It’s a precarious situation. I love my Lord AND my family who has done so much for me. A family given to me by the Lord Himself. I treasure both relationships.
Will Jesus forgive me and understand that I only pray to Him and read the Bible in private and never tell my family?
I was born into a Muslim family in the United States but I have fallen in love with His Word and I pray to Christ daily in my room with the door shut every morning. I tune in to online church every Sunday and I also have Bible study early in the morning a few times a week. I feel so much joy! I was never this enthusiastic about the Koran or Muslim traditions. Is that bad?
I could never ever tell my family because they are staunch in their faith and they would be devastated and I want to keep my relationships intact. They have done so much for me and I love them and I hold my relationship with them as sacred. Is it wrong that I choose to never tell them?
A couple members of our community turned to Christ and they were disowned by their families and completely ostracized from everyone. My family also looked down upon them in shame. I don’t want to put myself in such a predicament.
Is it wrong that the Bible makes me feel different compared to the Koran? I mean a good different. I feel so at peace. Is it wrong to never ever tell them? Is it ok and forgiveable to love and accept Christ in my heart alone? I don’t plan on going into ministry, so I don’t feel the need to share my faith (especially not with my family). I was just looking for a relationship with God that allows me to connect with Him on a deeper level and so that I spend my days in peace, which I didn’t have for a long time. I can already feel the transformation in my heart.
There are some aspects of Islam that just never resonated with me the way Christianity does:
I really dislike how Islam is practiced entirely in Arabic-reading, reciting, and praying in Arabic. Especially since I grew up in a family that does not speak Arabic. I also don’t like having to go through the mechanical motions (although truth be told I’m ashamed to say I never actually learned how to pray). I love the way Christians pray. Whatever is on your heart, you speak it aloud or silently. No matter what language you speak, the Lord hears it because He is an all-knowing God. He understands all languages. I can pray any way I want.
I also love the concept of song as a form of worship in churches, through choir or worship bands. There is nothing like that in the mosque! I will say the Azan is beautiful and the Koran can be read in a melodious way, but I’m so drawn to actual worship songs. The Lord should be praised through music in song in a house of worship!
I tried to read the Koran in English. The tone was entirely different. It felt like a rule book. Many of the stories are the same in both the Koran and the Bible. But in the Koran the stories are very short and disorganized, they are in different chapters. Whereas in the Bible, it flows like a story which I love.
Next I’d like to address the the relationship between God and man. In the Koran, I found many passages that mentioned how God’s love is conditional. There were many verses stating that God does NOT love liars, sinners, unbelievers, etc. (even though it does say He forgives and is merciful). Also the relationship between God and man is that of a Master and slave which did not sit well with me at all. There was a lot more emphasis on man proving their love for God through good deeds so that they get to Heaven.
In Christianity, it’s so different. God’s love for man is unconditional, that of a parent’s love for a child, which is how I’ve always seen the relationship!
That said, for a little while I tried to get into Sufism. You know, reading the world of Mystics such as Rumi. I still do read his works. I like Sufism because it focuses on the emotional and spiritual connection between God in man. In Sufism, God is indeed a father.
But Sufism didn’t hit me the way Christianity does. I like Sufism, I LOVE Christianity. When I started reading the New Testament, I absolutely fell in love with Jesus Christ’s character. I knew that I wanted to follow His teachings. He was so humble, patient, loving, altruistic, and compassionate. I love reading about His miracles (and again this was mentioned in the Koran but doesn’t go into detail about His journey with His disciples). I love the concept of a God incarnate. I can easily put a face to God. And knowing that He walked among us, it makes Him so personable. I see Jesus as a true friend and confidante. In Islam, there is a veil between man and God. You can’t see Him (I get it, it’s supposed to be that way).
I’ve always been so attracted to Christmas and Easter for some reason, more then Eid. I don’t know why!
I’d prefer to listen to the sermons at the church I tune into every week instead of the sermons from Muslim clerics.
But I have so much love for Jesus Christ and it’s a love ive never experienced this before.
I did read a bit about Muhammad and his followers in some of the Hadiths. I didn’t enjoy reading about these random Arab people like Abu Bakr, Uthman, Fatima, Aisha. I don’t know I just don’t acknowledge them.
I even read about the account of Jesus in the Koran when he was supposedly not killed and raised to heaven instead, being replaced by someone else who was killed in his place. I had a weird feeling in my stomach afterwards. This account felt like a cop out.
Sorry for the long post! I’d like to read your thoughts. This may sound weird but a close friend of mine who is Christian said there are many paths to God and I found my way through Jesus. This particular path gives me so much peace that I didn’t feel before. I could never tell me family though. I feel that religion is such a private matter and that it’s really no one else’s business. It’s between you and God.
With that said, I still see myself a Muslim man because I don’t want to break away entirely from my family’s tradition. I still have an attachment to Islam because I was born into it. I’d have to tell my husband about it but I really hope he is someone who will accept me and be understanding about my spirituality and faith life. I would even like to introduce and have our children learn about Islam so that they know about their family tradition. If they decide to choose another spiritual path when they are older, I’d be ok with that.
I love reading the Bible and praying to Jesus, it’s become routine for me now. I do it because I love it. When I had to read the Koran, I did it out of obligation or because it was something every other Muslim did.
Hope you enjoyed reading!
submitted by Wednesday, the 28th of February 2001, was called black Wednesday, due to violent economic eruptions. The robberies, thefts and instability created sudden economic and market break down. This made the already weak Turkish Lira drop its value by 25 to 30 percent (which resulted in the unemployment of 100,000 workers and thousands of journalists). The consequence of this violent shaking is becoming more and more serious. Turkey is now drowning in darkness.
A look back at Turkey's recent history finds that it has never had a moment of light. Its history is full of grief, sorrow, scandals and crises.
It is known that the 10,000 murders classified as unsolved are committed by the state. After the earthquake the state revealed its true face to the public. It was a state careless about the fact that thousands of people were lying beneath rubble. A state without mercy, both oppressive, and harmful towards its population. A state slow to deal with a natural disaster but yet quick to arrest and persecute Islamic activists during the same period.
The state considers it vital to implement the 28th February legislation's (passed in 1997). Legislation is directed towards Muslims and Islam. It is through such legislation Muslims are persecuted and interrogated. Legislation that declared war on Muslims via the Khimar(islamic dress), Quranic schools, prayer and other Islamic practices. This crafty and merciless battle against Islam and the Muslims is being waged through the states institutions and other contraptions of the State. The murders and conspiracies, which have occurred under the name Hizbollah are all lies, their purpose is to distort Islam and to cast fear into the hearts of the population and keep them in an iron grip.
All these conspiracies and events remain clear in the population's mind and the effects of fear and horror are still felt.
What is of the economic situation of the population?
The majority of the population are poor and starved. Families work most of the day but barely earn enough money to feed themselves.
Human beings are turned into slaves and robots, fighting each other to survive. The saying: One man's dead is the other man's bread is a ruling principle amongst the population.
These are dark times. Never has it been seen in Turkey's history that Satanism, whorehouses, and bars where so great in number. Fatimas, Aishas and Muslims women are being brought up in a Western environment, which in fact is a prostitute environment.
The suicide statistics are increasing. Are there any countries whose alcohol and drug situation is worse than Turkeys, perhaps very few.
In Turkey there is one library for every 65,000 persons. For every 7 people there is one book. There are approximately 10,000,000 books in the 1226 libraries. On the other hand in Sweden there is 45,000,000 books in only 12 libraries. 61% of the youth do not read books at all. Out of 10,000 peoples only 8 read books. 12% of the Turkish population are illiterate. 43% has 5 years of schooling. 13% has 8 years of schooling. 20% has 10 years of schooling. 7% has a university degree (5% unknown).
These percentages are not a result of economic scarcity; no these are the result of backwardness and the standard of values. The democratic culture has possessed the minds of the populations and made them worship wealth and material goods.
Turkey has established brotherhood and friendly relationships with the Jews. The same Jews known throughout history as the most treacherous and cowardly people. The Jews who recently in a picture portrayed the prophet Muhammad (saws) as a pig and then distributed this picture publicly. The Jews who murdered prophets. The Jews whom our Lord describes in the Qur'an:
Amongst those who have the most enmity and hatred towards the Muslims you will find the Jews and the idol worshippers.
Although the Turkish rulers are deeply affected by the western culture, Turkey's love for Europe is not mutual. Do they (the European Parliament) not pass laws and decisions that acknowledge a massacre upon the Armenian population? Do they not keep Turkey out of the Europe's common military? Do they not try to rip Cyprus out of the hands of Turkey? Do they not give Turkey a slap in the face one after the other? Don't they always say that until Turkey is Christian we cannot accept you into the EU? Even after all this the losers continue to insist on being part of Europe. The treacheries are great and words cannot describe the complete picture that reflects Turkey's real circumstances.
O you with common sense among the soldiers, thinkers, politicians and business people. When you established this republic you talked of achieving the same level as the modern western civilisation. This was one of the main philosophies behind the establishment of the republic. A modern civilisation in which ugly naked pictures are used to manipulate people. The pursuit of a modern civilisation with an irreligious generation and no mosques, leading instead to Satanists and their evils. With whorehouses and cafe shops spreading evil instead of pure mosques and libraries. Are you satisfied with what has been achieved?
You almost worship the Western civilisation and their culture. A culture where an overwhelming part of American and English children are illegitimate. Where an overwhelming part of their women have been raped and where many of them have been sexually abused as children, even by their own parents. This Western civilisation, which you love in this superficial way, is plotting and planning against you night and day. This Western civilisation hates and despises you only because you call yourselves Muslims. Whilst your forefathers like Fatih, Kanuni and Yavuz were under the Islamic Khilafah. The very same Islam and Khilafah which you consider hostile and a path to darkness, but which in reality are the real reasons for your and your forefather's strength.
You are sending millions of Turks as slave labour to Europe to clean their toilets at a cheap price, whilst your forefathers went to Europe with the Islamic Khilafah as a leading force - examples of leaders and rulers that spread justice, true guidance and light.
Did Ecevit not take a 500 hundred-year-old document to Clinton in October 1999. Found in a church, kept protected respectfully by priests and Christians this document outlined the justice of the Khilafah without prejudice.
Whilst the Europeans divided the Muslims into small cartoon states through treacheries like the
Lausanne treaty, they attempt to unite themselves in every aspect. Yet you are fanatic about keeping the artificial borders that the Europeans created with their pens. Now these western parliaments conspire to divide Turkey into even smaller parts e.g. more Kurdish areas.
You are about to transfer your destiny to the colonialist and hostile USA, even though it struggles to establish a pro American Kurdish state in North Iraq and for which it has designed a role for you where you serve their interests in the Middle East, the Balkans and in Central Asia.
It has been 77 years since you abandoned the Islamic model of education, but which scientist, expert, thinker, politician or statesman have you produced, that has not been educated in the USA, England, France or Germany or graduated from the American and French universities. If you deny this then why are you calling those like Kemal Dervis home from USA.
You have in fact regressed with your secularised democratic and western project. You are bankrupt and have forced the population to sink with your ship. You have created this dark hole and exposed the population to identity crises and depression. You have not delivered anything but misery and you have done all this in the name of the modern civilisation and at the expense of yourselves, your people's history, deen, personality and culture. You have even alienated them from these ideals by the use of the fire and the iron hand. This is why the word of The Creator of the worlds is a reality for you. Allah says (the meaning being): Allah does not change the condition of a people unless they change what is in themselves.
And Allah says, (the meaning being): "Those who turn their back to the merciful injunction will have a miserable life and we will on Judgement day revive them as blind. Then they will say oh my Master, I was not blind why did you revive me as blind, then Allah will say: My injunction came to you but you ignored it that is why I have revived you as blind."
And words of wisdom from a true statesman; Omar bin Khattab when he said: We were a degraded people and Allah gave us power by Islam. Allah will give misery to the one who seeks honour and power by other than Islam.
Oh Muslims the Messenger of Allah says to you, (the meaning being): "You should know that the wheel of Iman will spin forever. So spin with this wheel in accordance with Allah's book no matter where it spins. You shall know that the state and the book will be separated from each other, but look out, You may never be separated from the book. You should know that you will get rulers that lead you to kufr if you obey them, but if you do not obey them and are rebellious towards them then they will kill you." Then one of those present asked: "Oh The Messenger of Allah what shall we do?" The Messenger of Allah (saw) answered: "Do as Isa's Ummah did. They threw them into flames of fire and mutilated them with saws, but even then they did not compromise with their Deen. It is better to die in the condition where you are obedient towards Allah than to live in a condition where you are disobedient." (Ibn Hacer, al-Metalibul-Aliye 4/267; Haithemi, Mecmauz-zevaid 5/228)
Indeed The Book was separated from the state 77 years ago. But O Muslims what have you done? And what are you doing today?
O Muslims! Isn't it you who are left to famine and thirst? Is it not you who are oppressed and treated unjustly? Is it not you who say: This is our state, whilst experiencing fraud, injustice, misery and living in a state of no hope?
Was it for this that liberation battles were fought, wherein the pure blood of the martyrs was shed? Was it for this dark and miserable state of condition our Sahaba and our Master Muhammad (saws) fought and struggled against? Do we not have a promise from Allah? Did our Prophet (saws) not say, (the meaning being): Do not under any circumstances let yourself be separated from The Book?
Where are you heading? How long will you be like sheep that bend your heads to suppression, kufr and misery? When will you be like Seyh Samil the one who said: Rather a beautiful and honourable death than a dammed and miserable death? Or like Hamza who once said: I do not fear that which my eye sees, I fear that which my eye cannot see (Allah). And Salahuddin who said: May it become haram for me to smile and be happy as long as al-Quds is occupied. Or Omar who said: We were a miserable people, Allah honoured us with Islam. Anyone who turns his back on Islam Allah will give him misery. Or Fatih who said to a roman ruler: If you keep on degrading us then I will turn your land into a stable for my horses. Or Mutasim who sent a letter to a kafir ruler stating: To the dog of the Romans from the Khalif of the Muslims. If you do not release our sister, I will send such an army that will begin at you and end at me.
That is how Islam and Khilafah gave you honour, pride and status. You where the gentlemen of the world. It was Islam and the Khilafah that brought you into the light and onto the world arena whereas democracy, capitalism and the western culture has brought you to a burning abyss in which you have fallen and become buried in darkness. Wake up from the misery and hopeless condition which democracy, capitalism and the western culture have given you - and stand and shake it off you. Release yourselves from the chains of the western culture which has tied you minds. Then bury this secular state into the earth and liberate yourselves from the jahil death mentioned by Allah's Messenger (the meaning being): "The one who dies without giving baya to the Khaleefah, will die the death of jahilliyah". And this demands the presence of the Khilafah whereby it becomes fard upon you to re-establish the Khilafah.
Oh Ulama! O those who have knowledge in Islam, and those who have memorised the Quran!
The Messenger of Allah says to you (the meaning being): If two groups in my Ummah are good then my Ummah will be good, if they are corrupt then my Ummah will be corrupt. And these two groups are the ulama and the rulers.
Allah (swt) also says (the meaning being): "Those who hide the Book which Allah has sent down and exchange it for a small amount of money, that which they are filling their belly with is nothing but fire. Allah will on the day of Judgement neither talk to them nor will He declare them as innocent". (TMQ Baqarah: 174)
Furthermore The Messenger of Allah says (the meaning being): "That which I fear most for my Ummah's peace is those who are known as alims, but who in fact are hypocrites".
Because of the dark state of our Ummah's condition, you are much more responsible and sinful. You are to blame for the abyss filled with fire that this ummah has fallen in. You have not fulfilled your responsibility and you continue not to do so. You do not roar as lions for the truth. You do not inform people about the reality of this secularised state. Neither do you tell people about Islam without twisting the verses. You have sold yourselves and your pencils. Do you not know that the ones who established this secular republic state are agents for the Jews and the English - the ones who abolished the Khilafah and the rule of Allah? If you do not know this then ponder over these facts.
Lausanne was not just a peace agreement but it was an agreement in the interest of the west, especially the English. Its primary concern was to destroy the ummah, Islam and to make a radical change to Islamic history, language, personality, and even dress. Lord Curzon's reply when criticized by the English parliament because of Turkey's independence was,
"Turkey is finished, from now on Turkey will not be able to straighten its spine because we have destroyed Turkey's moral strength and political strength - Islam and the Khilafah." The Jewish rabbi Hayim Nahum, the very man refused by Abdulhamid because he wanted Palestine, was amongst those who abolished Abdulhamid. His family are financial advisers of one of the largest economic institutions and protectors of Jewish rights in Turkey.
This Jewish rabbi Hayim Nahum said to Lord Curzon: Acknowledge Turkey's independence and I will promise you they will fall into a condition where they stamp on Islam and that which represents Islam (the Khilafah).
Hayim Nahum closely co-operated with Mustafa Kemal and a woman who was working for the British secret agency who later became very close to Ismet Inonu and their relationship became so intense that even the delegation that were at Lausanne became worried.
Reflect upon the following conversation between Ismet Inonu and Mustafa Kemal:
Mustafa Kemal: What is it that you are reading with such a interest Ismet? Is it concerning that order which the English king will honour me by?
Ismet Inonu: What is it with this order?
Mustafa Kemal: Have you not read the American and the rest of the world's newspapers. The English king will honour me with the highest order?
Ismet Inonu asks in a cold way: Okay and in what concern does he honour you by it?
Mustafa Kemal: You above all else Ismet should know that the English people love me much and this is proved by abolishing Lloyd George (an opponent of the Turkish independence).
And the English newspaper the Daily Telegraph wrote about Mustafa Kemal the 11. of November 1983: Mustafa Kemal's death was a great death to our country. He as the only dictator with his instinct was a true English ally.
It was this triangle which abolished the Khilafah - the English, the Jews and Mustafa Kemal who was both a Jew and an English agent. They made and worked on a clever plan, hiding their innermost motives to abolish the Khilafah and remove Islam to the last. These hypocrites got people to fight the war of independence under slogans such as: Come we shall save the Khilafah and the Quran whilst complimenting the Khaleefahs until they got the power. Then a handful of Jews, English and Mustafa Kemal betrayed them and the people and plunged Islam and the Khilafah's history into darkness. This is the true version of the abandonment of the Khilafah which is in contrast to the false version which I was taught officially.
Oh learned Islamic experts! Some people said to Abdullah bin Omar: When we stand and talk in front of the rulers we behave different than when we are among each other. Abdullah bin Omar said: In the time of Prophet Muhammad (saws) we called this hypocrisy. (Bukhari)
One of El-Iz bin Abdusselam's students asked him, "When you rebuked the Khaleefah Ayubi where you then not afraid of him? Abdusselam answered him: "My son wallahi (by Allah), when I thought of Allah the almighty then the Khaleefah compared to a little cat."
The uncle of Ahmed ibn Hanbal, Ishak said that one day I visited Hanbal in prison and said to him: "As you can see your friends have answered and they are now free. It is only you who is left in prison." Ahmad answered: "Oh my uncle if the learned do not tell the truth, but speak only to escape prison, then the ignorant remains in ignorance and the truth is not made clear." How quickly you have forgotten the hadith where Habab tells: "Those before you were tortured so terribly that their flesh was separated from their bones, but still they hung onto the truth." Ishak said: "After Ibn Hanbal's reply we gave up."
So you who are learned in Islam! Take such people as role models. Those such as Hanbal, Sayid Qutb and Taqiudeen An-Nabhani, who refused to live in this miserable condition of darkness and who died honorably working to change the state of affairs.
Oh noble Ummah! Your vital cause is to abolish this secular state and re-establish the Khilafah to rule by what Allah has revealed and thereby ensure the sovereignty of Islam.
This solution comprehensive and is the solution to all your problems and other vital concerns. Come and take up this vital cause. Hear and obey Allah and His Messenger, Come and join that fight which the Messenger and Sahaba began, do not be ignorant and be of those who pick the temporary life which is filled with misery but instead be of the honoured and mighty who choose the eternal life of the Hereafter.
The prophet said concerning this cause: "Wallaahi (by Allah) even though you place the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left I will never give up this cause, until it prevails or my head is separated from my neck."
Oh mighty Ummah! Hasten to join the rows that are seeking jannah, the jannah that is prepared for those who fear Allah correctly and worship Him (swt) in the way He (swt) deserves. Allah (swt) says (the meaning being):
Oh you who have believe, answer the call of Allah and His Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. (Surah Enfal)
Samil Cevval The above article was published in Khilafah Journal (
www.khilafah.com)
submitted by Every time I visit my maternal grandmother, Nina, she tells me that she just wants two things; to see me healthy, and to dance at my wedding. My paternal grandmother, Felicia, tells me that there’s sadness in her soul because I’m still a bachelor, and prays to God that this’ll change. Since I suspect that their perspective on marriage is based mostly on personal prejudice, I’m tempted to dismiss these wishes to pair up, but it’s not like I’ve looked into it much myself. To some degree, there must be something to be said for it, and I’ve noticed that I spontaneously associate wedding rings on people’s fingers with respectability, maturity, and sanity. The ring is presumably a clue that its wearer is more tolerable, like the metallurgic equivalent of a five-star Amazon review. This isn’t only a mental quirk on my part, since some sociologists writing about the rising case of involuntary bachelors in China, describe how involuntary male celibacy is ‘regarded solemnly as a symptom of the failure in the man’s life course’. I’m not alone in being alone either, since in 2016, for the first time in recorded Canadian history, single-person households were the most common kind. Should we be worried?
The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt (1893-1894)
A few years ago, my girlfriend at the time invited me to a wedding ceremony, and being smitten with her I couldn’t refuse. The bride & groom were in their early twenties and I was pushing thirty, so it seemed slightly unhinged for them to make such a huge commitment before their frontal cortices are fully myelinated. Of course, Felicia and Nina made their decisions even earlier, 18 & 19, respectively. Despite my reservations about the new couple’s wisdom, I made an effort to immerse myself in the experience and tone down my party-pooper vibe. For example, despite my hatred of boxing, I even managed to have a great conversation about the sport with the beefy guy sitting next to me, thanks to listening to a trillion hours of Rogan’s podcast.
The highlight of the ceremony was when they recited the opening of 1 Corinthians 13:
Though I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
This gripped my body with frissons of delight, briefly cutting through the noise of my agitated mind. Taken the wrong way, it can be crushing to suggest that the actual worth of all knowledge and behaviour is predicated on something invisible and immaterial. But at the same time, it’s also obvious that without the right quality of consciousness, thoughts and actions are only husks of their true potential.
Of course, Paul didn’t use the English word love, rather the Greek
agape, a spiritual kind of love as opposed to
eros, which is related to the love of beauty and tends towards sexual attraction, hence the word
erotic. Martin Luther King defined
agape as ‘
an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return‘, built out of ‘
an understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill towards all men‘.
Agape comes from
agapao, which means ‘
to prefer something‘, and matches the contemporary understanding of love. After all, in order to say you’ve fallen in love is to say you’ve developed an intense preference for someone
specific.
The sense of boundless love that Paul associates with agape, however, makes it into a seemingly paradoxical notion of an unselective preferentiality. But that’s not to say it’s an incoherent idea. Buddhist practitioners might recognize this as
metta, or
loving-kindness meditation, which ultimately seeks to cultivate a sense of well-wishing for all sentient creatures. I can personally vouch for this frame of mind being a real possibility; one such meditative event was what I call my Gaia moment, where my sense of love for everyone felt so vast and spacious that I wanted to hold, cradle and nourish
all living things. Even at the time I laughed at how strange this was, yet it still felt so right and peaceful.
Paul’s intention to separate
agape from
eros is hinted at in the opening to chapter seven, where he wrote that men and women should ideally stay away from each other:
As for the questions raised in your letter; a man does well to abstain from all commerce with women. But, to avoid the danger of fornication, let every man keep his own wife, and every woman her own husband. Let every man give his wife what is her due, and every woman do the same by her husband; he, not she, claims the right over her body, as she, not he, claims the right over his.
Do not starve one another, unless perhaps you do so for a time, by mutual consent, to have more freedom for prayer; come together again, or Satan will tempt you, weak as you are. I say this by way of concession; I am not imposing a rule on you. I wish you were all in the same state as myself; but each of us has his own endowment from God, one to live in this way, another in that. To the unmarried, and to the widows, I would say that they will do well to remain in the same state as myself, but if they have not the gift of continence, let them marry; better to marry than to feel the heat of passion.
Paul knew that
agape is a distant dream for most people, so he immediately conceded the fact that the more common erotic love needs formal expression. From his perspective, marriage is a way to fix both
porneia (πορνεία, fornication) and
pyrousthai (πυροῦσθαι, burning/passion).
Porneia is a tricky word, and must be partly understood against the related term μοιχεία, (moicheía) or adultery. Women were owned and regulated by men in order to maintain so-called legitimacy, and divided into categories of ‘respectable’ and ‘non-respectable’. To have sex with a ‘respectable’ woman, regardless of her consent or marital status, meant to violate another man’s property. As a result, there was a big demand for ‘non-respectable’ women, and in fact, the ancient slave trade started as a way to add ‘non-respectable’ women into the marketplace. This grisly commodification of human life was seen as a solution for the the social chaos that erupted from
moicheía or sexual competition, and it was common practice for men to avail themselves at a
porneon or brothel. The Old Testament doesn’t really condemn men visiting female prostitutes, although it became a big issue in Second Temple Judaism.
But given the fact that women were sex slaves, sometimes captured as prisoners of war, the Corinthian
porneon was the grimmest brothel you could imagine, and doubled as a clandestine cemetery for all the unwanted babies that they produced. Since this is a pretty good approximation of a living hell, it’s little wonder that Paul wanted the Christian community to avoid patronizing it.
Porneia is the shadow of sexuality that exploits, consumes and destroys.
When it comes to
pyrousthai, it was a common belief in antiquity that sexual desire would physically inflame the body, and if it wasn’t periodically extinguished, it could destroy the victim. This is still a popular idea in contemporary culture, one of my favourites being Louis C.K. joking about how ‘
cities should put a red tag on dicks with an unacceptable PSI level‘, summarizing male orgasm as ‘
something that we need to do so we won’t murder people‘. In another bit, he accuses his wife of assassinating his sexual identity, and demoting sex to a perfunctory role. Clearly, he yearned for the return of his youthful
pyrousthai. Unfortunately for him, that meant a wild PSI spike, as revelations of his sexual misconduct wound up destroying his reputation and career.
The Babylonian Marriage Market (detail) by Edwin Long (1875)
Addicted 2 U
While Paul made no secret of his personal opinion that celibacy is superior, he also emphasized that all of his instruction is meant to serve the interest of the listener, rather than the goal of keeping people on a tight leash. His guiding principle was the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness— so he appreciated the fact that optimal interpersonal arrangements differ from person to person. This is more open-minded than some contemporary ideas about relationships, which is summarized by Amir Levine & Rachel Heller in their book
Attached:
The ideal relationship is one between two self-sufficient people who unite in a mature, respectful way while maintaining clear boundaries. If you develop a strong dependency on your partner, you are deficient in some way and are advised to work on yourself to become more “differentiated” and develop a “greater sense of self.” The worst possible scenario is that you will end up needing your partner, which is equated with “addiction” to him or her, and addiction, we all know, is a dangerous prospect.
While this seems pretty reasonable and is a useful perspective for some people, what the authors point out is that biologically speaking, dependence on partners is more like a fact rather than a choice. One tributary of the modern concept of self-sufficiency is that of nascent behaviorism from the early 20th century. During those simpler times, psychologists figured that children should be treated like little adults since society isn’t a friendly place. They shouldn’t be given too much attention, their cries should be ignored, and they weren’t to be touched while in hospital. If they acted up too much, they would be placed in foster care. As you might expect, this dramatically damaged the emotional well-being of the kids, as it turns out that the opposite is true. If only we could have anticipated that it’s a bad idea to emotionally neglect extremely sensitive, helpless and bewildered young creatures. Live and learn!
It wasn’t until John Bowlby came along that things started to change for the better. Bowlby was a casualty of this rough style of upbringing, as his parents were essentially strangers to him, the nannies he loved would leave unexpectedly, and he was sent to boarding school at an early age. As a way of making sense of his own suffering, he wound up studying psychology and working with juvenile delinquents. Corroborating his own struggle, he found that the most important factor in their pathology was the caregiving environment in early life.
Looking to ethology for inspiration to build an explanatory theory, Bowlby noticed there was a great similarity between human beings and other mammals when it comes to the behaviour of babies separated from their parents. The strategies they use (e.g., crying, clinging and searching) are ancient survival mechanisms, because the offspring that decides ‘
screw you, I don’t need anybody!’ is probably going to starve and die. And given the fact that humans are helpless for a much longer time than any other animal, the built-in attachment behavioral system is vigilantly looking for an attachment figure that can provide support, protection and care. Determining whether or not this figure is available has important consequences in the development of a child’s personality, since the more the child feels an attachment figure is present, the more it can be sociable, confident, playful, and curious.
In other words, having support, and knowing there’s someone you can count on, is actually necessary for the brain to feel safe enough to become independent, a phenomenon dubbed
the dependency paradox. You might see where this is going; this doesn’t quite disappear in childhood. But first, let’s explore this a little bit further. Mary Ainsworth, along with Mary Blehar, Everett Waters, and Sally Wall, took Bowlby’s ideas and developed a brilliant lil experiment to establish an empirical taxonomy of attachment styles in her ‘
Strange Situation‘ test, which has been run thousands of times.
It goes like this: a 12-month-old child accompanied by its parent is brought into a room with a young, friendly researcher, and a bunch of fun toys to play with. After sitting in the lap of the parent to feel safe, the child closely inspects each toy with gleeful curiosity and plays to their heart’s content. As this is happening, the parent is taken into another room for three minutes, and of course, the kid becomes awfully distraught and no longer cares about the toys. They cry and bang on the door that mom or dad’s walked out of, even turning violent and hurling toys at the kind assistant who’s still in the room. After the parent returns, they take time to console the child, and then the kid’s back to toy heaven. In precise terms, the attachment provides a
secure base from which children engage their
exploratory drive.
This secure attachment style happens in about half of all cases. But there are other kids with an anxious-resistant attachment style, who make up about a quarter of the participants, and they’re difficult to console as they desperately crave reassurance, but also want to punish the parent. Then there’s the avoidant children, who suppress their signs of distress when the parent leaves, and actively ignore the parent when they return, even though their physiological response goes just as haywire as the other children. There’s a final category, the disorganized attachment style, characterized by inconsolable self-destructive behaviour like hitting the head against a wall. These tragic cases are as a result of things like severe trauma, neglect and abuse.
While each child may have a different attachment style depending on the parent, and mothers typically have a closer bond with their children than fathers do, cultural norms play into this as well. Ruth Feldman, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Bar-Ilan University, has studied straight mothers who were primary caregivers, straight fathers who were secondary caregivers, and gay fathers who were primary caregivers. Mothers showed five times higher activation of emotional processing than straight fathers, whereas straight fathers had four times the activation of mentalization compared to the mothers. However, the gay fathers had high activity in both the emotional center
and the mentalization center. Feldman doesn’t suggest that gay fathers are superior, but rather stressed the fact of neuroplasticity. She points out that for most of history, it was common for healthy, young women to die during childbirth, meaning that neighbors and relatives had to take care of children. The biological patterns of being a caregiver are flexible and don’t depend on gender, since it’s critical for the survival of infants. Indeed, Feldman also explains that straight fathers can also have their brain chemistry change if they become the primary caregiver.
Mother and Child (detail) by Mary Cassatt (1884/1894)
Crooked Timber
Numerous studies show that once we become attached to someone, the two of us form one physiological unit. Our partner regulates our blood pressure, our heart rate, our breathing, and the levels of hormones in our blood. We are no longer separate entities.
Amir Levine & Rachel Heller, Attached
The most amazing example of physiological blending in relationships is outlined in a case study by Seanger and his team in the 1970s, where a sickly boy was taken to the hospital. Although he had adequate food intake, his growth was stunted and he had an alarming absence of growth hormones in his bloodstream. However, luck had it that he was assigned a nurse who gave him lots of TLC, and after a hundred days his growth more than doubled, with growth hormones tripling. Once the nurse took a three-week vacation, these measures plummeted to where they were before the child was admitted to hospital. But, great news, the numbers spiked again when the nurse came back from vacation. Robert Sapolsky summarizes this beautifully:
To take a concrete, nuts and bolts feature of growth, the rate at which this child was depositing calcium in his long bones could be successfully predicted by his proximity to a loved one. You can’t ask for a clearer demonstration that what is going on in our heads influences every cell in our body.
Robert Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers
It’s worth mentioning that growth hormones are secreted by the pituitary gland, which in turn is regulated by the hypothalamus, and involves the release of both stimulatory and inhibitory hormones. Do we see any similar effect on the hypothalamus in adulthood when it comes to relationships?
In a somewhat awkward but enlightening study by James Coan, women were placed in an fMRI machine with the knowledge that their legs would receive an electric shock at some point. It’s not easy to be chill in a situation like that, and surely enough, the threat made their right anterior insula, superior frontal gyrus, and their hypothalamus dance with dread. But there were three different groups: the first group received the shock by themselves, the second group held the hand of a stranger, and the third held the hand of their spouses. As you might expect, there was a dramatic difference in how stressful the event was when they were able to hold their spouse’s hand, although it should be added that the effect was dependent on there being high marital satisfaction to begin with.
The results are what you’d expect, even if this was a small study. If the absence of a loved one at age eight ruins our ability to deposit calcium in our bones, it would actually be a bizarre discovery if it completely stopped having an effect after our eighteenth birthday. However, while the mechanisms in place during infancy still play an important part in adulthood and shape the working model of social relationships, there are some important differences in romantic partnerships, such as power balance. Sometimes a person might be offering comfort, and on other days, they’d be the recipient.
Over the years, Ainsworth’s categorical system has been updated to a dimensional measure of avoidance and anxiety, offering richer possibilities that account for differences in degree rather than kind:
The Good Ones Are Taken
There’s a degree of flexibility when it comes to the level of avoidance and anxiety in relationships, both for better and for worse. Plus, in many contemporary societies, children and adolescents tend to attach to their peers more than to their parents or older relatives (a historically unusual situation) which will also impact their attachment styles. And different situations will inspire more of either behaviour; a secure person might be walloped with severe life stressors or an abusive partner, triggering tendencies of avoidance and fear, whereas a clingy, anxious person might find themselves calming down with a secure partner and a stabler life.
It’s also worth mentioning that even though avoidant children only make a show of shutting down, and still feel just as strung out as the other types, there are some avoidant adults who learn to use this emotional castration to their advantage. Sure, secure people believe that the world is friendly and that they’re deserving of love, attracting secure partners as a result, and some avoidants believe the world is generally hostile, but they focus on enjoying their own company. Since attachment styles are built-in tools for responding to difficulty, there are some advantages to each behaviour, despite secure attachment being superior; after all, it helped the child get through their life in one piece. As another example, people with an anxious attachment style are more sensitive and perceptive when it comes to subtle changes in people’s moods.
People with low avoidance and low anxiety are much more likely to be in long-term relationships with people who have similar emotional profiles. Likewise, it turns out that the dating pool is disproportionately composed of people with avoidant behaviour, since they are more likely to detach from their partners and dissolve relationships. Sadly, there are some vicious circles. Since anxious attachment styles sometimes develop in response to avoidant attachment figures, the emotional distance will trigger behaviour that seeks closeness in the anxious partner, which will further exacerbate the avoidant’s belief that people are only out for themselves, making them withdraw even further, ramping up the anxiety of the other person.
Despite being a fearful avoidant, I’ve nonetheless tasted the sweetness of successful adult attachment, if only briefly. When I first began dating, I couldn’t even believe it was happening, as I’d assumed I was meant for solitude. The first night I made out with the woman I was dating felt like unlocking a secret of the universe. The grey, iron weight of the past and the jittery fire of the future dropped away, and I had the sense that suffering consisted of bitter waves in a vast ocean of delight. Due to my endogenous neurochemical fireworks, it made sense to me why the first epistle of John describes God as being directly experienced through love; it felt like tuning in to a vast, eternal electromagnetic field of peace that is always available, yet not easily received.
This energy made me feel much happier in my life, more willing to extend kindness to others, and I even began telling my parents I love them. The initial cause seemed hilariously simple to me—two bipedal monkeys holding each other and touching mouths—although I didn’t realize the deep-rooted attachment systems at work. Robert Weiss points out that attachment figures in adult life aren’t exactly protective like a mother or father, but they still foster ‘
the attached individuals’ own capacity for mastering challenge‘, and generally provide a sense of security and safety.
The dark side of this, however, is that since attachment dynamics run so deep, even when two people are clearly not right for each other, the bond might still be forged, and even a wise separation can still feel like a catastrophic loss.
Study for Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (detail) by Édouard Manet (1865/6)
Hot Bible Thumping Action (18+)
J.C. was also hip to the biology of attachment theory. When the Pharisees asked him about divorce, he said:
Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. Matthew 19:4-6
At the time, there was a big debate about permissible grounds for divorce, which Christ sorta sidesteps, remarking that divorce is a symptom of a much bigger problem, which is σκληροκαρδία (
sklerokardia; sklero = hard/dry,
kardia = heart), adding that ditching one’s wife for anything less than unfaithfulness is a form of adultery. To my surprise, when his disciples hear this, they don’t make a vow to heal their hard hearts, but rather say, ‘
fuggedabout it then, might as well avoid marriage‘. And again to my surprise, Christ doesn’t reprimand them, instead replying with ‘
betchu can’t even do that right‘:
That conclusion cannot be taken in by everybody, but only by those who have the gift. There are some eunuchs, who were so born from the mother’s womb, some were made so by men, and some have made themselves so for love of the kingdom of heaven; take this in, you whose hearts are large enough for it. Matthew 19:11-12
That last line about hearts reads like a bit of a sarcastic jab to me. After all, the chapter begins with the glowing reverence of marriage found in Genesis, followed by an explanation that Moses was forced to allow divorce as a concession for
sklerokardia. If my heart was big enough, I wouldn’t be castrating myself to begin with. The interpretation of these few words is important, since it’s had some interesting consequences.
There’s a Russian sect called the Skoptsy, where the hardcore male members remove their penis and testicles, and the female members lop off their breasts, labia minora and clitoris, using knives and red-hot irons. They were pretty popular (up to 100,000 followers) and had a reputation for working hard and making good money, but the powers that be ruthlessly cracked down on them, and they’ve waned in the last few decades.
We only need to look to the previous chapters to refine our understanding of the lesson we’re meant to learn. In Matthew 5 & 18, Christ calls for various kinds of mutilation, such as gouging out our eyes if they look at someone lustfully, or amputating our limbs if they cause us to stumble. Clearly, everyone knows that the act of seeing is an impersonal natural process, whereas sin takes place in the mind. Likewise, stumbling is an unfavorable consequence of the intentional process of movement, and not the fault of a particular foot. The idea of mutilating ourselves seems insane because we clearly see the value of our physical body, but he’s pointing out that mutilating our hearts through sin is much worse, and a lot less apparent.
Paul clearly understood it in this way, and was in line with the disciples in choosing to be a
spiritual eunuch, as he snipes at those who
literally castrate themselves in his letter to the Galatians. But when Paul wrote ‘
I wish you were all in the same [celibate] state as myself‘, I can’t help but think that he overstated the degree to which his own consciousness was permeated by
agape, and exaggerating his ability to function as a free, unattached and self-sufficient man. In his letter to the Romans a few years later, he writes poetically about his psychological struggles, which anyone who isn’t a megasaint would relate to:
My own actions bewilder me; what I do is not what I wish to do, but something which I hate. […] Of this I am certain, that no principle of good dwells in me, that is, in my natural self; praiseworthy intentions are always ready to hand, but I cannot find my way to the performance of them; it is not the good my will prefers, but the evil my will disapproves, that I find myself doing. […] Inwardly, I applaud God’s disposition, but I observe another disposition in my lower self, which raises war against the disposition of my conscience, and so I am handed over as a captive to that disposition towards sin which my lower self contains. Pitiable creature that I am, who is to set me free from a nature thus doomed to death?
Romans 7:15-25
The Conversion of Saint Paul by Caravaggio (1600/1601) Grave Matters
Paul’s final question at the end of Romans 7 definitely tests the limits of attachment’s benefits. In popular books on the matter, there tends to be a slightly cartoonish lens: “
Trevor did not stay available for long. He quickly found a great partner and they have been together ever since. They traveled around the world, got married, and had a couple of kids. He is a wonderful father and husband.‘ Clients tend to be young, without any any sort of compromising illness, and death or mortality doesn’t come up. No doubt that for some people, in some circumstances, long-term coupling is a great choice, but not everyone’s luck is stellar, so what if there’s no intimate union to build a secure base and charge up the exploratory drive?
Paul might know, as he had a tough life. He was often homeless, went without food or water for long periods of time, received severe beat-downs, whippings, stonings, and got chucked into prison. Despite his devotion to missionary travel, he was quite intimate with poor physical health, and although he frequently prayed for God to remove the ‘thorn in his flesh’, he wound up having to live his whole life with an unspecified ailment so severe that he describes it as Satan torturing him. In his letter to the Galatians, he even expressed gratitude for the fact that they didn’t reject him on account of his illness. There’s also a line that implies he had poor eyesight, and he alludes to common insults he received on account of his ugly appearance and his voice, which means he may have had a speech impediment. Moreover, there’s compelling evidence from contemporary case studies of neurological disorders that suggests Paul had temporal lobe epilepsy, which would explain both the visions he describes in Second Corinthians and the conversion experience on the road to Damascus. And finally, let’s not forget that he considers himself a murderer because of St. Stephen’s death.
So he was a sick, ugly, epileptic, stuttering, homeless jailbird with murderous tendencies; quite a stack of woes. And despite all that, Paul asks people to ‘
rejoice always, pray without ceasing‘ and ‘
give thanks in all circumstances‘. Tall order, but that particular line from Thessalonians inspired some victims of Nazi concentration camps like Corrie ten Boom to be grateful despite being stuck in flea-ridden barracks. There’s also plenty of empirical evidence that it’s possible to positively influence neurological function through spiritual practice, although I’m sure everyone is sick of hearing about the benefits of meditation, so I’ll limit myself to some neat technical points.
Andrew Newberg has studied Christian centering prayer and Tibetan Buddhist meditation, finding that both groups, after many years of practice, were able to deliberately decrease activity in their parietal lobes, leading to a sense of timelessness and spacelessness. This experience was couched in the lingo of the respective religion, either ‘
being in the living presence of God‘ or ‘
entering a state of absolute awareness of the universe‘. Parietal lobes are roughly responsible for orientation, and sometimes, when a tumor pops up in that part of the brain, patients complain of different parts of their bodies becoming alien to them. In more normal circumstances, this sense of losing one’s self takes place whenever there’s an absorbing experience, like making love or watching a sunset.
Unexpectedly, while the parietal lobe activity is lowered, the thalamus activity increases during spiritual work. The thalamus is responsible for sending sensory information to different parts of the brain, including the frontal cortex, and we’d be missing the experience of consciousness without it. Normally the thalamus and parietal lobe are buddies; for example, they charge up during dream states and chill out during dreamless sleep. But during certain kinds of meditation and prayer, the thalamus activity increases while the parietal lobe decreases, strengthening lucidity while at the same time moving beyond concern for our particular self. Pretty neat, right?
One reason that one must pray without ceasing, however, is that negative life experiences are much more likely to get burned into the brain via the hippocampus, while positive life experiences are more likely to be forgotten. For evolutionary purposes, we’re much more sensitive and attuned to anything that’s going wrong, even if the vast majority of things are going right. In a neurological study from the 1960s, people had a wide variety of different parts of their brain artificially stimulated. You might expect the best feelings would be something like eating a delicious meal or intense sexual arousal, but apparently the winner was ‘frustration and mild anger’. Indeed, in the Ghatva Sutta, the Buddha describes anger as having a ‘
honeyed crest and poison root‘.
This isn’t only an academic curiosity, since designers of social media platforms have admitted to exploiting negative triggers precisely because they are much more powerful. All the the most incendiary, outrageous and polarizing stuff tends to get signal boosted since it activates the limbic system much more directly than positive, peaceful stuff, which is why it takes a sustained effort to decondition ourselves. As always, Paul puts it memorably in his letter to the Philippians:
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:8
But what about my grandmas? How does all this ameliorate their worry about me being doomed to bachelorhood? The answer is to out-grandma them using my patented Grandma Judo. I told them about a time when I had some rough side effects from some medicine, and my lungs felt like they were shutting down. I was too weak and disoriented to do anything about it, so I spent a few hours struggling to breathe. There were some moments where I wasn’t sure if I was going to come out on the other end, so I made a promise to myself, to God, the Universe, whatever was listening, to never take my breath for granted again. Earlier that day, I was feeling unlovable, ugly, weak and stupid, despairing about my loneliness and the crummy hand that I’d been dealt in life. But in the light of my basic biological functions being called into question, such concerns seemed pretty ridiculous.
Da’ud said, ‘O Lord, show me Your most hidden blessing!’ Allah replied, ‘Breathe, Da’ud. Who counts this blessing night and day?’ Al-Qurtubi
Of course, rejoicing in life’s little blessings is the most grandma-ish in the world, so they were on board when I explained this to them. In days of yesteryear I’d visit Nina for dinner on Thursdays and complain about my life, only to hear her never-ending refrain to be grateful for what I already have. It frustrated me to no end, and it never worked to hear. But while the Fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness) must be
tasted, it can always be shared.
Judo SLAM!
Εἰρήνη πᾶσι
References
The Bible (duh!)
The marriage dilemma of involuntary bachelors: the case of China Porneia: The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm The Timing of Cohabitation and Engagement: Impact on First and Second Marriages The Family as Ideology Evolutionary History of Hunter-Gatherer Marriage Practices John B. Watson – Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928))
Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love Adult Attachment: A Concise Introduction to Theory and Research John Bowlby, Attachment Theory and Psychotherapy – Professor Jeremy Holmes Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers From Heresy to Harm: Self-Castrators in the Civic Discourse of Late Tsarist Russia Lending a hand: social regulation of the neural response to threat Dating Over 40 Is Like Thrift Store Shopping. Joe DeVito – Full Special How Our Childhood Shapes Every Aspect of Our Health with Dr. Gabor Maté | FBLM Podcast Dr. Gabor Maté – Hold On To Your Kids Giving Thanks in All Circumstances – Corrie Ten Boom (by Vance Christie) Ruth Feldman’s brain imaging of parents Why We Believe What We Believe The Fearful Eye: Using Virtual Reality to Hack Fright Not all emotions are created equal: the negativity bias in social-emotional development Ghatva Sutta: Having Killed Angry by design: toxic communication and technical architectures Tafsir Al-Qurtubi – Clasical Commentary of the Holy Qur’an (Translated by Aisha Bewley) submitted by It is of Arabic origin, and the meaning of Aisha is "alive and well". Also possibly means "life" in Swahili. Aisha was a wife of the prophet Muhammad. The name is also linked to the moon goddess. Use in the English-speaking world is recent and many variants have been created from this name due to its pleasing sounds. STARTS WITH Ai- Aisha name meaning in english are Lively Woman Life. Aisha Was The Name Of The Favorite Wife Of The Prophet Mohammed. People believes to have their Lucky Days according to their names, Tuesday, Thursday are Favourable and Lucky Days for name Aisha and lucky metals are Copper, Iron for Aisha name holders. According to a user from Egypt, the name Aisha means "Aisha was Muhammad's favorite wife, and it means 'Alive' or 'life'". According to a user from Illinois, U.S., the name Aisha is of Arabic origin and means "Life or Alive". According to a user from the United Kingdom, the name Aisha means "She who live". Definition of Aishat in the Definitions.net dictionary. Meaning of Aishat. What does Aishat mean? Information and translations of Aishat in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. Aisha definition, favorite wife of Muhammad (daughter of Abu-Bekr). See more. “That is exactly the problem,” Aisha says. “Because we cannot see the virus it does not mean it is not here. It can be here, it can be everywhere! The coronavirus, or as doctors call it COVID-19, is dangerous because it can make you very sick. It can feel a lot like having the flu. It can give you a fever, it can make you cough and you ... The name Aisha means Prosperous and is of Arabic origin. Aisha is a name that's been used primarily by parents who are considering baby names for girls. Wife of the Prophet Muhammad Variations include: Aishah, Iesha, Ayeesha, Aicha Aisha means either 'life', 'alive and well' or 'she who lives'. The name Aisha is of Arabic origin and has been around for hundreds of years. It is linked to the Arabic moon goddess and Aisha was also the third wife of Muhammad in historic texts. She was said to be the daughter of one of the prophet's friends. Aisha definition: ?613–678 ad , the favourite wife of Mohammed ; daughter of Abu Bekr Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples Aisha writes Novels on Matrubharti, When We Met in Novel Episodes in English is published by Aisha.