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Guidance

I’ve noticed LinkedIn has a huge amount of “Business/Spiritual/Diet guidance/mentors” offering all kinds of advice. I’ve seen some very good advice. But I’ve also seen a number of business advocates who are not open or friendly. One post, by a business mentor, said they didn’t want to help anyone who was too shy or too timid. What?! Aren’t those the exact type of people who need your help? So, I feel sure in saying: even a self-proclaimed ‘guide/mentor,’ can have some seriously confused ideas about what it is to ‘help’ someone.

I am American and I say this because I’m going to be talking about western culture, which I spent half of my life in. I was born and raised there and I lived there for 33 years. Yes, I’m old.

Moving away helped me see my former culture so much clearer. I spent quite a lot of time studying it from a distance. No media, no internet, no cable television. My life when I came to Jeddah then was stripped down to the bare bone. Not even an English library!

In the States, however, when I was 25, I began studying religion because no matter what I did, what vice I gave up, I was still not in peace. I was at war with everything and everyone around me. I was a truly open-minded malcontent. I wasn’t arrogant. I knew my ideas and everyone around me of ‘right and wrong’ were fallible. My one saving grace was, my eyes were wide open. I saw:

  • How our civil and criminal laws changed all the time.
  • How our ideas of morality changed; no more pledge of allegiance, laws restricted breastfeeding, but you could find a beach that allowed nudity. Pornography and prostitution were legal or illegal depending on what state and year you were in.

I’ve always been on the side of the underdog, the one struggling, the misunderstood, so naturally, I saw homelessness as a very unnecessary suffering. As I watched my mother struggle to raise me and my brother, I realized it was because the laws and norms had allowed her former spouses to live a new life free from paying alimony or child support, and legal advice was and is costly.

  • There are too many orphans in western society
  • We don’t know how to make a society safe
  • Our punishment for crime often doesn’t match the crime
  • Our marriage and divorce laws keep people in costly court for years
  • We have too many women and children living in poverty
  • We have domestic abuse and violence escalating
  • People who don’t have a college degree can’t live on minimum wage so, both parents work and their children go home to an empty house

What am I saying?

There is not a single person alive who doesn’t need guidance.

And that’s why once again, fourteen hundred years ago, our Creator sent yet another Messenger, and the Quran, which is believed to be the final, infallible, unadulterated former message of all the former Prophets. It’s a way of life that will never lead you wrong. I guarantee this. Islam upholds everything good and denounces everything bad. It has Nothing to do with violence or terrorism. It upholds cleanliness, sobriety, charity, selflessness, and love.

I am so grateful Allah guided me through other people and saved me from myself.

Laurie Hill
Laurie Hill
Laurie Hill holds a Liberal Arts degree from Pennsylvania State University and a Certificate for Writing Social Commentary, (2006). Having traveled to many countries she is a passionate promoter for world peace for all people and all religious thought, as long as its base is non-violent, and respects individual freedom. An aspiring novelist with three completed novels she is currently working to publish her third. She has resided in Jeddah for twenty-eight years.

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