desolation culminating in an empty life of the mind, the vacant life of the body is all we can aspire to.

But we can understand the entirely human counterpoint to this stunning act of creation from which all life began, we can engage the light impressed on our forehead and the wisdom endowed in our consciousness to illuminate the life we live and the light we spread. By selecting the path of perfectability, an Islamic concept recognizing the origin and destiny of what it means to be human, we abandon the existential dread hovering over a life of the senses and the mind, a fear grounded in uncertainty and ignorance which seem poised to engulf not only individuals but whole societies as well. There is a terrible darkness brooding over our lives today intimately associated with the deliberate avoidance of light, there is an inability to come to grips with the causes of sorrow and the consequent pointlessness so many of us experience. Once we turn our face to God, to Allah, sorrow begins to dissolve, understanding fills the receptive heart as meaning occupies whole deserts of emptiness.

What emerges from the ashes of emptiness, the mythical bird of regeneration and rebirth, is the need to ascend, to rise up,

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