“Would you be prepared to die for your club?”
A news reporter asked two hardcore soccer fans outside of some stadium in Belgrade, Serbia.
“Yes,” the fans answered.
I was watching a short documentary on YouTube called “the eternal derby” and felt an instant need to bang my head against the nearest mountain. What was this person talking about? Why on God’s green earth would anybody be ready to die for a soccer team fifa world cup?
As a Muslim, I am required to preserve my life except under an extremely narrow range of conditions. It’s a gift entrusted to me by Allah, and he will take it back when my time comes. Sacrificing it for an unworthy cause is a grave sin in Islam. That’s why a person who takes his own life is eternally punished in hell.
However, a while later I watched an interview with a psychologist talking about relationship commitment and then he said something that caught my attention “Sacrifice means commitment, and as long as you haven’t sacrificed anything for whatever you claim commitment to, you haven’t really proven anything”
I instantly remembered that soccer fan, maybe he wouldn’t really die for his team, maybe when push comes to shove, he would freak out and run away faster than a gazelle on a National Geographic documentary, it’s possible. But he understood on a deep level that to express commitment to his team he must be ready to sacrifice.
Islam demands many sacrifices from its followers, first and foremost, you abandon many pleasures that Allah forbade like alcohol, premarital and extramarital relationships, usury in your financial dealings, and gambling. You must pray five times a day, every day of your life, you must fast a whole month every year, and you must also spend 2.5% of your wealth in charity every year (if it’s above a specific threshold). If you are a woman you must cover up your whole body except for your face and hands, and other things.
None of this is easy, it’s a hard sacrifice, especially for people who used to live a western lifestyle for a long time, but who said committing to the religion of Allah is easy?
It’s the nature of human beings that they want to commit to something and sacrifice for it, so why not commit and sacrifice for something that would be rewarded with, quite literally, an eternal life in an infinite heaven?
