Grab the Oars

[Batoota]

Grab the Oars. I recently discovered something. It’s a very simple discovery! It’s about time I discovered it. :lol: Lol, but seriously, it made me realize something……many of us are in the same boat and we’re sinking! We’re waiting for somebody to grab the oars and paddle us out while we continue to sink ourselves more and more….I could take this simile and stretch it—say that our Ummah is sinking and we’re all waiting for somebody (like Salah Al Deen) to fall from the sky and save us…but I’m not going to, because we all already know that…On the big scale, we are all *or many of us are* aware of the fact that our Ummah is sadly plummeting further and further down. :(But how many of us realize that on a small/individual scale, we’re also watching the sink drown? And also…….here comes the biggest discovery. How many of us realize that to others, we are the ones who can grab the oars…we are the leaders? :DLet me give you a personal story.Cheating, as we all know, is haram. Some “colleagues” used to come up to me and ask me for certain answers and I used to fidget and squirm. I wouldn’t answer them, but rather make a whole zigzag of a story…..I’d always have “excuses” as to why I couldn’t answer: something like “well, my answers are all wrong”

[Batoota]

Okay! that was only my introduction?! What about the 2 pages i typed?I think my computer has really lost it. Even the format is :(Ugh. It is out to get me. Trying again *good thing, i save what i write :D*Edit: i tried again, and it didn't post it...i'll have to try from a different computer later.Sorry!:blush::w:

[Ameeratul Layl]

“oh man, the teacher is looking at me”[/QUOTE]

:sl:
OMG.....Are u in lesson?:rolleyes:

[Batoota]

:sl:Yeah..^ that was my major excuse during a test...Thanks for reading that...:thumbs_up. Too bad my computer is NuTS!:w:

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[Ameeratul Layl]

:sl:Yeah..^ that was my major excuse during a test...Thanks for reading that...:thumbs_up. Too bad my computer is NuTS!:w:

:sl:
No probs.:giggling:

[Batoota]

*finally, it shud work!*

So yeah, my other exuse was “oh man, the teacher is looking at me”ß if it was during a test. I had all this other stuff. For some reason, I was shy and I felt too weak to plainly say “you know it’s haram [my school is *minimum* 95% Muslim]. When I think about it now, it didn’t make sense- me being weak about something like that. But I was.
Then last year, I started saying it. A person would come up to me, and they’d beg and beg, and I’d just be like “Sorry, it is haram.” I’d say it very quickly too- but that was because I felt I had to get the words out quickly or else they would never come out. I knew I was weak and that wasn’t good…what I didn’t realize was that the girl in front me noticed all the times I refused…

One day, she came up to me and she was like “I spent hours doing my homework and now this girl wants to copy it. What should I tell her?!”

And I was thinking “whoa?! Why is she asking me? Is she crazy?! I’m the last person to ask…I am so bad at just saying the plain truth...” But anyways, I just told her tell her what you told me. Just tell her “no, you worked so hard on it, it’s not fair…blah blah.”

And I think she actually listened to me…:statisfie

This year, me and that girl and a bunch of other girls were sitting down, talking about what to do when somebody asks us for an answer and that girl started talking about me. She was like “Batoota *not real name* just tells them to their face!” and she said it with admiration…

And I realized something.

For some strange reason, I was her example. I was the person she was following.:ooh:

I don’t mean this as if I’m bragging…because I’m telling you now, I’m the worst :embarrass person to follow. Ma shaa Allah, there are other girls in my grade who are very straight forward, and who tell people the truth to their face: D May Allah reward them. I’m personally not so good at that. And that was exactly what made me surprised. Here I was, looking for help, looking to follow one of those girls and instead a girl was following my lead. How did that happen?


Another story:

Despite the fact that our school is 95% Muslim, and that our school is segregated, grade 12 is planning on having a mixed prom- this of course will be unsupervised since the Ministry of Education here wouldn’t ever allow something like that, so our school has nothing to do with the prom. Because of this, the students themselves have to pay the money and apparently they are planning on doing it in a hotel- so they need a lot of money.

Anyways, the class had collected 800 dirhams for an English class project *building a model boat for a play :confused:*. It turned out the boat cost only 500 dirhams. The English teacher was like “what do you want to do with the money?” And then A LOT OF girls started screaming “donate to the prom”. One girl spoke out, and she screamed “Charity.” ß This was the day after the Pakistani earthquake.

This other girl cracked a joke about prom donations being charity for grade12. The girl who spoke out said “30,000 people just died and you want to get money for a party?” Although this girl told me she was a bit scared to say that (an entire class against her:nervous: ), she did… and you know what? Members of the prom committee looked at her and actually told her “You’re right.”

BTW: it means those people who do speak up are just as scared as the others!

The next day *or was it week?!*, that same girl that had cracked the joke was going around collecting charity for Pakistan, encouraging others to do that. People had changed.

Also about prom. Two girls said something against it to the prom committee. All of a sudden, they found another group backing them up. You see, that group was waiting for somebody to say something so that it could say something----- who knows? If those two girls hadn’t taken the initiative to say something…………..perhaps the group’s silence would have been the only thing heard.

We all know that Change can start from one person…all it takes is one leader….

The question is do we realize it could be us?



:w: