Pen It Down

Not many of us enjoy writing as much as we enjoy reading. Some said they just do not have the ideas while others confess they just do not know how to write! Well of course if we want to compare our writings to those who are experts we can straightforwardly say we do not know how to write (like them) or we cannot write (like them). But this has nothing to do with comparing our writing to anyone’s but just to write.
No matter how good or bad we are as a writer, looking at the increasing crave for justified reading materials nowadays amongst the society, the call to write is outreaching to each and everyone especially us who has devoted our life (hopefully) in the cause of da’wah.
One of the training that we received in our movement is to read and we read a lot! We read many books. Some of them are discussed in our weekly usrah or reviewed by our friends. What happens to those books that are not discussed or reviewed? What about different books that we read from others? Much of the contents of the many good books are sooner or later forgotten because we do not keep a good record of it. This is a good point to start writing, to record. You can save a lot of your time and others’ as well if you keep a good record of the books you have read. It can be a simple record consisting of the title, author, publisher and essential content of the book or quotes from the book if you like that inspires you or change you in anyway. It doesn’t need to be written in a form of an article, you can simply make it in a point form. And please have a special file or hard cover book for this purpose or you will lose your momentum to record when you keep losing them.
If you want to elongate your record and may be just to warm up your writing skill, you can start commenting on the book. Write in article form on how a book affects you and to what extent does it do so? Perhaps you will relate this to the current reality of your life if possible and through that you can record your thoughts and feelings about certain issues.
Keep all your writings in an organized file. Get back to it time after time and you will learn about yourself. When you might ‘sound’ aggressive, emotional and rhetorical at the age of 17 to 20 you may be more rational and support your arguments with better and reliable facts in your 21-25 years old writings. May be you will have more courage to offer solution to bigger issues when you are in your late twenties or early thirties. Silently these writings will serve as your self-retrospection tool. From these writings alone you can understand how you have changed over years and have your changes taken a positive turns, negative turns or have you been on a roller coaster?
Do not worry about getting your writings published. First get some friends to read them and may be you can just share them with your usrah-mates. Have them comment on your writings and don’t feel unmotivated should their comment be a little too hard. Take it positively that they are helping you to improve and they actually expect you to write better. If the comments are overwhelming perhaps you should think of sending them to magazines, newspapers or publishers. If you are fortunate and get published your writings will serve as one of your source of income.
Looking beyond monetary benefits, once you are published and known to the society, it will help a lot in conveying to others about Islam as a way of life thus writing now serve as a tool of da’wah. We are now fighting with those who are well-trained and skillful in writing and using their advantages to spread misleading arguments and judgments about Islam in papers and magazines and even published materials. It is not just about us writing anymore but about us trying to fight for the truth to prevail. An eye for an eye, we are taught, thus a wrong article demands for one right article to straighten it and who should write it up if not us who has been trained for years to sought the truth and spread it, who has been taught to read various books multi-crossing fields. We are running out of time now and out there the plea for defense again Islam through writings is agonizing loud and clear. Stop wondering whether or not you can write excellently. Put on your thinking cap as soon as possible and if you are writing for the cause of Allah surely He will help you to pen it down!