2.9 KiB
Closing
O my brother.
So we have reached the end of the journey. From the dark night in the valley of Mecca, we walked the trail of an old man who carried the fire of a hanif in his breast. We saw him bow his head before books his people did not know. We heard him say with a tremor, “This is the Namus sent down to Musa.” We witnessed his tears at the end of his years, then we debated in the councils of our hearts: was he the first believer? Yet in the end, all debate faded, as the lamp faded in his silent house. What remains is one name inscribed on the lauh: Waraqah bin Naufal, a reader of books who knew heaven before heaven spoke to the world.
Let this story not be merely one you read while fanning yourself, then forget as you turn the next page. No. Let it become a pen that writes something in your heart. Be like Waraqah: honest in seeking, steadfast in waiting, firm in acknowledging, and sincere in departing. For this world is full of those skilled in speech, but empty of those skilled in reading the signs of God. This world is crowded with those who chase rank, but deserted by those who chase truth into dark corners. And when you feel alone, when you feel strange amid a wrong crowd, when your tongue falters to speak truth, remember that once there was a blind old man who alone dared to tell the prophet just come down from the mountain, “I will stand behind you, though my people expel me.” If he could, why can you not?
Allahumma, O Allah who hears the whisper of hearts. You know this servant is not Buya Hamka, but only a pen trying to follow his footsteps. You know this book is full of flaws, of awkward words, of images that may miss their mark. But I beg You, accept its intention. Bestow on Waraqah bin Naufal Your overflowing mercy. Place him with the prophets he read about in quiet nights. And if any reader is moved by this story, make that stirring a seed of faith that grows until the day he meets You. O Allah, make us a community that does not merely read history, but writes history of goodness with our own hands. Make us people who know Your Namus not only from stories, but from the light that still descends into our breasts at every prostration. Amin, O Lord of the Worlds.
O my brother, is not history a mirror? In it you see faces that have gone, so you may correct your own face before you go. Let us meet again, whether in another book, or in a corner of life we both walk, or — God willing — on a day without shadow, beside the pool of the prophets, where we can ask Waraqah directly, “What did you feel when you first saw the Prophet’s face?” And he will smile, as he smiled on his deathbed then, and say, “Feel it yourself. For that light cannot be told with the tongue. It can only be felt with a heart that has waited.”
That is all from this servant. Maa as-salamah.
The Author
Under the same sky, from Adam until today