Washington Function Commemorates Spiritual Elders

Washington, DC: Mowahid Hussain Shah, special assistant to the Punjab Chief Minister, stressed the need for Muslims to hold fast to the rope of hope. “This we can do by looking back at the rich and inspirational Muslim heritage, and by emulating the legacy of the dervish who exemplified simple living and lofty thinking,” he added.
He said this while speaking at a well-attended memorial function held in the Washington area to commemorate spiritual elders, which was hosted by Faqir Naqvi, a Washington-based entrepreneur.
Despite sizeable presence in the United States, he said Muslims do not have adequate presence in the thinking and opinion-making professions of media, academia, and law. Mowahid lamented, “Affluence has not amounted to influence.”
Seeking revenge and pursuing riches has been the bane of Muslim society, and this is precisely what the dervish shunned, he stated. In this context, he named saints and sages like Nizamuddin Aulia, Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti, Farid Ganj Shakr, Data Sahib, and Bulleh Shah, who dominated their eras but whose wealthy contemporaries no one remembers.
“They well understood that worldly power and presence is temporary.”
Muslims, he said, “are fortunate to have a classic example in Hazrat Imam Hussain (AS) as an inspirational role model of submission before the Almighty and defiance against injustice and tyranny, which is the core Islamic message.”
He said, “Hazrat Imam Hussain (AS) considered right is might, and not might is right, and, he paid the supreme sacrifice to ensure that Islam remains immortal.” This message lives on as, even today “Muslim land may have been occupied in Kashmir and Palestine but Muslim people have not been conquered,” Mowahid concluded.

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