the peaceful message of Islam. The same year he was presented lifetime achievement award by Islamic organization ISNA in Chicago where he gave his famous speech on peace "What a wonderful idea" .
During his stay in DC, Toronto, and Chicago, I would follow him to his lectures and talks and sit along with others in his room to inhale his teachings, the wisdom and deeper meaning of the reality of the Unseen. In my conversation with Maulana Wahiduddin khan , he taught me that we are all born on the nature (fitrah), but later on we get conditioned by our environment and our traditions and automatically we do the same things as our parents our elders have taught us. If we are born in Muslim household, we follow our parents and family in rituals and if we are born in Christian home, we follow them as well. However, the matter with God is different. God is unseen but He wants us to discover Him through His attributes and creations and signs in the universe. Therefore an individual discovery of self and discovery of God is needed. Once we rediscover God, we gain faith and trust of Him and this follows God's worship and prayer rituals. So, I learned that I needed to rediscover God before I can perform any Islamic rituals
There are two ways to do the discovery of God, one is to discover ourselves and the nature around us and reflect over the daily experiences and events that are happening in our lives. The other method is to read Quran using our thinking, pondering and reflecting abilities. During this learning and education we will need to continuously check ourselves, decondition our mind from the hate, biases, one-sided thinking, and all the complexities (inferiority complex , superiority complex and so on). To keep the discovery going, we must keep ourselves on truth and become a life long seeker of truth and allow ourselves to go through various experiences in our lives. Also we need to know that everyone has their own truth and we need to be open to have dialogues and discussions without any judgement and finally surrender to truth if anyone else has it with more clarity and rationality.
Maulana advised that I could become a missionary of Islam (Da'ee) as he found me a seeker of Truth. I was skeptical but he stated that anyone who is on journey of Truth and discovery of God can become a missionary. You do not need extensive training , to be super religious or part of any organization, You just need to have motivation and inspiration to become a Da'ee
I took upon his advice , I got some English and Spanish translations of Quran from a team member and started giving out Quran to my neighbors , colleagues and kid's parents in parks. I found this experience to be very fulfilling and enjoyable as it allowed me to open up to other people, have conversations and listen to them about their experiences of their personal God and the spirituality. I found out that being a Da'ee inspired me to find questions of the Unseen , think and ponder upon the verses of Quran and learn from the experiences of other people. I also found out that we are all part of a big family and we have more commonality than differences . We are all diverse in nature just like the rest of universe, but in order to see the beauty in diversity , we need to keep ourselves on pure nature and remove all types of biases and judgements from our minds.
Now a days I am watching some YouTubers presenting their experiences of Islam and conducting interviews of seekers of truth around the world. They are using social media and they are doing great job! The internet is filled with Quranic translations, books and articles on Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and prayer rituals . All you need to do is to find the right resources and send it to potential seekers. Also, don't forget to follow up with them, read their comments, and attend to their learning and seeking needs.
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