Back in my university days abroad, I led a Muslim students’ association from a store we converted into a prayer area. Some of the most helpful brothers who majored in Economics and IT, as well as a postgrad lecturer in Management used to idolise the Mujahideen of Afghanistan...
...The fighters had successfully pushed back the Soviet invasion and for a while had the US on their side, fuelling them with arms just as they did the rebels in Syria. The internal politics of Afghan tribal wars were not known to the brothers. They daydreamed about the glory...
...of being fighters who saved Muslim people from religious annihilation as they saw it. They dreamed such victories could also save Palestinians and others they saw as oppressed against the geopolitical imperialism of both modern capitalism and communism...
...Two of the brothers left a safe Western country to join the battlegrounds. They were naive. It wasn’t what they thought it would be. One brother returned from Afghanistan a psychological mess and later left the practice of Islam altogether. The other headed towards Hezbollah..
...and got locked up and tortured for four months in a prison in Beirut. He returned to a secular life working in a bank and talking to young men devoid of meaning in their life about charting a different course. The lecturer disappeared altogether. No one knows what happened...
...Our journey in life takes us through many trajectories. Sometimes we have illusions & delusions when we are younger that we grow out of, other times life teaches us the hard way. Many opinions we held before have now changed. May Allah grant us the wisdom to keep evolving.
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