Voice of British Muslim Women

Siddiqa Faisal, Hayes

For centuries women are known to have a deep love and inspiration for ornaments. Ornaments, collected from the bowels of the deep, deepest of oceans, or mined from the hard, hardest of mountains. Women are so inspired by ornaments and gems, that if I say that they are “a weakness of a woman”, I won’t be wrong.   May be that’s why Prophet Jesus (peace be on him) asked his people “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.” [1]

Such is their importance!  But what is the ornament weakness I have or the source of inspiration for me; who belongs to the women’s auxiliary of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, “Lajna Ima’illah”, a global community of ladies, who are servants of Allah.

Obviously, the answer is a big yes, but my gems are not mere tangible pieces, my inspiration is a whole treasure chest, a chest full of gems, a treasure, that no one can snatch, steal or take away from me, rather it increases if I share it.  My treasure chest is, as described by the Promised Messiah, His Holiness Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (on whom be peace), where he said: ‘So, the Holy Quran is a treasure of divine insight and knowledge.’ [2]

We members of this, now a hundred-year-old auxiliary organisation, have been getting together from our inception to share and inspire each other of this, never ending, everlasting treasure.

On a personal level, my first gem collection, my first inspiration were the bedtime stories that my late mother Bushra Rafiq would tell me from the Holy Qur’an, not fictional, made up fairy tales, but mesmerizing and miraculous stories of Prophets of God where the ending was always the victory of righteous people who were precious to God. I would sleep calmly, with no anxieties, sweet dreams. As a teen I remember attending Qur’an classes with late Mrs. Lateef and later in mosque Baituz Zikr, Islamabad Pakistan, by late Mrs. Rehana Khursheed. They would ask us young girls to prepare lectures on different chapters of the Holy Qur’an. Unintentionally it became my hobby; my gem collection!

After I got married and moved to Karachi, I vividly remember Aapa Sophia, sitting in the big hall of the mosque Baitur Rehman spreading the shiny pearls of the beautiful teachings of the Holy Qur’an with such exuberance and a free flow stream like fluency that even I with my very little knowledge at that time, started to feel inspired and developed a deep desire to learn even more.

Taking and keeping that flame alit, when I came to the UK and it was in Bristol, in my head I rephrased Einstein, “I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they / I can learn.”    

It is the beauty of the most inspirational Book of all times and ages, the Holy Qur’an and the blessings of unity under the umbrella of Khilafat that for many of us the Qur’an class within the framework of Lajna that I conducted in Bristol became a source of “inspiration”, and the core objective of who we were as a women’s auxiliary.

One member recalls, “For me the Qur’an class was super inspirational as I saw Aunty Qudsia, an English Ahmadi Muslim woman, learning Arabic from scratch. The effort she used to put into learning Arabic was phenomenal, and made me think that my language i.e., Urdu is so close to Arabic, I must try harder to learn the language of the Holy Qur’an.”

We interconnected and intermingled in a beautiful string of the inspirational Holy Qur’an and will continue to progress, prosper and pass on this treasure to others around us.  God willing.

These days our beloved Khalifa His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad, (may Allah be his Helper), has started a beautiful series of Friday Sermons on the status and glory of the Holy Qur’an which can be found on the official website www.alislam.org.

[1] King James Bible Jeremia 2:32

[2] (Malfuzat Vol. 3: p 242)