The End of the Beginning...

I view my life, in current terms, as consisting of three distinct phases. The initial phase is ‏جَاهِلِيَّة (jahiliyyah; pre-Islamic ignorance), which spanned the majority of my life as of writing, beginning at birth and ending in my nineteenth year and second month. In this phase, during which I was raised by my Christian family members, I struggled to come to terms with myself, the world I lived in, and most of all repeatedly failed in finding a pure and wholly good system that I could follow to live a ‘good’ life.

The second phase is هُدًى (hudan; guidance to Islam). I was guided to Islam after looking at various ideologies and beliefs, eventually accepting it as the truth. Despite following the general guidance of Islam, I was an awful slave of Allah and regularly strayed from the religion in various aspects.

Ultimately, my many errors, misconceptions and acts of disobedience led to me meeting an individual who Allah used as a means to bring me back to the truth. Overnight I abandoned some degenerate acts I had become dependent on and began seeking knowledge properly for the sake of Allah, The Most High.

Now, in my twenty-third year and eighth month, quite some time after this walking upon the path of knowledge - albeit stumbling and taking time to resume my journey here and there - I have taken the conscious decision to devote myself to Allah properly and with conviction, with no excuses permitting me to leave this path. This is the current phase of my life, as of yet untitled. I hope that this phase will last until my death, unless one superior to it arrives before then.

I intend to one day go into detail on each of these phases, however my intention in mentioning them here is to highlight a new¹ mindset which I have been developing. I believe - and research seems to support - that taking on a new persona mentally will lead me to greater physical and spiritual change. Instead of simply being the revert who nervously bumbles his way through life, I am the ‘seeker of knowledge’ who has set out on an arduous quest to enjoy every drop of علم (‘ilm, religious knowledge) he can get his hands on, in order to break it down and share its beauty and tranquility with others. The earlier phases of my life were bringing me to this point, one day slowly coming after another with a wave of knowledge gradually approaching me to dispel my jahiliyyah.

Unfortunately, I am a very lazy person. You may think it’s damaging to my new persona for me to reinforce this through writing it, and maybe that is the case, but I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing. I have a simple routine; three minimal workout sessions per week, one minimal session of reading per day, and so on for my other interests and goals. My aim with this blog is to write at least a word per day. Even if it’s just one singular word adding on to an existing one, slowly forming the next post, that fulfills the minimum requirement.

Due to this goal, you are likely to notice that some or even most of my posts will have little reference markers like the one you saw earlier, and the one you’re about to see. These allow me to chronicle when I wrote each piece. Setting this site up took some time, especially since my life demanded quite a bit of me. Now, however, I fully intend to see this through, as I view it as an innate part of the new persona. The seeker of knowledge is one who writes greatly; not only taking notes on whatever drops of علم they can find, but also reflecting upon what they have heard or learned, and their own lives, journeys and aspirations.²

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته