{"author":"Kristiane Backer","author_id":"Kristiane+Backer","total_quotes":30,"quotes":[{"text":"Religion is also a process of healing, I discovered – a healing of the soul. Even our language points to this relation. The words ‘holy’, ‘wholesome’ and ‘healing’ all have the same root. (In German, this is even more striking: heilig, heil and heilen.) Muslims believe that all humans are born in a state of purity, our fitra, and it is only in the course of our lives that we tarnish our soul through bad habits and wrong behaviour. Through spiritual practices such as prayer, recitation of Quran and dhikr we can cleanse these acquired ‘black spots’ in our soul and return towards our original primordial nature. More so, dhikr is said to enliven the heart.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["healing","islam","soul","spiritual","spirituality"],"id":27072,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"Boys will always be boys,’ he said. ‘The relationship obviously wasn’t meant to be.’ He told me I should trust that the break-up was for the best, even if I couldn’t see that yet. As with every form of suffering, heartache brings with it catharsis, and turns us into better human beings. ‘It is like an iron in the furnace that is beaten into shape,’ he said. These bad experiences were ultimately a good sign because God tests the ones He loves. That might be why He has so few friends,’ he added dryly. His words cheered me up a bit.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["boy","break-up","god","islam","love","man","relationship"],"id":27989,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"The discipline gave me a sense of achievement. Not least, fasting is a test of willpower and, whenever I felt my willpower weakening, I would tell myself that I could eat as much as I wanted after sunset. But then the strange thing was that after fasting all day long, I tended to feel full with just a small snack.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["achivement","discipline","islam","self","self-control"],"id":38823,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"You’ve been tested.’ He advised me to try and ‘forgive and pardon, and this way seek to become beloved by God’ without my forgiveness being tied to the one who wronged me. ‘This is the Divine remedy,’ he emphasised, ‘remind your ego when it resists. Don’t you love for God to forgive you on the day, too?’ Reflecting on what the Shaykh said, his advice undid a knot in my heart and I resolved to work on my forgiveness purely for the sake of God. The Shaykh also recommended: ‘Be careful about what you pray for in the future.’ He promised to pray for me personally, asking God to send me a Muslim husband who would value and cherish me for who I am. Insha’ Allah!","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["forgiveness","islam","love","pray","religion","test"],"id":52516,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"According to Islam, whenever we are struck by illness or misfortune or someone hurts us, there is a higher purpose behind it, which we may not understand at the time,’ one of them said to me. ‘That’s where trust comes in. Through suffering, God helps us to better ourselves and make good our mistakes. It is a form of purification and also God’s way of testing the strength of our faith and the goodness of our character.’ Another lady suggested I look on the bright side.‘Suffering draws us closer to God and that is our aim in life,’ she said. Then she quoted Rumi who had said, ‘It is pain that draws man to his Lord, because when he is well, he doesn’t remember the Lord.’ I tried to look at the positive and believe that there was a higher, spiritual perspective on what I had just been through, and all the advice I was given helped me a lot. But it took quite a while for my heart to catch up with my mind.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["inspirational","islam","life","misfortune","purpose","spiritual","struggle"],"id":88722,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"It takes time,patience and endurance to become a devout Muslim. No one, not even God, expects anyone to become an angel overnight. That’s fortunate, I thought, because I sensed that the road ahead might be a long one.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["angel","endurance","good","islam","muslim","patience"],"id":101262,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"The words of the Quran all seemed strangely familiar yet so unlike anything I had ever read before,’ he told us. He embraced Islam in 1977, and changed his name to Yusuf, the Arabic for Joseph. ‘I identified with the story of Joseph in the Quran,’ he said. ‘His brothers sold him like goods in the market place.’ Yusuf felt the music business had treated him not like an artist but as a commodity.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["artist","islam","quran"],"id":101507,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"Then Gai told me about the famous cup of the heart, which I should now begin to empty. The Sufis compare our spiritual heart, the seat of God within us, with a cup into which the love of God flows. This cup, however, needs to be emptied before it can be filled with Divine love. This emptying is a long process that requires courage, strength of character, determination, and, above all, sincerity. It is a process of reining in and eventually extinguishing the ego, of letting go of material needs, bad and unhealthy habits and emotional attachments in order to make room for God. Sufis often likened it to the process of dying and being born again. ‘Die before you die’ is a famous Sufi saying. This was the essence of every spiritual path, Gai told me.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["allah","god","heart","islam","love","spiritual","sufi"],"id":110924,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"When you see that earthly powers are not listening to you, that you are under siege in this city for four years and shot at without the international community doing anything to help, what should you do? Die?’ he asked me in the course of our conversation. ‘No, you pray to Heaven for help.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["hope","pray","spiritual","struggle"],"id":126497,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"},{"text":"During this time I came to understand a lot about myself, human beings, faith and the meaning of marriage and friendship. The world is not black and white, nothing is what it seems, and we are not cartoon characters that can be divided into goodies and baddies, but complex and multi-faceted beings with many weaknesses. Human beings will always disappoint. But God is there. He sometimes speaks through others and we would be wise to listen to those we trust and to our own inner voice, God’s voice. No matter how difficult or painful life sometimes becomes, we must never lose faith.We may not always find justice in this world, but compassion and forgiveness are such important qualities. They help us to dissolve so much of the negativity that we hold. Practising them mostly benefits ourselves.","author":"Kristiane Backer","tags":["faith","friendship","islam","marriage","meaning-of-life","religion"],"id":137772,"author_id":"Kristiane+Backer"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":30,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}