According to Islam, whenever we are struck by illness or misfortune or someone hurts us, there is a higher purpose behind it, which we may not understand at the time,’ one of them said to me. ‘That’s where trust comes in. Through suffering, God helps us to better ourselves and make good our mistakes. It is a form of purification and also God’s way of testing the strength of our faith and the goodness of our character.’ Another lady suggested I look on the bright side.‘Suffering draws us closer to God and that is our aim in life,’ she said. Then she quoted Rum who had said, ‘It is pain that draws man to his Lord, because when he is well, he doesn’t remember the Lord.’ I tried to look at the positive and believe that there was a higher, spiritual perspective on what I had just been through, and all the advice I was given helped me a lot. But it took quite a while for my heart to catch up with my mind.

— Kristiane Backer

Among the lessons I learned on Hajj was that I needed to be mindful and keep the inner connection with God at all times and that self-improvement is definitely a never-ending struggle.

— Kristiane Backer

Anyone seeking to draw closer to God needs to curb the horizontal and ascend to God vertically,’ he said. ‘And this means giving oneself fully to God – with all one’s heart, body, mind and soul. There mustn’t be any dark corners.’ Skimming the surface wasn’t an option, he stressed. ‘People often tend to merely skate around the edges of religion, but what they really need is to plunge into its depths like deep-sea divers looking for treasures. Too many people nowadays make selective choices from various faiths – the New Age approach, but never embrace any one of them fully,’ said NASA. It was true, so many people didn’t believe in organized religion but liked to take the best from every religion or spiritual teaching. ‘The most direct means of communication with God,’ he concluded, ‘are prayer and dhikr.

— Kristiane Backer

A sick person is Allah’s guest for as long as he is ill. Every day he is sick, God gives him countless rewards, as long as he says ‘ all Alhamdulillah’, praise be to God, and does not fight it and complain. When God returns to him his health, he expiates his sins and gives him the status of the newly-born (completely pure and free of any sin). Illness is a mercy and a blessing.

— Kristiane Backer

As pilgrims, we effectively slip into the role of our spiritual ancestress and run back and forth between the hills seven times. This symbolizes our own quest in this world for whatever we are seeking and God’s Mercy which fulfills our quest even beyond our expectations.

— Kristiane Backer

Boys will always be boys,’ he said. ‘The relationship obviously wasn’t meant to be.’ He told me I should trust that the break-up was for the best, even if I couldn’t see that yet. As with every form of suffering, heartache brings with it catharsis, and turns us into better human beings. ‘It is like an iron in the furnace that is beaten into shape,’ he said. These bad experiences were ultimately a good sign because God tests the ones He loves. That might be why He has so few friends,’ he added dryly. His words cheered me up a bit.

— Kristiane Backer

But I comforted myself with the thought that the reward for every discomfort I suffered for God was a spiritual blessing.

— Kristiane Backer

During this time I came to understand a lot about myself, human beings, faith and the meaning of marriage and friendship. The world is not black and white, nothing is what it seems, and we are not cartoon characters that can be divided into goodies and baddies, but complex and multi-faceted beings with many weaknesses. Human beings will always disappoint. But God is there. He sometimes speaks through others, and we would be wise to listen to those we trust and to our own inner voice, God’s voice. No matter how difficult or painful life sometimes becomes, we must never lose faith. We may not always find justice in this world, but compassion and forgiveness are such important qualities. They help us to dissolve so much of the negativity that we hold. Practicing them mostly benefits ourselves.

— Kristiane Backer

Everything that is in the world, there is a correspondence on every level of existence. The macrocosm is a reflection of the microcosm, and the way we experience the outer world is a reflection of our inner state: it is our mirror. If we are in harmony with ourselves, then we will be in harmony with the outer world, i.e. God. If we change from within, then everything around us also changes. I certainly knew how true this was.

— Kristiane Backer

God does not expect of us what we cannot do, but He does expect what we can do.

— Kristiane Backer