The Light

Among the many Hollywood actors that I enjoy watching, Clint Eastwood happens to be one of them. For he is one of the 'less talk and more actions' type. And I for one do not watch movies that need you to think and wonder. Though he had been guilty of corrupting us with vulgarities like “Mother F*****” on certain occasions when he was in extreme anger, at least he did attempt to portray good mannerism in some of his movies. He did introduced us to 'polite' phrases like “I’ll make it into a suppository” instead of “I’ll shove it into your ar**”, if you could consider that as polite, i.e. And that aspect is the less remembered better side of Dirty Harry.

I don’t intend to discuss the many adventures of Dirty Harry but I suppose some would recall scenes when Harry, in the course of his duties, stepped into strip-tease joints where the dancers, male and female, danced in king-size bird-cages. Los Angeles was famous for this kind of joints. I am relating this from hearsay as I have never been to one just as I have never been to LA either.

Dr. Rosly, a friend, who was a Jema’ah Tabligh member in the States and now turned politician, told me of an interesting story relating to a caged-couple. During his student days in the States, bird-cages were a plenty. And I am not saying that he regularized those joints. But a friend of his did.

This friend, let us call him Ahmad, was a revert to Islam. After having served in Vietnam for a while, he begun to search for religion and discovered Islam, through a chance meeting with a Tablighi. And that brought him to the Jemaah as well. Having become a strong believer, he set to bring the Muslims in his LA neighborhood who had strayed, back to Islam. And his target was a 24-hour bird-cage joint operated by an Arab, whom he found out was a Muslim.

He visited this Arab on various occasions and warned him of the sins of selling liquor and of operating such indecent shows. And because of the regularity of his visits and the arguments, most of the regular visitors to the joint got used to seeing Ahmad and the Arab exchanging heated arguments. Until one day, as they were arguing, the male dancer who had been witnessing them on so many occasions, stepped out of the cage, walked to them (in the same attire as he had been in the cage), and inquired of what the arguments were all about. And as Ahmad was deeply engrossed in the argument with the Arab, he turned to him and snapped, “Look, it’s none of your business. Here’s my calling card and call me later!” Though the Arab joint-owner had been confronted by Ahmad on many occasions, he was plainly uninterested in Ahmad's call.

But the couple was. When they returned home from work that day that couple decided to find out as to what the whole issue was all about. He called Ahmad to inquire of the arguments. And a meeting was set. Ahmad visited them and explained of his cause, of Islam and of why he was trying to bring back the Arab to Islam. And they began to meet several times after, and eventually the couple became deeply interested in Ahmad’s messages and cause. Finally the caged-couple embraced Islam and discontinued their jobs as dancers. But the Arab was still continuing his business, as sinful as ever.

That is how hidayah reaches the hearts of whom Allah SWT have chosen. Crimsonskye and Kenakelayan, in their blogs and comments discussed at length of how the messages of those who accepted Islam in Texas, had touched their hearts.

Hearts became opened not through fantastic discourses on the Quran, but through what might seem as minor issues to most people. Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller for example, studied Islam at length and in depth before becoming a Muslim, but it was the action of a fellahin Egyptian woman and the attitude of a street youth whom he befriended in Aswan, a remote part of Egypt that opened the beauty of Islam to him and moved his heart to Islam. It was not from the heavy philosophical stuff that he had delved in for many years. A Thai-born American doctor, read of the Quranic verses of how tortures in hell would be through the burning of the skin. And that the skin would be replaced every time it became burnt, to enable the continuous repeats of the tortures. And that led him to conduct researches on the nerves-systems in the skin. Through this he discovered the fact that intense pain not only is experienced from burning but that pain is skin-deep. Thus he was led to the vastness of knowledge in Islam. There are many similar stories of how people revert to Islam, through such simple incidents.

The Holy Prophet sallallahu 'alaihi wassalam, said that his duty is to bring the shahadah to the lips of the people, and that Allah subhanahuu wa ta'aala takes care of the affairs of the hearts. Once the heart is touched, the lips become easy. Insha Allah.