Youth and the Window of Opportunity

Being only fourteen, or eighteen, or nineteen, is no excuse for delay, nor is any wish to "enjoy life a little" first. Usāmah ibn Zayd (may Allah be pleased with him) was only nineteen when the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) placed him in command of the entire army of Islam during his own lifetime — an army in which Khālid ibn al-Walīd and ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them) served as ordinary soldiers under him, men whose feet many could not hope to match. Muḥammad al-Fātiḥ, after whom the mosque built in his honour is named, brought down the Roman domain at the age of twenty-one: a man who knew more than a dozen languages and many sciences besides, yet who remained, at that age, a scholar, ʿālim, ʿārif billāh, with genuine khashyatullāh, fear of Allah, in his heart. Deen is not reserved for old age; it belongs to the young as fully as to anyone, whatever the common assumption to the contrary.

A genuine resolution is worth making, and worth returning to at the start of every year in the way many people already make resolutions for other things: an intention to draw closer to one's Lord, Rabb al-ʿālamīn, to give up bad habits, to reform one's character, akhlāq, to honour one's parents and one's religion, to read the Book of Allah (swt), to come to know His message, and never again to miss a single prayer promised to Him. Whoever's resolutions contain none of this stands, so to speak, on the wrong planet altogether — the planet of Shayṭān rather than of Allah (swt) — ignoring Him, though He never in turn ignores anyone. What is required is a decision about who and what one actually is. Every Muslim has already been given a head start, a kick-start: born into a Muslim family, not by any choice of their own — Allah (swt) chose that family, chose that environment — already, in that sense, ahead, and given, very often, a place at a good school — Wesley Grammar College, say — and a promising course of study besides, whether in medicine or elsewhere. The task that remains is to know the value of what has already been given and to work at it. The challenges facing young people today are real and considerable, and ought to be acknowledged as such rather than dismissed. But this deen is beautiful, and the path itself is theirs; time belongs to them, and a choice has to be made with it. May Allah (swt) wake His servants from this ghaflah, this heedlessness.