Our
Past

You know,

when humans are born into the world they soon get to learn that the world didn't start when they arrived

it was there for a long time before them.

And their parents and grandparents will tell them stories of when they were young,

and stories of long ago, long before they were born.

They will tell of famous people that changed the lives of those around them,

changes that still mean a lot to people today.

So in the community around them in Scotland they know that every year people celebrate the birth of Jesus.

And muslims tell their own stories of long ago, of Muhammad the Messenger, and how he changed the world in a way that still changes people's lives today.

By passing on their stories people can remember things for a very long time.

Nowadays things can change very fast.

People can remember times in their lives when things were very different,

even times before computers and mobile phones.

And there are constant changes in music and fashion, and the way that people entertain themselves.

In playgrounds children often play in much the same way as they have for hundreds of years,

while at other times they get almost all their entertainment through a new invention,

an electronic screen of one kind or another.

But as they grow they look at the sun and the moon,

and get to know the patterns of what they do

during the days and months and years of their lives,

and they wake up each day and sleep each night,

and some things they do often, several times a day,

and some things like birthdays, or school holidays, or the seasons, make a pattern they get to know as the rhythm of the years.

But the years can seem to take a long time to go by, and when they are gone they can easily be forgotten,

so people keep things from their past to remind them of the way they were.

They keep photographs and movies of themselves and the people they know,

to remember who they were and what they did when they were younger.

Or they will keep things they no longer use, just to remind themselves of the times when they did.

Some adults still have teddy bears they had when they were small,

and parents will often keep the tiny shoes that were once worn by their children, long after their children have grown to be adults.

It reminds them of the love they felt for them when they were still their babies.

For muslims, of course, the thing that they have saved the longest, is the wonderful Reading,

the words of God as they were spoken by Muhammad the Messenger.

Muslims have always known that those words were so precious that they must never be forgotten.

So those words were learned by heart, and used in the Salah,

and written down and passed from one generation to another until now.

Which is why muslims today can still read and hear and wonder at the same words

that were spoken by the Messenger, so far away and so long ago,

those words that changed history for humankind forever.