"The Picture Of Dorian Gray"

Turning the key very carefully in the rusted lock, I slowly opened the door and stepped inside.
How empty, sad and quiet. The house had been abandoned years ago. I felt suffocated as dust choked me. My first instinct was to pull the curtains, open the windows and rush back outside for fresh air.
Houses are built with a lot of care and passion and have to be maintained with the same. Rooms need to be aired, the gardens need to be tended with care, bushes trimmed and trees pruned regularly. A house where none of these activities takes place, soon earns the reputation of being 'haunted', and rightly so. Any place that is so neglected, and lacks signs of normal human existence will surely become a haven for 'the others'.
The human soul is such a house my dear friends; a very delicate, fragile house; a house built by none other than God Himself. And this house has windows too.......countless windows. To name just a few, love and fear of God, love for all His creatures, love of nature,compassion, tolerance and the ability to embrace everyone with their faults; equal sense of justice for all, humility, charity and mercy.
Each of these windows brings new life and nourishment to the soul. As we close one, it paves the way for the next to shut down, and one by one, over a period of a lifetime, all the windows are sealed and the soul is choked to death.
 And what is a man without a soul, but an animal; a slave to the demons of desire?
In order to maintain the house of our soul so that love grows and happiness flourishes in it, we need to keep all the windows open. Close even one of them and the soul begins to stagnate. Gradually it becomes putrid, just like the water in a closed pond. Very stealthily, the foulness of the soul takes over the entire body that encases it. When that happens, even the most handsome of men will lose their charm and beauty to the ugliness of their dying soul. As our ugly deeds alter the beauty of our soul, so do they cause our face to become hideous and repulsive; for the face is the mirror of our soul!
The reason why Muslims of a thousand years ago were so great is that they had kept their souls flourishing by keeping their windows open. They learned from others and embraced people and ideas without selfish prejudice and malice. They were magnanimous people and sought 'ilm' or knowledge rather than power. The latter fell in their lap without struggle, as a result of their intellectual pursuits.
History has proven that the great fame and success of the Muslims were generated primarily not so much by their military superiority as by their acts of extraordinary kindness, tolerance and generosity. The extended periods of their rule over vast regions of the world is accepted today, even by the west, as the greatest time of all, for learning and advancement of art, culture and science. It was a period of unimaginable glory and enlightenment for the Muslims of those days.
Alas, no more!!!
Why is it that today Muslims all over the world are suffering humiliation, indignity and oppression? Why is it that we no longer hear Muslim names in the fields of medicine, astrology, mathematics; all areas where Muslims were the pioneers of knowledge and discovery? Why do we hear of them bracketed only with violence, barbarism and brutality?
The answer is simple: We have closed all the windows. The 'rooms' of our souls need 'airing', the gardens need tender care and love. We are forever obsessed with the well being of our bodies, little realizing that bodies cannot be separated from souls.Our souls need nourishment of a different kind which only comes from self effacement and love for humanity.We forget that while our bodies will perish, our souls will not.
Let us open our closed windows, one window at a time.
Let us forget our conceited desires and rise above our biases.
Let us begin a new phase of life; a phase of love and kindness, of peace and tolerance.
Let us bring hearts and souls together.
Let us never forget the story of " The Picture Of Dorian Gray".