Facing the book!

On Wednesday, at the end of our Postcolonial Studies class, our teacher, Mr Tayyab Zaidi, asked all of us as to how exactly we "faced the book." A unique way of putting it, indeed. The question was followed by a brief discussion as to what did we do in response to the entire facebook episode. The teacher then remained quiet for sometime while we - the students - indulged in a brief conversation about various issues such as the advantage or uselessness of forwarding text messages about the issue etc. The discussion ended when I rephrased a statement given by a religious scholar when the Danish cartoons were published. I won't repeat what I said, but will copy here what he actually said before I write down the response of my teacher. So here goes,

Our beloved shaykh (DB) mentioned about 5 years ago when the Denmark issue occurred, “When the world wants to boycott this country or these products for their wrongs, then that is in its own place.  However, if you really want to make a mark, if you really want to send out a message to people, then abandon sin!  More so, follow the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (Sallallahu ‘Alayhi Wa Sallam) as much as possible. These evil people are trying to get us to be negligent of Allah and His Messenger (Sallallahu ‘Alayhi Wa Sallam).  They want to see us spend our time in marches and whatnot.  The thing that will really burn  baatil (falsehood) is looking like Rasulullah (Sallallahu ‘Alayhi Wa Sallam), acting like him, talking like him. (SOURCE)

In short, the real solution has to be a practical one - emulating the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wassallam. The point made by the teacher at the end of the discussion was extremely poignant. He said he often imagines that on the Day of Judgement if all of us were standing in a queue at the haudh-e kauthar and if Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi wassallam were to pass us by, he might not ask us as to what we did about the filthy cartoons etc. but what we did about following his sunnah. He further said that we make such a hue and cry over the cartoons etc. and there is no doubt that these are despicable acts but what about our own acts? Was it not haraam to disobey Allah and His Prophet sallallahu alaihi wassallam? And weren't we guilty of committing this haraam act of disobedience almost everyday? Did we ever try reviewing and hence reforming our lives in the light of this? How many of Allah's orders we disregard everyday? How many sunnah acts did we even try to revive in our lives? 

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And I wonder, have we ever lamented this loss in which we are spending our lives?