Hasan Asif

“I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every moment holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action;
and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
and I want my grasp of things to be
true before you. I want to describe myself
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day,
like the face of my mother,
like a ship
that carried me
through the wildest storm of all.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“Allah gives us gifts, but then we often become dependent on those gifts, instead of Him. When He gives us money, we depend on the money—not Him. When He gives us people, we depend on people—not Him. When He gives us status or power, we depend on, and become distracted by these things. When Allah gives us health, we become deceived. We think we will never die.”
― Yasmin Mogahed, Reclaim Your Heart: Personal insights on breaking free from life's shackles

“Our inability to understand God is our understanding of God.” Our inability to comprehend God’s infinite nature does not mean we cannot have a relationship with God; rather, it means our experience of God begins through admitting our ignorance before His all-encompassing knowledge.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam

“The ancient Bedouins would say that just as camel droppings in the desert would tell them that camels passed by, and footsteps in the sand were proof that a creature had walked by, the Earth’s many valleys, mountains, oceans, and constellations point to the existence of a Creator.”
― A. Helwa, Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam