Voice of British Muslim Women

Yusra Dahri, Tilford

My teenage years revolved mostly around one, self-absorbed question: what is my purpose?

Now, as a Muslim I knew that my purpose was to worship Allah, but unfortunately I was too absorbed into Western individualism to properly accept this answer. Surely that couldn’t be all?

 I wanted to have an additional cool, special, custom-made purpose. Something that I, and only I, could do. I did about 5 different types of personality tests, entertained roughly 30 career plans before rejecting all of them, and probably got on the nerves of several of my family members in the process. I was searching for ‘My Purpose’ but the emphasis always seemed to be more on the ‘My’ and less on the ‘Purpose’. I did not recognise this at the time for what it was: narcissism, plain and simple.

I was scrolling yet again through Google to see what expert strangers thought I ought to do with my life, when I noticed I had an www.openquran.com  tab up. Not really thinking about what I was doing, I typed in the word ‘purpose’. This verse came up:

23:116

‘Did you then think that We had created you without purpose, and that you would not be brought back to Us?’

It was like a slap in the face.

I had no doubt read this verse before, but sometimes certain verses only click for you at the right time. Here I had been, languishing on my laptop, lamenting that I was not really good at anything, and I would never find or fulfil my purpose. Yet this verse addressed my fear exactly. What’s more, it pointed out to me the ridiculousness of my behaviour.

This is addressed to the disbelievers, and whilst it is essentially a reprimand, I found something very comforting and reassuring about this verse, especially the latter half. We, human beings belong to God, and that is where our true home is. That is where we are trying to get back to. Our purpose, in a way, is to do what enables us to be brought back to Allah.

Trying to be unique or special while doing this does not make a difference, and also misses the point. The beauty of being a believer and doing good deeds and worshipping Allah is that it is something that is available to everyone. You don’t need a lofty career or four degrees to achieve your purpose. All the extra stuff might come in handy, but it is not the cause nor the justification for your existence. Without proper guidance you might end up worse than how you started, wasting your skills and time on things that don’t really matter. I wasted so much time thinking about who I was going to be that I never realised that there was someone I already was. Someone who was blind to not only what her purpose was, but also what that purpose meant.

Prior to this verse are these verses:

23:113

God will say, ‘What number of years did you tarry in the earth?’

23:114

They will say, ‘We tarried for a day or part of a day, but ask those who keep count.’

I find it very fitting that the same disbelievers who are not aware of their true purpose are also the ones who have the least understanding of time. Perhaps they felt their purpose was pleasure, but it is this vain purpose that has disconnected them from reality. In a similar vein, it is vanity that can cause a person to waste their time chasing a false purpose instead of accepting the true purpose that they –just like every other person – were born with.

However, this is not to say that a person should put no effort into their spiritual and moral development. According to  the Five Volume Commentary by Hazrat Mirza Bashir-ud-Deen Mahmood Ahmad:

‘The reprimand implies the answer that man has been created to serve a great purpose, a noble object. It is to become God’s Vicegerent on earth and to develop and reflect in his person Divine attributes […]

The verse further signifies that man’s life having a great purpose to fulfil will not end with his departure from this world and with the soul’s flight from its physical habitat. The human soul will continue its never-ending journey in a new world, a new form and in a new body.’

To replace my old question: I don’t know what my purpose is, and now I don’t really care. But I think I’m beginning to understand what our purpose is – and that it is something much more worthwhile.