The Next Phase of Western Dawah, Part 1

This is the first of a two-part series on the art of calling others to Islam in Western lands. This first part will identify and analyze what we at Taleef see as a major challenge to dawah efforts in the 21st Century by reflecting on the crisis in Gaza over the past year. God willing, part two will detail our vision for effective and meaningful dawah going forward by looking at the example of our Prophet ﷺ as well as some historical examples of successful spiritual revivals in the United States.

It is difficult to speak of the positive effects of a war. We are now a year out from October 7th, 2023, a day that kicked off Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza. Over the past year, Israel has dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, killed more than 41,000 people, and leveled well over half of the homes there. The extent of the loss is difficult to ascertain because the news cycle, along with our attention, has largely moved on. It is even more difficult to comprehend the level of human suffering there. However, as someone who works in the field of dawah, of calling people to Islam, it is also impossible not to recognize that the taqwa, or God-consciousness, of Gazan Muslims throughout this ordeal has opened a floodgate of conversion in the West.

Over the past year, we have heard from countless people embracing Islam that their interest in the religion began with a video from Gaza that they saw on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. In each case, they were shocked to see people who had lost their families and homes praising God and speaking of the hereafter. They saw that the chaos and destruction around them did not yield despair or nihilism but patient hope in the divine. They recognized that they would not have the capacity to hold up so gracefully under similar circumstances. So they began asking themselves what the Gazan people possessed that they did not. We have seen this at Taleef again and again, and we know that this same trend has played out across the country at various mosques and community centers.

What is amazing about the videos that have come out of Gaza is that they contain no profound arguments for the truth of Islam nor, indeed, any explicit appeals to accept the religion. Go back and search through these videos and you will see no great rhetorical victories—only the praise and glorification of God. What they do show, however, is that Islam is of benefit in the midst of unimaginable suffering. Islam provides the Gazans with transcendent meaning that pierces through the chaos surrounding them. Their example has called more people to the religion than many of the explicit dawah efforts of the past few years. Demonstrations of the benefits of our faith in a chaotic and increasingly meaningless world are succeeding where rhetorical exercises are falling short. Those of us in the West who aim to see the ranks of our religion invigorated by our families, neighbors, and coworkers should take note of this and adapt.

When I first embraced Islam, I associated dawah with pamphlets, preachers on street corners, and the occasional billboard. Now, dawah has largely moved online. Instead of pamphlets, there are blogs like this one; instead of street corners, we have Youtube preachers. But the underlying method of calling people to Islam has not fundamentally changed. Dawah remains a mostly rhetorical exercise, meaning we use words to convince others of the value and truth of Islam. This will always remain a necessary enterprise. Without efforts to verbally spread the message of Islam, we will fail those who are ready to listen. However, this method of dawah stands upon the assumption that our words can and do convey meaning and truth to a general audience. Two decades into the 21st century, I believe there is now reason to doubt that assumption.

The simple reason for this is information fatigue. A 2009 study out of UC San Diego showed that the average American spends 11.8 hours per day consuming information across all forms of media, including the internet, TV, and radio. Altogether, that amounted to around 100,000 words per day and accounted for just less than half of our brains’ processing power. The 2009 findings showed a 5x increase in information consumption since 1986 and a 90x increase since 1940. And this was before the smartphone became a universal feature of everyday life. Information consumption, and fatigue, has certainly increased in the past 15 years, and it likely explains the increasing ill effects of shortened attention spans and diminished reading comprehension that any school teacher will be familiar with. It is safe to say that, in 2024, we are awash in a sea of information without a life raft.

The issue with this is not simply that dawah efforts must compete with other sources of information. The much larger problem is that we have become numb to new information. New information does not produce new understanding or meaning for our lives. Consider that, in 2021, the U.S. Military disclosed the existence of extraterrestrial aircraft flying through our skies. There was no public intrigue, scandal, or widespread panic. We did not question our place in the great scheme of the universe. All of the books and movies on this topic that predicted a new era of human life—broader horizons or a terrifying sense of cosmic insignificance—got it wrong. The American public, if they heard of this event at all, largely shrugged their shoulders and got on with life.

What does this mean for the existing model of dawah? It means that we may craft the most articulate and convincing explanations of Islam for a Western audience and it will still run the risk of simply adding to the cacophony of meaningless information available to the public. We may master the algorithms of YouTube and TikTok to get our messages in front of as many eyeballs as possible, only for it to be seen in an endless scroll of salacious content and ads. It means that what dawah efforts are truly up against is a wall of noise and a fundamental lack of meaning surrounding human hearts in the age of information overload.

This is where I believe the Gaza videos point the way to a more effective form of dawah. They show rather than tell. They cut through the wall of noise because, rather than adding yet more information to that wall, they point to a world of meaning that lies beyond it. This should tell us that what so many people truly need and crave, more than expositions of Islam—the propositions of our theology or instructions in worship—is the tranquility of heart that comes from knowing Allah. Such demonstrations need to become the first line of our dawah. In the final analysis, the destruction on display in the Gaza videos mirrored a psychological turmoil that most Westerners experienced. At the same time, the Gazans displayed a calmness of heart amidst that destruction that we do not experience. A simple “alhamdulillah,” said with the right intention and sincerity, demonstrates that Islam provides a genuine refuge from the increasing chaos, noise, and nihilism of this world—that, in the remembrance of God, hearts find rest.

Learning How to Fail from the Hajj

In all of the discussions and informal counseling I have provided in my role at Taleef, I have yet to meet a person whose life went according to their plans. I don’t mean plans that naturally evolve, or goals that we change out of our own choice. I mean plans that go seriously awry. Plans that fail. For so many of us, our own journeys to Islam are wrapped up in these failures. And through these experiences, we see that our failures are often God’s victories. These are the times in our lives when God saves us from something that would be genuinely terrible for us, or He simply wants to be more generous with us than we could possibly be with ourselves. But failure can be ugly or it can be beautiful. We can do it with grace or we can be dragged through it, kicking and screaming. There is an art to failure and the Hajj teaches us this art.

The story of the Hajj is a story of family, the place where we experience some of our most intense shortcomings. It’s the story of our Prophets Ibrahim and Ismail, may God grant them peace, and of our mother Hajjar. Many with a Christian or Jewish background will already be familiar with the beginning of this story from Genesis 16, in which Hajjar, the servant of Ibrahim’s wife, Sarah, is scorned by her mistress after becoming pregnant by Ibrahim. She flees into the wilderness of Arabia, where she has an encounter with one of God’s angels at a well. 

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ relates this same story to us with greater, and slightly different, details. He tells us that Ibrahim led Hajjar into the wilderness after the birth of Ismail. He took them to the place where the city of Mecca sits today--at that time a barren desert valley. When he turned around to leave, Hajjar began asking him, “O Ibrahim! Where are you going, leaving us alone in this valley where there is nothing to sustain us?” Ibrahim would not respond to her. She pleaded with him, asking the same question again and again. But still he would not respond. Finally, she asked him, “Did your Lord command you to do this?” Ibrahim told her, “yes.” And she responded, “Then I am content with Allah.” After Ibrahim departed, Hajjar began to run between the mountains of Safa and Marwa, looking for water. She ran back and forth seven times, an act that pilgrims to Mecca still perform to this day. However, their deliverance came not from her efforts but from the Angel Gabriel, may God grant him peace. He struck the earth with his wing and a spring began to gush forth so profusely that Hajjar shouted, “Zam zam,” or “stop stop,” asking Allah to ease its flow. This is the well of Zamzam that pilgrims still drink from to this day. The water attracted birds, which attracted Beduins from the tribe of Jurhum. With Hajjar’s permission, they settled there, and together founded the city of Mecca.

This is only part of the story of the Hajj. But it is enough for us to take away profound lessons. The overarching lesson here is that beautiful things are often the result of our plans falling apart. The well of Zamzam, the city of Mecca, and the mission of God’s Messenger ﷺ, and thus our means of worshiping God, are all the result of Ibrahim and Hajjar sacrificing the plans they had for their lives. Their example can guide us through the sacrifices we make to obey God and draw nearer to Him. Our Mother Hajjar, in particular, can teach us three beautiful lessons here.

It is only natural, when we are tested, to become disoriented, confused, and flustered. We ask, “why is this happening to me?” God often tests us by taking us off the script we have for our lives. Hajjar likely expected to raise Ismail in the safety and comfort of Ibrahim’s home. When it became clear to her that Ibrahim would leave her alone in the desert with their son, she had the normal reaction of asking why. Her lesson to us comes from what she did next: she moved from reactionary fear and anxiety to a state of remembering God. “If God commanded this, then I am content.” We can also do this. We can remember that the One who created our adversity will also guide us through it to a resolution that He will also create. The trials we face, rather that being things that we flee from, endure, or battle alone, can become opportunities for fleeing to God’s mercy and care. 

Our mother Hajjar’s trust in God, however, did not lead to inaction. She did not sit back and wait for God’s deliverance to arrive. Rather, she actively sought it out by ascending the mountains of Safa and Marwa, back and forth seven times, looking for water or someone who might help her. Her outward state mirrored her inner state: first she fled to God then she hurried to find His deliverance. Her second lesson to us is that God acts through the means of this world, and that He often uses us to bring about the things we seek. Faith is not a passive belief that we simply hold in our hearts; it is something that demands our participation. When we move by faith, God’s deliverance is promised and it often is better than what we could plan for ourselves. 

However, God’s deliverance did not come through Hajjar’s efforts. It was a true miracle that was far better than anything she could have done herself. God sent His angel, Gabriel, to strike the ground to reveal the well of Zamzam. The water from this well was so abundant that it not only nourished Hajjar and Ismail, it also continues to nourish pilgrims to Mecca until today. This is God’s lesson to us: when we remember Him and move with certain faith in Him, He will help us in ways that we cannot imagine, from places that we cannot expect. His generosity outstrips anything we could have imagined for ourselves. Many of you certainly have stories like this. Your life goes off-script and takes you to a place that frightens you. You descend into doubt and self-pity; you ask why it had to happen to you. But, in the end, God’s plan turns out to be better than your own.

Hajj is the story of every one of our lives: of the failure and brokenheartedness we endure on the path to God, of the strength and nearness to Him we find along the way. The ritual reenactment of these moments from the lives of Ibrahim, Hajjar, and Ismail show us the reality of our own journeys. We, too, will find our own wells of Zamzam, those miracles in our own lives that are just as improbable as water gushing from a rock in the desert, which give life to us and all those who are near to us. So, as we enter into the first days of the month of Dhul Hijja, reflect upon the miracles God has given you, and your own best laid plans from which He has delivered you. Resolve to remember that God is always near, and to be with Him, as your move forward.

May God grant us all the grace to fail beautifully. Ameen.

Hajj & Revolution, Part Two: Malcolm X at Oxford Union

“The young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there's got to be a change. People in power have misused it and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built. And the only way it's going to be built is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don't care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth."

Our previous article commemorated Malcolm X’s assassination by pointing to a largely forgotten part of his legacy: his revolutionary politics vis-à-vis the American government. It dispelled the notion that the “post-Hajj” Malcolm became a peaceful and agreeable integrationist, a Muslim MLK. Rather, Malcolm advocated direct confrontation with the structures of oppression in this country in defense of his people’s safety and rights. Moreover, his post-Hajj politics inspired a generation of African American Muslim revolutionaries, whose politics still hold important lessons for us today. 

Now, on the anniversary of Malcolm’s birth, we will look at the other side of his political legacy: how he dealt with friends and built alliances following his pilgrimage to Mecca. He laid out his views on this subject in great detail during his debate at the Oxford Union on December 3rd, 1964. Here, Malcolm presents revolution and brotherhood as two sides of the same political coin. That is, he offers uncompromising opposition to any political structure that would seek to harm African Americans as well as unqualified brotherhood to any person willing to join him in this cause. As we shall see, this political stance not only stemmed from Malcolm’s faith as a Muslim, but was also deeply Prophetic in nature. Malcolm, like the Prophet himself ﷺ, deals with friends and enemies alike by appealing to their shared humanity. The article will end with a reflection upon the fact that many American Muslims today are using this exact strategy quite effectively in opposition to the ongoing genocide of our brothers and sisters in Gaza.

Malcolm’s address at Oxford Union provides a description and a constant appeal to the fitra, our belief in a shared human nature that recognizes truth and falsehood as well as right and wrong. Malcolm does not use this precise term. However, he prefaces his speech by identifying himself as a Muslim who speaks first and foremost from the principles of Islam: “I am a Muslim. If there is something wrong with that then I stand condemned. My religion is Islam, I believe in Allah, I believe in Muhammad as the Apostle of Allah.” He then immediately connects his belief in God and His Messenger ﷺ to his politics and beliefs about humanity: “I believe in the brotherhood of all men. But I don’t believe in brotherhood with anybody who’s not ready to practice brotherhood with our people.” This statement shows the connection between brotherhood and revolution in Malcolm’s politics. Human equality is endowed by God. Those who are willing to practice it are welcomed as friends and allies; those who willfully oppose it consequently engage in oppression and are rightfully opposed. 

However, Malcolm demonstrates that one need not be a Muslim to recognize this equality or practice brotherhood with him. This is where his appeal to our fitra is the most clear. Malcolm believes that, because every human has this capacity to recognize what is right and true, he may reason and work together with anyone. Throughout his address, he makes frequent appeals to our shared humanity as something that allows us to see through the veils of racial division. In his defense of “extremism,” the term his hosts used to characterize revolutionary politics, he said, “If we look upon ourselves as human beings, I doubt that anyone will deny that extremism, in defense of liberty, the liberty of any human being, is a value.” When the debate turned toward the Congo Crisis, and the different ways that the British press covered white and African deaths, Malcolm argued: “when you begin thinking in terms of death being death, no matter what type of human being it is, then we all will probably be able to sit down as human beings and get rid of this extremism and moderation.” The audio recording of this event makes it clear that Malcolm was not speaking theoretically. These statements were direct appeals to his audience, many of whom erupted in applause at these statements, to join him as brothers and sisters in his efforts for basic human dignity. 

Malcolm exhorts his audience in a deeply Quranic way, calling upon them to reason and reflect from the deepest, most human parts of themselves. Moreover, the politics he articulates here is thoroughly Prophetic. At the moment of the Prophet’s ﷺ final revolution, the Opening of Mecca, he makes a similar appeal to brotherhood. This was a moment when the Messenger of God ﷺ came face-to-face with his enemies, people who had dealt with the Muslims in the most inhuman of ways, those who upheld a social and religious system he was intent upon overthrowing. In that moment, he asked them, “What do you say, what should I do with you?” They replied, “You are the son of our brother, a forbearing and merciful man.” He responded to them, “I say to you as Joseph said to his brothers: ‘No blame is upon you today. Allah will forgive you, for He is the most merciful of those who show mercy.” For Malcolm and the Prophet ﷺ alike, revolution was always a means to achieve full human brotherhood.

Many young American Muslims must be applauded for exercising this precise political strategy with the encampments that have emerged on university campuses across the country over the past months. Their calls for their schools to divest from Zionist enterprises have been uncompromising in their demands and clear in their use of humanitarian language. Some, like the Northwestern encampment here in Chicago, have been successful while many encampments have been destroyed by universities with the help of police. However, what has transpired in so many encampments seems far more important than the response to their demands. They have been places where young Muslims have displayed a form of leadership that has been firm in their demands to end structures of oppression while warm and inviting to those who show up in good faith. Students at the Columbia encampment reported “the sense of community and love they felt among the tents.” Jewish students at DePaul gathered at their encampment on a regular basis to pray. And many of us have surely seen the images of non-Muslim students praying alongside their Muslim brothers and sisters. 

These are more than feel good moments and photo ops. They are bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood that are opening the eyes of more and more Americans to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There is now a genuine shift in sentiment towards Zionism in America, which our government itself attests to with its recent ban of TikTok, where much of Gen Z has learned about the crisis in Gaza, as well as its attempt to pass the “Antisemitism” Awareness Act, which would criminalize any substantial form of condemning Israel. If Malcolm taught us one thing, it is that opposition becomes the most intense when you hit your target.

May God elevate all those who strive in His path, ameen!

Hajj & Revolution: The Forgotten Legacy of Malcolm X

Today, we remember the life and legacy of Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik Shabazz, who was taken from us abruptly on February 21, 1965 in New York’s Audubon Ballroom. Malcolm is a hero to Muslims, African Americans, and freedom fighters of all stripes. He taught us how to live a life in uncompromising pursuit of the truth, how to speak that truth fearlessly to power, and, tragically, the all too common consequences of doing so. Moreover, Malcolm is perhaps unique among our Muslim heroes--not because of who he was but because of who we still are. We are a people who have not yet outlived the battles he fought, and we may still stand in the shade of the legacy he left to us. 

Yet inheriting Malcolm’s legacy requires us to revisit it. Many American Muslims hold the commonplace perception of a “post-Hajj” Malcolm who returned from Mecca both an orthodox Muslim and an “orthodox” Civil Rights figure, a Muslim variation of Martin Luther King, Jr.. This perception is due in no small part to Malcolm’s own autobiography, whose editor, Alex Haley, purposefully removed chapters that would contradict Haley’s own integrationist politics. If Muslims today are to truly understand and carry forward the legacy of Malcolm X, we must first understand a fuller picture of the revolutionary politics that he died upon.

Malcolm’s politics were built upon a fundamental recognition that the American government had declared a covert war upon African Americans, their leaders, and their movements for freedom. While he was likely unaware of the exact government agency and program that was targeting him and his movement, both inside and outside the Nation of Islam (NOI), he was acutely aware that the attacks from mainstream media, infiltration of religious spaces, and targeted violence were part of a coherent government effort to subvert and disrupt any efforts to organize and empower African Americans and Muslims in the United States. He correctly recognized the irony of integrating into, and seeking rights within, a system at war with him and his people. Such a “solution” was tantamount to defeat.

Today, we not only know that Malcolm was correct, we also know the name of this war: the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). A decade after Malcolm’s assassination, Senator Frank Church, who led the Congressional investigation into COINTELPRO, came to a similar conclusion:

“So the war [World War 2] was brought home, and the techniques of destruction that had become involved in the fight against Communist intelligence services or Nazi intelligence services overseas were, by the admission of the man who was in charge of these programs, brought home and used against the American citizens. And there is no better example of that than the language and activity used against the so-called Black Nationalist Hate groups, which I remind you again, included such non-violent and gentle movements as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the New Left.”

These investigations, known as the Church Committee Hearings, revealed a comprehensive program to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” black freedom movements. Specifically, the FBI sought to “prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Their own documents note that Malcolm could have been such a figure prior to his assassination, and that they believed Martin Luther King, Jr. to aspire to that position in the wake of his passing. COINTELPRO therefore did not distinguish between pacifists and militants, or integrationists and “separationists,” as Malcolm described himself; it declared war upon the black freedom movement as a whole.

Malcolm X was a revolutionary. He recognized that negotiation with a system seeking his people’s political destruction was futile. The system itself had to be overturned. This political consciousness only intensified within him after he embraced Sunni Islam. In speech on December 20, 1964 at the Audubon Ballroom--months after his return from Hajj--he said, “I go for revolution.... I’m not one who goes for ‘We Shall Overcome.’ I just don’t believe we’re going to overcome singing.... I’m interested in one thing, and one thing alone, and that’s freedom by any means necessary.” This was a clear rebuke of the Civil Rights Movement, with its marches and adherence to a policy of non-violence, as a movement that would not produce freedom for African Americans. Malcolm believed that revolution, perhaps even violent revolution, was the only means of achieving freedom from oppression--and he often pointed to the American Revolution as a successful example of his aspirations.

These were not mere words. Malcolm’s actions toward the end of his life directly reflected these beliefs. His departure from the Nation of Islam was motivated, in part, by his frustration with the relatively meek politics of Elijah Muhammad, who had censured him for his comments about President Kennedy’s assassination, and who refused to give explicit political endorsements. Malcolm also grew increasingly close, during these years, to an emerging cadre of African American Sunni Muslims engaged in revolutionary politics. Around 1964, one year before his assassination, Malcolm joined the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), led by Muhammad Ahmad, telling him that he could do more for his movement outside the NOI.

It is impossible to say what Malcolm could have achieved had he lived to fulfill his alliance with RAM or his intentions in establishing the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Likewise, we cannot say how most American Muslims might remember him differently had he lived to express his full potential. However, we do know of a number of movements and individuals that he directly inspired who carried on his legacy in the years following his death--many of whom carry the endorsement of also being targeted by COINTELPRO.

After Malcolm’s assassination in 1965, a long-time associate named Salahadeen Shakur, an African American Sunni Muslim, and a successful businessman in New York City, began teaching classes on Islam and Malcolm’s revolutionary politics from his home in Queens. Among Salahadeen’s students were his two biological sons, Lumumba and Zayd Malik, along with many others who adopted the Shakur name. This group, known as the Shakur Family, included notable freedom fighters like Sekou Odinga (who recently passed from this life, may God’s mercy be upon him), Assata Shakur, and Afeni Shakur, the mother of Tupac Shakur.

The Shakur Family became central players in the New York City Black Panther Party and, later, the Black Liberation Army. What united the Shakur Family was a commitment to Islam and the revolutionary politics that was handed down to them directly from Malcolm X. They recognized, like Malcolm had before them, and as Senator Frank Church did later, that they were engaged in a war for their freedom that they had not declared, but nonetheless were obligated to fight. Their objective, like Malcolm’s, was freedom by any means necessary.

It is not surprising that Malcolm’s revolutionary legacy has been forgotten by so many American Muslims. Like Malcolm himself, this legacy was violently suppressed. Just a few years after Malcolm’s death, many members of the Shakur Family became targets of the state when they were accused of plotting to bomb a New York City Police Department. Together, twenty-one members of the New York Black Panther Party, known as the “Panther 21” successfully defended themselves against 156 charges leveled against them, including Afeni Shakur who represented herself at trial. However, the two-year ordeal effectively neutralized many members, and sent a clear message to other would-be Black and Muslim revolutionaries of the time. Over the coming decade, many of Malcolm’s revolutionary inheritors were targeted for incarceration and, in some cases, assassination. Yet this legacy has never been fully lost to us, and it remains there for us to reclaim and carry forward.

It is important for American Muslims today to recall and revive this legacy not so that we may blindly replicate the actions of previous generations, but so that our current politics, the failure of which so many are feeling in the wake of October 7th, may be unsettled and recalibrated. In our last article, we noted that many American Muslims were chaffing in their schools and workplaces at efforts to silence them for speaking up against an obvious genocide of the Palestinian people, along with murders, intimidation, and threats leveled against us at home. We must now ask ourselves what our efforts to relieve this condition, for ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Gaza, have amounted to. Have we recognized that we, too, are in a war that we did not declare, and taken appropriate measures to defend ourselves? Or are we still singing “We Shall Overcome” to those who do not care for our songs?

May God grant success to all who strive in His cause. Ameen!

A Call to the Silenced: Jihad of the Tongue

يا ايها الذين امنوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويغفر لكم ذنوبكم ومن يعط الله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما

"O you who believe, be mindful of God and speak the truth plainly. God will rectify your affairs for you and forgive you your sins. Whoever obeys God and His Messenger has surely won a mighty victory." (Surah al-Ahzab, 70-71)

If you have ever attended a Friday congregational prayer, you have likely heard these verses from the Qur'an. They are often mentioned at the beginning of the sermon as a reminder and call to action for the believers. The command given here is quite simple and morally intuitive: be mindful of God and speak the truth plainly. As with all simple instructions that are oft-repeated, we have a way of reducing it to a platitude. It goes in one ear and out the other. "Yes, I've heard this before," we tell ourselves. It is not until we are tested by adversity that we finally realize the value of these reminders. Speaking plainly, and fearing God above all else, especially in the face of unspeakable injustice, is just as necessary as it is difficult.

The Israeli Defense Forces' bombardment of Gaza has been ongoing for a month now. The bodies of our brothers and sisters there are still being counted, but the number has already surpassed 10,000--roughly half of those being children. Here in Chicago, we are still reeling from the horrific murder of Wadea Al-Fayoumi and the stabbing of his mother, who could have been any one of our sons or spouses. Pro-Palestine protestors have been shot at and Muslims across the country are being threatened in the streets. As terrifying as these events have been, they are not surprising. The IDF bombs Gazan civilians every few years; and Muslims in America have endured multiple seasons of hate crimes since 9/11. Though we can never accept these things, we have come to expect them.

What has caught many American Muslims off guard over the past month is the widespread threat to our right to speak plainly about these injustices. Reports from across the country are spreading in our private WhatsApp groups, email listservs, and by word-of-mouth that many employers, especially at large corporations, are clamping down on any 'Pro-Palestine' speech--as if opposition to bombing children is a partisan position. 

The angst and frustration that has resulted from this curtailment of our rights is already palpable in our communities. It is already impossible to send aid to Gaza. Now we are expected to also sit in silence as innocents are slaughtered in their beds at hospitals and refugee camps? As entire city blocks in the most densely populated place on earth are leveled? All while Israel's claimed enemy, by most accounts, sits largely unaffected in underground tunnels? No, we cannot submit to this reality. God commands us not to submit to this reality.

There is a hadith that I have noticed many American Muslims use as something of a mantra for dealing with injustice. In it, the Messenger of God ﷺ says, “Whoever among you sees evil, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot do so, then with his tongue. If he cannot do so, then with his heart, and that is the weakest level of faith.” We use this hadith to comfort ourselves in our powerlessness, which has been all too real for far too long. However, there is another way to understand this hadith: as an order of operations. It is a recipe for changing our apparent state of powerlessness. If you find yourself to be so powerless that you can only hate injustice in your heart, your next step is to speak out--especially if you hope to ever rectify injustice with your own hands. 

Many American Muslims, especially those who have already been silenced, will protest that doing so will threaten their jobs, their future employability, and therefore the welfare of their families. And this is true. So what can you do to create the conditions that will allow you to speak the truth plainly? What are your legal and contractual rights? Invoke them. Who are your allies at work, school, or your neighborhood association? Befriend them. Which institutions can put pressure on the institutions that put pressure on you? Call them. Your inability to speak today does not imply your inability to speak forever. Move from weaker to stronger levels of faith.

Secondly, we cannot mistake our fear of consequences for true powerlessness. If there truly were no power in our words, we would be allowed to speak as we please. The unjust suppression of our speech is a sign that it actually might change something. Despite the Zionist veneer of most American institutions, popular support for Israel is trending downward with each generation. Baby boomers, who still hold the reins at many of these institutions, will all reach retirement age by the year 2030. With their departure from the halls of power, pro-Zionist sentiment will drop by twenty percent. Now is the time for building coalitions that can effectively speak out for justice in Palestine and put meaningful pressure on our institutions. We have a voice, we have an audience, and we have the momentum.

God calls us to speak plainly--literally to "speak a word that hits its mark." This implies true speech delivered gently so that our audience will be receptive to it. When God sent Moses and Aaron, upon them be peace, to Pharaoh, one of the greatest tyrants to ever walk this earth, He instructed them to "Speak to him gently that he might take heed or fear Me." We owe this to the tyrants of our times as well, whether they come with bombs or HR complaints. And we must uphold these standards so that we do not one day become the tyrants whom we oppose. 

Such things are by no means easy; but they are absolutely necessary. These two prophets of God voiced the same fear that many of us have today: “Our Lord! We fear that he may be quick to harm us or act tyrannically.” God replied to this, saying, "Fear not. Indeed, I am with you both. I hear and I see." God Most High promises us that, in fearing Him and speaking the truth plainly, He will rectify our situation, He will forgive us, and that in these acts lies a mighty victory.

May God give us victory. Ameen.

Longing for the Messenger of God ﷺ

We are now in the month of Rabi' al-Awal, the month of our beloved Prophet's birth, may God bless him and grant him peace. This is a month in which Muslims have traditionally celebrated his birth and life by holding gatherings of remembrance and increasing their salawat, or blessings, upon him. Sending blessings upon the Prophet ﷺ is an act that God and His angels perform constantly. When we do so as well, we are joining them in an act that will complete our faith and reunite us with them in the garden.

At our 9th Annual Newcomers' Retreat, which we just completed in Washington, D.C. earlier this month, we focused nearly all of the instruction upon the Prophet ﷺ--his life, teachings, and station as a mercy to all of creation. It was extremely interesting to witness the various reactions our attendees had to this. Some leapt through the door of loving the Prophet ﷺ, others walked through at their own pace, while others hung out around the threshold, inspecting what lay on the other side. However, of those who were more skeptical, I noticed that all of their hearts came absolutely alive when we visited a group of elders at Masjid Muhammad, an Imam W.D. Muhammad community in D.C.. They glowed in their presence the way many others had glowed upon learning about the Messenger of God ﷺ. When I had the opportunity to ask one of the sisters what was so meaningful for her about that meeting, she said, "I think I needed to see all of those things we learned about the Prophet ﷺ in a living, breathing person. It didn't seem real until that point."

This is a reality for many of us. We need to see to believe, and we live at a time when we are apparently removed from the Prophet ﷺ. We can hear stories about him and his Companions, but it remains difficult to feel a genuine connection to them. After all, our lives are very different. Our challenges to live as Muslims are different. Therefore it can seem that our ability to know and love the Messenger of God ﷺ is different. But there are antidotes to these problems. One is connecting with people who love him. Another, which is just as powerful, is understanding that our apparent distance from God's Messenger in this age is an illusion. God and His Messenger see a different reality.

We can see this lesson in the life of Uwais ibn Amir al-Qarani, the greatest of the Tabi'een, or generation of Muslims who lived directly after the life of the Prophet ﷺ. Uwais is counted among the Tabi'een because, even though he lived during the life of the Prophet ﷺ, he was never able to meet him in person. He lived in Yemen, a month's journey from Madinah, but never was able to emigrate because he was the only person who cared for his sick mother. However, he longed to be in the presence of God's Messenger ﷺ and never let go of his hope to meet him.

Despite the physical distance between them, the Prophet ﷺ knew Uwais. He told his Companions:

“There will come to you a person from Yemen who will be called Uwais and he will leave none in Yemen behind him except his mother. His skin was white (due to leprosy) and he supplicated Allah and it was cured except for the size of a dinar or dirham. Anyone amongst you who meets him should ask him to supplicate for forgiveness (from Allah) for you.”

He also said, in another version of this narration, “If he were to take an oath in the name of Allah, Allah would honor it.” The Prophet ﷺ knew that Uwais had a high station with God. This happened in an age before social media and telephones. Uwais was not a 'significant' person in Yemen who would be known in Madinah; he was a shepherd who was shunned by most people due to his leprosy. The Prophet’s ﷺ knowledge of Uwais should not surprise us. The Messenger of God ﷺ described in detail things that are happening in the world today. He knows his followers. He knows you and me. 

Uwais would not leave Yemen to join the Prophet ﷺ until his mother gave him permission to do so nearly a decade after becoming Muslim. After ten years, he would finally meet his beloved Prophet. Yet, to his dismay, on the road from Yemen, news came to his caravan that the Messenger of God ﷺ had passed from this world.

Can you imagine how distant Uwais must have felt from the Prophet in that moment? After so many years of longing to make this journey, his beloved was snatched from him. He would never meet Muhammad ﷺ, and God would never send another prophet. He must have felt unworthy and unimportant, just as his people in Yemen told him he was. 

Yet God revealed another reality to Uwais when he arrived in Madinah. Umar approached the delegation from Yemen, searching for Uwais, just as he had done for years since hearing about him from the Prophet ﷺ. Umar asked them, "Is there amongst you Uwais ibn 'Amir?" They responded that yes, Uwais was among them, but that they regarded him as an outcast. However, Umar demanded to be taken to him. When they met, Umar informed Uwais of what the Prophet ﷺ said about him and begged him to ask God for forgiveness on his behalf.

Outwardly, Umar, one of the greatest Companions, was humbling himself before a strange outcast with no connection to the Prophet ﷺ. Yet, inwardly, Uwais' station with God had been elevated through his obedient devotion to his mother and his unceasing longing for the Messenger of God ﷺ. What had seemed like an unbridgeable gap suddenly transformed into the the means of Uwais’ connection to the Beloved ﷺ.

What may seem real to us may not be what is real with God. He is al-Haqq, the Ultimate Reality. And God has given knowledge of each believer to His Messenger ﷺ. So do not be dismayed or deluded by your existence over 1400 years after the life of our beloved. Live a dutiful life of service where God has placed you, just as Uwais did, and do not stop longing for the Messenger of God ﷺ. That longing is the greatest strength that we have as Muslims today. Separation intensifies love, and the Prophet ﷺ has promised that "You will be with those whom you love." He has hinted that this apparent separation is a virtue that we possess which the Companions cannot. He said to them: “How I long to meet my brothers.” The Companions asked him, “Are we not your brothers?” He said, “You are my Companions, but my brothers are those who have faith in me yet they never saw me.”

May God increase us in our longing for His Messenger ﷺ in this month and every month to come. Ameen!

How to Navigate a Crisis of Faith

God tells us in the Qur'an, in chapter 29, verse 57, كل نفس ذائقة الموت ثم إلينا ترجعون, "Every soul tastes death and then is returned unto us." These words are often understood, and even translated, as referring to a future event: the moment when we literally pass from this worldly life. Yet the Arabic tells a slightly different story. The word ذائقة is a present participle, which is most accurately translated as "is tasting." Every soul is tasting death--always and everywhere in this life. It is only in the garden that we will experience life in its purest form. In this world, life will always be tinged by at least a hint of death because nothing that we hold dear can remain constant.

It is important to remember that this applies to our faith as well. This is a difficult pill to swallow for believers, especially those who, at some point in their lives, consciously turned away from disbelief. We have a sense of being rescued by this wonderful thing called iman. We have experienced the darkness of life without it. That stark contrast makes it the sweetest thing we possess. So what are we to do when we experience a crisis of faith--when we feel that darkness creeping back in, and the light slipping from us despite our best efforts to cling to it?

Steve Jobs once said, reflecting on his diagnosis with terminal cancer, "Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there." For many of us today, this could be a commentary on verse 29:57, because it is our reality. Heaven comes at a price; nearness to God in this life also comes at a price. However, we live in a culture that has conditioned us to expect sweetness at no price. I mean this quite literally. Think of all the artificial sweeteners on the market. Splenda, Sweet N' Low, Equal, and Stevia all exist because we want soft drinks without the calories. They (supposedly) remove the need for moderation or balancing our consumption with exercise. Yet God tells us that the price of returning to Him is tasting death. This is just as true of our faith as it will be our bodies. The real question is whether, like our bodies, our faith will be resurrected after it dies.

Alhamdulillah, I've been blessed to work in the community at Taleef for many years now. I've sat with dozens of people going through crises of faith. The common thread in nearly every case has been growth disguised as loss. Scratch the surface of these crises and you find that what has departed a person is neither their belief in God nor their love of the Prophet ﷺ. It is their way of believing and loving. What has carried them to this point will not carry them forward. The same answers don't satisfy them. The same level of practice doesn't work. Well, can we really assume that we grasp faith in its fullness from the first moment it enters our hearts? Does the faith of a 10 year old work for a 20 year old? Most of us have matured enough to know that would be impossible. Why, then, do we think will not lose our faith, in its current form, again by age 30? And yet again by 40? Every soul must taste death to return to its Lord.

Cicadas are among my favorite of God's signs in this world, and they provide an apt metaphor for our own crises of faith. Look around one summer when you hear the cicadas buzzing, and you'll probably see their molted shells on tree trunks. Keep looking and you may see a newly emerged cicada with a soft, tender exoskeleton. It won't be able to fly again until its body expands and hardens into its larger form. Imagine yourself as a cicada for a moment. Growth requires the unthinkable. You have to break through a part of your own self, part of yourself that you identify with, but which has nonetheless died. Doing this will leave you vulnerable, temporarily unable to spread your wings the way you used to. Then you must sit there in that vulnerability as your body grows into a new form. Refusal to do so means death by paralysis: your body will harden in its old shell and die. Submitting to this process means death that returns you to a new life. Not an easy prospect for the cicada! But to the outside observer, this simply looks like growth.

Our challenge as believers is not to become paralyzed when we enter into a crisis of faith. Yes, the faith that carried us here is passing away. But do we worship our own faith? Or do we worship God? The ability to let go of what has passed enables us to look for what God is guiding us towards, which is certainly better. Our religion is submission, and submission requires trust. God is al-qareeb, He is Nearby, and He is simply asking you to abandon an old, worn-out garment that will only constrict you going forward.

Also know that this process is Prophetic. The Messenger of God ﷺ used to seek repentance from God 70 times per day. There are multiple interpretations of why he did this. One of them is that this was the number of times per day that God would raise his spiritual rank; his repentance was for the relative poverty of his previous position. One of the reasons he is a mercy and example to all of humanity is that he shows us that we can grow gracefully. The best of us, and the rest of us, have been through it. Knowing this is knowing that you are not alone. We're waiting for you on the other side.

And God knows best.

The Righteous Predecessors of American Muslim History

The Messenger of God ﷺ said, in an authentic hadith:

خير الناس قرني ثم الذين يلونهم ثم الذين يلونهم

"The best people are those of my generation, then those who follow them, then those who follow them."

Our beloved Prophet established a community that, like himself, became a pristine example for all of humanity of walking the straight path to God. He said elsewhere of this community, in a hasan hadith, "My Companions are like the stars of the night sky. Whichever of them you follow, you will be guided." The following generation of Successors took this light that the Companions received from the Prophet ﷺ and transmitted it across the generations, down to us today. 

The Prophet's ﷺ statements establish an important relationship between ourselves and past generations. We are only able to live and worship God as Muslims today because of those before us who struggled to establish and maintain Islam for themselves and future generations. This is a debt we can only repay by showing gratitude to God and making our own efforts to ensure that we pass the torch to those who come after us.

Across much of the Muslim-majority world, we see this gratitude expressed in the way Muslims build monuments to those who established Islam in the lands where they live. During my time living in Egypt and Syria, this was impressed upon me everywhere I went. You can scarcely walk down a street in Cairo or Damascus without stumbling upon a mausoleum or monument dedicated to a famous scholar, saint, or sultan. In these places, our history goes beyond something to read about in books; you walk amongst it daily and feel the connection of standing in the same places and breathing the same air as the predecessors to whom we owe so much.

However, the dynamic in the United States, and much of the modern West, is very different. In a recent class on the history of Islam in America at Taleef Chicago, I asked the class if they knew the names of the first Muslims to come to our city. Crickets. Admittedly, it was a trick question. Apparently, no one knows. I'm a historian of Islam in America and I don't know. What we do know is that the first purpose-built mosque in the United States was constructed in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood for the 1893 World's Fair. We even have pictures of the Ottoman Muslims who lived in and around this mosque during the fair. But, frustratingly, we don't know their names, who they interacted with, or if they left a lasting impact upon the passers-by at the fair. The mosque was torn down after the fair so that we, today, cannot walk past it and experience something of their reality. The names and stories of the first Muslims who worshiped God in this land therefore have not become a part of our living memory today.

Ottoman Muslims on “Cairo Street” at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair

The story of the first purpose-built mosque in the U.S. is the story of much of our history as American Muslims. We live in a society that was built upon priorities that often are not our own. I first realized this a few years after embracing Islam when I learned that African Muslims had been enslaved in my hometown in Georgia during the eighteen-hundreds. I was shocked that, despite the emphasis my primary education placed on local history, I was never told that there were entire families of African Muslims who lived in and around my hometown. Learning that I had spiritual predecessors who went to great lengths to preserve their religion in a foreign and hostile environment gave me a sense of rootedness and tranquility that, previously, I had not experienced as a Muslim. Suddenly, Islam became something that connected me to the land of my birth. It also gave me a sense of mission: understanding and sharing the history of the those who established Islam in America became a priority that led to my graduate studies.

The “Ben-Ali Diary,” a copy of the Risalah of Ibn Abi Zayd written by Bliali Muhammad of Sapelo Island, GA

This sense of rootedness is something American Muslims in general need desperately. We need a sense of standing upon the shoulders of those who came before us, even if this is not a reality we see reflected in the hegemonic culture. Otherwise, we will continue to be spiritual orphans in the Americas; there will be no torch that we inherit and pass to future generations. Solving this problem also may just solve much of the alienation and isolation that young Muslims today face by providing them with a sense of belonging to generations of Muslims who prayed upon the ground where we live and walk.

To that end, let's discuss our history. If you are a Muslim living anywhere in the Americas today, you are an inheritor of generations of African Muslims who came before you. This does not discount or exclude your inheritance from other Muslims, especially those to whom you are connected ethnically. However, African Muslims hold a special place in the history of Islam in the Americas for three reasons. The first of these is that African Muslims were almost certainly the first people of the Ummah of Muhammad ﷺ to live and establish prayer on this side of the Atlantic. Moreover, they have formed a continuous presence here since at least the time of Columbus. The Messenger of God ﷺ informs us that, when we perform the prayer, the earth below us will intercede for us until the Day of Judgement. Should we not do the same for our predecessors?

A Mandinka War Tunic covered in gris-gris, or talismans containing Qur’anic verses and other Arabic formulae. Similar tunics have been found at Fort Musa, a garrison town north of St. Augustine, FL.

The second reason is that African Muslims stand alone as the only group that has successfully established an Islamic civilization in the Americas. Whereas we today live as Muslims in a largely post-Christian secular modern civilization, African Muslims brought their civilization with them and lived within its bounds. Indeed, the Atlantic slave trade did not separate African Muslims from their civilization so much as it exported it with them to the Americas. Wherever we find African Muslims in the Americas across the past 500 years of history--whether that be on plantations, in free communities, or in independent settlements away from European slave society--we find them led by scholars and shaykhs in positions of political authority, just as they were in West Africa. Moreover, there are multiple examples of evidence that these communities communicated amongst each other, as well as with their brothers and sisters back in Africa.

Thirdly, and due to the previous reasons, the history of African Muslims in the Americas can provide instruction on how to live our lives as Muslims today. Dealing with religious differences, political adversity, and maintaining community life are specific challenges that African Muslims have navigated through various circumstances. Leaning upon their guidance and wisdom is both a practical solution to many of the challenges we face today as well as a way of honoring and building upon their legacy.

This history is something you can get a feel for in books. However, it is also still living in our communities. I am consistently amazed at how much I learn from African American elders in our community whenever I sit down to talk to them about this history. I always walk away with a better sense of who I am as a Muslim. They are the monuments to our collective past who can provide a sense of rootedness and direction for our future as Muslims in this land. I pray that God enables each one of us to honor their legacy and to become inheritors of the blessings that exist within it. Ameen.

“Welcome Home” Past and Future

We launched the Welcome Home blog on Eid al-Fitr in 2021. Over nearly two years, we've published 25 articles introducing essential knowledge about Islam for newcomers to the religion, as well as articles on some of the most common challenges facing Muslims of all backgrounds in America and beyond. Each post is intended to create a homecoming of sorts. "Welcome Home" is an intention, and a prayer, that every interaction we have with the community, whether online or virtual, will bring us all closer to our loved ones, our community, and our Lord. As we approach the second anniversary of this blog, we'd like to take a look back by providing some of the deep history behind this greeting.

"Welcome Home" began at Taleef, like so much else, with our founder, Usama Canon, may God have mercy upon him. As soon as Usama came to Chicago around 2012, we noticed he would say this to new Muslims directly after they said their shahada. It was a brilliant greeting with layered meanings. Usama wasn't just welcoming them into a new religion and community, he was welcoming them to their primordial home. He was recalling the moment when God asked humanity, "Am I not your Lord?", and we collectively gave our first shahada. "Welcome Home" started as an acknowledgement that our first home is with God.

The power of these moments made this a common greeting at Taleef. When team members would travel from Fremont to Chicago, or Chicago to Fremont, we would greet each other with "Welcome Home." When old friends would return to Taleef after a long absence, we would greet each other with "Welcome Home." When visiting scholars would come to Taleef, we would greet them with "Welcome Home." When returning citizens would join us at Taleef, we would greet them with "Welcome Home." It was our prayer that, when we meet for God's sake, we remember and relive that time when we all were gathered in God's presence. 

The same prayer lies behind much of what we do at Taleef. People often remark on the fact that we serve tea, burn incense, put greeter at our door, and obsess over the aesthetics of our space. Some are delighted by it while others have called it "bougie." But the intention is simple: when you feel comfortable, your heart opens; when your heart opens, you are ready to receive the angelic presence that arrives when God's name is mentioned. Grand mosques all over the world contain beautiful courtyards and groves that lead into the prayer hall for the same reason: to provide a scent of the Garden that fills our hearts with ease so that we may enter the prayer without our worldly baggage. "Welcome Home" must be said as much by our surroundings and conduct with one another as with our words.

"Welcome Home" is saying that we've noticed spreading around the wider Muslim community. More importantly, however, is that the ethos behind it appears to be spreading as well. There is a growing recognition, even in communities with whom we have no formal ties, of the need for places of homecoming available to everyone, but especially those on the margins of our community. I saw this recently during a conversation I had with a sister in Fremont who said her shahada with us nearly two years ago. She lived quite far from the Bay Area, so none of the staff had seen her since that day. Catching up with a new Muslim after a long absence like this is often a difficult conversation. You tend to hear about the struggles they endure to connect with their community and learn the religion from a consistent and reliable source. But, to my delight, she very joyfully reported that she had fallen in naturally with her local masjid, met a group of other new Muslims in her hometown, and even found a husband. Conversations like this used to be exceedingly rare but they are becoming more common. When I reported this to Taleef's Executive Director, Ali Dia, he asked me, "What does this mean?" I said, "It means we're winning." And by "we," I mean all of us. The effort to build an Ummah in this country where hearts come together with each other and with God is winning.

"Welcome Home" is a weighty claim. It's a claim that we will try to facilitate the primordial homecoming for all who walk through our doors. But it is a claim we must endeavor to fulfill for the sake of every heart that is seeking God. On the second anniversary of this blog, we would like to thank all those who have joined us in this effort, and invite others to come along. Whether you pass down a sense of home that was gifted to you, or you are providing a home that you never had yourself, make a home in your community for someone who can't find it elsewhere. May Allah give us the strength and wisdom to carry this weight.

Belief without Anxiety

All praise is due to God. We are once again in the month of Rajab, which means that it's officially Ramadan season. It was at this time of year that the Messenger of God ﷺ would pray, "O Allah, bless us in the months of Rajab and Sha'ban, and deliver us into Ramadan." These next two months are a time to seek God's blessings so that we may enter the month of fasting with hearts that are prepared to receive rewards so immense that they can only be known to God.

The Prophet ﷺ also said of this month that "Rajab is the month of Allah, Sha'ban is my month, and Ramadan is the month of my community." This gives us some direction on how we ought to be using this time. Sha'ban is an excellent time for increasing our salutations upon the Prophet; Ramadan is when we gather to break our fasts and listen the recitation of the Qur'an. But how can we celebrate the month of Allah? What can imperfect, needy creatures like ourselves offer that is actually worthy of One who is transcendent and without need?

In last year's Rajab article, I wrote about tawba, or the act of turning back to God. What better way to celebrate the month of Allah than by turning away from our imperfections and to to our Lord who is perfect? Tawba, as I mentioned last year, is a profound act of hope because we must truly believe that God's mercy is greater than our sins and shortcomings--that it is easy for Him to forgive us no matter what we have done or what we have been through. This is the essence of the takbir, the statement of "Allahu Akbar", that we say during our prayers and other moments of victory. Tawba is a celebration of Allah.

I also mentioned in that article that anxiety over our sins is what holds many of us back from genuine tawba. This is a natural pitfall for any believer, to become so focused on our misdeeds that we forget the mercy of God. However, I have noticed another form of anxiety in many Muslims over the past year that is far more paralyzing: anxiety about God Himself. This is different from the shortsighted view that we might be excluded from God's mercy; it is the belief that God is not fundamentally merciful, that He primarily dispenses judgement and punishment. Usually, this belief is coupled with the assumption that this is precisely what we deserve because of our flaws and imperfections.

The seriousness of this anxiety did not strike me until very recently, when I was watching the latest season of Ramy. In the second to last episode, Ramy, who is struggling with a sex addiction, says something incredibly profound: "my parents say they believe in God but I think they're just... anxious about God. And I am too and it pushes me to do all this stuff and now I have a problem." This scene was an epiphany for me because I not only saw many of our community members at Taleef in Ramy, but I also saw a diagnosis of the issue that afflicts them.

Ramy is correct: true belief in God is not anxious in nature. Belief is more than giving a thumbs up to the question of whether or not God exists. There is an essential emotional dimension to it. The word iman, which we translate as "belief," or "faith," might just as easily translate to "trust." We can see this in the nickname of the Prophet ﷺ, which comes from the same root, al-ameen, "the trustworthy one." In chapter 95 of the Qur'an, God refers to Makkah as hadha balad al-ameen, "this land of safety and security." To truly believe in God is to trust in God. Belief in God ought to make us feel good, to lift our spirits, and to comfort us in moments when we despair of ourselves. Mere rational belief without this emotional connection will always end in anxiety because, in the end, we are still left to ourselves. We remain limited by our shortcomings rather than liberated by God's ability to forgive us. 

Fortunately, the way out of this predicament is the same as the way into it. God tells us in a Hadith Qudsi, "I am as My servant thinks I am." Our opinion of God can either be the source of trust or anxiety. And while changing our opinion of God may not be easy, it is straightforward. God continues in this hadith, "I am with them when they make mention of Me. If they make mention of Me to themselves, I make mention of them to Myself; and if they make mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of them in an assembly better than it. And if they draw near to Me an arm's length, I draw near to them a cubit, and if they draw near to Me a cubit, I draw near to them a fathom. And if they come to Me walking, I go to them running." The beauty of this hadith is that, while we do have to make the first move to have a better opinion of God, we do not have to do most of the work. God swoops in to uplift the one who calls upon Him like a parent who hears the cry of their child. Our cry can be as simple as repeating the name of Allah a few dozen times when we wake up, or after our prayers. It may also be a litany that we receive from a teacher. What you will see is that the results far outweigh your efforts.

Trust deepens with experience that affirms it. Start with the remembrance of God this Rajab and you will be amazed at your state as you enter Ramadan. The paralysis of turning to Him will begin to leave you, and it will become an occasion of joy and hope. May God bless us in Rajab and Sha'ban, and deliver us into Ramadan. Ameen!

What Converts Can Teach Other Muslims, Part 2: Our Collective Shahadah Story

When I embraced Islam in 2006, public shahadah stories were extremely popular. You would see them at big conferences and MSA events. It was an entire genre of YouTube videos. Often, telling your story was a matter of course when introducing yourself to a new group of Muslims. These more personal interactions even had a tendency to turn into mini halaqas, as people would often gather around once they realized you were talking about your conversion. However, the trend has since died down. Personally, I have not told my shahadah story in quite some time. And if you search for "shahadah story" on YouTube today, you'll see that the most watched videos are many years old now. 

This is a positive development. Shahadah stories, while inevitably profound, created an artificial divide within many communities. The divide was not one of solidarity or empathy between converts and born-Muslims. Rather, it created the false perception for everyone that deep theological questioning and struggles with religious practice are reserved for converts prior to their embrace of Islam--that, once within the fold of Islam, even if you entered by birth, such things were off-limits. 

In practice, this meant that, usually, I would tell my story to an extremely attentive audience, get to the end of it, and recognize a kind of vicarious catharsis in their eyes. The moment of embracing Islam felt good for them to hear. At first, this led me to expect a story in return because, I assumed, born-Muslims were identifying with my story. I assumed they had been through similar struggles in their own lives to find God and worship Him with sincere intention. But these stories never came. In fact, it was extremely rare that I would hear anyone who was not also a convert say, "You know what? I've been through something like that myself." It was as if most born-Muslims were capable of basking in the revelation of "iqra" without enduring the pain of Jibreel's squeeze.

For many years, I assumed, in my naivety, that the majority of Muslims who were born into Muslim families simply grew up practicing Islam and believing in God without any hiccups. Then I began working in the Muslim community full time and I learned better. Born-Muslims deal with profound struggles of faith, practice, and community. And they do so just as deeply as any convert. The difference is that they tend to do it in silence. So while shahadah stories may be a thing of the past, the perception that underlies them is still very much with us: that serious doubts about God, struggles with practice, even major sins are for some Muslims and not others.

The problem with this perception is that it is not, in fact, what our religion teaches. Indeed, the process that most converts go through--of questioning God, rejecting certain ideas about Him, accepting others, and struggling to implement them through worship--is something that scholars of the past recognized as the beginning of the spiritual path for anyone seeking God. Sidi Ahmad Zarruq, a 15th century Moroccan scholar, referred to this process as takhliyah, emptying oneself of falsehood and wrong actions. Moreover, he argued that this must precede any acceptance of the truth, or tamliyah, filling one's heart with devotion to God.

According to Sidi Ahmad Zarruq, we can see this process in the story of Abraham's, peace be upon him, confrontation of his father Azar, an idol-fashioner, and the people of his nation. In chapter six of the Qur'an, Abraham attempts to guide his people through a process of emptying themselves of their idolatry so that their hearts might genuinely recognize the existence of God:

And mention when Abraham said to his father Azar, "Do you take idols as deities? Indeed, I see you and your people to be in manifest error." And thus did We show Abraham the realm of the heavens and the earth that he would be among the certain in faith. So when the night covered him, he saw a star. He said, "This is my lord." But when it set, he said, "I like not those that set." And when he saw the moon rising, he said, "This is my lord." But when it set, he said, "Unless my Lord guides me, I will surely be among the people gone astray." And when he saw the sun rising, he said, "This is my lord; this is greater." But when it set, he said, "O my people, indeed I am free from what you associate with Allah. Indeed, I have turned my face toward He who created the heavens and the earth, inclining toward truth, and I am not of those who associate others with Allah.”

God is inviting us here to engage in a radical form of questioning. What is it that you worship, really? Abraham's nation, the Sumerians, worshiped the sun, the moon, and Venus (also known as the evening star), among other deities. Their process of takhliyah would require them to empty themselves of the worship of created celestial bodies before turning toward the Creator of the heavens and the earth. What about us? What are our idols? Identifying them can be a painstaking process not only because we are rejecting things we have always held to be true, but also because of the social consequences of doing so. Abraham's people catapulted him into a pit of fire for blasphemy! Yet this is what our very creed call us toward: we must say "la ilahah," there is no god, before we reach "ila'llah," except for God.

From what I have observed, the reason so many born-Muslims suffer through their own processes of takhliyah in silence is because of social pressure. I mentioned in my last article that "I sense among many of my friends and students the anxiety of accepting someone else's judgement of them--where their interactions with God are no longer a secret between them and their Creator but, rather, open to the interpretation of others." Like our Prophet Abraham, many of us feel, often correctly, that our community would be more than willing to throw us into the fire if our journey toward God transgressed social norms. This is a particularly dangerous situation because takhliyah, which we could easily translate as "purging," is usually a loud and messy process that is difficult to conceal. Doing so in a non-supportive environment seems to have convinced many Muslims that it ought not be done at all--that the only acceptable form of growth is tamliyah without takhliyah. Yet this is not how God created us. Try to fill a glass that is already full. Try to say the shahadah without "la ilahah."

This type of social pressure is not simply a detriment to healthy spiritual growth, it is the false god itself that many young Muslims today need to purge. Many young Muslims today do not distinguish between God's judgement and the judgement of their community. This may sound like an extreme thing to say. However, I see this in how they voice their fear and anxiety during moments of crisis. Young Muslims today who stop praying, or remove their hijab, or question the existence of God are afraid first and foremost of what their parents or the other students at their MSA will think of them. When I ask what they think of themselves or, more importantly, what they believe God thinks of them, it is almost as if that question does not register. They have no notion of God apart from the expectations of others. Indeed, most of my work in these situations is convincing them of the takbir, that God is greater than this. Then takhliyah may begin. Then they may begin to say "la ilahah" to these expectations and judgements. Afterwards they usually do indeed reach "ila'llah." And from this prayer and other forms of healthy practice also usually emerge.

One of the most profound skills we could learn, as a community, is looking upon each other with a merciful gaze. I mean this quite literally. So much of the judgement that many young Muslims feel in their communities today comes not from explicit remarks, condemnations, or interrogations about their religious lives, but, rather, from looks that invite self-judgement. How would our communities change if entering the average American mosque felt like a homecoming to a loving family? This was the practice of our Prophet ﷺ and it remains the legacy of our pious predecessors. Once, Abu Yazid al-Bastami was walking with his disciples along the Tigris River in Baghdad when they saw a number of people on a the river enjoying a pleasure cruise. They were drinking and singing loudly. The shaykh's disciples said, "O shaykh, pray against them!" He responded, "O Allah, as you have made them happy in this life, give them happiness in the next!" When they questioned him, he simply asked them, "Who am I to challenge the mercy of my Lord?" For their happiness in the next world would necessarily entail their repentance and spiritual growth during this life.

I look forward to a day when I can swap shahadah stories with Muslims who never knew another religion. When did you first realize that there truly is nothing worthy of your worship, your ultimate concern, except God? Our collective shahadah story means that we don't serve anyone to the detriment of our service to God. The shahadah is a liberatory statement in this way. Through all the pain of spiritual growth, we come to realize that we have only one true Lord, and that what we do for Him ultimately is our secret with Him. And God knows best.

What Converts Can Teach Other Muslims

The majority of my articles have addressed common questions and struggles that spiritual seekers new Muslims face. These have covered everything from the basics of our creed to interactions with our parents during the holidays. However, as I have discussed before on this blog, those who are born into Islam contribute a lot to our community at Taleef. This month's article is a piece of brotherly advice intended primarily for this group.

I recently narrated a hadith during a Friday sermon in which Hamza, may God be pleased with him, became drunk at a party, cut the humps off of two of Imam Ali's (ra) camels, and later insulted both Ali and the Prophet ﷺ. My point in telling this story was to display the humanity of the Companions in order to ease a growing anxiety I sense among millennial and Gen Z Muslims about their own inherent worthiness as Muslims. Hamza is the Lion of Allah, the uncle of the Prophet ﷺ, and a martyr of the Battle of Uhud. The Messenger of God ﷺ mourned him profoundly after his passing. And yet he was just as deeply human as you and I. He had flaws, he had rough edges, and, yes, he sinned. We can, and must, hold these two realities together when we remember our role models among the Companions of the Prophet. They were neither perfect nor were they under any illusions that they ought to be perfect. So why do we find so many Muslims living with this assumption today?

My intuition before the sermon was that reactions would be fairly evenly split between converts and those born into Islam. This was entirely accurate. Nearly every person who approached me afterwards who came from a Muslim family had questions on how they should interpret the hadith, what it means for the status of Hamza, or whether the event took place before the prohibition on alcohol (it did). There was a consistent underlying anxiety in their responses because something about their understanding of Islam had been challenged—though a few did express relief. The converts didn't approach me at all because they were unfazed. But when I sought their reactions, they generally amounted to, "Well, who hasn't been there?" They were well-acquainted enough with their own flawed humanity, without the immediate tinge of guilt and self-judgement, to identify with the story and take its lesson—namely, that Hamza, like the other Companions, is beloved to God despite his shortcomings. So where do we get off having low opinions of ourselves as Muslims because of our own flaws and missteps?

Unfortunately, I see these low opinions often and almost exclusively from those born into Islam. Perhaps you've noticed some of these things too: the self-deprecating comments, a certain sheepishness when entering a religious space, and, perhaps most telling, a constant awareness of what other people think. I sense among many of my friends and students the anxiety of accepting someone else's judgement of them—where their interactions with God are no longer a secret between them and their Creator but, rather, open to the interpretation of others. What I see is the assumption that they ought to have been perfect and, because they have not, their Islam is somehow deficient.

What converts can teach other Muslims is this: getting in touch with your own imperfections is actually the beginning of self-esteem as a Muslim. God alone is perfect. Even the Prophet ﷺ, who was blameless, was reprimanded by God in Surah Abasa for an error. So abandon whatever expectations you may have had that you would make it through this life untainted by the world. What makes us worthy as Muslims is acknowledging our need of God's guidance and mercy because we are imperfect. Hope in God's mercy and you will receive it. Your imperfections will not depart; there is no repentance from our humanity. But they will seem insignificant compared to God's vast generosity.

If there was ever a Muslim who approached perfection (aside from the Prophet ﷺ), it was Abu Bakr, may God be pleased with him. It was said that if the faith of Abu Bakr was placed on a scale, and the faith of all the other Muslims on the other side, Abu Bakr's faith would be heavier. Many of the Companions would praise him for his faith. This was Abu Bakr's prayer upon receiving such praise: 

“O Allah, You know me better than I know myself, and I know myself better than these people who praise me. Make me better than what they think of me, and forgive those sins of mine of which they have no knowledge, and do not hold me responsible for what they say.”

Even Abu Bakr was aware of his own shortcomings—and he would remind himself of his imperfection in these moments. But the real secret in this prayer is that Abu Bakr wasn't ultimately concerned with himself. His eyes were on God, who knows us better than anyone and whose judgement is what truly matters. Whatever our anxieties or self-perception, true contentedness lies in this shift in perspective. Islam is not about believing ourselves to be good or bad. It is about believing in God--making Him the object of our concern and hope. And God knows best.

Remembering Imam Warith Deen Muhammad, Iconoclast and Servant of His People

To God we belong and to Him we return. Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the passing of Imam Warith Deen Muhammad, one of the great spiritual leaders of the twentieth century. His name is one that we should all know as American Muslims, especially if we are engaged in any sort of community work. Imam Muhammad presided over a period in African American Muslim history called the "Second Resurrection," the mass exodus out of the Nation of Islam into the global community of Sunni Muslims. His example is relevant to all Muslims today looking to build communities that address their members' deepest spiritual needs.

Imam W.D. Muhammad is perhaps most famous as the successor to his father, Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam who mentored the likes of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Elijah Muhammad was certainly the most prominent figure of the "First Resurrection," that period from the 1920s into the 1970s when African Americans became the face of Islam in America. Despite obvious credal differences with our essential belief in God's Oneness, the Nation of Islam "conferred upon Blackamericans a sense of ownership in Islam," to quote Dr. Sherman Jackson. Indeed, it is largely thanks to Elijah Muhammad that so many of our African American brothers and sisters today see themselves as fully Black, fully Muslim, and fully American with the effortless authenticity that is still difficult for so many White, South Asian, or Arab Muslims in America.

Imam Muhammad's mission only furthered this sense of Black ownership in Islam. This is important to note since many memorials to him focus upon his reforms of the NOI. While there can be no doubt that these were sweeping on nearly every level--theological, organizational, political, even financial--it is the continuity he established with his father's priorities that made him as great leader from whom we can still learn today. The most important of these is perhaps the genius he shared with Elijah Muhammad for addressing the deepest theological concerns of his congregation. For, while the official creed of his reformed American Society of Muslims may have changed, he continued to pursue his father's project of social and theological liberation for all African Americans.

Nowhere was this more visible than Imam Muhammad's program, the Committee for the Removal of All Images that attempt to portray the Divine, or CRAID. This was an iconoclastic movement that attempted to persuade Black Christians to remove images of Jesus--especially ones that portrayed him as a White European--from their churches. The June 17, 1977 issue of the Bilalian News, the newspaper of the reformed NOI, ran the headline, "DESTROY ALL RACIAL IMAGES OF GOD," and called upon an interfaith coalition to “demonstrate and boycott if necessary, until we get all those Caucasian images of [the] divine out of our neighborhood.”*

It may seem strange to many readers today that a Muslim leader would concern himself with the internal workings of churches. I certainly remember my own sense of confusion during my first reading of the Autobiography of Malcolm X over Malcolm's debate with the Christian prison chaplain over the true color of Jesus' skin. The debate itself was fascinating but its import eluded me. Yet this issue of portraying a White God to Black congregations cuts to the heart of debates over the role of religion in perpetuating systemic racism. Indeed, by Imam Muhammad's time, such debates were nearly a century old. As early as the 1890's, the African Methodist Episcopal preacher, Henry McNeal Turner, wrote about the detrimental psychological effects upon African Americans of having to pray to a God who resembled the same people who had enslaved and oppressed them: "Every race of people since time began... have conveyed the idea that the God who made them and shaped their destinies was symbolized in themselves, and why should not the Negro believe that he resembles God as much so as other people?" By 1967, the historian Vincent Harding wrote in The Christian Century, "No white Christ shall shame us again. We are proud to be black." The question of the color of Christ, God's peace be upon him, therefore remained a painful topic of debate among many Black Christians and, eventually, Muslims during the decades leading up to the formation of CRAID. 

This debate became so pervasive among Black Americans that, by 1965, Elijah Muhammad could say, without further context, that "those who worship his [Jesus'] image (the so-called Negroes) are guilty of loving the white race and all that race stands for."** For Elijah Muhammad, theology was upstream of psychology as well as social and political dynamics. If an entire people could be beguiled into worshiping the likeness of their oppressors, those same oppressors could determine their place in the world. His response, therefore, struck at the root of the matter by providing a theological solution. He side-stepped the question of Jesus' color altogether by naming a Black man, Fard Muhammad, as God while declaring whites to be devils. Whatever our disagreements with these claims may be, it is clear that Elijah Muhammad was not alone in his desire to address an issue that had become a deep wound for his people. It was this same sense of theological concern that animated the mission of Imam W.D. Muhammad.

CRAID continued this tradition of theological concern for African Americans while adapting its language. Imam Muhammad not only was more diplomatic in speaking on the question of Jesus' color, he also levied his critique in a new theological language that compared his followers' task with the Prophet Muhammad's ﷺ cleansing of the Ka'aba. “Whether you realize it or not, you who support my call to have racial images removed from the worship of God, are doing something more important than anything anybody has done since Prophet Muhammad.” Moreover, his call to directly remove harmful images in Black neighborhoods followed the Prophetic ethos of first seeking to right wrongs with one's hands, and if one cannot, then to speak out against it. In this sense, Imam Muhammad's intervention in the question of Christ's portrayal was perhaps more daring than his father's--and his love for his people more fervent. 

The lessons from this single chapter of Imam W.D. Muhammad's life are far-reaching. His actions speak of a man whose finger was on the pulse of his community. He was intimately familiar with the ills that afflicted his people and possessed the insight to provide solutions that dealt with root causes rather than symptoms. Perhaps the greatest lesson we can take from him is his understanding of who "his people" were. It was not simply the Muslims. He understood portrayal of the divine as an issue that harmed not only Muslims, and not only African Americans, but humanity as a whole. And it was his belief that Islam can provide a cure for all of humanity that made him a truly Prophetic leader.

*Most of the information on CRAID is sourced from: Brummitt, Jamie L. "Black Muslims, White Jesus: Removing Racial Images of God with CRAID and W.D. Muhammad." In New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam. Edited by Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Greenberg. New York, Routledge, 2017.

**Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 1973), 83.

Ashura

Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram,  is marked on our calendar as a day that holds a great deal of significance. 

Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “I did not see the Prophet ﷺ as eager to fast a day and preferring it over others except for this day of Ashura and this month of Ramadan.”

It is known that before the fast of Ramadan was made  mandatory on the Muslims, the Messenger of God ﷺ and His noble companions fasted Ashura as a mandatory fast. The Hadith that is related post migration to Medina states the following:

Ibn Abbas reported: The Messenger of Allāh ﷺ came to Medina and he found the Jews fasting on the day of Ashura. The Prophet said, “What is this day you are fasting?” They said, “This is a great day in which Allah saved Moses and his people, and he drowned Pharaoh and his people. Moses fasted on it due to gratitude, so we also fast on it.” The Prophet said, “We are more worthy and closer to Moses than you.” The Prophet fasted the day of Ashura and he commanded fasting on it.

Imam Ahmad relates,” it was on this day that the Ark of Nuh (Peace be Upon Him) came to rest on Mount Judiyy’.

Ashura is a day of freedom. It celebrates the Quranic theme of savior through God and communal liberation. 

This day indicates three major events in human history; Noah being saved from the flood, Moses and his people being delivered from Pharoah, and the martyrdom of Imam al Husayn, May God shower His peace and blessings upon him. 

Through these narrations, we reflect on three points as they relate to da’wah (calling to God): patience, speaking truth to power, and communal sacrifice.

As for the first, patience, it is exemplified through the story of Noah. God mentions that Noah called unto Him saying “My Lord, indeed I invited my people (to truth) night and day. But my invitation increased them not, except in flight. And indeed, every time I invited them that You may forgive them, they put their fingers in their ears, covered themselves with their garments, persisted, and were arrogant with (great) arrogance.” (Quran, 71:5)

Later on in the verse, it is mentioned that Noah said, “Ask forgiveness of your Lord. Indeed, He is ever a Perpetual Forgiver. He will send rain from the sky upon you in (continuing) showers, and give you increase in wealth and children, and provide for you gardens and provide for you rivers.” (Quran, 71:11-12)

This was the invitation of Noah. His invitation was one of God’s bounty, and not His wrath. It called to beauty and the Garden of God. Interestingly, even the mention of rain is one of provision and not punishment. Qatadah, May God be pleased with Him, says that this call was made by Noah for 950 years!

Daw’ah does not happen overnight, nor does it happen on our terms. We learn from the fortitude of Noah that our job is to call to God as long as we can. This takes patience and grit. In the age of Amazon prime delivery, Uber Eats, and instant streaming, we seek instant community. This project of calling to God and community building takes time and only comes fully into fruition when God makes it so.

A part of community is remembering that this blessing is directly from God. God says, “And We certainly sent Moses with Our signs saying, ‘Bring out your people from darknesses into the light and remind them of the days of Allāh. Indeed, there are signs for everyone patient and grateful.’” (Quran: 14:5)

We are to be reminded that the blessing of community is from God, and part of our responsibility is to protect that from the pharaohs and pharoah-like tendencies that threaten our community. We have a communal obligation to speak truth to power, both domestically and abroad. What’s fascinating about the story of Moses and Pharaoh is that, even though Pharaoh is mentioned as a self proclaimed demigod and the epitome of oppression, God commands Moses and Aaron to present His signs to Pharaoh due to his transgression. God says to them, “Speak to him gently, so perhaps he may be mindful of Me or fearful of My punishment.”(Quran 20:44).

Why does God command that Pharoah must be spoken to gently, let alone called to the truth as well?

As we speak truth to power and fight oppression, we should remember to do so with the methodology that is presented to us in revelation. Al-Razi, the great exegete, mentions three reasons why this is the case:

1. Speaking to a tyrant roughly will only have him ignore any call to good

2. Speaking to a tyrant roughly will lead to grave consequences to those you are trying to protect

3. We maintain prophetic principles in our approach as not to becoming Pharaohs ourselves though the process.  

This is God’s method. Moses responds quickly, “Our Lord! We fear that he may be quick to harm us or act tyrannically.” (Quran 20:45) However, God reaffirms His majesty and presence saying, ”Have no fear! I am with you, hearing and seeing.” (Qur’an 20:46)

There is a collective duty to fight the Pharaohs in the world and most importantly within ourselves. Part of our ethos is to take a prophetic stand against the Pharaohs that are in our homes, ruling our nations, and everything in between. And all the while, knowing that God sees everything. Everything is accounted for. There is nothing to fear except our own indiscretions at that point. 

For that to happen, it necessitates communal support and sacrifice. This is beautifully exemplified through the courage of Imam Husayn and his companions, may God be pleased with them all. 

Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Messenger of God ﷺ was the stalwart of justice and righteousness. The Messenger of God ﷺ said, “Husayn is from me and I am from Husayn. Allah loves anyone who loves al-Hasan and al-Husayn. They are two of my distinguished descendants.” Our faith is not complete without having an unrelenting love for the distinguished pillar that is Imam Husayn. When we reflect on the events of Karbala and the martyrdom of Imam Husayn and his family, which included al-Abbas the son of Ali, Ja’far the son of Ali, and Imam Husayn's sons, Abu Bakr, Abdullah, and al-Qasim, we are inspired by the selfless courage of Imam al-Hussayn. He never sought power or prestige, rather he sought justice and the protection of the family of the Messenger of God ﷺ  and those who were under their protection.

It has been said that when Imam al-Husayn left Kufa with the certainty of his imminent demise, he ordered the tribe of Bani Aqeel, “Enough killing of Muslims! You are all free to go! I have given you permission!” And they responded, “What will our people say?! That we left our shaykh, our master, the tribe of our uncle, Ali, the best of uncles, and we did not even pick up a spear with him, nor did we fight with him, or pick up a sword for him?! Nay! But we give our life, our soul, and wealth, and our families in ransom to you until we return to you what is yours! May God make life unpleasant without fighting for you!” Sa’eed bin Abdullah al-Hanafi added, “By God! We will never leave you. For abandoning you is abandoning the Messenger of God!”

This is a communal spirit of upliftment and support that is learned through Imam Husayn and his companions–an unrelenting love for our community and the disenfranchised to rally behind them when they are oppressed or hurt. This is the spirit of community. If this is deeply rooted in our communal DNA, then we have already won. 

Imam Husayn did not lose; he and his community won. They lived together and died for each other. They strove in the way of God. Through Imam Husayn we get the likes of the great sacrifices of those that died to protect their community like Omar Mukhtar and Malcom X. 

We ask God that he accept our fast on Ashura, and make us a voice for the oppressed and the disenfranchised. May we fight the Prophetic fight, and hope in God’s deliverance.

A New Year of Mercy and Certainty

Praise be to God, we find ourselves in the final days of 1443 of our Hijri calendar. A new year is just around the corner. This is usually a time, in our solar calendar, when we begin taking stock of the past year and making resolutions for the next. We should mark our spiritual calendars in much the same way. Has the past year been a time of increase and blessing, or of struggle and patience? Are we happy with where we find ourselves in our journeys toward God? What is our plan to move into the coming year with real, sincere intentions?

One collective intention we could make this year is to recalibrate our relationship to mercy. A common thread that unites many of the people who come through our doors at Taleef is a genuine desire to receive God's mercy. Many of us have, at some point, tasted this mercy and found Taleef to be a place where that experience can increase and deepen. Yet receiving mercy ought to be the beginning of a process whereby we grow strong enough to eventually show mercy to others.

As I have often contended in the past, Islam is a religion of mercy before anything else. We call upon God's names of mercy when pray or read the Quran. The Prophet ﷺ was sent as a mercy to the worlds. We are commanded to honor our mothers as the most tangible sign of God's mercy in our lives. Moreover, many of our teachers at Taleef taught us that that majority of people in this time are most in need of a message of mercy rather than one of rigor. Our communities ought to be a place that reflect these realities. 

At the same time, we can afford to expand the way we talk about mercy. Perhaps especially at Taleef, we tend to discuss mercy as something that belongs to God and which He bestows upon us. Indeed, this is part of our methodology of calling people to Islam: we point to God's beautiful names more often than we do His majestic names. We emphasize ease more than rigor. This is something we will continue, God willing. Yet we can also begin to discuss mercy as something that we ought to be showing to each other. This is a far different conversation. Showing mercy is not easy. In fact, it is rigorous and difficult. By definition, showing mercy is the act of forgoing your own rights for the benefit of another--often another who may not be deserving of your goodwill. More often than not, it requires us to experience a level of hardship in our own lives than teaches us the true value of being merciful with one another.

I began to think about mercy in this new light recently after hearing an interview with a young man named Colin O'Brady. If you've ever heard the expression, "the world is your oyster," this certainly applied to Colin. He had just graduated college at Yale University and was preparing to apply for graduate studies. During his summer break, he took a trip around the world that eventually landed him in Thailand. One night in a remote beach village, he came across performers who were jump roping with a flaming rope. Boys will be boys, so Colin joined in. One misstep later, the kerosene-soaked rope was wrapped around his leg. Colin suffered burns over twenty-five percent of his body. Worse, the rope had burned his leg so badly that the doctor told him definitively that he would never walk on it again.

Eventually, Colin's mother arrived in Thailand to help nurse him. However, unlike Colin, she would not accept the doctor's assessment. She told him that, not only would he walk again, he was going to set a huge, audacious goal that would require him to do more than walk. Colin protested. He was in a state of despair over what had happened. But his mother persisted and he finally agreed to enter the Chicago Triathlon.

When they both arrived home, she sat Colin in the kitchen one step away from another chair and asked him to walk to it. The way Colin tells this story, the infectious certainty of his mother was the only thing that motivated him to try. So he took the single step. The next day, the chair was two steps away. Eventually, Colin was walking across the room. The next year, he won the Chicago Triathlon. Eventually he went on to climb the tallest mountains on all seven continents and trekked to the North and South Poles.

Colin's story is amazing. However, for our purposes, I'm really more interested in his mother. It can be no wonder for us, with all of the emphasis that our religion places on mothers, that it was Colin's mother who was the source of mercy here. However, none of the mercy she showed him throughout this story could have felt good in the moment--either for herself or her son. She pushed and challenged him at a moment when her instinct was probably to comfort and soothe. Yet what is truly amazing to me is how she could tell him, apparently with absolute certainty, that he would walk again. Most of us would only be so bold as to set a manageable goal. We would hedge it by insisting that, no matter what happened, we would still love him. Our fear of his failure would push us to take an easier, but ultimately less merciful, path. Instead, Colin's mother had mercy on him by transmitting to him a state of absolute certainty that he would walk again. What hardships had she overcome in her own life to give her such certainty? Had someone else had this kind of mercy on her? Have I overcome enough hardship to do the same for my sons if the time arises?

Whether we are talking about mercy or certainty, states such as these have to be tasted before they can be transmitted to others. If we are to be merciful with each other, we must first experience mercy, both from God and from our brothers and sisters. This is why we will continue to emphasize mercy at Taleef. But let's start to go further in 1444. Let's allow those moments of mercy we experience during Jumuah prayers or the Burdah begin to teach us how we can be with one another when our friends and family need us most. Moreover, let's set a New Year's resolution: whatever hardships come our way next year, we will be certain that what lies on the other side is better for us. And we will do this not for ourselves, but so we may give that strength to others.

Reaching to the Peripheries of Our Community

I begin with praise and thanks to God who does not burden us beyond what we can bear. The topic of this article is a difficult one, and it marks a new direction for the Welcome Home Blog. God willing, many future articles will address the work we do at Taleef, where it comes from, and where we see it going in the future. This article will address some new language that many of you have heard us using at Taleef: that we serve those at the peripheries of our communities. I discuss how we came to this description of our work, what a periphery is, and what the unique growth of the Muslim community's periphery in the U.S. (though much of this transcends this country) is teaching us about the future of Islam in America. As the article explains, we are constantly thinking about the work we do at Taleef and modifying our understanding of it so that we may improve. So this is intended to start a conversation, both with our community members and our sister communities around the country. I would be honored to hear your thoughts at wcaldwell@taleefcollective.org.

What Do You Do at Taleef?

One of the most difficult tasks we've faced at Taleef over the years has been answering the question, "What do you do at Taleef?" First time attendees at our campuses in Fremont and Chicago often sense something different about the space, the people there, and the content we offer. So we are often asked about what Taleef is, as well as how and why we operate the way that we do. This has led to countless hours of internal conversations on how best to answer these questions. Until very recently, we've never offered an official answer. 

The first reason for this is that, even if Taleef does offer something special or unique within the wider Muslim community, we think that ought not be the case in principle. Taleef is simply a community of Muslims who love Allah and His Messenger ﷺ. That ought to translate into how people are welcomed into our spaces, our cleanliness and aesthetics, and the relevance of what and how we teach. So we have never wanted to pigeonhole something as universal as Islamic education or Prophetic adab as the brand of a particular organization.

However, when we have had to name what it is we do at Taleef, we have often explained it in terms of the demographics we serve. Taleef has always had a strong convert care program. This was something that our founder, Usama Canon, pioneered within the organization in Fremont and it was the main avenue through which Taleef expanded to Chicago. While Taleef has always done much more than provide services and programming for newcomers to Islam, the guiding principles of our convert care program have shaped nearly everything at Taleef—from the accessibility of our content down to very specific practices like the "no knowledge rule," which requires our teachers to translate all Arabic terminology. In practice, the appeal of this "convert care" approach has been far wider than the convert community. Many, and often the majority, of our community members are Muslims born into Muslim families who are attracted to Taleef precisely because of these priorities. So the second reason for our struggle to answer the question of what we do at Taleef has come from the issue of how to name this. "Convert care+?" "Convert and convert-adjacent programming?" We've come up with many clunky answers over the years, none of which were satisfying or actually descriptive.

More recently we've started to use language that is actually descriptive. Taleef serves spiritual seekers, newcomers to Islam, and the youth. If you've been in our spaces in the past couple of years, you have probably heard us say this. What unites these groups is a common need for accessible educational content and a genuine sense of companionship that will allow them to come into their own as Muslims. We think this works quite well as a description of what we do and who we serve. Yet you may have also noticed us reaching toward an actual theory of why these groups are an important and urgent priority—not simply at Taleef but in the wider Muslim community. Seekers, newcomers, and youth occupy the periphery of our community; they live at our outer edges and need to be ushered consciously toward the center. 

Why Focus upon the Periphery?

In truth, I think we have always sensed this dynamic at Taleef. For years we have used the slogan, "Come as you are to Islam as it is." We believe Islam has a center that is defined by the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, and the living tradition through which these have been handed down from generation to generation. And we have always attempted to facilitate passage into this center from the periphery by inviting anyone to "come as you are." We maintain a high internal standard but a low barrier for entry. 

If we can use the analogy of a bicycle wheel, Taleef has attempted to serve as a spoke that provides a path from the outer edges of our communities to the hub of "Islam as it is," a solid and empowering grounding in the religion. The outer edge is where the rubber meets the road. It must be defined by the low barrier of entry, just as a bicycle's tire will naturally collect gravel, grass, or sand. The Muslim community must have spokes like Taleef because those who remain at the peripheries get crushed from the repeated turning of the wheel. Every Ramadan, Eid, or Friday that passes without welcoming and initiating seekers, newcomers, and youth increases the risk of their alienation, disillusionment, or apathy. When the spokes work, centripetal force naturally draws them toward the center. When the spokes work, the hub supports the wheel and the wheel allows the hub to continue turning.

Again, our understanding is that Taleef ought not be unique in doing this work. This process is how Islam has spread and grown historically. Indeed, what we now consider to form the center of our tradition originally came from the peripheries. The religious sciences would not exist as they do today without Imam al-Ghazali, a Persian. Sibawayh, the great grammarian of the Arabic language, also was not an Arab but a Persian. Islam survived the onslaught of the Mongols thanks to the Mamluks, Turkic slaves who eventually founded one of the great Muslim empires. Many of these same Mongols later became Muslims. As the historian Richard Bulliet argues, the success of Islam can only be understood from its peripheries because "in truth the edge ultimately creates the center."

Crisis at the Periphery

A growing periphery, in most cases, would be a welcome development. It would suggest Islam's wide appeal, the arrival of new blood, and a bright future for our communities. Yet, in practice, this has not been the case in many of our communities across this country. In the spirit of full transparency, our work at Taleef has always been characterized by a sense of crisis. Moreover, we know from conversations with many people at our sister communities around the country that we are not alone in sensing this. One of our greatest struggles is dealing not with the multitudes gathering a the peripheries but with a center that is not ready to receive them. Our community members can and, more frequently than we would like, do fail to find their way toward the hub. We are fighting centrifugal forces rather than being able to rely upon the forces that have historically allowed Islam to grow from its peripheries. 

This takes us back to our inability to define Taleef solely in terms of its convert care work. That "convert-adjacent," "convert+" demographic has always been with us. Their presence, while absolutely welcome, suggests a disturbing trend: the periphery is also growing from the center rather than solely from the arrival of new blood. Muslims—converts and born Muslims alike—are leaving their communities, and sometimes their religion, not because they are lured by something beyond it but because they feel pushed outward by a force they often cannot name. In retrospect, the main limitation of "convert care" was that it was too narrow a framing. There is a real need among Muslims of all religious backgrounds for spaces where they are deliberately invited into the religion in a way that is accessible and relevant to a young American adult. 

A recent lecture by Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, "The Crisis of Marrying Outside the Faith," provides an excellent example of the common struggle many young Muslims face today. I highly encourage everyone to watch this video, especially if the topic of this article seems foreign to you. He reflects in this video upon a conversation with two parents of a young woman who decided to marry a non-Muslim man. Many of the solutions he offers on how to avoid this type of struggle going forward struck me as very familiar: lower the barrier for entry into marriage, facilitate healthy public gender mixing among the youth, allow open conversations about love and romantic relationships. We have much the same methodology around marriage at Taleef. Once upon a time, I would have pigeonholed this methodology as specific to convert care. Our lack of Muslim family members usually requires lower barriers and spaces where we can meet each other directly. Many of us are already used to speaking more openly about romance. Moreover, I think the majority of us have been ready to accept that such things would not take place in masajid where different cultural norms dominate. However, Shaykh Yasir argues in this video that, no, in fact, even young Muslims with Muslim families are not culturally at home with the norms around marriage in many masajid. If converts were ever unique in their struggles to adopt and live Islam authentically, this appears no longer to be the case. There is a common disjuncture between Muslim youth of all stripes and the established Muslim communities in America. Therefore, there is a common crisis of translation, transmission, and initiation that we must face together.

Indeed, this video does suggest that there is a crisis that is larger than marriage—more so because of what is left unsaid than what is said. Shaykh Yasir is clearly walking on eggshells, even apologizing for raising the issue in his community, throughout the video. As a teacher in a Muslim community, I know this dance all too well. This is what we do when we know a topic will not be well-received. Yet marriage is not just any topic. It is not a pet fiqh issue. It is the crux of transmitting Islam to the next generation. If this one issue is not addressed, what we have seen at Taleef for years—that the periphery is growing from the center—the wheel will collapse upon itself. Therefore the true value of this video, from my vantage, is that it demonstrates a growing awareness of a center that cannot hold. And with awareness we may begin a productive conversation.

Crawling out of the Convert Care Pigeonhole

If this article is anything, it is a call for more spokes on the wheel. At Taleef, we're already doing work to ensure that "convert care" is a skillset that someone in every Muslim community across the country possesses. We have best practices that we're willing to share. However, anyone can check in with the converts in their community to better understand and improve their experience. If converts are uncomfortable bringing their parents to jumuah, the other youth in the community are probably uncomfortable (or bored, or alienated) at jumuah. If you see converts going outside the community to get married, you can bet most of the youth will do the same. None of these issues are isolated or particular to a single demographic: they all boil down to the readiness of our institutions to receive and integrate our peripheries. 

And while there will always be specific services that newcomers to Islam need, what we have called "convert care" at Taleef will also need to change. The needs underlying this term have become too universal to continue pigeonholing them with a single demographic in our communities. The next stage in the evolution of convert care will have to be a product of the collective genius of our ummah in this country. However, I would like to start that conversation with a suggestion. Rites of passage, by which a community consciously recognizes a young man or woman as a full member with full rights and responsibilities, may be the necessary bidah hasanah, or beautiful innovation, of our age. If the problem of marriage that Shaykh Yasir indicates tells us anything, it is that we are not passing the baton to the next generation. So perhaps we simply need to deliberately pass the baton. And God knows best.

The Joys of Eid

Eid Mubarak! We have once again completed a month of intensive fasting, prayer, and recitation for the sake of God alone. Whether this was your first or fiftieth fast, may Allah accept your Ramadan and reward you all from the immense reward that only He knows.

Mother Theresa reportedly once said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Yet the generosity of our Lord, and blessings of this religion, as always, are greater than what we imagine we deserve. Ramadan is our yearly opportunity to do a great thing. It is an act of worship that stands alone as something done for God and God alone. For an entire month, we become preoccupied with God rather than ourselves. We give up our food, drink, sensuality, and wealth. We stand in prayer during the night. And we persist in this despite our fatigue. Ramadan is a heroic act; Eid is a celebration worthy of that heroism.

God says in the Quran: "And you see the earth lifeless, but as soon as We send down rain upon it, it begins to stir to life and swell, producing every type of pleasant plant. That is because Allah alone is the Truth, He alone gives life to the dead, and He alone is Most Capable of everything." This is an image many of us can relate to on this day. The hunger and fatigue of Ramadan have done their work on us. They have left us parched and barren. Especially in the last few days of the month, I have had the sensation of dragging myself across the finish line. Yet Eid is the day God sends down rain upon the believers. We return to life as we used to know it—with its vital energy, fulfilled appetites, and "every type of pleasant plant."

My brothers and sisters, I want you to be conscious of the joy you experience on this day. Take note of it and remember it. The same pleasures we enjoy throughout the rest of the year are especially sweet on this day. Eid contains special joys because it comes on the heels of a month of total submission to God. Dry, barren, lifeless earth is most capable of absorbing the rain. So too do we find greater blessings in God's gifts after emptying ourselves of ourselves and turning to God in expectation of fulfillment that can only come from Him. The joy of Eid is the joy of this religion lived to its fullest. And it is the subtlest reminder of the joy we will experience, by God's permission, when we are reunited with our Lord and His Messenger ﷺ in the garden—a day when lasting joy comes after a lifetime of turning back to God.

On behalf of the entire team at the Taleef Collective, I would like to wish you all a blessed and joyous Eid al-Fitr. May the joy of every taste, embrace, and reunion on the day extend into the rest of the year as well as the life to come.

What Remains of Us during Ramadan?

Ramadan Mubarak!--May you have a blessed Ramadan. Our annual month of fasting, intensive worship, and reading the Quran has arrived. Whether you are celebrating the month for the first time, the twentieth time, or you're simply looking into what this is all about, we pray your efforts are filled with God's blessing.

If you are new to this religion, you may hear many explanations of what exactly we are doing during this month. When I first became Muslim, I heard that fasting is a form of solidarity with the poor and hungry, that it reminds us of our blessings, or that we fast simply because God commands us to. The most confusing part of this was that none of these were wrong answers. However, none of them seemed to capture the essence of what I experienced during my fasts. So what is Ramadan all about?

Ramadan is the meeting of our authentic selves with our Lord. It is the answer to the question of what remains of us when our material existence is diminished and our spiritual hearts are allowed to shine forth. The promise of Ramadan is that we meet God in our best and most beautiful state--with an empty belly. 

God says in the Quran:

يا ايها الذين أمنوا كتب عليكم الصيام كما كتب على الذين من قبلكم لعلكم تتقون

"O you who believe, fasting has been prescribed for you, just as it was prescribed for those who came before you, that you might attain God-consciousness." (2:183)

The answer to our earlier question is that we fast to attain God-consciousness. Fasting exists to wake us up. It takes us from a neglectful slumber into a state of hyper-awareness of our Lord. This may seem ironic given the sleepiness and lack of energy most of us feel especially in our first week of fasting. But in consciously saying "no" to ourselves--our appetites, our desires, our comfort--we come alive in the consciousness of our Creator. Our hearts and minds shift from a place of self-centeredness to God-centeredness. Our living and our breathing become not for ourselves but for God. 

It is for this reason that our Prophet ﷺ tells us: “Every [good] deed of the son of Adam is multiplied, a single deed as ten times the like of it up to seven hundred times. Allah Almighty said, ‘Except for fasting, as it is for Me and I will reward it. They leave their desires and their food for My sake.’”

How does this work? What is the connection between fasting and God-consciousness? If we look to what we fast from--eating, drinking, and sexual activity--it becomes clear that our fasting denies a particular part of our nature, the animal-self. We give up appetite, which weakens passions like anger. These are the aspects of our souls that we share in common with animals and which tie us to the material world around us. It may come as a surprise to many of us that there is more to ourselves than this aspect of our soul! Fasting shows us what remains of ourselves when we strip that away. It opens the door to a greater reality that lives within us: that when we are not preoccupied with fulfilling our worldly needs, an awareness of our Lord who is beyond ourselves, yet closer to us than ourselves, emerges naturally and effortlessly. Ramadan brings us closer to our angelic natures.

Many of us embrace Islam around the same time we become adults and leave home. This was certainly true for me. One of the things I have noticed over the years are the parallels between what happens to the fasting soul and what happens to our relationships with our parents after we become adults. We get an answer to a similar question: what remains? What remains of our relationship with our parents when we are no longer looking to them for material support? For so long we relied upon them to feed us, clothe us, and shelter us. What remains when we begin to do this for ourselves? The answer to this question will differ for all of us. However, in the best cases, what remains is a deeper love and gratitude born of a new awareness, a consciousness, of everything our parents provided us over the years. This awareness can only arise after we begin our fast from their support. But once it is there, it transforms the relationship. Love and devotion deepens; and sometimes, in the most beautiful cases, genuine friendship emerges.

The beautiful thing about fasting is that, while the destination of God-consciousness is the same for all of us, the path each of us take to get there will differ. We all have different souls that will react differently to the fast. If this is your first time embarking on the journey, my advice is to go easy and don't go alone. Fasting will expose you to parts of yourself you may not know exist. Judge yourself gently as you would someone else you're encouraging to succeed. And find a community of Muslims to break your fast with as often as you can. The road is always easier with companions.

Sha’ban: Recalibrating The Heart

All Praise is due to God, The One God, Most High, the Consolidator of all affairs. 

We ask Him to send His infinite Peace and Blessings upon The Last Messenger, Our Master Muhammad, His family, His nation, and those to yearn for Him until the end of time. 

It is related in al-Nasai that one of the companions of the Messenger of God ﷺ, Usama bin Zaid, may God be pleased with him, once asked Him, “O Messenger of Allah, I do not see you fasting any month as much as you fast during Sha’ban.” To which The Prophet responded, “It is a month people neglect between the months of Rajab and Ramadan. It is a month in which the deeds are raised to the Lord of the worlds and I like for my deeds to be raised while I am fasting.”

Sha’ban comes from the root word sha’b, which refers to a gathering or an assembly. It's used in general to refer to a group of people, as God mentions “We made you into shu’ub (people) and tribes, so you may know one another. (Qur’an 49:13)

This beautiful month that precedes the noble month of Ramadan is when the virtuous actions of the entire ummah are presented to God. This is also the month where the qibla, or direction of prayer, changed from Jerusalem to Makkah.  As our prayer has a qibla, so does our heart. Through time, routine, ups and downs, that qibla tends to change. Maybe it turns towards a worldly desire, the egocentric qualities of greed or envy, or even towards nothing. It seems that Sha’ban seems to come just in time to remind us where our hearts’ qibla should be pointed. 

The Messenger of Allah when describing this month says, “A month in which many people neglect.” The scholars say that this is the month in which The Messenger of God made up for any outstanding fasts he had to make up. In fact, it is known that the wives of the Messenger ﷺ would use Sha’baan to make up for their missed fasts before Ramadan, and He used to fast with them to make it easy for them. The scholars of Hadith also maintain that one of the meanings of “neglect” here is tribulation or hardship that leads to lack of awareness. Neglect is the inherent nature of the Devil’s plan. We know that the demons are chained in the Ramadan, and so their impact is much greater in Sha’ban–the devil’s last stand, so to speak. The accursed devil’s plan is a mighty tribulation, and when his plan works, tribulation leads to neglect. On the flip side, when we recognize God’s presence, we go from being neglectful to wakeful. That is the tremendous nature of this month.

Imagine for a moment that you are presenting your entire years’ work to the CEO of your company, or your dissertation to the respected department at a university. Or maybe you remember trying out for a high school team after an entire summer worth of preparation. Do you remember the feeling you had before that meeting? The cold shivers, agitation, the jitters? Did anything else matter at that moment? Did you ponder upon the latest gossip? Ruminate on the uncertain future? Did you have the headspace to hold onto outrage about what someone had done to you in the past? Or were you simply thinking about that meeting? How then would you be when you present yourself to the King of kings in His celestial courtyard?

Sha’ban plunges the believers ego onto a humble plain, and raises the soul to the reorganization of the heavens. This process prepares us for Ramadan and gives us the fortitude to defend ourselves against the devil’s last stand. As the Enemy seeks to cause dissent between the hearts and a loss of inner sight as to what's important, the believers duel him with prayer and fasting. They fight the devil and the ego by revisiting what is real. God is real. Your Prophet ﷺ is real. God’s Promise is real. All of this is manifested in the smile of a loved one, the prayer of an elder, a reunion with an old friend, thoughts of a loved one that has passed, the patience that comes with pain, and works of virtue and truth. 

One of the more difficult things that I have experienced in past Sha’bans is hearing of a loved one, a friend, or a community member returning to God. Almost every year at this time, I hear of a series of people passing, many of them being younger in age. This is the most difficult of tribulations. I truly do not understand why that is. It may certainly well be that I am simply more aware of such news during this time. Whatever the case may be, it intensified the meaning to The Prophet's prayer “O Allah, bless us this Sha’ban, and allow for us to reach Ramadan.” I’ve learned that one of the greatest signs of God's grace is valuing what you have. Valuing your faith, family, time, body and mind, and everything else. 

Two things that we are taught to hold on to in order to recognize the gifts of this month and prepare for Ramadan are: increase your worship (prayer, fasting, and prayer upon the Prophet ﷺ), and to offer a secret between you and God. 

Regarding worship, when headlessness and tribulations are brought forth, we can choose to be neglectful, or in full awareness. Our awareness is generated through one thing: worship. Prayer, fasting, remembrance of God and His Prophet ﷺ, and reciting God’s book is irrigation of the heart in times of difficulty. The Messenger of God ﷺ told us “Worship in times of hardship is like migrating to me!” Let every word of worship be your migration to the Divine and towards His Messenger ﷺ. 

In regard to offering a secret to God, it was related that one of the salaf, or early generation of Muslims maintained a fast for years without anyone knowing. He would go from his home to the market with two loaves of bread with him, one from home and that he’d buy at the market.  His family at home would think he’s eaten a loaf of bread at the marketplace, while the folks in the market would think that he had taken bread home to eat. It ended up that he would feed the hungry without anyone knowing. In our tradition, it is considered mustahab, or recommended to conceal the virtuous actions that you partake in when fasting. This is your secret with God. Maintain a deed that only you and God know of. Your little secret for your Lover, between the lover and the Beloved. This keeps the heart sincere and calibrates your hearts qibla towards the Most High.

We ask God in this noble month to bless us and to allow us to reach a fruitful Ramadan

Faith and Happiness

One of the best lessons I received in my early years as a Muslim is that we never become too advanced to return to the basics. Even the great scholars of our religion will often review foundational teachings, such as the fard al-ayn, or individual obligations, on a yearly basis. Our foundations are not something we move away from as we learn and grow, but rather the roots that continue to nurture and teach us. This is true because, even while these teachings remain the same, we are constantly evolving as believers. We encounter every prayer, every Ramadan, and every act of charity as a new person with something new to learn from these acts of worship. So what better way to mark the new year than by returning to the shahadah, our testimony of faith?

The shahadah is the first pillar of Islam, and the one that upholds the other four. It is our testimony that "there is nothing worthy of worship except God, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God." If you are learning about Islam for the first time, you are likely to hear that this testimony is what makes one a Muslim or that it is the key to paradise. Some Muslims can even tell you why they believe in this statement by giving rational proofs for God's existence or explaining the signs of Muhammad's ﷺ prophethood. However, as newcomers to Islam, we're often drawn to it by our intuition. We sense that there is something satisfying about this faith that abstract proofs and promises of otherworldly benefits simply cannot account for. This intuition is true, and it is pointing us toward the reality that the shahadah is the basis of true happiness even in this world.

Start reading the Quran and you'll notice that God has a lot to say about us. He provides intimate details of our psychology, examples of motherly mercy, and even what we might call the meaning of life. In Chapter 51, verse 56, He says, "I have only created the jinn and humans to worship (Me)." Because the Arabic implies the word "Me" (God), this statement does two things. First, it defines us: we are worshiping creatures. We long for something larger than ourselves that can provide happiness, purpose, and meaning in our lives. Second, it tells us what to do with this inborn desire: direct it towards the One who created you, the One who put this desire within you, and worship Him alone.

Why is this so satisfying? Why does it produce a happiness that is unlike anything else? God tells us that He "ennobled the children of Adam." (17:70) He created us with hearts that can encompass Him when nothing else in creation can do so. Ultimately, we are not made for the created world. Our highest concerns and desires point us beyond it. So worshiping the things within the world are ultimately unsatisfying. It will eventually leave us feeling empty, burned out, and seeking a new lord. The shahadah liberates us by finally turning us toward the Creator who is beyond this world. It fulfills us by answering that ultimate desire. And it teaches us to hold the things of this world in our hands rather than in our hearts.

The Messenger of God ﷺ said "The best thing that I or the Prophets before me have said is 'There is nothing worthy of worship except God, alone, without partner.'" Yet living by this statement would be a bewildering task if we didn't have his example to follow. This is why the second statement of the shahadah, that Muhammad is the Messenger of God, must accompany the first. It shows us the human path to God. We all may have an inborn desire to worship God. But we all come from different walks of life--culturally, socially, economically, even religiously. Therefore we all have different ideas about what it means to serve God. The sunnah, or example of the Prophet ﷺ, clarifies these questions for us.

When the Prophet ﷺ lost his infant son, Ibrahim, may God be pleased with him, he cradled his body and wept. A companion who was present asked, "Even you, O Messenger of God?" The Prophet ﷺ responded, "This is a mercy." The beautiful thing about this incredibly sad narration is that it shows us how the sunnah leads us toward God by challenging our misconceptions around what it means to worship Him. The companion in this hadith questioned why God's Messenger, the greatest servant of God, would feel sadness at the death of a loved one. After all, shouldn't he expect to see Ibrahim in the afterlife? Shouldn't he be grateful that he passed in a state of submission to God? Rather, the Prophet ﷺ teaches us that the tears we shed at these moments are not only in line with faith in God, they are a form of mercy--the primary characteristic through which God relates to His creation. The Prophet's sunnah shows us what it means to actualize our belief that there is nothing worthy of worship except God throughout the seasons and rhythms of our lives.

The shahadah is a small statement but it points us toward a vast ocean of divine realities. As we return to it again and again in our daily prayers and invocations, its many lessons begin to unfold and, God willing, the happiness that comes from faith deepens. One of the beauties of our testimony of faith is that it allows us to take delight in God's creation without ever subjecting ourselves to it. However, you don't need to take this from me on faith. As with all things in Islam, the proof is in the practice. Make a resolution to connect with the shahadah this year and you will witness the transformation yourself.