Editorial
Reasserting faith on the banks of a river
The Bishwa Ijtema is a renewal of core values
The end of the first phase of the Bishwa Ijtema was marked on the banks of the river Turag in Tongi yesterday with tens of thousands participating in the Akheri Munajat. The prayers, organized annually, were one more indication of the myriad ways in which people across the spectrum are drawn to matters of faith. There is, always, something that transcends the worldly and attempts, as it were, a reaching out toward the higher perches of experience which only belief in the Almighty can explain. The Bishwa Ijtema, a yearly gathering which brings together men and women in an exploration of the religious spirit, indeed in a search for spiritual sustenance, is one of those moments which bring the one who remembers the Creator of the Worlds in deep communion with matters beyond the observed.
Every experience of faith is a substantive affair. On the banks of the Turag yesterday, the collective submission of the human will to the grandeur of Allah and the beauty of the universe came in linkage with an awareness of the need to live a life of purity untouched by the banality of the temporal. In a bigger sense, the sojourn of the faithful in Tongi, capped by the Akheri Munajat, was but one more assertion of the thought that much as individuals pursue life along the course determined by their needs and their inclinations, at the end of the day it is always a recalling of the end of life, of what lies beyond the world we inhabit, that takes hold of the soul. Therein lies the essential beauty of Islam as a faith. It does not abjure the worldly. Neither does it deny the metaphysical. What it does is remind people that as much as this world is a necessity and a truth we cannot shake off, it is a world which ought to prepare us for the end. And that preparation comes fundamentally through a reshaping of our perspectives on life in terms of our need to go for a bigger calling. And that is unquestioned adherence to faith.
Let a renewed belief in life's core values emanate from the Bishwa Ijtema. Love of country, an insistence on a practice of good and a common faith in our ability to belong with one another is a lesson we derive from the Akheri Munajat. It is not a coincidence that faith is resuscitated on the banks of a river.
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