It was a Friday, so I looked about for a place to do jumma. The closest masjid I could find was a fifteen-minute walk away, so I set out on foot about half an hour ahead of time. Google Maps reviews of the masjid said it would likely be crowded, since it was in the heart of Manhattan.

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I arrived at the address and entered the building. It was an older, rundown sort of place. The building directory didn’t say anything about a masjid, but I knew it was on the first floor upstairs.

Yet as I waited for the elevator, something felt off. This didn’t seem like the place. I looked around, walked over to the stairs, and pulled out my phone to read the description more closely.

Now, I’m no fan of AI (I have failed students for using it on assignments in my classes), but I do appreciate that Google Maps has now integrated an AI feature that summarizes a location’s reviews into a single sentence, offering a succinct encapsulation what to expect based on others’ experiences.

The summary said something like: “Reviewers say to be sure not to miss the entrance - it’s through a garage full of food trucks and street carts.”

What?

I was clearly in the wrong place.

I exited the building and walked a few steps down the block. There, sure enough, was a series of heavy-duty plastic curtains concealing the opening of a garage door. I pushed through.

Inside was met by a massive courtyard-like space. Sheets had been laid down for folx to pray on, transforming what was a parking lot for food trucks and street carts into a masjid.

A few men were lounging or had already begun some salaat. And in the corner was a set of stairs leading up to a small carpeted room: the masjid. I ascended, removed my shoes, performed my sunnah/nafilah, and got set for jumma.

The visit to this masjid flashed me back to a moment from my doctoral work in Manchester, UK, during Ramadan. There, at the back of a famous halal Indo-Chinese restaurant, the owners had set down sheets in the parking lot for folx to do salaat on. Many local community members came to this restaurant for iftar, but only three people at a time could fit in the single, purpose-built room that the restaurant had for salaat - others had to go outside.

I’ve reflected on this elsewhere (in my book, Making Muslimness - DM me your email address if you want a free PDF of it, by the way!), but it strikes me that this is a thing we Muslims do: transform spaces from “secular” to sacred.

I put “secular” in quotes because I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “secular” space, in the truest sense of the word. This is not least because of the Prophetic hadith about the entire earth being a masjid, and therefore wherever you are at the time of salaat is an appropriate place at which to perform it. Think, for example, of the recently revived video of folx doing taraweeh in Times Square (thanks to comedian Mo Amer for featuring it on The Daily Show) - a transformation of one of the most sensorally overwhelming, capitalism focused, entertainment oriented spaces in the world into a place of prayer.

This happens everywhere. And it isn’t an accident. From café rooftops in Kuala Lumpur to vacant classrooms in London, the transformative potential of the Islamic politics of space is everywhere.

I sense that this speaks to an even wider phenomenon. I sense that part of what’s at play here is a deep unease (in a good way) with us being souls stuck in physical bodies.

Let me explain.

If the soul is oriented towards the Divine, yet is trapped in physical form, then yearning to reconnect with that Divine - even in fleeting moments like daily salaat - requires transforming the soul’s physical environment into a spiritual one.

Soulfulness cannot fully flourish in a physical environment that is not set aside, or is not particularly focused, or is not specifically oriented towards the Divine.

And when whatever we find, see, and touch around us does not remind us of the Divine, we have to make it remind us.

This necessitates changing one’s physical into something metaphysical, where laying down a jacket or blanket or spare bedsheet with the intention of connecting to the Divine suddenly makes it a sacred space.

How many times have I put down some kind of cloth on the ground, to do salaat in an airport while on a layover?

Immediately, the purpose and function of the location becomes something different. It becomes a space that resists the logics of the place’s design. It becomes a reflection of one’s commitment to prioritizing the Divine, wherever one may be.

This, I think, is one of the things that sets Islam apart from many other religions. Ultimately, you do not need a specific physical location to be a Muslim.

What you need is a spiritual transcendence that goes beyond the tangible and into the realm of the ethereal.

What you need is a commitment to the cause of connection.

And what you really need need is action that activates attachment to the Absolute, actions that are not limited to keeping the Divine in a single place.

How could we even do that, when the Divine is the one that created all those places in the first place?

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The Qur’an tells us repeatedly that this world was not designed for play or amusement. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why, in this day and age of constant entertainment and frivolity, we so regularly transform it into a place of prayer: as a reminder of and return to its original purpose for existing, that of hosting human-Divine connection.

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And with that, a du’a: I pray that whatever space you and I find ourselves in, we are able to harness the courage to establish connection to the Divine on whatever ground is before us, with whatever materials accompany us, and with whatever purity can join us, in order to bring to light and into practice closeness and nearness to the Divine, which is, in and of itself, the ultimate gift of all.

The topic? Contentment.

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The maulana was talking about the life of Imam Ali al-Rida, the 8th Shi’a Imam. He had the honorific title al-Rida - which translates as “the pleasing one,” “the one who is content,” or “the one who is satisfied” - which allies and enemies alike used to refer to him. At jummah, the maulana used this title and stories of the Imam as a jumping off point to help us understand the of contentment in the Islamic ethos.

He talked about this in many ways: in calamity, in finances, in work, in family, and more.

But there was one metaphor he used that blew me away. The maulana said that to achieve contentment in the appropriate Islamic way, we all ought to be more like bank tellers.

Bank tellers? I was confused.

Yes, bank tellers. Because bank tellers sit all day receiving and passing out money. They take in and give out probably thousands of dollars in a given day.

But crucially, they do this without emotional attachment or affect - perhaps because this is a job but also, more importantly, because the money they’re handling isn’t theirs.

The money the teller transfers either belongs to the bank or to the customer they are passing it to. The teller is simply a medium, a middleman.

So why do you hesitate to give zakat, he asked, knowing that all of your money doesn’t belong to you anyway?

My mind exploded when he said this (not literally, I’m still intact, alhamdulillah - but you get my drift).

It wasn’t because of the way he framed this in relation to money. Rather it was because of the broader implications of what it means to be content in this world.

Think about it:

• How often do we get attached to a thought that is just passing through us, obsessing over the possibility of that thing or that idea with no justifiable basis that it is seeded in reality?

I went to get something framed recently and saw a gentleman in line who got attached to using a particular frame for his artwork, only for the staff member to tell him that that frame was out of stock. The customer offered to call the framing warehouse to find out when it was going to be available, he offered to buy the frame himself and bring it in, he offered to wait until the frame was back in stock thereby missing out on the ongoing sale - anything he could do to fulfill his attachment.

• How often do we think that we know the purpose for the things that we have, when there may in fact be another more important purpose to attend to later on?

This past weekend, I was entering a store when a man stopped me and asked if I had $2 for the bus. I said no and that I didn’t have any cash. But as I reached the store’s doors, I remembered I had a $20 bill in my wallet. So I asked the cashier to break my $20 into $5 notes, intending to give one to the man outside. It took a while for the cashier to figure out how to open the register without a sale and by the time I went back outside with a $5 note in hand, the man was gone. I looked for him or for someone else to donate to, but there was no one. The next day, I got a piece of mail saying that my wife’s car needed an emissions test - which can only be paid for in cash: exactly $20. The money had another purpose, yet to be revealed to me.

• How often do we think that the thing we have - the job, the house, the stuff - is ours for good, rather than just being ours until the Divine deems it is time for someone else to have it?

My workplace is going through tremendous turmoil at the moment with people leaving and others shifting positions. At least four of us (myself included) have been thrust into new leadership positions as a result of all the change, positions that - at least for me - I never would have considered going for were it not for the fact that others left or are leaving theirs with sudden notice. But when the Divine says it is time to change, stepping up is required.

For the maulana at jumma, the only way through all these ups and downs is contentment. He was quick to point out that contentment doesn’t imply a lack of emotion or feeling, pointing to the story of the Prophet’s (pbuh) sadness at the loss of his infant son Ibrahim.

The Prophet was crying at the loss, but even in that moment, reminded himself and those around him of still being content with the Divine’s actions, with what the Divine has given or taken, with whatever circumstances have unfolded.

Contentment, in other words, is the deepest capacity to remain steadfast in accepting of what has come and giving of what has been given to you.

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What if we were like bank tellers with our careers?

Our reputations?

Our love lives?

Our relationships?

Our homes?

Our stuff?

What if the bank tellers hold the secret to detachment, not because of what they do but because of how they do it?

What if, at root, we concerned ourselves less with attachment to that which we are dispensing and more to that which is the Source of all that can be dispensed and the capacity to dispense at all in the first place?

What might it look like to maintain the je ne sais quoi of letting things just pass through, because everything that we touch and see and feel is all temporary and fleeting anyway?

It might look a lot like contentment.

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And so, a du’a: I pray that amid all the chaos and madness of the world, the injustice and the pain, the uncertainty and anxiety, the trials and the struggles - I pray that amid all of that you and I can find the means and capacities and inner resoluteness to maintain steady and deep contentment, whatever comes and whatever goes, knowing that we, too, one day, will be of those things that pass through and go, returning from whence we came to the Divine’s embrace.

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Initially, my train was scheduled for 8 PM - the latest one I could get, not knowing how long the show and post-show would go. Having already left my bags at the hotel, I intended to see the show, find a place to do asr, have a relaxed dinner, and head to the train station.

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So imagine my surprise when, as the show was concluding, I overheard an usher mention that the talkback was only 20 minutes long, ending around 4 PM. I checked Amtrak - there was a train leaving at 4:30 PM, which was just enough time to get my bag and get to the train station.

The talkback ended promptly and I zoomed out of the theatre, into the respectable rain and through Times Square. The hotel was only a few minutes away, but I arrived fairly wet. Upon retrieving my bags, I jumped onto my phone and changed my train ticket.

In the midst of this, the concierge approached me. I did not notice him, my head buried in my device, struggling to input my credit card information, until he spoke:

“Excuse me sir, do you need a taxi somewhere?”

Hyperfocused on the task in front of me and (probably subconsciously) upholding a scarcity mindset even though I was on a work trip, I disregarded his offer.

“No thanks, I’m just going to do this train thing.”

The ticket went through and I headed out, my GPS showing a 12-minute walk to the train station.

Plenty of time, I thought.

I launched my feet and luggage past tourists, over puddles, and through crosswalks. Rushing down the street in the unrelenting rain, I walked so fast that my shins started hurting.

Splish, splash, ow, splish, splash, ache, went the cadence.

Through my befogged and rain-splattered glasses, I saw the train station ahead of me, a major meeting place of city-specific, regional, and national rail services. 4:18 PM.

But my GPS showed it a little bit further away.

So instead of going straight, I turned right.

Disaster.

Sidewalk gave way to construction, and I was in the wrong spot. I turned around, spotting another entrance to the station and headed towards it, dragging my luggage into traffic amid honks and screeches.

Approaching the second entrance, the door was locked. No way in. Two other pedestrians also approached, and one relayed that there was another entrance - back the other direction.

It was the one I’d seen but hadn’t taken.

Splish, splash, ow, splish, splash, ache - I rushed back, praying to my Lord to get me to this train on time. The week had been long and meandering. I was ready go home.

I got onto the escalator, descending below. 4:22 PM.

When you’re in a rush, there are few things worse than being on an escalator. In a moment of calm, they are brilliant for enhancing the slowness of your day. But in a hurry, they are often infuriating.

This one was no exception.

At the end, I grabbed my luggage and raced through the station. A text message:

"Your train will be departing from Platform 8.”

Signs throughout the station pointed the direction. First Platforms 12-21, then Platforms 1-19, then Platforms 1-12. I followed the arrows, entered another hallway, and passed by number after number.

1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8 - 8! I hurtled towards the escalator on the right.

But instead of going down to the platform, it rose up from it.

Escalators are indeed enemies of the frantic.

4:26 PM.

On the opposite side of the up escalator was a set of stairs. So I sprinted down those, unceremoniously thumping my carry-on down each step

There, at the bottom, on Platform 8, was my train.

With one last heave, I lifted my bags onto the train and paused in the vestibule to catch my breath, rain-soaked clothing and luggage dripping everywhere.

4:28 PM.

I entered the mostly empty carriage, put my luggage in the rack above, and sat down.

Alhamdulillah.

Barely a moment passed before the train started moving - apparently, I was facing backwards. I regrouped and picked another seat, forward-facing this time.

As the journey progressed and my clothes began to dry, I found myself wondering about the concierge and his offer. It was a mercy from the Divine, the offer to call me a taxi and - in anticipation - save me from the pain and rain. Yet I turned it down.

Why?

The situation was difficult enough as it was, but I made it more difficult upon myself.

Why?

The trip was to be fully covered by the project budget, yet I still felt like I could not afford a 5-minute cab ride to the train station.

Why?

In Surah Ash-Sharh, the Divine addresses Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) directly, describing how the Prophet’s heart has been uplifted, his burdens have been made easier, and his reputation has been enhanced. And then, verses 6-7 say this:

There’s a lot of popular discussion of these verses, because of the way that they promise ease with difficulty. Not before or after but rather concurrently. At the same time. With.

The concierge offering to call me a cab, while I booked a ticket. The other pedestrian indicating where the station entrance was, while I was flustered in the rain. The conductor agreeing to come back and scan my ticket when it initially didn’t load, while I sat drenched and drained in my seat.

Yet I find it so difficult, at times, to notice, acknowledge, and accept these mercies in the midst of hardship. Wouldn’t a $20 cab ride have saved me a lot of headache? Wasn’t it worth it?

And yet, there is no added benefit or value in additional suffering, in disregarding the mercies that the Divine sends in moments of trial.

What does it say about my image of the Divine or my attempted over-reliance on myself that I chose the path of most resistance rather than the path of least?

Who am I - and who are we - to make things harder than they need to be? And moreover, who am I - and who are we - to disavow the Divine’s mercies when that same Divine is the one that created us?

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The Qur’an has it right all along, because the Divine:

Is there a way out of the morass that is me wronging myself, us wronging ourselves?

Can I - can we - recognize the mercies that show up with and alongside difficulty, in the exact moment of that happening?

Can my own - can our own - scarcity shadows, infected by capitalist profiteering and neoliberal flexibility, take a step back in favor of other values that matter more (comfort, dryness, and not getting lost)?

I don’t know, but I hope so.

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And so, a du’a for one and all: I pray that you and I can interrogate the paths that we haven’t taken - not from a place or regret or what-ifs, but from a place of learning and healing - so that when we are next faced with such a circumstance, we see within it the ease and the difficulty, marveling in and connecting to and appreciating the Divine’s capacity to so elegantly provide both at once.

For the first time in a while at a conference, I was not presenting. Rather, I was listening, taking in ideas and perspectives on Muslim mental health as I (insha’Allah) slowly but surely attempt to move in the direction of researching the intersection of theatre, trauma, and Muslim refugee youth.

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There’s a different mode of magic that comes into play when listening rather than speaking, receiving rather than doing, absorbing rather than acting. For someone who tends towards speaking first, it’s a curious and compelling reminder to remember the value of taking things in and letting them settle.

The Qur’an reminds of this in Surat al-Ma’idah, ayat 82-83:

More than once over the weekend, I heard people speaking truth and started tearing up. I wrote down quote after quote in my notebook. Many of them related to trauma:

“trauma is a whole different monster when it’s unhealed”

those who have “overcome their trauma” become “credible messengers”

“what are we being polished for? what are we being sharpened for?”

“Western mental health contributes to an erasure of the soul”

“emotional mastery is a sign of true strength” because “the Sunnah is to appreciate the emotional experience”

“silos are a failure of spiritual imagination”

And the one that hit me the hardest:

“if hurt people hurt people, then healed people heal people”

Subhanallah.

What might it take to be one of those healed people, I wonder?

In alignment with where my research seems to be going these days, I’ve been thinking a lot about what Islam says about trauma - but not in the way that others might be thinking of it.

For the Qur’an, to me, feels pretty instructive on this topic. The first few verses of Surat al-Ghashiyah (ayat 1-7), which is traditionally interpreted as a discussion of the perils of punishment in the afterlife, might also describe a trauma response:

Sounds terrifying.

And so is the experience of trauma.

“A whole different monster when it’s unhealed,” trauma can result in lived experiences not too far off from some of this.

Trauma responses are almost always overwhelming to one’s system. Being downcast (i.e. depressed), overburdened (i.e. overwhelmed), and exhausted (i.e. disassociating or zoning out or shutting down) are natural consequences to a nervous system that has reached its limits.

But what about the next few segments, you may ask? How could burning or drinking or eating relate? The Arabic root words offer some insight here.

The word used for a “scorching fire” is naar, which comes from the same Arabic root as noor (light) and munir (illumination). What if the fire of trauma, the hurting of it, is actually the place where healing can also happen?

Next, we have ayin as the word used for a scalding “spring” as in a spring of water, which shares a root with ayn (eye), referencing a source of water or a source of vision. What if the core or source wound, as it’s often described, is burning with reactivation again and again in a trauma response, a spring that can’t be shut off?

Then, we have dhariya’ which renders a “foul, thorny shrub,” a tasteless plant from the Hejaz region of today’s Saudi Arabia, the Qur’anic Arabic of which shares a root word with dhara’a (to humble). What if a trauma response feels like a humiliation, a lowering of oneself the most base dimensions of personhood?

Finally, we have a lack of nourishment or “satisfying hunger,” which comes from ju’in, a term that shares a root with ja’a (empty in the belly, longing). What if a trauma response yielded an inability to attend to one’s physical needs, specifically disconnecting an individual from their body’s cues about hunger?

Plot twist: these, among other things, are - in fact - exactly the types of things that trauma and trauma responses do to an individual: makes it harder to know when to eat, surfaces feelings of humiliation, and reactivates a source wound over and over again.

The Qur’an taught us this over 1,400 years ago.

But crucially, it also taught us how to heal.

Because what was it that Rumi said?

“The place of the wound is where the light enters.”

(also a quote that someone dropped at the conference!)

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There’s often a limitation that we impose onto the Qur’an, especially those of us for whom Arabic isn’t a first language, where we rely on translations and transliterations that only capture one level of meaning: the literal one, which a specific translator has rendered. And then, without understanding, we argue about those interpretations and attempt to make meaning of the Qur’an in that light.

The reality, however, is that each verse (nay, each word!) has multiple layers of meaning. Imam Jafar as-Sadiq said there were 4 layers (literal, allegorical/metaphorical, hidden meanings, and spiritual). The Prophet himself indicated 7 layers (external and then hidden meaning, which contained another hidden meaning, which contained another hidden meaning, and so on).

Who are we to keep the Qur’an so small?

Why are we so afraid of its hidden depths?

And why are we blinding ourselves to its layers and layers of truth?

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With that, a du’a: I pray that wherever you may travel in the coming days, weeks, and months - whether through your literal body or in your intellectual mind or via your emotional heart or into your spiritual existence - that your travels take you to and through the truth, always and forever servicing as a source of reflection and inspiration in achieving greater and closer connection to the Divine.

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Mostly, this is because of a number of changes happening in my professional environment.

My department consists of about 30-35 faculty/staff. Over the past year, the following has occurred:

• approx. 5 of us have lost a loved one

• about the same number have had to care for (an ailing) loved one (or multiple)

• our most recent department chair left her position to take another job, with approx. 3 weeks notice

• by the end of this year, 5 folx will have quit, retired, or left the university for one reason or another

• our department has been flagged as having multiple “low enrollment” programs, and faces the threat of closure if things don’t change

And beyond all that, since I’ve worked at this university (starting in 2022) there have been at least 3 presidents and 3 provosts, possibly more (I’ve lost count).

Amid all of this, somehow, I’ve been floating along and doing my thing. I attribute a lot of that capacity to being a person of faith (and acupuncture and going on walks).

But I also feel that much of this flotation comes from an awareness of awe, in the Divine’s capacity for destruction.

This isn’t a particularly sexy topic among Muslims of a certain generation (millennials and younger, I’d suggest), primarily because many of the ways that folx learned about the Divine through their parents or grandparents was with a lot of associated doom and gloom. Kind of like this:

Child: Why do I have to do salaat?

Parent: Because otherwise Allah will punish you.

Or, something like this:

Grandchild: Why do we fast?

Grandparent: Because otherwise we will burn in the fires of hell.

Dramatic. Unfortunately, also very common.

As such, I’m a bit wary of wading into this dimension of the Divine because it is often easier to stick only with the supposedly positive characteristics of the Divine, especially in a time of such wanton destruction: things like mercy, truth, light, and forgiveness.

Undoubtedly, these are all significant, and indeed there is a hadith qudsi indicating that the Divine’s mercy prevails over His wrath.

This yields two questions, then:

1. Why are so many of us focused on the destructive potential of the Divine rather than His more lenient qualities?

2. Why would I focus on destruction in this post?

Both of these questions yield a similar answer: it depends on how we imagine the Divine.

Humans are, inherently, limited. We are souls with spirits in a body, a body that has and takes physical form, a physicality that means we have been prescribed a beginning, middle, and end. Certainly, bodies grow and change throughout life. But ultimately, they die and degrade.

The Divine, by contrast, neither “is born” nor “dies.” The Divine is limitless, unbounded, superseding time and place. Ultimately, the Divine is beyond gender and the 99 names or qualities that we use as descriptors.

The issue is that we limited humans are attempting to comprehend that which is limitless.

As a result, the characteristics we emphasize about the Divine say more about us than they do about the Divine.

If we focus on names like Ar-Rahman and Ar-Raheem, which emphasize different kinds of Divine Mercy, then we start to see ourselves as out of control and in need of Divine Mercy. If we focus on names like Al-Wahhab and Ar-Razzaq, which emphasize the Divine’s capacity to bestow and provide, then we start to see ourselves as impoverished recipients dependent on the Divine’s gifts. If we focus on names like Ar-Raqib and Al-Basir, which emphasize the Divine’s all-seeing and all-witnessing capacities, then we start to see ourselves as blind and only able to access partiality in any given moment.

All of these approaches add different dimensions to our visions of ourselves, as well as our visions of the Divine.

Yet in the contemporary age, we are often reticent to approach Divine Qualities that appear to us to be negative, names like Al-Mudhill (The Dishonorer or The Humiliator), Al-Khafid (The Reducer or The Abaser), and Al-Mumeet (The Creator of Death).

Why?

Because there is no escape from the “negative” qualities. There is only acceptance of them. The individual who is dishonored or humiliated or reduced or abased cannot fight that circumstance. They can only accept it.

I can only accept that my family lost a loved one within the past year. I can only accept that my workplace is in shambles. I can only accept that my future employment may not exist.

Any other tactic simply yields unnecessary self-inflicted suffering.

The Qur’an is very clear about this:

In other translations, the second half of the ayat is rendered as “man wrongs his own soul.” In either case, it is we who make our own situations worse.

Because whereas contemplation of the “positive” Divine Attributes may lead me to humble myself or reform myself, contemplating the “negative” Divine Attributes leads me to detach myself from the dunya and re-attach myself to the Divine.

My job dissolving or my loved one taking her last breath has a finality about it, because I cannot resurrect anything.

I can do nothing about these circumstances except submit to their reality, a reality that is crafted by The Ultimate Reality that is The Divine.

The Divine Qualities are a holistic package, because (from a human perspective), they all achieve the same ends: bringing humans closer to the Divine.

We cannot only take one type without the other, thinking that we know better about what is best for us. Again, the Qur’an is clear:

Maybe it is our own limitations that are keeping the Divine small, rather than daring to contemplate every aspect of what the Divine entails.

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What would it look like to engage in capacious consideration of the Divine’s true balance of power?

To reflect on everything rather than just something?

To wonder what it is that exists beyond the form through which we take in and experience our environments?

To be curious about why we seek pleasure and avoid pain?

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Things to think about.

And with that, a du’a: I pray that whatever destruction, dissolution, and disintegration we find ourselves negotiating right now, we are strengthened through that experience to come closer to the Divine and, in that closeness, build whatever it is that we are meant to construct in our communities, contexts, and chronologies.

The bigger issue was that this particular set of trails in this particular park is notorious for being hard to follow.

Mountain bikers’ paths crisscross the terrain, and few of the trails are properly marked with blazes that make them easy to follow.

So after following a blue-blazed trail for almost an hour, passing over streams, through forests, and along ridgelines, I came to an intersection.

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Straight ahead, the blue-blazed trail continued. Crossing that trail, to the left and right, was an unblazed trail, one that (according to Google Maps) was called the Nipmuck Trail. Named after one of the indigenous nations of this area whose land was stolen by colonizers in the 17th and 18th centuries, the trail cut deeper into the forest on the right. On the left, if I followed it far enough and long enough, it led back to the car (so said Google Maps).

What to do?

Stick with the clearly marked path but end up with a longer hike home?

Or risk getting lost on an unmarked path in a place where my GPS and phone signal could give out at any minute?

I turned left. It turned out to also be a turn towards faith.

For a while, the trail was fine. I periodically pulled out my phone to check that I was still following the dotted gray line that led back to the road where I parked.

All good.

The path ascended and then descended, moving out of soft pine needles and into crunchy leaves. Another check of the map.

Still good.

It then hit a few small stream crossings, before happening upon a much larger stream called Roaring Brook (so said Google Maps). I crossed the Brook and sat down to have some snacks and water. Now hydrated and nourished, I got up, walked a few yards up the trail, and checked the map again.

Not good.

The pulsing, pale blue-and-white dot (thanks, Voyager 1 and Carl Sagan) that represented my phone and I was off in the dark gray hinterland of the park somewhere. The Nipmuck Trail was, somehow, way off to my left, with no path leading to it.

At this moment, pointing my phone in the direction of the trail, I considered my options:

• A: retrace my steps and go back to the blue-blaze trail

• B: stay on the path I was on and hope that it connected with the Nipmuck Trail

• C: bushwhack across the marshy bog to my left and hope to encounter the Nipmuck Trail where Google Maps said it was

• D: cry

I ruled out Option A because it would be too time consuming. I ruled out Option B because I had no evidence that my path would intersect with the Nipmuck Trail. I ruled out Option D because while it may be cathartic, my problems wouldn’t be less significant.

Option C it was.

So, I turned left and began moseying through and across marsh and bog and moss and standing water, trying to stay as dry as possible.

Towards the end of Surah Ali ‘Imran, the Prophet is counseled on how to handle difficult situations (this is related, I promise).

The Qur’an details his experience at the Battle of Uhud, when he assigned a number of Muslim archers to hold their position on a hill overlooking the battlefield, no matter what, so that they could protect the Muslim army’s rear flank.

When these archers saw that the Muslims were winning the battle, many of them abandoned their posts to join in gathering the spoils of the battlefield. The enemy commanders, seeing this, took their forces around the now-unprotected hill and attacked the Muslims from behind, turning the tide of the battle. It ultimately ended in a stalemate (or a Muslim loss, depending on whose accounts you follow).

Subsequently, once the battle was over, the Prophet did not shame or publicly admonish the archers who disobeyed his orders. The Qur’an comments in this way:

But then, the ayat goes on to say something quite powerful:

If all things go back to the Divine (which they do), then making the decision to take the unmarked trail in the hopes that Google Maps, GPS technology, my phone battery, the weather, my shoes, and the terrain of the woods would do me a solid really about trusting the Divine.

Not a single one of those things was in my control.

All were essential to make it safely back to my car.

Each of them was in Hands that guide my actions and protect me from and through all that I might otherwise bumble into.

How often do I make a decision and fully put my trust in the Divine, especially when that decision is one that I am unsure about?

How does the risk that I take in making a decision I’m not 100% certain about provide an opportunity for me to put de-center myself and re-center the Divine?

What would it look like for that decision-making process - any decision-making process, really - to begin and end with the idea that I am being fully, truly, radically, and completely held by the Divine?

What might I be willing to do or try or believe or enact?

The writer EL Doctorow has said that “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Replace “writing” with “life” and Doctorow’s pro-Israel positions with pro-Palestine ones, and the man may have been onto something.

The Divine give us the tools that we need just at the moment that we need them - not a second earlier. Trust in that fact and process, even and especially when decisions are not fully clear, is what the above ayat is talking about.

It is a command to make a decision and have trust.

It is a command to tie up your camel and pray to the Divine for its protection.

It is a command to step onto some squishy moss and hope that you don’t sink into the muck.

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Trust in the Divine got me back to the path, back to my car, and back to my computer to write this post.

I wonder what else it can do, for me and for you.

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With that, a du’a: I pray that you are able to make decisions and trust in the right thing of them working out for you, even and especially when they are unclear, knowing that the Divine is in full control and complete charge of every thing, time, place, person, circumstance, situation, and idea that any of us can possibly imagine.

Not Shi’a or Sunni or Sufi or whatever, but Muslim.

In a world where we are being pushed to greater and greater division through the smallest and smallest of differences - “You like hot sauce rather than sour cream or chili on your baked potato?! CANCELED!” - I’d like to think it’s pretty radical that I (a Muslim who leans Shi’a) married the woman I did (a convert who leans Sunni).

Or maybe not, given that my parents did a version of the same thing.

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Even still, as holidays around the world are for families of mixed backgrounds (whatever that might mean), Eid is a negotiation for us.

Which masjid will we go to for Eid salaat?

Which communities will we connect with?

What activities will animate our day?

These questions return year-on-year to my wife and I

She values seeing and encountering the racial and ethnic diversity of the ummah on Eid, a diversity that is sadly lacking in many Shi’a spaces around the country (Maryland’s Idara-e-Jaferia and the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California are a few notable exceptions I have personally encountered).

I value engaging with an Eid khutbah and takbeerat that feel fully immersive and deeply spiritual and teach me something new, experiences I have rarely had at Sunni masajid on Eid.

What to do?

This year, the stakes for our decision were even higher as my wife’s sister (who is also Muslim) came to stay with us for a couple days - or so I thought. Turns out she wasn’t bothered one way or another, as long as we went somewhere.

So that left my wife and I to figure things out. And in the process, my argument went something like this:

“Shi’as are always in the minority and by being in a normatively Sunni space we are reinforcing that so we should go where I want.”

My wife’s argument went something like this:

“That may be true out there, but in here, within our relationship, I want to do what matters to you and you want to do what matters to me. I’m more removed from normative Sunni-ness because I converted.”

Of course, I’m paraphrasing.

But have you every been in a situation where what you’re arguing for isn’t actually what you want but is instead the logics and narratives that you’ve heard others use? And that you have to figure out what is actually underneath the front you’re putting up? What it is that you actually think?

After much discussion, we finally figured it out: Shi’a trauma.

Part of what makes it so hard for me - at times - to adopt anything other than a staunchly Shi’a perspective on Muslim things is because of the embedded minority-ness of that stance. It’s also because of the rampant Shi’a bashing that I know is all too prevalent in our communities (see, for example, the image below, which is a comment I received after editing one of my Substack notes to incorporate Shi’a perspectives - I blocked out the original poster’s name for their protection).

This kind of stuff is real.

So, too, is the fact that many Shi’a communities would prefer to remain insular in racial, ethnic, and sectarian terms. Because it is safer to do this than risk unknown connection.

So, too, is the fact that many Sunni communities remain ignorant of or actively erase the injustices and abuses of power that occurred after the Prophet’s death (and extend into today), in which the Prophet’s family was killed at the hands of other “Muslim leaders” who are often lauded in Sunni circles today. Because it is safer to do this than risk unknown connection.

In these historical accounts and present-day engagements, nobody has a monopoly on morality.

Yet if my Shi’a brothers and sisters seek to uphold the legacy of Husayn and the Holy Household, a legacy I believe in, then we have a responsibility to push beyond the borders of comfort, beyond the borders of safety, to build the types of communities that our Prophet did.

When I got into a disagreement with my wife about where to go for Eid salaat, holding firm to a logic that was general and sweeping about the oppression of Shi’as rather than specific and particular to our relationship, I was demonstrating a trauma response.

For social worker Resmaa Menakem (p. 8 of his stellar book, My Grandmother’s Hands, holds the quotes below), trauma is this:

“a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat,” causing “us to react to present events in ways that seem wildly inappropriate, overly charged, or otherwise out of proportion”

And then in response, we develop a form of acting, a standardized archive and repertoire of behavior in relation to trauma:

“over time, these [reactions] can become embedded in the body as standard ways of surviving and protecting itself. When these strategies are repeated and passed on over generations, they can become the standard responses in families, communities, and cultures”

Knowingly or unknowingly, I am holding in my body - through generations of familial and historical legacy - Shi’a trauma. On Eid, I acted and spoke from that place, which was “overly charged.”

Yet, to be Shi’a is to also be Muslim.

And so the upshot of healing this particular set of traumas - especially when they have been visited upon Shi’a narratives and communities by other Muslims (Aurangzeb, anyone?) - is that we are all implicated. We are all responsible, whether for how we act or for what we believe.

I’m reminded here of the brilliant actress Cicely Tyson’s quote:

“You always seek to control others when you are not in full ownership of yourself.”

Indeed.

Shi’a trauma, ultimately, is Muslim trauma.

It is trauma that we have visited upon ourselves, whether by becoming insular from a place of fear or by persecuting from a place of fear.

It is trauma that keeps us separate.

It is trauma that disconnects us from the Divine, from following what He clearly ordained in freeing the Prophet from responsibility for what his community did after delivering Islam (Surah al An’am, ayat 159):

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I’m still wrestling with what this all means, because I do not want to be a house divided against myself.

But perhaps the takeaway is this: the overwhelming event that was the Sunni-Shi’a split has, and continues, to affect all of us - whether we are aware of it or not.

What might it take to heal that division, now, over 1,400 years later? Without losing what everyone has to teach to everyone else?

And how can we do it? Without canceling one another for our love of a particular condiment?

Indeed, it is the baked potato that matters most, after all.

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On that note, a du’a: I pray that whatever path and way we are drawn close to the Divine is one that is full of strengthening and forging for us, making us the best possible servants of the Divine and those who are in closest alignment with what it is that He is enacting in and on this created plane, realm, and existence. May the Divine protect and unite us all.

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It’s meant to be a celebration that marks the conclusion of 29-30 hard days of fasting, abstention from food, drink, sex, smoking, anger, and more during daylight hours.

Families gather, friends visit one another, worshippers deck themselves out in the finest garb they can manage.

Yet as soon as the sun sets on the last day of Ramadan, as soon as my wife and I look off to the horizon to sight the moon, as soon as we anxiously check our emails to see if the moon sighting committees have made any announcements - I get inundated with sadness and grief.

This year was no exception.

The last few days of Ramadan lined up with spring break and despite the tricky time of the semester, I unplugged from everything work-related to work on the one goal I had set for myself this Ramadan: to complete a reading of the entire Qur’an.

Since the Qur’an is divided into 30 parts, in theory, a person can finish the entire Qur’an in Ramadan by reading 1/30th every day.

In reality, 7 days from the end of the month, I wasn’t even halfway through.

So I cranked, doing little else besides reading 10-15% of the Qur’an each day.

That cranking, somehow, made me cranky. Despite my preference (which I’ve written about in previous posts) to worship in private rather in public, I got short with those around me and retreated into myself.

My tunnel-vision of finishing the Qur’an meant that I read quickly - perhaps too quickly - and constantly felt behind. I pushed myself and ignored my body’s signals (belchiness, which is a symptom, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, of moving too quickly through something; sinus congestion, which is otherwise linked to overthinking; and ear blockages, literally preventing me from engaging with my environment).

There’s no Satanic whispers to blame during Ramadan, so this was all me.

Down to the wire, I managed to finish the last section, the last juzh, 20 minutes before maghrib on the final day of Ramadan.

And then, I felt exhausted.

Have you ever worked and worked and worked to achieve something or held on and held on and held on tightly to something? And when you reach some kind of conclusion about it all - maybe you achieve the thing, or you finally let go, or you lose out - instead of feeling relief, all you feel is tired?

Our bodies, minds, and souls use up so much energy when holding onto things. Releasing them also releases our energetic attachment.

Not surprising, I reflected more than once, that the Qur’an took 23 years to be revealed; that its revelation could crush an entire mountain; that the knees of the Prophet’s camel buckled when he received a single verse.

It is weightier - physically and spiritually - than we often give it credit for. And when we attend to the knowledge contained in our bodies, that becomes clear.

I laid down on the couch in disarray, drained and overwhelmed and sad all at once.

I had read the whole Qur’an, but did that increase my akhlaq?

I had completed the whole text, but with what understanding?

I achieved my goal, but at what cost? And to what end?

All of these questions combined with my end-of-Ramadan anxieties: what if I didn’t do enough this month? what if my good deeds were not accepted? what if my bad deeds outweighed anything positive? what if I didn’t make it to next Ramadan?

Part of the sadness that shows up for me at the end of Ramadan is a profound feeling of not-enoughness (again: no shaytan around, so this is all mine).

I continually feel like the bar of possible achievement - striving towards the character and actions of the Prophet (pbuh) and the Holy Household (as) - is so far beyond my reach.

That nothing positive I do will ever be enough to counter all the negatives.

And all of these insecurities come crashing down on me at the end of Ramadan, when it feels like I have not done anywhere near enough.

Combine that with the weight of the Mother of All Books?

No wonder I was so tired.

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How do we properly honor the bitersweetness with which Ramadan ends?

It feels so abrupt, so stark, so raw.

Too quickly do we go back to eating and drinking and whatever else besides, our bodies snapping back into routine after weeks of adjustment to a different lifestyle.

Maybe we ought to fast a few extra days during Shawwal, as the Prophet (pbuh) advised. Or continue to integrate and regularize the practices we began in Ramadan so that they don’t become one-hit wonders. Or pray with sincerity to make it to the next Ramadan in a year’s time.

Whatever practices we may engage, I also find myself yearning to feel sad. To maintain that sadness. To recognize that sadness is a simply a feeling telling me how much I love something.

And how much it matters to me.

And how much I miss it.

And how much I hope to see it again soon.

That, in and of itself, isn’t such a bad thing.

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And so, a du’a. I pray that you and I can trust the sadnesses that we feel at transitional times, clarifying what it is that we love and how much it is that we want to stay connected to what we love, a sadness that ultimately indicates the depth of tragedy that it is to desire increased intimacy with the Divine, a closeness that is ever-elusive and consistently just out of reach.

PS. From now on, be on the lookout for weekly - rather than biweekly - posts from me here at Deeds and Du’as. Same great content, now coming to you exclusively on Tuesdays!

The topic? Rest.

The students had reached the (almost) halfway point of a semester that began with intensive writing and - after the rest week - transitions into intensive editing.

I also try to engineer my semesters to be this way, laying back into cruise mode halfway through when others seem to be getting more and more frenetic.

Pausing in the middle always feels like a good idea.

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Yet at the same time, in this class in particular, which is an intimate seminar rather than a large lecture-style course, I also prioritize check-ins.

One in particular is a go-to classic: PIES.

Students and I offer to the room one word for how we’re doing in each domain: physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

I’ve been using PIES check-ins for years (shoutout to - if I’m remembering correctly - Center DC for introducing me to this technique), and the last one often trips up students the most. Many of them are born and bred in a secular context that is purportedly non-religious or non-spiritual.

So in the class a few weeks back, we integrated these two things - the idea of rest, and the idea of the multiple domains of our lives.

What does physical rest look like? Intellectual? Emotional? Spiritual?

And that last one, especially during Ramadan, is where I get hung up.

Because striving at the soul level can be exhausting.

In a month when the blessings are myriad, when the invites or desire to bring people together can run rampant (but also can be absent if you’re new to Islam or new to an area), when the opportunity to go to this late-night salaat or that evening lecture, when the Qur’an was revealed - it can often feel like you have to just go, go, go.

Read this much Qur’an. Host that many people for iftar. Be at the masjid that many evenings. The list never ends.

Yet I find that Ramadan - especially this year when overlapping with two eclipses, one Mercury retrograde, and an uncountable number of bombs raining down on Muslims the world over - can be and often is exhausting.

The soul seeks nourishment, the body is taxed, and everything else falls by the wayside.

The “intense heat” or “burning” that is Ramadan (its original meaning in Arabic) becomes palpable. Where my wife and I live, this month has also seen increased temperatures and a melting of the mounds of snow that floated down from the skies over a harsh winter.

At a certain juncture, Ramadan burns us.

And then, the question becomes: how do you respond? How do you rest? And how do you balance these things with the mercy of the first 10 days, the forgiveness and repentance of the second 10 days, and the power of the last 10 days, knowing that you may not make it to see another Ramadan?

In the Khoja Shi’a tradition that makes up 50% of my heritage, different items are used to break fast in the beginning, middle, and final thirds of the month: dates during the first 10 days, water during the middle 10 days, and salt during the last 10 days.

Perhaps there is a message about rest in this variation.

Dates are a mercy, something that replenishes the body with much-needed nutrients immediately. In these first 10 days, our bodies are getting used to fasting. They are in need of mercy and understanding, since many of us only fast during Ramadan and require time to acclimate.

Water flows as abundantly as the forgiveness of the Divine. In the middle 10 days when our systems are more settled into the rhythm of fasting, one of the hardest things to maintain in the non-fasting hours is water consumption to stave off daytime dehydration. Using water to break one’s fast symbolizes receiving the forgiveness of the Divine.

Salt, like water, is necessary for human life. But it works differently. Salt is an electrolyte, which means it facilitates the movement of electricity through the human body. In other words, it makes human power possible. In the final 10 days, which folx often think of in reference to powering through the third of the month, salt symbolizes access and connection to Divine Power in a tangible and coherent way.

Like the PIES check-in, we cannot effectively rest until we know how we operate and function across different domains.

Because sustainable, wholesale rest it not about doing nothing across all four arenas. It is about rotating different forms of rest across all the domains at different times.

Like a farmer with multiple fields who, every year, leaves a different section fallow or alternates the types of crops being planted in a field to encourage regeneration, so too do we need variation, variation that makes it possible for our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls to recharge.

Rest is not always about doing nothing.

Sometimes, it is about doing a different kind of something.

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Ramadan serves as a clear example of this, rotating us through mercy, forgiveness, and power to ensure that we, too, can rest, recharge, and access different parts of our relationship to the Divine.

Maybe, if we apply that rhythm beyond Ramadan, we can bypass the secular hustle that treats our bodies and minds like expendable machines, leaving no room for spiritual replenishment or regeneration.

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And so, a du’a: I pray that you and I can find, witness, and exercise the variety that we all need in order to replenish, restore, and regenerate our way through the peaks and valleys of life, an active rotation of the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual crops and capacities we plant and harvest on a daily basis, so that our connection to the Divine can always and forever be deep, abiding, and fresh.

PS. In that vein, no posts from me next week, as the final stretch of Ramadan (and soon, Eid!) are upon us. Eid Mubarak in advance to one and all!

I hit my head again.

Those who know me well will know that this is, unfortunately, a recurring reality. I suffered my first concussion as a teenager with a poorly timed soccer ball to the face.

Loss of consciousness, hospitalization, and a ride in a medical helicopter soon followed.

I’ve been suffering head impacts here and there ever since.

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The most recent one occurred in the masjid, which - perhaps surprisingly - has happened more than once.

While masajid are places of peace, they can also be places of congestion: heads and feet and bums are in close proximity, body parts going this way and that.

The movement of humans of all body types, shifting from standing to bowing to prostrating to sitting, is predictable yet unwieldy.

Landing in Riyadh airport before hajj two years ago, there was a small room for salaat near baggage claim, which I entered. Barely a few minutes later, as I arose from sujood, a rogue butt nicked my head in passing. I was too worried about being seen as Shi’a - my hands by my side rather than folded across my chest - to notice that it was coming.

Most recently, after congregational salaat (and this time in a Shi’a-majority space, so I had no excuse), I rose to do two rakaat nafilah. Everything was going fine as I moved from standing to sujood, until: SMACK. A little kid had wandered into my path. Momentarily, we were both stunned. He waddled away, and I - in pain - finished my salaat.

In both cases, I probably made my life harder in two ways: I move slower than most other people during congregational salaat, and I close my eyes.

These two things happen because even in the congregation, I desperately want to recreate the feeling I have of praying to the Divine when I am alone. On my own mat, I can close the door of the room and tune out distractions, closing my eyes and feeling the tingle of my skin and the warmth of the Divine as I recite this or that surah or supplication.

That feeling of connectedness, when I can get it, is like nothing else.

But in public, I struggle to find it. There are sounds of microphones and voices that interrupt the connection I’m trying to establish, bodies moving here and there, bright lights - all sorts of things that make the purpose of prayer, connectedness to the Divine, impossibly hard to come by.

Reflecting on the latest episode of impact, my wife commented that maybe there are two lessons to take from the fact that this happened again (despite it not having happening for a while):

1) it’s probably good to keep eyes open in congregational salaat; and

2) as I move into increased publicness and Shi’aness (stepping out of a period of my life focused more exclusively on internal and personal spiritual purification), it would behoove me to pay attention and connect to those who are around me on similar journeys, in more concrete terms

Indeed.

The metaphor of keeping one’s eyes wide open during salaat is both a practical matter and one of relationality.

Because whereas the close connectedness that can manifest during quiet, contemplative moments of solitude may feel better, Islam has never been solely about monastic retreat. Neither has it ever been solely about communal relationship.

Instead, it has always been about both and the radical middle path between them.

So often, I have wondered how to find the individual in the collective. How to recreate the sense of one-to-one spiritual connectedness to the Divine in a communal setting.

As someone who is happy to retreat into his cozy home environment (which I take to be physical, emotional, or spiritual), this is my natural impulse.

But what if the question isn’t formulated quite right?

What if my task, instead, is to find the collective in the individual? To bring a sense of human-to-human connectedness into my individual worship of the Divine? To beware of the communal togetherness that can only be manifest in a group bowing and standing and prostrating all at once. To foster a type of du’a, as an example, that brings others into frame more concretely, rather than only being centered on what it is that I want or need.

I don’t exactly know what that shift would look like, but now, I do realize this: there’s a place and time to go inward and there’s a place and time to go outward.

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Learning which to do when is a crucial part of spiritual growth, traumatic head injury or not.

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And so, a du’a: I pray that you and I develop discernment about what it means to be of those who are appropriately able to respond to the circumstances that the Divine puts us in, knowing when to retreat and when to advance, when to step up and when to step back, when to press ahead and when to yield to others, dancing and oscillating between these in the magnificent in-between that constitutes the beautiful middle path of being in right relationship to both the Divine and all of His creation.

But one game stood out to me in particular: the Leeds vs. Man City encounter on Saturday.

Because in that game, something sad happened.

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A little less than 15 minutes into the game, the referee stopped play. The sun had gone down. So the stadium’s big screen displayed a message describing what was going on: a break in play so the Muslim players could break their fast.

Man City’s Muslim players - Rayan Cherki (French), Rayan Ait-Nouri (Algerian), and Omar Marmoush (Egyptian) - did exactly that: trotting over to the sideline to take on some liquid and vitamins.

Then, everybody went back to their positions on the pitch and the referee restarted play. Barely a 1-2 minute interruption.

But during that interruption, another thing happened: some fans from Leeds United started booing.

Overt anti-Muslim racism.

How are we still here?

No, really.

Because for a while now (5 years, in fact), the Premier League has had a protocol - shared with the English Football League, which consists of the three tiers of professional football below the Premier League - allowing for a short break in play during matches that overlap with iftar time.

This affects approx. 55 Muslim professional footballers across the Premier League and anywhere from 150-200 across the lower three leagues.

A stoppage of this length is barely longer than might occur if the ball goes out of play for a corner or a throw-in or a goal kick. Or, God forbid, if there’s a stoppage for the video assistant referee to review some on-field decision.

Mostly, I’m disappointed.

Because in this week of all weeks - a week in which the US and Israeli government’s blatant and militant anti-Muslim (specifically Shi’a) racism is masquerading as unrestrained male aggression and fear of nuclear weapons, a week in which I’m also planning to testify in support of local measures that will aim to tackle anti-Muslim racism in schools, a week in which I’ve just finished submitting a scope of work to deliver a training on anti-Muslim racism to a nearby school district - in this week, of all weeks, I’m tired.

I’m tired of seeing - being assaulted by, really - these kinds of headlines with these kinds of depictions with these sorts of negativities with these sorts of arrogances.

I’m tired of the blatant disregard for, disdain for, and degradation of Muslims trying to live out their lives and do their thing.

I’m tired of the overwhelming flattening that toxic masculinity meshed with white supremacy culture does, an aggressive mix that leads some Leeds fans to boo Muslim players who are breaking their fast at the same time that it leads the US Secretary of Defense to say that the US bombing of Iran “was never meant to be a fair fight,” “is not a fair fight,” and that “we [the US] are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Can I get another form of masculinity, please?

One that’s not so insecure or arrogant or full of itself?

One that is modeled on care for others, whether or not they are within one’s social or racial or religious circle?

One that leads from a place of compassion, rather than a place of aggression?

The Prophetic example and that of the Holy Household are exactly that.

We have stories of the Prophet finding trash at his doorstep (or thrown on him from above, depending on the narration) everyday, until one day it wasn’t there any more. And so he went to the person he knew to be the culprit, an old lady who lived near him, and inquired about her well being.

We have stories of the Holy Household (Imam Ali, Fatima al-Zahra, Imam Hasan, and Imam Husayn) fasting during Ramadan, sitting down to eat their meager iftar, and hearing the knock of a beggar at their door night after night. And so, multiple nights in a row, they gave their iftar away, despite fasting all day.

We have stories of Imam Ali being in the heat of a duel at the Battle of Khandaq, gaining the upper hand against and overpowering his strong, feared, and dangerous opponent. Fearing embarrassment, shame, and possible death, the man spat in Imam Ali’s face. Imam Ali sheathed his sword, walked away, and let the opponent go free. Later, when astonished onlookers asked why, he replied that it was because he was fighting this man for the love of the Divine and did not want to kill an opponent from a place of satisfying his own anger.

Where are these levels of care, compassion, and self-restraint today? Among my fellow men, where are these capacities and commitments? Among my fellow Muslim men, where and how are we leading in these ways?

And how can we generate more of it?

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I don’t have particular answers, but I do know this: the models of masculinity that I’m seeing in the world around me - the racists masquerading as jokers; the war-mongerers masquerading as peacemakers; the fearful, power-hungry, and colonized Muslim leaders masquerading as political strongmen - none of these are particularly inspiring to me.

And yet, they are who our systems have created, who our systems benefit, who our systems uplift.

I’m tired of all that.

And I want something else.

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So, a du’a: I pray that in the next phase of our experience as a creation, in the next chapter of the world’s existence (because believe me, we’re currently bombing ourselves out of the current one), in the next articulation of what it means to be a human, you and I can find an ethos and an ethic for relating to one another in a fundamentally caring and kind way, one that - with connection to the Divine and with a lot of hard work - we can start building today.

Except that earlier in the day, reports surfaced that the US and Israel had bombed the headquarters of Grand Ayatullah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, killing him while he hung out with his daughter and grandchildren.

As a Muslim who leans Shi’a (and who may lose subscribers on Substack due to what I’m about to write here, but bismillah either way 🤲🏾), I was already in my feelings about this. Khamenei was one of four living Grand Ayatullahs, a position that demonstrates the highest of spiritual clarity and knowledge for Shi’a Muslims and - quite possibly - communicative connection to Imam al-Mahdi, the leader of our times, who has been in occultation/hiding since the 10th century.

Now, there are only three such individuals left.

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So I went to Trader Joe’s. Getting out of the car, I walked across the parking lot to the store entrance. Behind me, two Black women were chatting and also heading into the store. They seemed to be of similar age as me, possibly younger.

Woman 1: “My mom said gas prices are gonna go up because they bombed I-ran.”

Woman 2: “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

A few thoughts and feelings ran through me.

• Thought 1: How can you forget?

• Feeling 1: Disappointment. I tend to assume that Black women, because of their racial position, have an inherent affinity to side with the oppressed rather than the oppressor. In this case, that affinity - if present at all - didn’t show up.

• Thought 2: So this is only an economic issue for you?

• Feeling 2: Anger. Some of us don’t get the privilege of forgetting that the US and Israel are engaging in a vanity project of military adventurism, in more ways than one.

• Thought 3 (entering the store): A hand basket should be sufficient.

• Feeling 3 (entering the store): Cold. There’s a lot of people in here, but these fridges are pumping.

Truly, humans are insaan, an Arabic word with roots meaning “to forget.” How easily and quickly we shift into a self-focused mindset, where thing that’s happening “over there” only affects us if we have to pay more at the pump.

Forget the 150+ schoolgirls who were killed as “collateral damage” when the US and Israel bombed a Revolutionary Guard headquarters. What difference does that make? The only thing worth caring about, apparently, is that gas will now be $3/gallon instead of $2.60.

I’m angry, but not at these women specifically. Their actions and statements are simply a symptom of the wider problem.

And in a way, I’m mad at myself. Because even in what I wrote above, I am still unwilling or unable (for whatever reason) to fully claim and name that I’m Shi’a. Instead, I say that I “lean Shi’a” - whatever that means.

Why the ambivalence? Why the uncertainty? Why the fear?

Because the reality is that there is a tremendous spiritual and leadership legacy to Shi’aness, a legacy I am proud to be part of, a legacy that I am increasingly calling my own, a legacy that has been mired by the current (and long-entrenched, historical) sociopolitics of anti-Shi’aness, even from other Muslims.

Etymologically, the word “shi’a” means “follower,” and specifically came into popular use in the aftermath of the Prophet’s death in 632 CE. It refers to those who followed Imam Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, as the Prophet’s leadership, who - after his farewell hajj - gave a speech in which he named Imam Ali as such.

(Here’s the full text and reference of that original speech, well documented in both Sunni and Shi’a sources, for anyone who is curious. And here is further documentation - this time from primarily Sunni sources - of how some of the Companions of the Prophet responded to his announcement.)

Yet ironically, despite the word’s etymology, to be Shi’a is to step into leadership. It is to serve others and give of what the Divine has given you. It is to recognize the power and potential in being thrust towards guiding others by virtue of how you yourself have been guided. And more broadly, it is to stand up for what is right and just, no matter how small you are or what the consequences may be.

This last point is part of the reason why countries like Iran are so feared by the US, Israel, and other international actors.

Not primarily because they threaten those actors (though sometimes they do that too), but mostly because they don’t kowtow to those actors. They don’t fear their power.

On a philosophical level, when led by someone like Khamenei who has the spiritual nous enough to know what it truly means to be Shi’a, they don’t care about the US and its games. They don’t compromise their politics and aren’t afraid of speaking or enacting truth to power. They lead, from the self first and outward towards others next.

To be Shi’a, in other words, is to move towards the fullest realization of one’s human potential.

Much of this spiritual and and religious potential has been lost in intra-Islamic squabbles, in the wider sensationalist portrayal of Shi’as as bloodthirsty bloodletters, in the damaging perception of Shi’as as violent revolutionary terrorists.

We have created an environment - both within Islam/among Muslims and in the wider world - where Shi’a Muslimness has become the boogiest of the boogeymen. Where being Shi’a is indicative of being a heretic. Where being called Shi’a is almost a religious slur.

Yet, when leaders like Zohran Mamdani win mayoral elections, US (and Western and global, more broadly) Muslims proudly proclaim that he is the first Muslim mayor of New York, eliding or ignoring or erasing the fact that he is Shi’a.

This, perhaps, is what I struggle with.

The brilliant spiritual and religious potential of Shi’aness is, in my own life, clouded by fear.

When I go to the nearest Sunni masjid for jumma, will I be accosted for doing salaat with my hands by my sides rather than folded across my chest? When I speak about the tragedy of Karbala in a Muslim space, will I be met with anger and disillusionment (or, at best, ignorance and curiosity) at me raising this uncomfortable history? When I tell fellow Muslims that I identify with being Shi’a, will they disregard and deny my existence as somehow other than Muslim?

These fears are real.

But courage is fear walking.

And so, step by step, I try to articulate and hold onto and commit to a vision of myself as a Shi’a, as one who leads by serving, as one who stands in front by giving back.

Because if that’s not the example of Imam Ali, despite all the trials and tribulations that he faced after the Prophet’s death, I don’t know what is.

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We have enabled a fracturing of our Muslimness and allowed that fracturing to fester: partly through politics, partly through kowtowing to Western neoimperialism and neoliberalism, and partly through our own ignorance, anger, and disdain for uncomfortable and inconvenient truths.

If only we could find and celebrate more models of inclusive Muslimness, the type that places like the Muslim community organization Center DC (and others) demonstrate.

If only we could recognize that the fracturing of our clear and distinct history and tradition is only as potent as we let it be.

If only we could find and value truth as well as difficult histories that make us question, critique, and re-evaluate everything we thought we knew and took for granted.

There is much more truth out there than we often let ourselves believe. These are some of the things I pray for.

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And so, a du’a: in addition to the above, I pray that whatever community you’re a part of, whatever ruptures it may suffer, whatever hurts it has experienced, whatever fissures it may be navigating - I pray that you and those you love, whether family or friends or community or whoever, can step by step hear one another through the difficulty and the pain of disconnect, on the way to a greater and closer relationship to one another and, ultimately, the Divine Source of Everything.

It was rough.

And I freaked out.

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It took a while to figure out, but one of the main reasons for the freakout was because there was a remembered link (what therapists and psychologists call “the past-present connection”) between something that happened to me earlier in life and something that was happening to me right now.

In other words, my freakout about water coming in through the window of my (relatively) new house was exacerbated by memories of water dripping in through the roof and ceiling of my parents’ house during my teenage years.

I took this insight into therapy. Because now being thrust into homeownership, the Divine is inviting me into (among other things) differentiating between a big problem, a medium problem, and a small problem - freaking out about every little thing makes it harder to figure out what is worth freaking out about.

This particular therapy process involves reprocessing past memories and being open to what sorts of phrases/ideas emerge as a result. In EMDR therapy speak, from what I understand (and I’m no expert), these are called “cognitions.” Are these cognitions positive or negative? What domain of my person (i.e. safety, control, self-worth/self-concept) are they associated with? And how can they shift from negative to positive so that the original memory (in this case, of water dripping through my parents’ ceiling) becomes less distressing?

Once my therapist and I reprocessed the memory, positive ideas began to surface: “It’s going to be OK” (safety), “I can handle this” (self-worth), and “Allah will take care of this” (control).

We then assessed each of the statements regarding how true I felt it to be, relative to the original memory.

“It’s going to be OK” felt very true.

“I can handle this” felt extremely true.

“Allah will take care of this” felt neither true nor untrue.

Excuse me?

I felt unsettled, ashamed, and embarrassed all at once.

How could that statement feel less true than the idea that “I can handle this” or “it’s going to be OK”? How weak is my faith and belief that “me” being in charge feels stronger than Allah being in charge? How flawed am I that a generic statement (“It’s going to be OK”) that doesn’t attribute causation and protection to the Divine ranks higher than one that does?

What is this madness?

Immediately, a part of me reared up demanding answers.

But how will Allah take care of it? What will he do? There’s water coming through the ceiling! This has to be fixed now!

The session ended soon thereafter, as my therapist had to go to another client. We tried to contain my existential angst before closing out, but it persisted for a few days.

We met again as soon as possible to try again.

Back into reprocessing, we waded through the different cognitions. The answer-seeking part showed up again. This time, it was accompanied by an I-centered internal voice:

I am the one going around putting buckets and trash cans and containers under the drip spots. I am the one noting which spots have leaks. I am the one making a game plan. I am the one handling this.

Another voice, calm and mature, responded:

And who gave you the capacity to do those things?

Silence.

The I-centered voice had nothing to say.

The calm, mature voice continued:

It’s not that Allah will take care of this. It’s that Allah is already taking care of this.

Immediately, my anxiety disappeared. My body calmed. The memory became less distressing.

I left the session feeling lighter and freer, with gentle music playing in my head.

A process like this clarifies the amount of control that some part of me still thinks it has over, well, anything.

Yet, the reality is that the tempo of the first statement (“Allah will take care of this”) yielded anxiety because it was future based. There was a thus a gap between my reality in the memory (water is dripping now!) and the idea that it will be addressed in the future.

The second statement (“Allah is already taking care of this”) grounded me in a current reality. My capacity to put the buckets down and notice the leaks, the contractor my parents eventually hired to fix the issue - these were the Divine in action, in the moment, right now.

There was no waiting.

The solution was here.

I just had to realize I wasn’t in control.

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How often do we live in one time or another, past or future, only for the present to pass us by?

How often do we have feelings (anger, frustration, irritation, etc.) about the Divine not acting in the way or on the timescale that we want?

How often do we assume that those feelings are justified, that our way is the only right way, that we are right and in control, Divinity be damned (astaghfirullah), despite the limitations of our point of view, perspective, and position?

I was only a teenager at the time. But the thinking that puts “me” and “my version of now” at the heart of everything we (as individuals) feel inhibits the possibility of true surrender and submission to the Divine.

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And so, a du’a: I pray that we view our freakouts as invitations, engaging them with curiosity to unpack and understand what animates us beneath the surface of our current experiences, ultimately gaining control of our souls so we can truly connect our hearts with the Divine.

Part of this is borne from my own research experiences, and part of this is borne from Qur’anic and other examples.

Let me explain.

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In recent travels to India and Saudi Arabia, I’ve been researching and practicing my faith in particular contexts. Whether it has been understanding Muharram in Lucknow and Hyderabad or completing hajj and visiting the Prophet’s grave in Makkah and Medina, things tend to happen at night rather than during the day.

In India, most of the Muharram activities happened as majalis at night. In Saudi, Masjid al-Haram was buzzing at 1 AM; I visited the rawdah, the Prophet’s grave, at 3:45 in the morning.

Even friends, family, and colleagues who live in Muslim countries confirm this around this time of year: during Ramadan, people retreat during the day and emerge during the night.

Daytime becomes a time to sleep and rest, while nighttime becomes a time for activity and energy.

Partly, in some contexts, this is because of the heat. Attending hajj in 2024, for example, the thermometer clocked in at a cool 120°F most days.

But even still, the Qur’an is clear about what goes where:

So what happened here? Why are we, in many instances, doing the opposite?

Here, the Qur’an is also clear: daytime is a space for worldly activity - attending to jobs and work and school and family. Nighttime is a space of spiritual activity - with particular emphasis on specific nights and activities like laylatul qadr and salaat al-layl (tahajjud):

In other words, part of what makes the nighttime beneficial for spiritual activity is the quiet, the clarity, the freedom from daily and worldly disturbance.

But Muslim Time isn’t just about the flipping of night and day in order to achieve closeness to the Divine.

It’s also about how the tempo of this earth, which appears to be all there is, is actually just a blip on the radar screen of the Divine plan.

The Qu’ran, once again, helps us out. It describes how, at the end of all things, the Divine will interrogate those whose scales are light on good deeds:

The curious thing about this is that the time we think we have isn’t the time we actually have. Our perception of that time is, in the grand and eschatological scheme of things, flawed.

We don’t have as much time as we think we do.

And moreover, the time we think we have isn’t even as long as we think it is.

Perhaps that’s why the Creator swears by time, His own creation, to remind us that time is passing, whether or not we choose to go along with it:

The instructions on maximizing our time are there, in plain and clear language.

Am I taking advantage in the way that I ought to?

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So often, we think that tomorrow will come and it will be possible to do all the things then that we haven’t done today.

We make to-do lists and set meetings and schedule appointments. As I’m writing this, I’m looking at a to-do list sitting on my desk, even while I just canceled multiple appointments because of an upcoming snow day.

Time dissolves what we think to be true and what we hold to be dear, inviting us to re-calibrate and refocus our priorities.

Perhaps this is why Muslim Time exists as an inversion of day and night, an illusory miscalculation about how long our stay on this earth has been or will be.

Muslim Time marks Muslims out as strangers on this earth, which is not at all a bad thing. Because to attach to Muslim Time is to detach from the 9-5 culture and doomscrolling one’s life away.

It is to spend time - one of our most finite of resources - on the things that we want to do ahead of the next life. It is to orient towards something beyond this earthly plane of existence. And it is to decenter the demands of this life, despite the difficulty that comes with waking up early for suhoor and salaat or staying late at the masjid the night before.

All of these things matter, making this moment imperative, urgent.

It’s time for Muslim Time.

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And so, a du’a, about capturing and centering and prioritizing this situation right here, right now: I pray that whatever time you follow, it is a time that aligns with the values and priorities you have for this life and the next, a recognition of the connection between how your days are spent and how that spending will be accounted for, for now and forever more.

Despite this event being on my calendar for a while, I was rushing from one thing to the next that day and did not properly prepare.

So upon arrival, I did a quick search through my laptop’s files to see if I could find documents that would support our efforts.

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An old cover letter from a few years back surfaced, which I had used to apply for a job at a major news outlet writing about the same field that these students were studying. The position was relatively high profile and fairly public. It would also bring me closer to my hometown and family.

I never got an interview for the position, let alone the job itself.

At the time, I mentioned my sadness about this to my wife. I thought I was well qualified and would bring a unique perspective to the role, benefiting the organization and those who read its work (which is a lot of people).

Seeing the cover letter brought all these feelings rushing back. But I put them to the side to facilitate the session.

We used the cover letter to structure the workshop and discern a template and framework that the students could use for their own attempts at employment, if they so chose.

At the moment that I started to describe how job ads often list KSAs (knowledge, skills, and attributes) to help themselves and candidates figure out what the role is all about, I thought it might be helpful to see if we could find the original job posting. That way, the students could reverse engineer the letter and see what kinds of language in a job posting led to what kinds of phrases in a cover letter.

So, to Google I went.

Upon putting in the name of position, the organization, and the phrase “job ad,” I hit the “return” key. Dozens of hits came up.

But they weren’t for the original job post.

Instead, most of them were for news articles, covering how the position I once applied for had been eliminated a few days earlier. The organization had just suffered massive layoffs and this position was one of the casualties. The person who had gotten the job (another Brown man, incidentally) was now out of work.

Subhanallah.

What a protection.

Often, when a door closes, we are quick to blame others or ourselves, feeling emotions that distance us from a spiritual recognition that that thing was never ours to begin with.

Often, when that door closes, we also don’t get closure as to why that thing happened. What was the reason? Why didn’t we receive that job or that promotion or that house or apartment or school admission?

And often, when that door closes, if we’re lucky, we can move past that lack of closure within a few days or weeks or months or years, shifting from a place of sadness and disappointment to acceptance.

Yet here, many years later, I was blessed with knowledge about what had happened and why that position did not work out for me. Despite my sadness in the moment original moment of rejection, I was being protected from being another casualty of this organization’s layoffs years down the road, out of work after having pivoted my career to a different industry and moved to one of the most expensive areas to live in the country.

Subhanallah.

In the Qur’an, Allah gives revelation to the Prophet (pbuh) in reference to protection - and, crucially, why and how he protects us. Two ayat in particular come to mind:

Here, the Prophet (pbuh) is told to tell the people that he cannot do anything to benefit or protect himself, except by Divine Authority and Will. This is in response to a question from disbelievers about when the “threat” of things like the final Day of Accounting will come to pass.

Then, elsewhere, there is a further reference.

Here, the Qur’an is describing how we are given protection by angels, as human beings. And that Allah does not change our state, whether of awareness or circumstance, until we humans change our faith. In some of the tafsir and commentary on this verse, there’s also reference to the fact that if Divine Will dictates that we suffer something (i.e. illness, injury, and so on) for whatever reason, then these groups of angels that otherwise protect us step aside for that Divine Will to be established and enacted.

In both cases, the human - whether as the Prophet or the layperson protected by angels - is not in control of if or how they are protected.

In both cases, there are limits around how protected a community or individual may be, whether through an “appointed term” or by angels changing their protective proximity.

And in both cases, humans are unable to do anything to improve their condition on their own, except increasing their faith and relying on the Divine for whatever knock-on effects that that may have.

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It is impossible for me to know what, if anything, triggered the release of knowledge about why I was protected from not getting that job.

But I do know this.

In the interim since I applied for the job, my capacity to accept what the Divine has ordained for me has increased, primarily because I have prayed routinely to be one of those who sees (in both the physical and the metaphysical senses of the term) and has clarity and understanding.

When I applied for that job, I likely would not have been able to accept the knowledge that within a few years, the job would no longer exist.

Now, however, given the changes in our political circumstances and the volatility of employment and prices that this country (and others) is facing, that willingness to understand and accept is so much greater.

Indeed, Allah does not change the state of a people until they change their own state. And exactly when that happens is when the appointed time period comes to pass - which can neither be hastened nor slowed.

In other words, when something doesn’t work out as you’d like it to or hoped it would, don’t be sad.

A greater purpose is already, imminently, at work.

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And so, a du’a: I pray that you and I each put the desire and need for us to be protected in the hands of the only One who can, respecting the Timing and Plan of that Divine in a way that moves us past the threshold of our human emotions, despite how large and significant they may feel or seem, and into the threshold of Divine embrace that takes full control and charge of everything, no matter what.

(I promise this isn’t a self-promotional post [the book is too expensive anyway, so just let me know if you want a free PDF and I can send one along when it’s out]).

I waited a few weeks and then was grateful to hear back that the panel was accepted, with the caveat that I needed to flesh it out with a few more panelists.

Fair enough.

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A week or so later, I got another email from the organizer of the working group that I submitted the panel to.

The email asked if I were interested in combining my panel with another person’s, who is also researching Islam.

But whereas my proposal sought to emphasize the book I wrote (discussing contemporary issues of Muslimness) and put it in dialogue with other scholars who could comment on it, the other person’s proposal was for a historical panel on the way that Islam has gotten short shrift in discussions of the humanities and theatre more generally.

An important idea, but just not what I was going for.

So I said no.

I stewed over this for a couple of days, irritated that just because “you are both presenting on Islam,” that there’s somehow an appropriate fit and value to bringing our works together.

How have we gotten to the point that a single religious framework means we are not constitutive of internal diversity?

How does a discussion of Islam in the 10th century equate to a discussion of Islam in the modern day?

How is it that the politics of research means that we are more interested in lumping people together on the basis of labels rather than the content of what they are saying?

It feels racist.

Or, at the very least, Orientalist. (Which is also racist.)

What agitated me most about this situation is the totalizing impulse, the flattening impulse, the broad-brushstroke impulse.

Orientalism has created a dynamic in which the entire “East” (which is where Islam has historically been placed by the Christian “West”) is one thing.

And it’s all stuck in the past (according to Orientalism).

So there’s no need to differentiate by context, or time period, or community.

All Muslims are the same, right? [insert eyeroll here]

They all smell the same, act the same, think the same, look the same, feel the same - engaging with one of them is like engaging with all of them.

So, the logic goes, we might as well lump them all together since they’re all the same anyway.

The perpetuation of this logic is how we end up with (as has lately occurred) billionaire owners of major sports entities (which depend on immigrant labor) viewing a country as “colonized by immigrants.”

Because once you see one group as all the same, and then tar them with the same brush, there’s nothing unique or individualizing or individuated about them.

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White supremacy culture, in bed with Orientalism, colonialism, and all its ugly byproducts, has created a dynamic in which all 2 billion Muslims on the earth are one thing: a teeming, mass horde that must be disciplined and punished rather than differentiated and understood.

It saddens me that this is where we are.

And even still, there is hope. There must be hope.

Hope that we can build a collective consciousness that counters these kinds of things.

Belief that displaying the panoply of Muslimness can demonstrate the beauty of billions of seekers sharing a common core yet still finding their own individual path to the Divine.

Courage to insist on standing alone in certainty and clarity rather than with others in convenience and cowardice.

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And so, a du’a: I pray that we can all find the strength within us to resist the temptation to fold into others’ misplaced agendas, especially when we know that those agendas run counter to the causes and issues that matters to us and especially when we know that standing firm will only strengthen our connection to the Divine and the way He wants us to be in this world.

They live not too far from my parents, so when I visit them, I try to add on a visit to these friends as well. Often, this will look like going to dinner at their house, to spend time with them and their three kids and the family’s various animal companions.

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On my most recent visit, my wife and I had dinner with these friends. We sat down to the meal and they, being a Christian family, said grace to thank the Divine for the meal we were about to eat.

Then, as they often do, they invited me and my wife to also offer a blessing.

Together, we said Surat al-Fatiha, a pre-meal practice that has existed in my family for decades.

Our recitation was quiet. One of the parents asked,

"Is there a reason why you say it so quietly?”

I paused and thought. Before I could speak, my wife said,

"It used to just be Asif reciting it, but now we all try to do it. So maybe we’ve just gotten a bit quiet.”

I think she is partially right. In my family, there has often been the expectation that the youngest (that’s me!) would recite al-Fatiha for everyone before a meal.

Perhaps this started out as a way of celebrating and encouraging a child’s confidence to recite the Qur’an publicly.

But in time, and even into adulthood, it meant that I became the person looked to on matters of religion and faith, even though the head of the household traditionally holds that role in Islam.

In many instances, I wonder if we (as a Muslim ummah and especially in South Asian Muslim communities) have made young boys over-responsible for the family’s religiosity. I am thankful to have been spared from these circumstances, but the stories are myriad:

• Young, unmarried men being the wali (even though a wali is not required for a legal Islamic marriage) or the witness at their sister’s wedding

• Brothers (older or younger) having a say on what their sister studies or how she spends her days

• A young woman’s brother being paid her mahr instead of it being paid to her directly

These are a perversion of the correct and necessary Islamic practices and relations between male/female siblings.

But beyond this, these not a young man’s responsibility. Not least if he is still learning the ropes of his own life, his own faith, and his own way of being in the world. What business does he have leading others when he is still learning to lead himself?

At the same time, we young men are often not held to the standard of religious practice that our pedestalized family positions would suggest we ought to hold. Similarly, we are often not admonished about our salaat or need to uphold a modest gaze or educated about what kinds of Islamic responsibilities we have in providing a mahr or sustenance for a family or sexual satisfaction to our partners.

Perhaps much of this discomfort and unease is what has led me to take a step back from being the sole reciter of the pre-meal al-Fatiha, the result of which has been that now everyone says al-Fatiha together, albeit with a case of the mumbles.

At the same time, I think there’s another reason why I mumbled.

Even though I have been friends with this Christian family for years (they have attended our family weddings, we have attended their children’s baptisms - the relationship is close and warm), I remain acutely aware of my racial and religious position anytime I am with non-Muslims.

It surfaces unexpectedly like a sudden wind yielding choppy waters.

How will I navigate them?

Will I be toppled by unanticipated racism?

Will I protect a part of myself out of fear and uncertainty?

Living as a Muslim among non-Muslims is, fundamentally, a wild card. On the one hand, everything may be fine. On the other hand, somebody might say or do something inappropriate.

Good intentions may yield negative behaviors.

And so, too, might my mumbles.

For they imply a lack of trust, in some ways, in the Divine Protection that I (and others) am blessed to be afforded.

They assume that I have to guard myself because I am not already being guarded.

They imply that it is better to remain small and (hopefully) unseen, even though I am an honored guest at my friend’s dinner table.

They insinuate that being on my own in worship is safer than being in community with others of a different faith who worship the same One.

What has fear made us do?

What has it turned us into?

And how do we undo it?

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Next time, I may speak out louder. I may be more willing to weather the (possibly) inevitable barrage of questions about meaning and pronunciation and origin. I may better open up my heart to the potential of connection, curiosity, and care, rather than closing it off out of a worry of malfeasance.

And on the whole, I may end up being better for it.

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With that, a du’a: I pray that you and I can find in our hearts and minds and souls the capacity to be silent when appropriate and to speak up when necessary, while always acting to choose one over the other rather than waffling in between.

A half-year of tumult meant that she was needed to care for her father whose dementia is advancing day by day.

Within a week, it started raining. A lot.

So much, in fact, that the basement flooded. The basement of our new house. A house that had gone from being just another one we were looking at to one we were the owners of in barely 2 weeks.

And now, once my parents went back to their lives in another state, there I was - alone and responsible for a new place, with a major problem to address.

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My head was spinning from all the change.

Part of the reason it moved so quickly is because we waived the inspection. The housing market conditions of our area demanded this, simply because we did not have a whole boatload of extra money to tempt the prior owners with. We had to incentivize our offer in other ways.

Waiving the inspection, as any real estate agent or prospective homebuyer will tell you, is a pretty big risk. You’re essentially buying a house, the largest investment most folx will ever make, without understanding its history.

In other words, you’re walking straight into the unknown and - perhaps - straight into trauma.

Month 1 of owning the house showed that there was an issue with flooding in the basement. So we addressed that.

Month 2 demonstrated that the gutters needed some maintenance. So we addressed that.

Month 3 highlighted some rusting pipes. So we addressed that.

Month 4 yielded a problem with the oven. So we addressed that.

Month 5 surfaced challenges with ice dams, icicles, and insulation. So we addressed that.

Month 6, where we are now, has demonstrated an issue with the electrical box. So we’re addressing that.

After each one of these challenges, I’ve had a moment of thinking that we’re alright and through the latest hurdle, only to find that we’re only pausing in between this storm (sometimes literal, other times figurative) and the next.

But in our latest struggle, when the electrical box got grumpy, leading the furnace to shut off and refuse to restart in the midst of subzero temperatures, I started to see the hikmah of it all - the wisdom in the timing and order of things.

Because had we had an inspection and known that we were going to face all these problems, it’s quite possible that my wife and I would not have taken the leap to buy this house. Had the basement flooding not yielded the need to install sump pumps, we would have not gotten more heavy-duty electrical outlets put in the basement. Had there not been those heavy-duty outlets, we would not have been able to hastily plug our furnace in when the electrical box acted up.

We would have been frozen in our own home.

And yet, Allah reveals everything in stages, in its own time - in His own time.

How often do we, as humans, push forward in hastiness to know everything, immediately, all at once?

How often do we get frustrated that we don’t know everything about a situation, an experience, a circumstance, claiming that if we knew it then we would (or wouldn’t) have acted in a certain way?

How often do we express and maintain the conceit that we should be afforded more knowledge than we already have?

And how often do we get overwhelmed by the knowledge of even just one thing being out of whack?

The Qur’an is very clear about the value of things happening in stages, in multiple locations.

In relation to revelation generally, look at Surah an-Nahl, ayat 101-2:

Then, in relation to the Qur’an more specifically, Surah al-Furqan, ayat 32 has this to say:

And then to the cosmos, in Surah Yunus, ayat 5:

And then to the creation of human life, in Surah az-Zumar, ayat 6:

I often find myself yearning for all the answers, to everything, all at once, immediately. Perhaps because I believe that if I know everything now, then it will save me from hurt and harm later.

And as a human, I generally try to avoid the bad stuff.

But what if the bad stuff is actually the good stuff?

What if the stages are the things we benefit from, rather than hindrances to be upset about?

Where slowly and steadily, I am being strengthened in knowing how to navigate and negotiate these experiences. So that one day, perhaps when stressors increase exponentially in other areas of life and something at the house needs to be addressed, I will be able to handle it.

Moreover, not only am I finding that there are stages of growth, but the existence and presence of those stages are - in fact - the Divine way.

This staging is a mercy. The slowness is a mercy. The timing is a mercy.

Even if my nafs, my self, my soul, my psyche, my ego - even if it is impatiently raging for something else, that doesn’t mean it’s right.

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And ultimately, who knows my capacity for growth better than The One Who Created both me and that capacity in the first place?

Getting a thing like a home inspection is probably important, if your primary objective is safety in this world. But not getting it, if your objective is to get closer to the Divine by having trust (or tawakkul) in Divine Timing and Divine Knowledge, might be more important.

And as I try to shift away from the first and towards the second, maybe I never needed that inspection after all.

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So, with all that said, a du’a for you and for me: I pray that in whatever sticky or tricky circumstance you find yourself in, you can trust the timing, zoom out to see the wisdom, and have patience with the unknown that will - undoubtedly - surface all sorts of anxieties in yourself, anxieties that - once addressed - will no longer stand in the way of pure, true, and unadulterated belief.

This person is about my age, perhaps a few years older. We share some other characteristics as well, which I won’t describe here to avoid identifying them.

When I learned this, I tried to put the information out of my mind. Good for them, I thought. Nice to have a retreat from the city.

Yet days later, I was assailed by unwelcome emotions while doing salaat (Shaytan always tries my patience during salaat): jealousy and envy.

Or, at least, what we commonly name those emotions to be.

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A quick Google search told me that being jealous means “feeling or showing envy,” where envy is “a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck.”

I don’t want their house (more money, more problems).

I don’t even like beaches (sand gets everywhere).

I don’t like this.

And yet, it was here to teach me something. What? And why?

I once felt a pang of jealousy for another person in my world, who had reached a professional milestone I am still striving towards.

I narrated this to my therapist, concerned about being consumed by this emotion, one that the tafsir of Surah an-Nisa importantly reminds us to watch out for. His response was telling:

“Maybe it’s just trying to show you what you’re striving towards. Yearning for.”

The reframe flipped my perspective on its head.

Muslim thinkers and scholars have extrapolated a similar distinction: between ghibtah (envy without malice) and hasad (malicious envy). Whereas ghibtah inspires aspiration towards something that someone else has (i.e. knowledge or wealth) without wanting that person to lose the thing they have, hasad is the dangerous and all-consuming one.

Ghibtah is aspirational and, in many ways, desirable. Surah al-Mutafiffin (ayat 26), for example, encourages those who aspire towards good things in this life and the next, even if the word ghibtah isn’t used.

If seeing someone else have something inspires me to work harder to get a version of that thing, then the hard work and aspiration is welcome.

But hasad is degrading and highly undesirable. Surah al-Falaq (ayat 5) is explicit about seeking protection both from the maliciously envious one and their malicious envy.

If me seeing someone else have something inspires me to wish ill for them or want the exact thing that they have, then there’s a problem.

That’s where we start to veer into nazr, or evil eye issues - even the Prophet (pbuh) himself suffered from those.

Who am I to think that I am above experiencing or emanating out such dangerous sentiments?

So when the Qur’an and its tafsir (through Prophetic example) teach us to beware of envy, what if they are doing so because they are reminding us to detach ourselves from emotions as the driving force behind our actions?

What if they are doing so to give us greater control of our emotional worlds?

What if they are doing so because interlinking our emotional, internal experience with our physical, worldly experience runs the risk of disconnecting us from our true purpose of transcending emotional realities?

What if, in other words, overattachment to the world (both inner and outer) is what keeps us from being our truest, soulful selves, connecting with the Divine?

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It’s probably okay for me to strive for a house by the water, if that means I will work harder and trust Allah to provide me with increased provision if that is what’s best for me.

But it’s probably not okay for me to do so if it means that I want this other person to not have their house.

Ultimately, if I am able to believe in the Divine’s unending bounties, then there’s plenty of houses and plenty of beaches to go around - me having or not having one doesn’t and shouldn’t stop anyone else from the same.

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And so, a du’a for me and for you: I pray that your and my aspirations and striving become the powerful ones that elevate you and inspire you to do and be better for yourself and those around you, rather than becoming the damaging ones that push down and belittle those in your world. May we all aspire to goodness, in all things.

“Excuse me, sir —”

“Sorry,” I said, interrupting him and walking away.

I knew he wanted money and didn’t think I had any cash in my wallet.

But then I reached my car, paused, and realized I did have a few dollars. So I thought better of it and turned back.

"What’s up, man?” I asked.

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The Black man before me was disheveled and ashen. His coat was discolored and his hair was mangled.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but could you spare $20 so I can get a motel room for the night?”

“I don’t have $20,” I said.

“Maybe you could call them up and pay for it?”

“I have a few bucks,” I said.

“OK, thank you,” he said.

I pulled out my wallet and took out the few dollars I remembered. But as I did so, I saw another note in the stack: a $100 bill, a gift from my father who recently visited me, cash I do not ordinarily carry around.

Ashamed, I turned the large note over, hiding it from the man in front of me.

But he saw, and I knew he did.

I gave him the single notes and hurried away.

He went back to his post by the FedEx. I rushed to the car and sat down, embarrassed.

As I sat, I wondered to myself.

What is the test here? Shouldn’t I give more? To the point of going just past discomfort? Should I give the $100?

Immediately, a firm voice rose up inside me: “NO.”

It did not feel like a whisper or an equivocation or a suggestion. It felt like a command.

I reflected within, to see if any other parts of me had anything else to say. None did.

So I drove away.

As the subsequent days and weeks went on, I wondered if I made the right choice. But I was also consumed by a question: how do I know the difference between a Divine command and a Satanic whisper? Especially when one shows up within me?

The Qur’an is fairly clear about how Allah does or doesn’t communicate with humans, in Surah Ash-Shuraa, ayat 51:

And then there’s verses that describe how Shaytan communicates with humans, based on how he communicated with Adam and Hawa (pbuh). Like this one, Surat al A’raf, ayat 20:

These two ayat feel instructive to me. Because whereas both offer a type of indirect communication (Allah’s is through inspiration or a veil or a messenger, while Shaytan’s is through suggestion and not quite saying explicitly what to do), the quality is different.

Allah’s communications to humanity are clear and concise, if delivered through other vectors.

Shaytan’s communications to humanity are fuzzy and suggestive, if coming directly from him.

Allah commands.

Shaytan whispers.

Allah directs.

Shaytan insinuates.

Allah says.

Shaytan implies.

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If that’s the case, then what of the “NO” that I heard when I sat in the car?

By the above criteria (direct vs. suggestive, clear vs. fuzzy, etc.), I sense that the suggestion to give the $100 was a Satanic whisper and the “NO” was a Divine inspiration.

This, then, leads to another issue: isn’t giving more universally and unequivocally a better thing?

Not quite. Surat al Isra, ayat 29, has the answer:

In other words, take the middle path and do all things in moderation. In that moment, some inspiration within me confirmed a limit and told me to stop, perhaps protecting me from going overboard. In another moment, giving everything I had might have been the right thing to do.

Either way, the only way to discern the difference is to stop and listen. To sit, quietly, in the dark, until you are told which way to go.

Told.

Not whispered to.

Allah doesn’t need prepositions, for He is peerless and independent. Shaytan does, for he is inferior and dependent.

I know which one I’d rather follow.

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With that, a du’a: I pray that you experience clarity of communication and command, where the simplicity of its message reminds you which direction to follow. And that we all, then, are gifted the courage to do so.