You don’t want to act like a ‘verbal’ ninja. Your heart, however, kept pounding hard; you can feel the blood-rush. Before you explode, better kick the ‘fella’ responsible for the whole mess (imaginary). Gosh!! Just another day of looking at the same rubbish- and yes, I mean real dirty rubbish.

Cleanliness is much more than outward appearance. It is an all-embracing ethic of sound living. It is also a state of mind and heart that reflects our morals and worship.

Islam places great emphasis on cleanliness, in both its physical and spiritual aspects. On the physical side, Islam requires the Muslim to clean his body, his clothes, his house, and the whole community, and he is rewarded by Allah for doing so. While people generally consider cleanliness a desirable attribute, Islam insists on it, making it an indispensable fundamental of the faith. A muslim is required to be pure morally and spiritually as well as physically. Through the Qur’an and Sunnah Islam requires the sincere believer to sanitize and purify his entire way of life. In the Qur’an, Allah commends those who are accustomed to cleanliness:

“Allah loves those who turn to Him constantly and He loves those who keep themselves pure and clean.” (2: 222)

In view of the significance of cleanliness in Islam, Muslims should have the highest standard of cleanliness and personal hygiene of all the people in the world. But, it is highly regrettable that the heap of garbage has become an identity of Muslim homes and localities. The Muslim majority areas are marked with unhygienic and unhealthy conditions.

Just look at your own home environment- the bed you sleep in, the kitchen you cooked in, the toilet that you used everyday. If you always have these habits of leaving dirty plates, bowls, pots and everything else around the kitchen area, thinking that ‘oh…. I just gonna leave this here for a while, I’ll come back to this soon’- well, you better reflect your eeman. Because chances are, that dirty plates won’t be clean until the next time you need to use it, which can sometimes be a while. Same goes when you saw that dirty rubbish in the full bin, and have yet to wait for other peoples to throw them outside- although you acknowledged the fact that responsibilities for house chores are to be shared. Worse than that, you even want to justify yourself by giving some OLD LAME excuses, like ‘oh.. I was busy’, ‘sorry, wouldn’t happen again’- yet it did, etc.

What a waste!! If a non-muslim friend make a sudden appearance to your home, he/she might think ‘wow.. this ‘fella’ is messy..’.. and unconsciously, the subject of religion differences between you and him/her became attached with cleanliness. Thus, there you go.. you have just contributed a fitna to Islam. And yet, some of you are leaders.

Remember, that human actions belie partly within our unconscious bound- that is just how we operate in this world. Well, you may recite Quran two or three times a day, you may perform sunnah prayers whenever you can, but if the way you live your life, physically, does not reflect a true Muslim, then I guess you are not yet a TRUE Muslim. Just like Mr. Faimee Erwan wrote in his great article- ‘Blind!’- the first thing he wrote was ‘as of today, let’s talk about us Muslims and the things that we seem to be taking for granted’. I could not agree more.

I am only sincere, purely for Allah’s sake.

Izaida Ibrahim

MASC (Ad. P.Th.), CCC Registered Counsellors (UK)

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