Voice of British Muslim Women

Iffat Mirza Rashid, Alton

Without growth or decay we’d have no concept of time. The seasons of the year, for many millennia are a cycle of growth – flowers, vegetation, animal young, and a few months later, we see their decay as the weather cycle turns frostier and the nights get longer.

Most of the time, we wouldn’t think twice about this, it becomes part of the mundane, it’s just the way the world works, and the predictability is almost reassuring. For example, as someone who struggles to deal with the summer weather, the promise of autumn is ever-comforting. But I wonder, if in the anticipation for cooler weather, the crisp chill, and the red and golden trees, I miss the wonders of summer. I realise that I am impatient.

As humans, we delude ourselves into believing that we are as infinite as time – that we have been around as long as time has and will continue to be for as long as time is. And in those interstitial moments, when we are reminded that this is not the case, we are confronted with our own mortality and indeed, the fleetingness of time. Sometimes it’s as insignificant as realising, we’re already more than halfway through the year (“I can’t believe it’s already September!”), and at other times it may be related to particular milestones in our lives or the lives of those around us – for example seeing a friend’s younger sibling after a long time and suddenly realising while we were growing up so were they.

For me, at least, these realisations have never been easy. Like I say, I must confront the fact that I am impatient but equally live in fear of time’s relentless march onward. It’s almost as soon as something begins in my life, I begin to mourn its end. In these moments, I am at a loss. As chapter 103, verses 2-4 of The Holy Qur’an tell us, ‘By the testimony ofTime, Surely, man is in a state of loss, Except those who believe and do good works, and exhort one another to accept truth, and exhort one another to be steadfast.’

It’s not just that time goes on, it’s that it’s irreversible and even it feels like sometimes we’re the only one’s on the march forward. For example, going back to an old town you once lived in and realising nothing has changed except you. The same clock tower has been ringing on the hour, every hour that you’ve not been there for years. Perhaps your favourite ice cream shop is still there. And sometimes, it’ll be the smallest things that’ll make you realise that time moved on for everyone. Perhaps the ice cream shop no longer does your favourite flavour.

But it is comforting that we are told how to make it through this ‘loss’. By becoming ‘those who believe and do good works, and exhort one another to accept truth, and exhort one another to be steadfast’ we can brave the reality of time’s relentlessness. In the Five Volume Commentary of the Holy Qur’an, His Holiness Mirza Bashir-ud-Deen Mahmood Ahmad (May Allah be pleased with him) explains:

“It is history’s infallible testimony that those individuals or nations who do not make full use of their God-given powers and faculties and of the opportunities that come to them in this life, and who defy the eternal natural laws which determine the destiny of man inevitably come to grief. It is such individuals and nations who are the losers in the race against time […] Man cannot escape “loss” which is the purpose or object of his life without possessing true and real faith in Divinely-revealed truths and adjusting his conduct in harmony with them.”

Indeed, one of these Divinely-revealed truths that we must adjust our own conduct with, is that while we are mortal, God, the Creator, is Eternal. In remembering this, we are mindful to whom we should turn to in moments of hurt and in moments of joy, in moments of agitation and moments of calm, and in moments of excitement for the future and nostalgia for the past. It is only then that we can reckon with such a loss.