Eat Pure; Live Pure

Assalamu Alaikum Dear Reader,

tl;dr we should pay attention to what we consume from our business transactions and what we actually eat.

Are we honest when we buy & sell? Are we using riba (interest) in our dealings? Are we hiding defects of something we sell? Do we sell alcohol, pork or lottery tickets? Are we cutting corners in our services? Is the meat we eat questionable in how it's slaughtered? Many questions that can be left to the future, but in this one I wanted to tell you a story about the inspiration of this newsletter and of Musawwif.

This first class I had with one of my dearest teachers focused on the question: how does one attain proximity to Allah? What I took from that lesson was the source of inspiration for starting this newsletter. Unlike many explorations of the topic which in my experience all default to ~vibes~ or generic messaging, he gave us concrete steps to this goal, which are summarized by the Ayah:

ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَكُونُوا۟ مَعَ ٱلصَّـٰدِقِينَ

"Fear Allah and be with the voraciously truthful."

The second part of the ayah has to do with companionship, and the well-known narration of the Messenger ﷺ,

الرجل على دين خليله، فلينظر أحدكم من يخالل‏

A man is on the religion of his friend, so discern whoemever you take as a friend.

I'm sure most of us are familiar with the implications of this narration so I won't spend more time on this.

The first part of the ayah, however, is more subtle. I heard a family friend ask the question, "Can you increase in taqwa?" and though the answer is a definitive yes, the how isn't as obvious. Increasing in taqwa is very much possible and not something exclusive to people born in the right family, or in the right environments, or some stroke of luck - it's a path available to anyone willing to try. Our teacher explained for us the aphorism:

اتَّقِ ٱللهَ فِي ٱلْفَاحِشَةِ جُمْلَةً وَّ تَفْصِيْلًا

“Be wholly and particularly conscious of Allah regarding indecency.”

Commonly translated as "God-weariness" or "God-consciousness" with relation to fearing God, practically it is that God finds you where He commands you to be and you’re not where He commands you not to be. The foundation for taqwa is learning what these commands and prohibitions are. Something much easier to digest (pun-intended) is focusing on what we consume.

Whoever eats pure will obey Allah whether he wants to or not. Whoever eats impure will disobey Allah whether he wants to or not.

Eating pure or impure touches two things: our business dealings, and the actual food we consume. The inspiration for this newsletter, and this initiative came about from this principle and is foundational for many of the issues we face in ourselves, our homes, relationships, families, and more - the types of problems where we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into trouble rather than the types that earn us proximity to Allah.

As I don't want to lengthen this letter for longer than my own attention-span, I will leave you, dear reader, with just one thing to takeaway. Avoid Riba. Avoid selling alcohol, pork, lottery tickets. Avoid lying about merchandise. Hopefully you aren't involved with these directly, but if you know someone who is, pray for them first, then (shamelessly) plug this newsletter to them so we can work on something together. We've been bogged down by the institutions around us that are unified in destroying us. Sure, unity is an easy answer to give, but how am I supposed to trust the brother next to me when "the uncle with a long beard, praying first row at Fajr who steals money from Muslims" has become an archetype?

Allah bless you, and help us all.
With Peace,

Junaid Siddiqui

P.S.

Feel free to reply for comments, feedback, concerns etc. Would love to hear back from you and have some fruitful dialogue insha Allah.