If you spent this Ramadan in its true spirit by fasting and more importantly immersing yourself in intensified prayer and personal reflection----you will have most probably felt by the end of the month refreshed and over-hauled, and if you were extremely fortunate then you would have also felt stripped clean of all the muck that had heaped up inside.

In case you had 30 minutes to spare perhaps on one of these days, then may be you were able to watch a girl called Mariam on Dawn TV getting blasted for not wearing a dupatta on her head during a show which was a question and answer session dealing with the topic of Islam.

She got hit from left, right, and center. They came at her from all sides! How on earth could she sit there day after day without a dupatta! "Get her to realize what Islam is, and then preach to the rest of us!!!" said one furious caller. The fury and comments just swelled with each passing day. But Mariam didn't cover her head. She remained staunch in her stance, and the callers unwavered in their views.

Should Mariam have followed the usual decorum such programs demand? Perhaps. Then why didn't she? May be because she felt that if she had to cover her head then it should be based on a decision of inherently wanting to do it for Allah and not for a bunch of people who were telling her to do it. The problem with this justification is that it only works for Mariam, and not for the rest of the people who felt she was committing a huge blunder. But then again, Mariam wasn't really interested in pleasing people and pacifying them---she was sticking to her guns. Her unwillingness to budge and acquiesce was not her problem----it was ours. But why?

Why were so many of the callers and others watching the show perturbed by her not covering her head? What difference would it make to them if she did or didn't?

It seemed people's agitation emerged from the idea that since she is a Muslim to begin with then why couldn't she adhere to Islamic values? The answer is how many of us are adhering to Islamic values? So Mariam wasn't covering her head.....if you look around most of us don't wear hijabs. Most of us can't even claim to be good practicing Muslims. So then how are we able to point fingers at her?

This isn't to defend Mariam. But rather we need to start realizing what the status quo is. Over the last several years we have evolved into a society that has gradually become far removed from Islamic values. May be that's why we're so obsessed about religion these days----because we've lost religion. So when a girl shows up on a TV channel co-hosting a show about Islam and isn't wearing hijab, that should come as no surprise because we essentially have reached a point where such issues have lost significance. We have forgotten what is right and wrong.....we no longer know what is in-line and out of line. We have back-pedalled to the point where we need to once again re-learn what Islam is and what it teaches us. And, so as a result of our own faults, short-comings, and carelessness we stand confused, lost, and incapable of adhering to "Islamic values". Rather than point fingers and brand each other with pejorative statements, we must endure this "re-learning" with civility and tolerance. And there is no harm in doing this. One only hopes that this repeat expedition will this time around bring us to the right destination. Until then, Mariam and others like her are trying to learn-----so let them.