Former Indian actress Zaira Wasim was on the receiving end of trolls and abuses after she had tweeted a verse from the holy Quran that included a citation to ‘locust attack’ and related it to people’s arrogance.
The tweet went viral after several reports of locust attacks in various parts of the country got circulated online. After netizens had objected to Zaira’s tweet and mentioned how it was totally unfair to justify a crisis by using a verse from the Quran, Zaira quickly deleted the tweet.
After that, Zaira Wasim also removed her social media accounts from both Twitter and Instagram.
The tweet, however, read, “So We sent upon them the flood and locusts and lice and frogs and blood: Signs openly self explained: but they were steeped in arrogance- a people given to sin
-Qur’an 7:133”
Netizens cited the insensitivity of the tweet and had also accused Zaira of using her religion to justify her bigotry. One user wrote, “Well She just used a Quran’s verse to Justify Locusts attack on a country which offered her an opportunity in cosmopolitan city. I will again say, The Source of Hate & bigotry is something else, Education and Secularism can never become the answer to radical Islamism.”
Check out these responses to Zaira’s now-deleted tweet
Meanwhile, some users questioned Zaira Wasim’s decision to deactivate her account. However, Zaira Wasim rejoined Twitter after taking a break and to that user’s question, she came up with a response.
“Because I’m just a human, like everyone else, who’s allowed to take a break from everything whenever the noise inside my head or around me reaches it’s peak :)”
It’s been almost a year since the Dangal actor Zaira bid adieu to her career in the film industry by pointing out that profession was coming in the way of her relationship with God.
Zaira Wasim announced her bold decision to quit acting field, saying she was not at all pleased with her acting profession as it interfered with her faith and religion.
In a detailed post on her Facebook page, which she explained clearly, she realised “though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here”. She later shared across all social media platforms.
“Five years ago, I made a decision that changed my life forever. As I stepped my foot in Bollywood, it opened doors of massive popularity for me. I started to become the prime candidate of public attention, I was projected as the gospel of the idea of success and was often identified as a role model for the youth. However, that’s never something that I set out to do or become, especially with regards to my ideas of success and failure, which I had just started to explore and understand,” Wasim said in the lengthy post.
The National Award-winning actor said that she has completed five years in the profession and she wanted to “confess that I am not truly happy with this identity i.e my line of work”.
“For a very long time now, it has felt like I have struggled to become someone else. As I had just started to explore and make sense of the things to which I dedicated my time, efforts and emotions and tried to grab hold of a new lifestyle, it was only for me to realise that though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here.
“This field indeed brought a lot of love, support, and applause my way, but what it also did was to lead me to a path of ignorance, as I silently and unconsciously transitioned out of ‘imaan’ (faith). While I continued to work in an environment that consistently interfered with my ‘imaan’, my relationship with my religion was threatened,” she said.
Wasim said as she continued to “ignorantly pass through” while trying to convince herself that what she was doing was okay and was not really affecting her, “I lost all the ‘Barakah’ (blessing) from my life”.
“I was constantly battling with my soul to reconcile my thoughts and instincts to fix a static picture of my ‘imaan’ and I failed miserably, not just once but a hundred times…”
“I kept procrastinating by tricking and deluding my conscience into the idea that I know what I am doing doesn’t feel right but assumed that I will put an end to this whenever the time feels right and I continued to put myself in a vulnerable position where it was always so easy to succumb to the environment that damaged my peace, ‘imaan’ and my relationship with Allah (God),” she said.
“In the great and divine wisdom of the Quran, I found sufficiency and peace. Indeed the hearts find peace when it acquires the knowledge of Its Creator, His Attributes, His Mercy and His commandments,” she added.
Wasim added that she started to heavily rely upon Allah’s mercy for assistance and guidance rather than valuing her own believability.
“I discovered my lack of knowledge of the basic fundamentals of my religion and how my inability to reinforce a change earlier was a result of confusing my heart’s contentment and well being with strengthening and satisfying my own (shallow and worldly) desires,” she said.
The actress, who made her huge Bollywood debut in Aamir Khan’s 2016 film Dangal, said she questioned the deepest sources of her ideas of success, meaning and the purpose of her life.
“The source code that governed and impacted my perceptions evolved into a different dimension. Success isn’t correlated with our biased, delusional and conventional shallow measures of life. Success is the accomplishment of the purpose of our creation. We have forgotten the purpose we were created for as we ignorantly continue to pass through our lives; deceiving our conscience,” she said.
Wasim said the journey has been “exhausting, to battle my soul for so long” and life was too short yet too long to be at war with oneself.
Talking about openly announcing the decision on social media, the actor said she was doing so not to paint a holier picture of herself, but “this is the least I can do to start afresh”.
“This is just my first step as I have arrived at the clarity of realisation of the path I wish to be on and strive for and during this time I may have consciously or unconsciously planted a seed of temptation in the hearts of many, but my sincere advice to everyone is that no amount of success, fame, authority or wealth is worth trading or losing your peace or the light of your ‘imaan’ for,” she said.