Al Aqsa..pray,eat and love

Al Aqsa…pray, eat and love!

Amid the contradiction that we live in, is the upcoming issue of what is happening in and to al-Aqsa in Ramadan.

I love Jerusalem in Ramadan. It gives a flavor to the city that is denounced all year long. I can continue my fascination with the city during this month forever. It brings out the charm and the real mystifying essence of the city. However, there are things that one cannot just ignore.

I have to say that I am just getting sicker and sicker each day of “us.” It is no longer the occupation only, or the PA only. It is no way a universal conspiracy against us. There is something wrong with us.

Last week when the masses of people decided to use the EGED transport services that were provided for free to the dwellers of the West Bank to the Jerusalem. These masses totally forgot any notion or any significance of occupation and Boycott for the sake of ten shekels of saving to a free transportation. They ignored the need to support the crippled Palestinian economics. Those watching were also applauding and criticizing the Palestinian transport services for using the worshippers and thought that such transportations should have been free in the first place. This state of transforming a nation into “beggars” and “poor” is nothing but another indication of how extreme things are becoming … or are.

It is no wonder that Israel mocks our negotiators for the last twenty and so years. It is not surprising why the rumor of buying Palestinians with a free dinner and thus selling the Palestinians to their lands at such a degraded level price continue to spread into the air. Of course, there is nothing left of the area or the cause to for more spreading out?

The other distinguishing features that Ramadan has exposed this year is the filthiness that is left behind the worshippers who fight their way to enter Jerusalem and to make it to al-Aqsa in an attempt to attain good deeds to their accounts in heaven! If filthiness is not enough, to distract the picture of the mystifies city, the certain scenes of graffiti, which include engraving hearts and names of lovers on the pillars of the mosque and the walls. It should be romantic gestures from fans who want to engrave their pure love on the walls of al-Aqsa… however, within our continuous moaning and yelling on the Israeli attempted Judaization to the place, how can we treat such a place with so much disrespect and a real absence of commitment to the heritage. This same heritage that we are so scared the Israelis is trying to Judaize. How can I, as a Muslim despise the act of a bunch of settlers trying to enter the Aqsa to pray, and disregard the filth that Muslims leave behind after prayer? How can I overlook the engraving of names and hearts on the pillars, and not consider it a real distortion to the heritage that we vigorously fight to prove sacred and ours!!!!

While worshippers are busy listening to hateful speeches from the Aqsa sheik whose expression does not differ from all fundamentalist, radical expressions of sheiks that represent nothing but the Daesh mentality.

Speeches that call for male dominance and more restrictions on women and hatred to others. All and any others that the speaker does perceive as enemies. Enemies to him and God.

Not a word is mentioned about morality, behavior, and cleanliness

Cleanliness that comes with a package in the definition of Muslims in such representations.

There is a real absence of awareness that is no longer binding to one category or another. There is this state of lack of feelings towards what it means to be a human being that is here to make the universe a better place through a proper upbringing that brings about good and better people. I can no longer blame a system, whether it was a system of an occupation that tends to keep us under oppression or a system of corruption that tends to suck the resources of whatever is there in this place. The problem is to us, parents, adults who have no problem walking down a street or sitting in a mosque and littering behind, leaving plastic bottles, and leftovers of food. People using public toilets like open sewage areas and then washing out and attempt to pray. Individuals with no sense of ownership except to what they physically and own. People who have no sense of a homeland. A nation that needs to be clean, not just occupation free. An occupation that we even abuse in our lack of awareness and commitment to our real causes of life and being.

There is a structural and cultural problem in our lives as Arabs and Muslims here. Lacking hygiene and cleanliness in the surrounding can only mean lacking cleanliness in our inside.

There is this living state of loss and filthiness that is distinguishing our lives today.

Somewhere, amid all the personal failures of us as people and a nation, Israel watches out and leaves no chance to continue its violations. With such a drastic scene of ugliness from all directions …and from inside.

God does not change the situation of people until people change what lies within them.