What we can achieve if we work together

I listened intently as my good friend and fellow workshop facilitator spoke today. She had a lot of valuable information to share as always, but one thing stuck with me. It was the state of disunity, individualism and selfishness in which we live. She used Somali immigrants to South Africa as an example and told us that the reason the Somali community is thriving here is because they work together, because of their unity. For example she said, when one person or family needs a house then the whole community puts together and helps that person to buy a house and they do such things for each other all the time.

It’s funny, last night my family and I were having a similar conversation. My mother told us about this group of brothers who had a successful business because they worked so well together, and we could identify many more similar situations. Unity is strength- This is an old clichéd phrase, but some things can never be emphasized too much!

I feel saddened that this unity isn’t the norm. I look around and see families struggling because they cannot afford to take out a bank load and get a house (as is the norm for most people). Then they have to spend preposterous amounts of rent money, and sometimes the landlords don’t even need the money they are getting. Then there are those who can’t even afford to make that rent, and they get kicked out with nowhere to go or get taken to court because they are in breach of payment. The house thing is just one example, I can find so many, and I’m sure you can too.

I really, really hate this system of individualism that’s so prominent today. It’s a selfish system and it makes people easily ignore the difficulties of others. Imagine what we could achieve if we all worked together. Can you just imagine how much better our societies and or entire world would be if people stopped only focusing on themselves and their immediate families and started worrying about everyone.

And once again we see the beautiful teachings of our Beloved Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) shining through. It is related in a hadeeth something to the effect that the true believer should want for his brother what he wants for himself. Surely if we all practised on this then our societies would be just like that of the Somali immigrants I mentioned. Surely then no one would be suffering because a true spirit of sharing would exist.

If only we could all go back to the beautiful teachings of Islam, if only we could shift out of our comfort zones and stop the narcissism which seems to be so in fashion these days. If only we could get together, work hard for the good of each other and make sure that everyone in society was taken care of. If only we stopped thinking of ourselves, raising our own status, getting better possessions for ourselves, if we only we understood that unity truly is strength!

May Almighty Allah (Exalted is He) be our guide and help us to see the truth!