APM: The Great Pivot, Gratitude Deluxe, and Cape Town’s Apartheid Wall

Allah

THE GREAT PIVOT

One of the minor portents of the end of time is the ubiquity of ignorance. And with its proliferation, the age will inevitably suffer a deficit in character.

Ignorance is a double-edged sword when character is at a low. Not only does ignorance hamstring people’s thoughts, behaviour, and actions, but it also allows the unscrupulous to exploit them.

Mercifully, minor portents, just like minor penalties, are intended to benefit. God reminds us: “We shall certainly make them taste a nearer torment (in this life) before the greater torment, so that perhaps they may return (to the right path)” [32:21].

However, when we fail to heed life’s lessons and the minor becomes stacked, and its effects become too great, it leads to a tipping point. The minor now enters the realm of the major.

We call this the compounding effect, and it’s presently working in everyone’s life. Depending on what we are magnifying and multiplying, compounding can either be a boon or a bane. In this case, it is the latter.

Worse still is jahlu Allah, ignorance of God. When this state compounds, we are prone to lose our souls.

But while we are not in the throes of death, or the Hour is still not yet born, there is still hope. Amendment is still available if we pivot from stubbornness to alacrity, from ignorance to knowledge acquisition, from missteps to sounder ones, from self-centrism to God-centrism.

And if we do, we would not have moved from ignorance to knowledge, but from ignorance to wisdom.

The Prophet (s)

GRATITUDE DELUXE

The best thanks a servant of Allah can give is not vocally, but through action. And the best action is to resign your will completely to His (al-Quran).

Hence, the Prophet (s) lived the highest gratitude by becoming the living, breathing, embodiment of the Quran.

Cape Town’s Apartheid Wall

Spatial apartheid is not a racist relic, but a reality that still affects most non-whites living in Cape Town today. The City of Cape Town’s decision to build a separation wall along the N2 further entrench this injustice and speaks to the moral degeneracy of our ruling class.

Everyone in Cape Town deserves to live with dignity. Especially the previously disenfranchised who have been victims of continued spatial and economic apartheid, which is the real genesis of crime in this city.

A wall is not the solution. You cannot fix a wrong with another wrong. A separation wall will only further stigmatise and alienate the marginalised.

By building a wall, the city is intimating that these communities must be separate from the rest. The response to such otherisation will be more crime and desperation.

With the wealth gap ever increasing, Cape Town is a powder keg waiting to be ignited. And the wall might be the flint that will light the fuse to an irreversible catastrophe.

Have your say about the R115 million concrete barrier being built next year on the N2 by clicking the link below:

N2 Apartheid Wall

Until next week, InshaAllah

Zaahied Sallie

Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme

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