Life’s Tests #wcw

So, I am back to blogging and that means returning to one of my favorite blogging days, Words Crush Wednesday!

As you know Words Crush Wednesday is a little link-up game featuring our favorite quotes (or on Memee’s Musings, my favorite quotes).  Now typically I prefer to choose quotes where I know who originated it.  For example, “When one door opens…” I am sure you know a version of that saying, but do you know who is credited with saying it?  I do.  If you’re curious, here’s the link.

Anyway, I stumbled across this one the other day on my friend’s Facebook timeline and instantly loved it.  As you can see it doesn’t say who said it so I did a little digging on Google.  (I am writing in past tense because when you read this it will have already happened.  The truth is I am writing this post and researching at the same time.)  I found a lot of different memes like the one I have here with the webname of who made the meme.  Not helpful.  But I kept looking.  I thought I found one, but then when I clicked the thumbnail to see who the quote was attributed to, I discovered it was attributed to “Aunt Judy.”  I do have an Aunt Judy, but she’s really not all that computer savvy.  You’re right, of course, she could have said it and someone else could have really liked it and so they made the meme and attributed it to her, but I highly doubt it.

So I kept looking.  I found another one that looked promising.  The picture was a little odd, it  invoked in me the idea that the man in the image was in prison.  Not sure at this moment if that was the case or not but that’s beside the point.  I opened the thumbnail to see who it was attributed to.  But this quote was a bit different.  Instead of God it referred to Allah. Now I know that Allah is the name used for the Islamic concept of god.  And so I thought to myself, “Hmm, is this a bastardized version of a quote?”  So I dug a little deeper into the man being cited, Nouman Ali Khan.  I put his name into Google and discovered that it is, in my opinion, entirely possible.

Who is Nouman Ali Khan?  Well, apparently he is a German-born Pakistani who works as a professional Muslim speaker who founded and instructs at The Institute for Arabic and Qur’anic Studies. So he is well educated — and as a side note, personally, in my opinion, anyone who is a professional public speaker knows how to talk and coin great sayings.  I mean, they get paid to talk and share their ideas after all.  I won’t deny I was surprised by this development.  The quote I read and love may come from a person of a religion that does not even recognize God.  I mean, wow, that’s a bit of a shocker!

I found only one other possibility for a cited originator to this quote and he had a long name.  I opened this one up and what I found was that again instead of “God” it read “Allah” and it was attributed to:  Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan.  I tried to find out more.  I didn’t really get anywhere in discovering whether this is the same man, or his father, or someone totally unrelated.  I learned other stuff about Nouman though. Apparently he went through a long period of atheism but ultimately returned to Islam.  No biggy, I am pretty sure many people raised in religion have had times when they questioned their faith or even denied it and then sometime later have returned, or converted to new religions while others remain atheists (Honestly, I think they’re just really angry at their god, believing he has abandoned them.)  Anyway, none of that matters though because this isn’t about a Muslim man, or religion, it’s about a quote that I understand and relate to.  A quote that I loved enough to post on my blog.

If this man were not Muslim.  If he did not practice Islam I bet that all of the quotes that credit it as “Unknown” or slap their own website name upon it would respect who said it. And that makes me sad.  It makes me sad that we live in a world with so much hate for people different than ourselves.  I know much of it is fear driven.  And I know that in America so many of us are angry because of 9/11 and that anger is due to fear. Life in America has never felt as safe as it did before those planes flew into the World Trade Center towers.

My first year blogging I wrote a post entitled, Relationship: What is it and why is it so damn confusing? where I propose how different the world would be if we were less emotionally driven.

Anyway, this post got super-duper long because as it turned out the quote I chose for this week belongs in the same family of quotes as the one I opened this post with about doors opening. Turns out this quote isn’t a quote at all. But still, I’ve come this far and regardless of its nature and where it came from, I am keeping it. I love God. I have been a student and taken many tests in my time. And there have times when I have felt so alone in my struggle (though I have never abandoned God). For these three reasons this non-quote meme speaks to me. I hope you love it for what it says regardless of your position on the Muslim peoples or the Islamic religion. It has wisdom that is meant to bring comfort, patience, and understanding during times of trial regardless of which god it cites.

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If you’d like to play Words Crush Wednesday along with me here are the details:

Cut/paste and follow these 3 simple rules:

(1) Always pingback to the site you discovered #wcw on with every Words Crush Wednesday post. In this case, that’s me: memeesmusings.com!

(2) In your post, use the badge they’ve created just for you – In this case, you’d use the Panda badge (size doesn’t matter), just grab it below.

(3) Tag your post #wcw so the Words Crush Wednesday community players can find you.

(4) Optional: When you are ready, create your own badge for those you inspire to play Words Crush Wednesday. If you do not create your own badge then your inspirees MUST use the badge from the blogger who inspired you — it’s on your post — so be sure to make it easy for them to find. (P.S. I create all of my graphics on Canva.)

If you wanna play #wcw with me, grab that panda badge!

^* To see the badge I earned, visit my very first #WCW post. And, here’s my pingback: Rebirth of Lisa