This is going to be an unusual post.
Because I do not know what I am going to say until I type it.
Why?
Because I am trying to articulate something that I have never read.
I cannot think of a book that already says what I think I want to say.
It is right at the precipice of my consciousness and I need to type in order to discover what it is.
In June, we went to Finland for a week.
Before we went, I read a whole history of Finland. I watched dozens of YouTube videos and read many news articles. I roamed over Google Maps imagery of Finland.
While we were there, I tried to absorb every moment of it, paying attention to every detail I could.
Why?
Because I wanted to witness Allah’s actions (afʿāl) in the world.
You see, I am not really a player in Finnish history. Generations upon generations of Finns have lived and died and fought and struggled to bring about what I witnessed firsthand in June 2023. I wasn’t there to be part of that history. Before that, Allah covered the landmass of Finland with the massive glaciers of the last Ice Age. I wasn’t there either. Whatever my agency is in the world, it literally has nothing to do with Finland. No historian is going to write the history of Finland 100 years from now and have a chapter on the week that David Coolidge spent in Helsinki and how it changed the course of Finnish history. I am, to make a long story short, completely irrelevant to Finland. And yet, Finland is just as much a part of Allah’s creation as I am, and just as important, I assume.
So by being in Finland, I could tease out some of the differences between my experience of the world (as a subjective individual) and the world as such. And from that, I could reason more clearly about what truly matters in my life from Allah’s perspective.
For example, our kids came too. While I had no major social obligations to any Finn, I was responsible daily for the well-being of our children. In an entire nation of 5.5 million human souls, there were 2 that I really needed to focus on. As is reported from the Messenger of God صلى الله عليه و آله و سلم: “the best of you are those who are best to their families.” You can travel around the world, but Allah will still inquire as to how you dealt with all your relations.
Another example is prayer. For a man, no matter where they are in the world, they are never exempted from al-ṣalāh. So I had to make fajr, dhuhr, ʿaṣr, maghrib and ʿishāʾ every day, no matter where we were. Thus, I needed to know the qibla and have ṭahārah at the proper times.
But it is more than that. Now, Finland feels like a long dream. What I experienced in each moment is gone and will never come back. Only some photos remain, some internet data that says my IP address was connecting through Finland, and whatever I can recall in my memory from those moments. But each moment, and its value with Allah, is known by Allah. If Allah wants to remind me of any moment on the Last Day, that is Allah’s right. All I really carry forward with me is my intention (niyya) from those moments.
For example, one might say that my prayers while I was in Finland were expressions of my faith. But perhaps in some of my prayers I was totally distracted. Allah could remind me of that on the Last Day, and say that even though my body was moving in obedience to the teachings of Allah and the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه و آله و سلم, in reality my intention (and attention) was only really there at the beginning of the prayer. Or perhaps I had some hidden motive to pray that was not purely for Allah. Only Allah knows. Even though I know I prayed all my farḍ/wājib prayers there, I cannot remember the details of them. What was I thinking in the 2nd rakʿah of maghrib on Thursday? I have no idea, but Allah knows.
Which reminds me of a cd I used to listen to regularly of a Sufi shaykh who said that the only thing that we do that remains for eternity is our intentions. The prayers I made with my body in Finland are gone. There is no video of them. There are no pictures of my body performing them. What remains is whatever of my intention was in doing them – from before I started each prayer until after I finished it – that was pleasing to Allah. And only Allah knows that. May Allah be gentle with me, yā Laṭīf!
Sometimes we become overcome with delusions of our own agency in the world. We think we can really change our country, for example. But did we ever realize that the United States of America that we inherited from those who are all dead now is exactly the product of all their struggles? Whatever is good and bad in our country are the results of hundreds of millions of struggling, choosing, striving, and planning bodies driven by heart-minds whose intentions are known only to Allah. How will God judge Abraham Lincoln, some unknown rebel soldier, and some unknown slave? Only Allah knows, but each matters to Allah because each was created by Allah. And each had a tiny effect on our country that makes it what it is today. And so will it be when people of the future look back on 2023.
The USA is only one small chunk of the Earth, and its population is approximately 3.75% of the total human population. I am completely irrelevant to Finland, and only slightly less so for the USA.
But I was created by Allah, and if you are reading this then you too were created by Allah.
And we are on the road to our destinies, and the possibility of, in Qur’anic language, “a garden as vast as the heavens and the Earth.”
What a truly wondrous thing.
One day this whole life will feel like a dream, or as the Qur’an states, “like an evening or a morning.”
I hope to see you there.
May Allah be gentle with us, yā Laṭīf!
The Cathedral of Helsinki
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