Fatima Barkatulla – Gifts of Islam for Women – Direct Relationship with God and the Meaning of Life

			We'll breeze you around the mod to the sunset in the evening
		

			when I'm drowning in onto water in the deepest, darkest ocean.
		

			So why is it that so many women are choosing Islam? What gifts does Islam give them?
		

			Well,
		

			the message that Islam propagates is the essential message is that we have one God, the Creator, and
that human beings have been put onto this
		

			yearning to connect with that creator, yearning to understand what's the meaning of life? What are
we all here for? What's the point of all this? And I think all human beings at some point,
		

			do come back to that question. Sometimes we suppress that question, because it depresses us, or
because we don't find the answers around us. We suppress it using alcohol, or we suppress it using
drugs, or we suppress it using any kind of escapism, you know that that is available to us or that
our heart inclines to. And ultimately, what that sense of emptiness can lead to, is
		

			worship of our own desires. Now, what does that mean worship of one's own desires, when you're
constantly told, life is about freedom, doing what you want, when you want, forget about discipline,
forget about having laws and rules to live your life by
		

			and forget about God,
		

			what happens is,
		

			human beings tend to become enslaved to their own base desires. That sense of I want this and I want
that, I want to do this, and I want it now. Right? Whether it's sexual desires, whether it's the
desire for material goods, this world can lead a human being astray and make you go mad, if you were
to obey every single desire that you had. And so, the message one of the key messages of Islam is
free yourself from worshipping your desires, free yourself from the worship of creative things, you
know, all this, this glitter and glamour, that the world offers you, the material world, and submit
yourself to the one who made you. That's actually the first gift that gives us a relationship with
		

			our Creator. That relationship that each one of us, is secretly yearning, whether we will admit it
or not, whether we are aware of it or not, there is a certain lack of peace of mind, lack of
tranquility, that the human being feels, when they're not connected with their Creator, because the
Creator who designed this earth, who designed human beings, designed Me and you, has designed us to
have that yearning.
		

			And if it's not satisfied, then there's there's a hole in our lives. So the first gift that Islam
gives to us as women, and this is for men as well, is a direct relationship with God.
		

			I can call him God, whenever I want. I don't need an intermediary, anyone in between, you know, I
don't need a man to communicate for me, or to forgive my sins for me. I can call out to God
directly, and ask him and he hears me wherever I am. He knows what I'm thinking.
		

			It gives me a framework to understand who is God and the nature of God that God is not a man. God is
not male or female. He's above these things. We refer to him as he because that's the most
appropriate thing in the language to refer to refer to him as is considered neutral. And it tells us
how to connect with him, how to worship Him, how do I access this creator of mine, you know, who
created me?
		

			And it does that by way of the message that God sent us. And, you know, we know about the prophets.
Throughout the ages, God sent messengers to human beings, to tell us how to live our lives, to tell
us who he is, whether it was the Prophet Abraham Moses,
		

			Jesus.
		

			And we believe that the Prophet the Prophet Mohammed was the last in that line of messengers that
God sent.
		

			And he came to affirm what the prophets before him said. And he came with some new things that God
wanted human beings to, to know about.
		

			So that's the first gift and the greatest gift. And through that, I feel a sense of tranquility. I
feel a sense of peace. When the difficulties of life that are inevitable hit me.
		

			I know how to handle them, because I've been given a framework with which to look at those
difficulties.
		

			Praise