From a faraway island without a name

From a faraway island

Without a name

Came a coconut

Floating upon the waves

Leaving behind the shares

Of the isle you call home

How long have you drifted

Upon the waves?

Lifting the lone fruit

I place it to my chest

And share its silent solitude

A kindred drifter’s loneliness

As I watch the setting sun

Be swallowed by the sea

Tears flow down my face

Not knowing where I myself may be

In The Battle of Pacific, 2011. Japanese movie

Image: zazzle.com.br

‘From MTV to Mecca’ is the truly inspiring story of Kristiane Backer,

who at the height of her career as one of Europe’s leading pop culture icons, converted to Islam. The book can be purchased from Amazon and AwakeningUK ....MASH'ALLAH http://kristianebacker.com/book

Shumayla Tanveer

I am glad I had the chance to introduce Kristiane to the culture and religion of Islam. She not only loved the sacred music and the desi food but had an open mind to study and look beyond the headlines. I admire the sincerity with which she continued to discover the faith for herself and her steadfastness in practicing. This book will inspire Muslims and non- Muslims alike. May Allah bless her and give her all success’ Imran Khan

In the early 1990s, Kristiane Backer became one of the very first presenters on MTV Europe. For years she lived and breathed the international music scene, quickly gaining a cult following amongst viewers and becoming a darling of the European press. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bono, Bob Geldof, Jim Kerr, Take That and Cat Stevens, Kristiane was catapulted to the forefront of popular culture.

Through a fateful meeting with the famous cricketer Imran Khan, Kristiane travelled to Pakistan, where she encountered a completely different world to the one she knew: the religion and culture of Islam. She was drawn to this way of life which was dominated by a love of God and began to read the Quran and to study books about the Faith. The more she immersed herself in the world of Islam, the more she found herself dissatisfied with her own life. With the support of friends she met through Imran Khan, Kristiane began to learn the true values of the religion and, in 1995, decided to become a Muslim.

From MTV to Mecca takes the reader on a spiritual and cultural journey across the globe – from Pakistan to Bosnia, LA to London, Hamburg to Saudi Arabia – that will inspire Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Encountering Islamic academics, musicians and fellow converts, Kristiane finds the spiritual path of Sufism and embarks on the ultimate journey – the pilgrimage to Mecca. We share Kristiane’s highs and lows as she adopts Islam; from the difficulties of finding love, to embracing Islamic practices in day-to-day life, to dealing with prejudices, misconceptions and professional struggles, and she speaks with startling honesty of what it truly means to be a practising Muslim in Western society.

Open your eyes. Your world is an illusion. Shumayla Tanveer. Facebook

From the day you were born, you have been conditioned. Your schools taught you to be quiet, neutral and numb. Your media desensitized you to the suffering of your fellow human beings and the system slowly isolated you until it somehow felt normal to feel alone on a planet with 8 billion other people on it.
You worked hard for the future with your reward always just around the next corner or just up the next step. Everything was tomorrow but tomorrow never came.

And you realized too late that you had never lived at all. Something was missing and no matter how much you worked, partied or paid you could not disguise it. You accepted it as natural for one to be wealthy whilst another is poor, or the absurd notion that we must pay back the debt of our own existence.

We traded community culture for corporate comfort and our most precious resource, our time, as a commodity.
We need to move beyond revolution and into the next stage of human evolution. A time marked by unparalleled compassion and peaceful co-existence. The shape of which we can not foresee as it must be created together.

We will take no power back as we shall empower ourselves and we shall say: We are the humans. We are awake now. We reclaim our destiny

Image: Garden Paradise in Pakistan. From the Gardens of Shahzad Ahmed

gardening.about.com