Carried along by the river, on the edge of death, Deek relives a terrible moment from his past – even as rescuers search for him desperately.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13| Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28| Part 29

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“So I swam, striving for the shore, and the great wave carried me on.”
— Homer, The Odyssey

Leaking Light and Heat

Deek was as helpless as a leaf, pushed along by the frigid, fast-paced current. He was on the verge of drowning, but had not yet given up. At times, he sank beneath the surface, but always he kicked up again, pawing at the water, craning his head to suck in a lungful of life-saving air. He’d swallowed a lot of water already, and the brackish taste was thick in his throat.

At times, he didn’t know why he kept fighting. Why not surrender to the hungry, sucking river, and let himself be taken away to a place where, whatever his life might be, it would not consist of lonely hotel rooms and lost friendships? He could not feel his extremities. He felt as if his hands and feet had been severed, and his life’s energy was flowing out of the stumps, flowing into the river’s black current.

At other moments, he remembered what Rania had said to him that night in the car, parked outside the hospital:

“If my love for you on our wedding day was hot and passionate, then it is a still burning flame, as powerful as ever. I’m trying to hold on to you, but it’s like holding on to an electric eel. You have to do your part as well.”

She was right, he was an eel, because didn’t eels live in the water? And here he was, dying in water just as he’d been born from it. She was right as well that he had not done his part. If he survived this, he would do his part and more; he would.

Lion of Love

He could not die letting his beloved wife think that he did not love her and want her. He could not die without apologizing to her for his intransigence, stubbornness, and lack of gratitude. So he kept his mouth shut like a spaceship’s air lock, lips pressed tightly together in spite of the burning in his lungs, because he knew that if he were to open it and take that icy water into his lungs, he would be finished. His life belonged to Allah, and Allah would take it or spare it as He willed, but in the meantime, Deek would fight like a cornered lion. In his waking dream, Rabiah al-Adawiyyah had called him Lion of Love, and so he would be.

He’d once seen a video of a lion in Africa being hunted by a man with a rifle and his team. They pursued the lion into the bush, fanning out and beating the bushes. There came a point, however, when the lion had had enough, and decided to make a final stand. He came charging out of the bush, running straight for the hunter, ignoring the beaters and support crew. SubhanAllah! The lion knew exactly who his enemy was. The hunter dropped to one knee, aimed, and shot the lion in the head when it was almost atop him, and the lion tumbled to the side.

Deek despised that hunter, but he lauded the lion for his immense courage and fierce will to live. The lion was all who suffered under the leaden weight of oppression, yet refused to surrender. The lion was the indigenous peoples of the world, the Tibetans, Uighurs, Palestinians, Rohingya… It was Deek himself, and he would not die until he could see Rania one last time.

The river spun him in circles. His wet clothes threatened to drag him into the depths. He struck a man-sized chunk of floating wood, and a sharp edge cut his shoulder. He tried grabbing onto it, but it bobbed away on the current.

Lost Lake

Sanaya struggled through the thick undergrowth along the bank, trying to keep up with Amira. She could hear her younger sister up ahead, calling out for Baba again and again. Every few seconds, her eyes shot to the river and she scanned it, looking for any sign of her father. The water was terrifying. Sanaya had never learned to swim. She had a rich friend, a Muslim girl named Halima, who lived in a mansion with an indoor pool. Halima occasionally threw girls-only pool parties. Sanaya would splash around in the shallow end, but even that made her anxious.

Suddenly, the heavy underbrush disappeared, and she found herself standing on a stretch of evenly cut grass. There were trees and picnic tables. She recognized this place. It was Lost Lake Park. A misnomer, since it was not a lake at all, but a riverside park. Some of the Muslims would hold Eid picnics here. Amira stood on one of the tables, screaming Baba’s name at the top of her lungs.

“Why are we stopping here?” Sanaya asked.

Amira looked down at her. There were tears in the younger girl’s eyes. “I don’t know. I just feel like we should.”

Teeth clenched, Sanaya tried calling her mother again. The call went to voicemail. Then again – same result.

Driving Blind

Rania drove madly up the mountain, now and then glancing at the GPS on her dash-mounted phone. Her back hurt badly, and every turn of the dark, winding road seemed to make it worse. On one curve, the car fishtailed and would have gone over the cliff, except that the rear of the car slammed into a pine tree that grew right on the edge. Rania’s head rocked to the side and hit the window. Needles and pinecones rained down on the car. She moaned, dazed. Her head ached badly, and her vision was hazy. She knew she was concussed.

Her phone had popped out of the mount. She found it on the floor. The screen was cracked, and it was dead. No matter – she had an image of the map in her mind. She pressed the gas to resume the mad dash, but the car had died. She turned the key again and pressed the pedal, and the engine turned over, making a noise like a frog chanting, “raka raka raka,” yet did not start. Pausing for a long breath, she tried to calm herself. She whispered, “Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem,” then turned the key, and the car started! She was off like a shot, tires squealing in protest.

“Hold on, Deek,” she said out loud. “Wherever you are, I will find you.” Her vision was still gray around the edges, and it was suffocatingly dark out here. She had no map and drove blind, only halfway sure she was going the right way. But when a sudden turn appeared on the left, heading steeply downhill, she hit the brakes and took it. It was not the route that she remembered from the map, but somehow it felt right. It was an old, thinly paved road with cracks and extrusions where tree roots had pushed up the pavement. The car bounced and shook, and Rania feared it might come apart.

Hanging

Deek could not fight the river. His spirit was willing, but his body was a drained husk. He whispered a prayer in his mind, asking Allah to forgive him, and to welcome him home. Just as he stopped kicking his feet and let his arms fall limply to his side, he seemed to hear his name being called. It was impossible, of course. No one would know to look for him here, and he wouldn’t be able to hear them anyway, out here in the middle of the river.

Yet he heard it, and in response, he thrust his arm up out of the water. Impossibly, his hand struck something, and he willed his frozen fingers to clamp shut. With his last molecule of strength, he pulled himself up.

He had grasped a slender, low-hanging tree branch that hung far out over the river. He wrapped his other arm over it, catching the branch in the crook of his elbow. Looking around wearily, almost hopelessly, he saw nothing, for the night was as dark as despair. He knew he didn’t have the strength to hold on for more than a few seconds, so with one hand he undid his belt, pulled it free, and used it to lash his arm to the tree branch. He pulled the belt tight and notched it. With this, exhaustion overcame him, and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

A Risky Plan

“There!” Amira jumped up and down on the table, pointing. “It’s Baba, there, there, there!”

Sanaya peered but could see nothing. A dark shape hung over the river on the other side, maybe ten feet from the far shore. “I think that’s a tree branch.”

“I know that. He’s hanging from the tree branch!”

Amira leaped down, pulled off her shoes and socks, then began to take off her jacket.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to rescue him!”

Sanaya seized her sister’s arm. “You don’t know how to swim. Neither of us do. Even if that’s him out there, you’ll only drown yourself.”

Amira struggled, trying to pull her arm away. “Let me go!” Sanaya bear-hugged her, and the two of them fell into the grass, struggling.

Amira went limp. “Fine! You win. What’s your plan, then?”

Sanaya stood and called emergency services, updating them. She got off the phone to see Amira hanging on a long tree branch, jumping up and down to break it off. With a loud crack, it snapped, and Amira screamed as the branch fell atop her.

“What’s this, then?” Sanaya demanded as Amira stood, rubbing a fresh bruise on her forehead.

“You hold one end, I’ll hold the other and wade out into the river.”

Sanaya considered. It was a ridiculous plan, but Amira was right; they had to do something. But she wasn’t going to let Amira enter the water. “You hold one end, and I will wade out.”

Sanaya shucked her father’s heavy jacket, but kept her shoes on. She gasped when the icy water swirled around her legs. “It’s freezing!”

“Then get him out!”

Holding on to the end of the branch, with Amira at the edge of the shore, Sanaya was still far from the center of the river, let alone the far side where her father hung. The water was up to her hips. Letting go of the branch for a moment, she braced herself against the current, removed her hijab, spun it into a rope, and tied one end to the end of the branch. Gripping the other end gave her about another three feet, and she waded out a bit more, hoping the cloth would not tear.

It was hopeless. The water was up to her belly button now, and pulled at her strongly. She was terrified. Her teeth chattered, and her heart pounded in her chest like a ship’s cannon. Suddenly, there was a bit of give to the hijab, and she waved her arms, floundering. Looking back, panicked, she saw that Amira had waded out into the water. She was trying to help Sanaya reach Baba, but it was impossible; he was too far away.

“No!” Sanaya screamed. “Go back!”

Crash

Rounding a sharp, downhill curve, the road opened up into a straight stretch, and Rania saw a long stretch of parkland stretched out along the river. She knew this place. She’d been here for a few Eid picnics. Lost Park, or something like that.

She barrelled into the parking lot too fast, and jammed her foot on the brake pedal, but it was too late. The car hit the curb and bounced. Rania lost control of the wheel, and before she could react, the car slammed into a tree. Rania flinched, turning aside just as the air bag deployed, bashing one side of her face.

Struggling out from behind the air bag, Rania ran toward the river. She saw the scene at a glance: her daughters were in the water! She dashed into the freezing water, seized Amira around the waist, and began dragging her back to the shore.

Cold and Shock

Sanaya had given up on this plan. Fear made her movements jerky as she struggled back toward the shore, even as Amira was wading in deeper. She was startled by a tremendous crashing sound, and saw that a car had crashed into a tree a short way away in the park. Its front end was smashed in, one headlight still shining. Wait… was that Mom’s car?

Astonished, she watched as Mom struggled out of the car and then sprinted toward them. When Mom began to drag Amira out, Sanaya held tightly to the hijab as it went tight. Amira was pulled out of the water, and she followed. Alhamdulillah, she thought. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah.

Back on the shore, she lay panting and shaking with cold and shock. Amira was on her feet, talking and pointing.

“Mom,” Sanaya gasped. “Your face!”

“The air bag.”

As her mother began to remove her clothing, Sanaya realized what she meant to do. She sat up. “Mom! What about your back? Can you swim?”

No Pain

“I’ll be fine”, she said. “I can swim better than you can imagine. Listen to me. You two stay out of the water! I will bring your father back, by the will of Allah. Sanaya, get out of those wet clothes. There’s an emergency blanket in the back of the car; use that.”

As she said these words, she stripped to her underwear, knowing that wet clothing would drag her down. Then she dashed into the water. It was very cold. She’d spent countless afternoons swimming in the Tigris, but that river was much warmer than this one.

She hit the water running. The river’s cold was a living thing, slamming into her chest, stealing her breath for a heartbeat. Her skin recoiled, but her mind did not. She had no space inside her for hesitation or fear. Once the water was up to her waist, she dove in, her body knifing through the surface, and began stroking strongly toward Deek.

She realized for the first time that her back was as free of pain as when she was a child. For weeks, pain had been her constant shadow–every step, every twist, every attempt to work or sleep. Now there was nothing. Her head still throbbed fiercely from the car crash. Her vision pulsed with gray at the edges. But her spine felt straight and strong.

As she hit the center of the river, the current threatened to snatch her away. Rather than waste energy trying to fight it, she let it wash her downstream as she continued to cut across the river. Once she’d cleared the center, she reoriented on Deek. Four breaststrokes, then a breath. She cupped her hands to pull at the water more effectively and kicked hard the whole time.

She saw now that Deek had lashed himself to the branch and hung, either unconscious or dead. Even as she watched, however, the notch on the belt slipped free, and her husband slipped underwater and disappeared. He was gone.

River of Memory

As Deek’s body drifted in the icy river, slipping deeper and deeper down into the blackness, his last thought was of the day they rescued his uncle.

The memory rose out of the darkness like a lantern rising from the sea.

He was nine years old again, sitting cross-legged on the cool tile floor of their Baghdad apartment, a battered wooden checkers board between him and Lubna. She was only four, pudgy-cheeked and bossy. She slapped one of her black pieces onto a red square and said, “Shaikh mat,” though it was the wrong game entirely. Deek tried not to smile.

Their grandmother moved about the kitchen humming an old love song from her youth, something about jasmine and moonlight. The smell of frying eggplant and tomatoes filled the house. Outside, the neighborhood kids were playing football in the alley, their shouts drifting through the open balcony door. It was evening, a warm spring night, and everything was ordinary.

Then the front door slammed.

Ammu Khalid, the eldest brother in the family, stomped in, still in his police uniform, his face tight and angry. He tossed his cap on the couch so hard it bounced to the floor. Behind him came Ammu Tarek, his father’s younger brother, nineteen years old, slender, bright-eyed, wearing the same denim jacket he always wore when he went “out for a walk”—which everyone knew meant plastering pro-democracy, anti-government flyers on electrical poles after midnight. Their father, Uthman, followed quietly, closing the door gently as if trying to balance out the force of his brothers.

The argument began even before the table was set.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Khalid snapped, pulling off his boots and rubbing his temples. “And not only yourself.”

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” Tarek shot back. “Loving your country is not wrong.”

“Loving your country is not the same as making yourself a martyr.”

“Someone has to tell the truth!”

“And what about the rest of us?” Khalid snapped. “What about my job?”

“Your job,” Tarek sneered. “Working for Saddam the Butcher. Abu Ghraib is full of ghosts because of him.”

“Keep your voice down! I know all this.”

Grandmother shushed them sharply, setting plates of food on the low dining cloth, but the shush only slowed them for a heartbeat. Soon they were yelling again, Tarek accusing Khalid of cowardice, Khalid accusing Tarek of recklessness.

Baba sat at the edge of the cloth, folding bread into neat triangles. He did not look at either brother, only murmured, “Come, come, enough. Sit and eat. No good ever comes from shouting.”

But they didn’t stop. The fight felt larger than them—like the entire country had cracked down the middle, and the fissure ran straight through the Saghir family.

Deek didn’t understand most of it. In school, he was taught that Saddam was the protector of Iraq, the hero of the Iran War. Posters of the President hung in every classroom. But he’d heard whispers, too—men lowering their voices when certain names were spoken, neighbors who vanished without explanation.

To Deek, all of that felt distant and confusing. What he understood was checkers, drawing, and his father’s gentle voice reciting Quran. And Lubna sticking her tongue out whenever she lost.

He moved a piece on the board. “Your turn,” he whispered.

Lubna didn’t move. She was staring at the adults, her lower lip trembling with confusion and fear.

He leaned close and whispered, “It’s okay. They always fight.”

But that night felt different. Even as a child, he sensed it.

Ammu Tarek stormed out after dinner. Uthman sighed, rubbing his beard. Khalid sat with his face in his hands, his untouched food growing cold.

Rania in the Dark

Rania angled her trajectory to compensate for the current. Her legs kicked hard, arms pulling in long, practiced strokes. The old muscle memory came back as if it had been waiting just beneath her skin. The Tigris had taught her this when she was a girl, spending entire summer afternoons in the water while her cousins shrieked and splashed nearby.

“Deek!” she shouted, but the word broke apart on water.

She saw him then, a dark shape rolling in the current, being dragged inexorably toward a bend in the river. He bobbed once, then vanished.

“No,” she gasped, and drove herself forward, kicking harder. She stopped fighting the current and let it carry her toward her husband. When she reached the spot where she estimated Deek should be, she whispered, “Bismillah,” and dove.

The river was inky black. She could see absolutely nothing. She spread her arms out wide, moving them about. Lungs burning, she surfaced, took a breath, dove again, then repeated the process a third time.

Her fingers brushed cloth. She reached, missed, reached again.

This time her hand slid across his shoulder, then under his arm. She clamped her arm tight on his, and pushed for the surface, kicking for all her life. Breaking the surface, she took great, heaving breaths, then adjusted her position relative to Deek, hooking her forearm across his chest from behind to keep his face above water, just as she’d once seen a lifeguard do in Mosul. His head lolled back against her shoulder, his face gray and slack, eyes closed. She did not know if he was breathing or not, and could not check.

“I’ve got you,” she panted, though he could not hear her. “Wallahi, I’ve got you. You are not getting away this time.”

She rolled onto her side, his weight against her, and began to kick with everything she had, using her free arm to scull and pull. The current fought her for every inch, snatching at them both like greedy fingers.

She set her jaw and kicked harder.

Her vision narrowed to a tunnel: a patch of darker shadow that was the far bank, the dim blur of trees, the pull in her shoulder, the weight of her husband’s body. She could hear Amira screaming, Sanaya shouting something, their voices thin across the rushing water.

She did not answer. All her breath was for swimming.

“Just a little more, Deek,” she told him, though his body did not respond. “Do you remember what I told you? I love you because you never give up. You’re my great Iraqi prince.” She gasped these words using breath she could not spare. But Deek needed to hear it.

Kidnapped

Nine-year-old Deek was awakened deep in the night by pounding fists on the door and the roar of motors outside. He sat up, heart hammering. Lubna cried out in the dark.

Their grandmother ran past the bedroom door yelling, “Wake up! Wake up!”

Uniformed men burst into the house with flashlights and boots. They dragged Ammu Tarek out of bed, tied his hands, hooded him, and shoved him into a transport truck. Their grandmother screamed until her voice cracked. Their father did not move, did not speak—his face was carved from stone.

When the police trucks finally roared away, grandmother fumbled for the phone with shaking hands. She called Khalid.

He arrived before dawn, pale and grim. There was no argument this time, no shouting. Only orders.

“Pack. All of you. One suitcase each. Hurry.”

“What will they do to him?” grandmother demanded.

Khalid’s jaw worked, but no words came.

Then he turned to Baba. “Uthman… I need you. Come with me.”

Deek felt his breath catch. Fear surged through him like electricity. He couldn’t lose his father. He couldn’t.

So he did the only thing he could do. While Khalid and Uthman loaded into the covered jeep, Deek crept out, slipped behind them, and curled up on the floor behind the back seat, pulling a dirty blanket over himself. The engine vibrated through his bones as they drove.

Ambush

They left the city and entered an area of heavy forest by the Euphrates. Khalid unlocked a chained gate with a key that glinted in the headlights. He drove off the road, between trees, until the jeep was swallowed by darkness.

Then came the sound of metal: a rifle being checked and loaded.

Deek peeked from beneath the canvas. Khalid handed their father a pistol.

“I know you’ve never used one,” he said hoarsely. “But tonight you might have to.”

Baba nodded once, though his hands trembled.

Deek followed them on bare feet, shivering in the cold, hiding behind shrubs. His teeth chattered loudly enough that he feared they would hear him.

Just after dawn, a police truck rumbled down the road and through the gate.

Three policemen got out. They opened the back and hauled five hooded men onto the dirt. Even from a distance, Deek recognized the way one of the prisoners stood—a wide stance, the familiar denim jacket, the rangy frame. It was Ammu Tarek.

Deek’s breath hitched. He bit his knuckle to stop the cry rising in his throat.

The policemen forced the prisoners to their knees by the riverbank. Rifles lifted.

At that instant, Khalid stood, shouting something wordless and furious, and opened fire. Baba stood beside him, hands shaking but steady enough as he fired the pistol. Two policemen fell, and one fled into the trees. But not before he fired a wild burst at the prisoners.

Deek saw it in slow motion: One prisoner dropping forward with a ruined skull. Another tumbling backward into the water, and Tarek toppling into the river like a sack of sand.

The other two prisoners tore off their hoods and ran into the forest.

“Get Tarek!” Khalid yelled. Then he ran after the last policeman.

Rescue

Baba sprinted to the river, dove in without hesitation. The water was a heaving brown rush, cold and fast. Deek watched his father surface gasping, dive again, surface, dive again. Each time he came up, his face was more frantic.

Little Deek couldn’t stay hidden. Terror propelled him. He ran down the bank, stumbled into the water.

“Baba!”

His feet sank into cold mud. The water was frigid, pulling at his legs like living hands. The current smelled of silt and diesel, and something metallic.

He couldn’t swim well. But he went anyway.

His father surfaced, choking, dragging Tarek’s limp body by the collar. The current yanked Baba sideways, threatening to twist him under.

Then he saw his son, and his face went white.

“Deek! Get back!”

But Deek didn’t. He splashed toward him, arm outstretched, crying, “Baba!”

Baba reached him, grabbed his wrist, and together—fighting the current, slipping in the mud—they dragged Tarek to the bank. Uthman collapsed beside his brother, applying pressure to the wound in his back as blood pooled darkly beneath them.

Escape

Ammu Khalid returned, muddy and panting, his rifle slung over his shoulder.

“Into the jeep!” he barked.

They laid Tarek across the back seat. Baba climbed in beside him, pressing the wound with both hands. Deek pressed himself into the corner, soaked and freezing, watching his father’s hands turn red.

Khalid drove like a man possessed, through back alleys and farm roads, until they reached a modest home on the edge of town. A dissident leader—a nurse by trade—opened the door, looking terrified. Once he saw Tarek, however, he ushered them inside.

They left him there, not knowing whether he would live or die.

They returned home only long enough to collect their other family members.

That night, hidden behind a false wall in the back of a panel truck, Deek listened to his sister sobbing, to his grandmother whispering prayers, to his mother’s silence. He did not understand everything, but he understood one thing: they were leaving Iraq forever.

Weeks later, they learned that Ammu Tarek had survived and had been smuggled to Turkey. And that Ammu Khalid was dead. The adults told the children it was a car accident.

Years later, Baba told Deek the truth, that Khalid had committed suicide. For a long time, Deek believed that Khalid must have done it out of shame that he betrayed his leader and his colleagues. Or perhaps he knew he might be suspected as the culprit and did not want to be tortured.

It was only in recent years, when the memory came to Deek one day as he was bathing, did it occur to him that Khalid had known where the prisoners would be taken. Which meant that he himself had executed men in just this way. Maybe the shame and guilt of his own deeds finally overcame him. Only Allah knew.

River of Echoes

Now, reliving all of this in his dying moments, Deek’s reality blurred, and he began to think that he was Ammu Tarek. He had been bound, hooded and shot, and thrown in the river, and now here he was, drowning. The cold stole the air from his lungs. The hood clung to his face. Water filled his ears. The river tumbled him end over end.

Hands seized him from behind. Strong hands, gripping his arm, dragging him upward. Then earth beneath him. He was being dragged. Voices shouting, “Deek!” and “Baba!” This confused him. Who was he, really? Was he in Iraq, or somewhere else?

It didn’t matter. He felt himself being drawn away again, but not through water this time. Rather, he was being pulled away from his own body, from the world, from this confusing and lonely existence. He could not decide if this was good or bad.

Dead

As Rania neared the shore, towing Deek behind her, the girls ran into the water and pulled her and Deek out. Rania’s breath heaved in her chest, and her arms and legs felt like spaghetti noodles, devoid of all strength. She let the girls do the bulk of the work as the three of them worked together to have Deek up the bank and onto the grass, where they laid him out on his back.

Quickly, professionally, Rania checked Deek’s vitals. Her hands trembled, but she had done this thousands of times. Deek’s eyes were open, and his body was very cold. He had no pulse, and was not breathing. He was dead.

“No,” she whispered. “You are not dead.” She knew that very cold water could preserve brain function for a long time. She would revive him by the will of Allah.

Rania tilted his head back, swept his mouth clean with her fingers, sealed her lips over his, and gave him five long rescue breaths—slow, steady, forcing the air in, watching his chest for any lift. On the third breath, a small bubble of foam escaped his lips. She wiped it and continued, switching to chest compressions. The girls were weeping beside her, Sanaya hugging Amira tightly, sharing the silvery emergency blanket with her sister.

“Back up,” she told the girls, breathless but firm. “Don’t distract me.” This moment was everything. She placed her hands on his sternum and began pushing. One. Two. Three. Four. Five…

Her elbows locked. Her shoulders burned. Deek’s body gave no response at all.

“Mom!” Amira cried behind her. “Listen—sirens!”

Rania ignored her. Her world consisted of her hands against her husband’s cold chest.

“Come back to me,” she said through clenched teeth. “A burning flame, remember? That’s what you and I have, that’s what we are. A burning flame of love. You never give up, you’re crazy like that. It’s not in your nature to give up. Deek. IT’S NOT IN YOUR NATURE.”

Thirty compressions. She leaned down, gave him two more breaths. More water dribbled from the corner of his mouth, but still no chest movement of his own.

She did another cycle. And another. Her arms were shaking uncontrollably. Her vision pulsed with pain from the concussion. She was about to call Sanaya to come and take over. Rania could coach her, tell her what to do. She could hear the sirens now, loud.

What Did You Say?

“Amira,” she said. “Stop crying and come talk to your father.”

To her credit, Amira did not ask what she should say. She stifled her sobs and dropped to her knees, leaning close to her father’s ear. “Baba, we’re right here. Please, Baba, we need you. You always told me, you and me together until the end of the line, remember? Keep your promise.”

Something shifted.

Rania couldn’t put her finger on it, only that suddenly the world was enveloped in silence. She pressed down hard with the last possible compression she would be able to do—

—and Deek’s entire body jerked beneath her hands.

She froze. “Deek?”

A second later, he convulsed and coughed—a weak, strangled sound that tore itself from somewhere deep inside him. A gush of river water spilled from his mouth, splattering onto his chin and shirt. Then he rolled onto his side in a spasmodic reflex, heaving violently as he vomited water and mud.

“Allahu Akbar!” Rania cried. “That’s it, habibi, let it out.”

Deek gagged again, spit, coughed, then sucked in a ragged, shuddering breath that sounded like wind gusting into a cave. Rania put a hand on his chest and her ear against his mouth. His breathing was irregular—fast, then slow, then stopping for a moment before restarting. His body shivered uncontrollably, muscles spasming under his soaked clothes.

“Sanaya, put the blanket on your father!”

Sanaya draped the emergency blanket over Deek, and Rania pulled her daughters in tightly around him. They huddled together, their bodies forming a cocoon of warmth around his trembling frame. Amira recited Surat Al-Fatiha, while Sanaya said a long dua for protection in times of danger – one that Rania herself did not know.

“Mom,” Amira whispered, crying and laughing at the same time. “He’s breathing.”

“Yes,” Rania said, smoothing Deek’s wet hair back from his forehead. “But he’s not out of danger. Keep holding him. Keep him warm.”

Red and blue lights flashed. Tires screeched in the parking lot. Rania jumped up and pulled her clothes and hijab back on, then returned to Deek’s side.

Her husband sputtered again, a shallow cough, then looked from Rania to his daughters with eyes filled with sadness and confusion. He whispered something low and ragged.

“What did you say?” Rania came close to his mouth. “Say that again.”

“I said,” Deek replied in a voice as rough as sandpaper, “Where am I?”

Rania’s eyes widened with fear. Had Deek suffered brain damage from the lack of oxygen? That was a very real risk.

“You’re in Fresno,” she replied. “On the banks of the San Joaquin River. Can you tell me your name?”

He smiled faintly, even as tremors ran through his body. “I am Deek Saghir, and you are Rania Al-Hassan, my beloved wife. And I’m sorry for everything. I want to come home now.”

Rania didn’t look away from him.

“Deek, you fool,” she said. “You have one heck of a sense of timing.” She took one of his hands, clasped it tightly. “You’re home, habibi. You’re home.”

***

Come back next week for Part 31 inshaAllah – the FINAL chapter of Moonshot!

 

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Asha and the Washerwoman’s Baby: A Short Story

The Deal : Part #1 The Run

 

The post Moonshot [Part 30] – Two Rivers, Two Lives appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

If you are a Muslim man reading this after having intentionally clicked on the article link, may Allah reward you. Even if you don’t have a wife, you definitely have a mother, and maybe even a sister or daughter. I promise you, this will be relevant. 

As a husband, part of being your wife’s qawwam (protector/maintainer) is being actively involved in helping her meet her spiritual, emotional, and physical health needs. This applies to fathers as well. If your own father did this, then alhamdulilah, you are so privileged to have such a Prophetic example. If not, then it’s up to you to break that cycle by educating yourself on what kind of support your wife needs during her midlife years and helping her through it.

Shifts in Midlife

There are funny social media reels about husbands being told their perimenopausal wives now detest the way they smell/breathe/sleep/chew. Beneath that humour is the very real issue that, as hormones shift during perimenopause, even the most solid of marriages can be tested. 

For example, a wife who has been happily homeschooling her three young children may now be far too exhausted by her hormonal changes and much more prone to anger. Midlife is a time for a mother to start looking inwards on how to nourish herself better, after nurturing her own children. Perimenopausal symptoms can start in some women as early as their mid-thirties, while most women start feeling symptoms of declining estrogen and progesterone in their forties until they reach menopause.

I actually asked my husband for tips on how to write this article, and he has plenty of gems to share. 

 – Make sure she eats well

With the gradual decline of bone density and muscle mass starting in her late thirties/early forties, protein is now absolutely necessary to help strengthen her bones and muscles. Stock up on protein, and – even better – prepare a protein-rich dish for her. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but knowing that she doesn’t need to hunt for more protein will help to ease some of her mental load.

Plant-based protein shakes are also helpful. Yogurt smoothies with nuts and fruit are another tasty and easily-prepared option. Offering her a slice of her favourite bread with high-protein peanut butter and jam can make a huge difference in her mood. 

 – Exercise together

Exercising together is a lot more conducive than nagging her to exercise. Ask me how I know. It helps to have a partner to go on walks with, and it’s even better to have a partner to spot you while you both lift heavy. In addition to building muscle and bone mass, exercise works wonders for improving mental health, blood circulation, and mobility.

“At the very least give your wife the gift of time to exercise regularly.” [PC: Elena Kloppenburg (unsplash)]

For those who are financially able, consider investing in a personal trainer to support your wife in her fitness journey, and/or gift her with a ladies-only gym membership. 

For those who aren’t, you can still support her by giving her the gift of time to exercise regularly. Consistency is difficult to maintain even in the best of times, so supporting your busy wife means committing to looking after your children or arranging for childcare, to give your wife the time and space to exercise. Renewing this beautiful intention to support your wife’s exercise journey is also a means of pleasing Allah .

 – Facilitate her good sleep

If your wife is struggling to sleep, then please know that this is part of perimenopause. If she is also neurodivergent, then getting sleep during perimenopause will be even trickier than usual! The irony is that nightly long stretches of uninterrupted sleep are exactly what will help to regulate your wife’s hormones, but falling asleep can be harder than ever. 

Ask her how you can help support her nighttime sleep routine. Mothers often sleep late at night because they crave that silence and uninterrupted time to themselves. To counter this, brainstorm ways to give her time to herself during the day. After a rough night, do her a favour and give her the chance to sleep in. 

Whenever possible, take charge of the morning school drop-off routine so she can rest a little while longer. Give her the opportunity to nap during the day by looking after your children, or arranging for a trusted babysitter or family member to do that.

 – Be understanding of her libido changes

Marital intimacy comes in stages – the excitement and discovery of the newlywed stage, the exhaustion after newborns, and the fluctuating state of perimenopause. Vaginal dryness can be a reality for many perimenopausal women, and this can definitely impact her decreasing libido. It’s important to investigate different types of lubrication that can help, as well as the possibility of dietary changes or supplements. Foreplay is even more important in this stage of marital intimacy. 

Jabir bin ‘Abdullah narrates saying, “The Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and give him peace) forbade intercourse before foreplay.” [Khatib, Tarikh Baghdad: the chain was deemed sound by Dhahabi]

Figure out a way to schedule regular marital intimacy instead of leaving it to chance. It’s natural for perimenopausal wives to feel anxious about intimacy, but avoidance only makes it worse. 

Supporting your wife throughout the day will endear you to her, making her much more receptive to marital intimacy at night. Keep in mind that, on top of hormonal changes that make your wife feel uncomfortable, her body shape has probably changed over the years, too. Telling her that you still find her beautiful  and attractive will help allay any anxieties she may feel. She is the mother of your children, and her body has gone through a tremendous change with every child she brings earthside. 

 – Keep lines of communication open

Every marriage has its own stresses, but coupled with perimenopause, it’s more important than ever to remember that you’re both on the same team. Make daily bids for connection by turning towards each other, rather than turning away. There are simple things you can both do to show your love and concern, e.g., preparing a favourite drink/snack, affectionate touches, and using terms of endearment. You can think of this as filling up each other’s love tank, so you can both function well together as a team, as opposed to sputtering on empty.

In addition to small daily gestures of kindness, make an effort to schedule at least weekly date nights and/or coffee dates together. It makes all the difference to have intentional conversations about meeting each other’s needs – especially during difficult stretches. It’s important for husbands to also express what kind of support they would like too. Plan for success to help both of you thrive. Supporting your wife does not mean obliterating your own needs – that will only create resentment.

 – Hormone Replacement Therapy 

By the time a woman has reached menopause, even the most supportive husband cannot replace the role of hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I’m at least ten years away from menopause, if not less, but I’m already reading about the benefits of HRT. All of the most common perimenopausal struggles listed above can be alleviated by the right dose of HRT.

In the words of Dr Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and expert on women’s aging and longevity:

“Estrogen, when started within 10 years of your last menstrual cycle, doesn’t just help with hot flashes or night sweats. It significantly reduces your risk of the top killers of women in midlife and beyond: heart disease and osteoporotic fractures. In fact, studies show it can reduce the risk of heart disease by 40–50%. That’s not a small perk—that’s a game-changer.”1

Conclusion

By the time you have reached this point in your marriage, alhamdulilah, you have already graduated through the newlywed and newborn babies stage. Now is the time to continue to nurture your wife through her midlife years by ensuring she has enough protein to eat, exercises, and sleeps well. Understanding her shifting libido will help to keep your marital intimacy going, as well as supporting her decision to explore hormonal replacement therapy. It’s important for husbands and wives to keep having regular conversations around how you can both meet each other’s needs, as a team, with Allah’s Pleasure in mind.

InshaAllah, the love and care you give your wife during this critical stage will reap tremendous reward in both this life as well as the next. 

 

Related:

– The Muslim Woman And Menopause: Navigating The ‘Invisible’ Transition With Faith And Grace

– A Primer On Intimacy And Fulfillment Of A Wife’s Desires Based On The Writings Of Scholars Of The Past

 

1    https://www.drvondawright.com/blog/what-if-we-told-you-estrogen-could-help-you-live-longer

The post Perimenopause For Husbands: What To Expect And How To Support Your Wife appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

By Amina Abdullah A Warning I Didn’t Understand

This all started on a regular back-to-school trip to Target. I asked my mom if we could get some Korean skincare. Instead of answering me, she reminded me to never watch KPop Demon Hunters even if my friends are. She mentioned that our local imam had warned parents to keep their kids away from this show; apparently, he knew it was quite popular, and did not think the content was appropriate for children.

While I thought it was odd that my skincare request somehow made her think of that movie, I did what I do best: I nodded, but I honestly did not understand why she was being so serious. I thought it was just a cartoon and could not be that bad.

A few weeks later, I was at a small party with some of my mom’s Muslim friends. It was fun at first, but after a while my friends and I got bored and went inside to watch TV. Someone picked a movie, and suddenly KPop Demon Hunters was on the screen.

Right before I sat down, my younger sisters, who are now 5 and 8, told me very clearly that watching it was a bad idea. They said, “You should not watch that.” I thought they were just being dramatic and trying to act older than they are. But later on they came to watch too.

At the end of the movie that’s when we realized their advice was right.

What I Saw and Why It Mattered

Very quickly we realized this movie was not what I expected at all. Some of the characters wore clothing that did not feel appropriate. The songs, especially “How It’s Done” and “Your Idol,” had lyrics that did not seem right for kids to hear. There were also mixed-gender scenes that felt uncomfortable, and it just did not feel like something I should be watching.

What surprised me the most was that all the other girls acted like everything was perfectly normal. They had watched the movie so many times that nothing seemed strange to them anymore. That made me think. When you keep watching something again and again, you start to think it is fine, even when it is not.

Just because something is animated does not mean it is harmless. And just because everyone else thinks it is okay does not mean it actually is.

So in conclusion, KPop Demon Hunters is not a movie Muslim kids should watch. Not even once. It is better to listen to the people who care about you, even when you think you know better.

***

Amina Abdullah is a 5th grader from California’s SF Bay Area. When she’s not at school, she’s a part-time Hifz student, badminton player, and older sister.

Related:

Why I Walked Out Of The Film, Bilal

‘Little Mosque on the Prairie’ Ends | The First Muslim Sitcom in Review

The post K-Pop Demon Hunters: Certainly Not for Kids appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

As the Muslim Book Awards are in full swing, judges Amire Hoxha and Zainab bint Younus discuss Amire’s book “Amar’s Fajr Reward,” which brings Kosovar representation to the Muslim kidlit space, and what it was like for Amire to write as a minority within a Muslim minority. They explore trends in Muslim bookselling, and what’s still missing in the Muslim kidlit space.

If you’re a Muslim writer, publisher, or reader, you won’t want to miss this episode!

Related:

Podcast: Refugee Representation In Muslim Literature

Podcast: A Glimpse Into Muslim Bookstagram

[Podcast] Books, Boys, & Kareem Between | Shifa Saltagi Safadi

 

The post [Podcast] Kosovar Rep & What’s Missing In Muslim KidLit appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

It was once the darling slogan of liberal Muslims in the West, their talisman against suspicion, their get-out-of-Guantánamo-free card. In the shadow of 9/11, when Muslims were being strip-searched at airports, interrogated at borders, and rounded up in their neighborhoods, Western Muslim leaders found themselves endlessly parroting this question. It was their shield, their mantra, their desperate attempt to prove to the “civilized” world that they were not, in fact, bloodthirsty savages. The Prophet Muhammad , they said, was compassionate, tolerant, patient, merciful, endlessly forgiving—more yoga instructor than warrior, more monk than statesman. And so, every Friday sermon, interfaith dinner, and panel discussion circled back to the same soothing line: “What would Muhammad do?”

But how curious the silence today. Gaza burns, Palestinians are starved and slaughtered in numbers that recall the darkest chapters of the twentieth century, and the “good” Muslims—the liberal Muslims, the moderates, the tireless ambassadors of interfaith kumbaya—suddenly forget their favorite question. Nobody wants to ask what Muhammad would do in the face of genocide. Why not? Because the answer is too obvious, and too uncomfortable.

The Post-9/11 Muhammad: A Pacifist Mascot

Let us recall the context. After 9/11, Muslim leaders in the West scrambled to perform what might be called the ‘Great Pacification of the Prophet.’ No longer the man who organized armies, brokered treaties, defended his community, and met aggression with force—Muhammad was rebranded as a pacifist saint. His patience in the face of insults was exalted. His forgiveness of enemies was endlessly quoted. His emphasis on inner struggle (jihad al-nafs) was turned into the *only* jihad worth mentioning.

The goal was transparent: to convince a deeply suspicious Western public that Muslims were not ticking time bombs. “See?” these Muslims pleaded. “Our Prophet is just like your Jesus—peaceful, forgiving, nonviolent.” The “What would Muhammad do?” question became their version of “What would Jesus do?”—a saccharine slogan perfectly fitted for bumper stickers and youth group T-shirts.

It was not entirely disingenuous. The Prophet Muhammad did indeed show patience, did indeed forgive, did indeed emphasize inner reform. But the narrative was highly selective. It was also deeply political. In the ‘War on Terror’ climate, Muslims were under enormous pressure to prove their loyalty, to sanitize their religion, and to present Islam as a benign spiritual hobby rather than a political force.

The Vanishing Question

Fast forward two decades. The bombs fall on Gaza. Hospitals, schools, and refugee camps are obliterated. A population penned in like cattle is starved, denied water, denied medicine. The word “genocide” is whispered at first, then shouted openly. Muslims across the world watch in horror, rage, and despair.

And yet, those same liberal Muslims who once found their tongues so nimble with the phrase “What would Muhammad do?” now fall mute. Where are the interfaith panels, the carefully rehearsed sermons, the op-eds in The Guardian? Where are the hashtags and the bumper stickers?

The silence is not accidental. The silence is strategic. Because everyone knows what Muhammad would do in the face of genocide. And it does not fit the pacifist rebranding.

The Uncomfortable Answer

The Prophet Muhammad , faced with the annihilation of his people, did not advise patience and Twitter activism. He did not retreat to his prayer mat and wait for celestial justice. He organized. He defended. He made it an obligation for his followers to resist. The Qur’an itself makes the duty explicit: “What is the matter with you that you do not fight in the cause of God and for those oppressed men, women, and children who cry out, ‘Lord, rescue us from this town of oppressors!’” [Surah An-Nisa; 4:75]

This is not an obscure or fringe interpretation. It is the mainstream of Islamic tradition: defensive jihad is mandatory when a community faces extermination. For Muhammad , the defense of the vulnerable was not optional, not metaphorical, and certainly not reducible to therapy-speak about “resisting your lower self.” It was concrete. It was armed. It was non-negotiable.

So if one were to ask, honestly, “What would Muhammad do?” in the face of Gaza, the answer would be devastatingly clear: he would organize a protection force, and he would make defense a duty. He would not wring his hands about “messaging” or fret about what white liberals might think. He would not outsource morality to the State Department. He would stand between the slaughterer and the slaughtered.

And that is precisely why the question is not being asked.

The Liberal Muslim Dilemma

Here lies the dilemma of the “good” Muslim in the West. For two decades, they have invested heavily in the pacifist-Muhammad narrative. They have reassured their governments, their colleagues, and their neighbors that Islam is peace, that jihad is just a personal detox retreat, and that the Prophet was basically a life coach with a beard.

To now say, “Actually, Muhammad would call for armed defense of Palestinians” is to risk unraveling two decades of carefully curated branding. It risks losing the approval of the very Western societies they have bent over backwards to placate. It risks being lumped in with the “bad” Muslims—the militants, the radicals, the ones forever marked as barbarians.

And so, better to stay silent. Better to issue vague platitudes about peace, condemn “violence on both sides,” and retreat into the comfort of interfaith dinners. Better to mock or sideline those “useful idiot” imams who dare to speak the uncomfortable truth. Better to remain respectable, even as Gaza burns.

The Politics of Selective Piety

The irony, of course, is glaring. When cartoons of the Prophet appeared in Denmark or France, the “good” Muslims were quick to remind us: Muhammad ignored insults. He forgave his enemies. He never condoned mob violence. And they were right.

The true taboo question then is not “What would Muhammad do?” but “Why are liberal Muslims afraid to ask it?” [PC: Aliaksei Lepik (unsplash)]

But when it comes to genocide? When children are pulled from the rubble, when families are obliterated in their homes, when a besieged people cry out for help—suddenly, the Prophet is nowhere to be found. Suddenly, the selective piety that once filled conferences and press releases evaporates. The Prophet, once paraded as a mascot of moderation, is now locked in the attic, too embarrassing to bring out.

This is not simply cowardice. It is complicity. It is the internalization of Western hegemony so deep that one’s own religious tradition must be amputated to fit the demands of respectability. It is to reduce Muhammad to a caricature—first as a saintly pacifist, now as a silence-inducing taboo—rather than grapple with the full complexity of his legacy.

The Real Taboo

Here, then, is the true taboo question: not “What would Muhammad do?” but “Why are liberal Muslims afraid to ask it?”

The answer is not flattering. They are afraid because they know the truth: Muhammad would not sit idly by in the face of genocide. He would act. He would fight. He would obligate his followers to defend the oppressed.

And that answer does not play well at interfaith luncheons. It does not reassure security agencies. It does not flatter the liberal order. So the question is buried. The Prophet, once deployed as a prop for Western acceptance, is now silenced by those same Muslims who once could not stop invoking him.

Conclusion: The Prophet They Dare Not Name

“What would Muhammad do?” was never really about Muhammad . It was about politics. After 9/11, it was about survival: Muslims needed to prove they were safe, and so they fashioned a Prophet who was permanently nonviolent. Today, in Gaza, the same question would expose a truth too dangerous for “good” Muslims to utter: that their Prophet was not only merciful but militant when justice demanded it.

And so the silence speaks volumes. The “good” Muslims have trapped themselves in their own narrative. They are so invested in the pacifist Prophet that they cannot now call upon the real one. They have chosen approval over integrity, respectability over responsibility.

But history is merciless. When future generations ask, “What did you do during the genocide in Gaza?” the “good” Muslims will not be able to say, “We asked what Muhammad would do.” They did not dare. And perhaps that silence will be remembered as their loudest answer.

 

Related:

– Beyond Badr: Transforming Muslim Political Vision

– The Terminal Hypocrisy Of A Crumbling West And The Dawning Of A New Age for Muslims

The post What Would Muhammad Do? – Silencing The Prophet: Liberal Islam’s Cowardice In Gaza appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Swept into darkness, Deek fights to survive while his family—and their love—reach for him from both sides of the unseen.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13| Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28

* * *

“Through love the bitter becomes sweet,
through love the copper turns to gold.”
— Rumi, tr. Nicholson

Grave Marker

Sanaya pelted downhill, her shoes slipping on loose gravel and damp tufts of grass. The cold night air burned in her lungs, and the smell of wet earth rose around her. Every few steps she threw out her arms for balance, her breath ragged in her ears, her heart pounding hard enough to drown out everything but the whisper of wind in the trees. She tried all at once to see her footing in the dark, not lose her balance on the steep slope, and decide who—if anyone—she should call.

Though she felt the urgency of the situation, she was not panicked, perhaps because she was not convinced that her father was, in fact, in the river. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Amira’s vision. It was just that Amira had never had a vision before. All of Sanaya’s life, she’d known that Mom had a second sense, but it wasn’t any great, world-changing talent. Mom knew when the phone was about to ring, and when she and Baba were apart she would get a feeling when he was unwell. Mom didn’t consider it anything special, and referred to it modestly as female intuition.

Amira’s “feelings” were stronger. Not only did she know when the phone was about to ring, but who was calling as well. One time they’d been in the car, stopped at a red light—Mom driving, Sanaya and Amira in back. When the light turned green Amira leaned forward, seized Mom’s arm and said, “Don’t go yet.” A second later a drunk driver ran the red and t-boned the car in front of them.

So yes, her sister had a talent. But to be able to say that Baba was in the river… That was a step beyond what Sanaya’s rational mind could accept.

Amira ran ahead of her, galloping down the hill like a gazelle, her dark hair flying behind her. Sanaya couldn’t fathom how the girl could move so fast without tumbling head over heels. The slope funneled them toward the sound of rushing water—low, steady, and menacing, like a growl in the dark.

She reached the bank and slid down a muddy trail, her hands sinking into cold muck as she steadied herself. The river smell hit her—damp reeds, algae, something metallic and raw. At the bottom, Amira stood on a narrow sandy beach, breath misting in the moonlight, yanking off her shoes and jacket with trembling hands.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to look for Baba!” Amira’s face was pale, her eyes wide. She took a step toward the river.

Sanaya seized her sister’s arm. “No! No way. Look at it!” She jabbed a finger at the broad, ink-black expanse of water. The current moved fast, eddies flashing dull silver under the moon. It hissed against the bank and tugged at stray branches floating past, as deadly and sinuous as a giant boa constrictor.

“That water is freezing! If you go in there you’ll drown.”

“We have to do something!” Amira screamed, her voice breaking. “He’s drowning.”

“We don’t know that! He might still be up by the house, maybe he went for a—”

Her words died as she saw a large rock at the top of the beach. Baba’s wallet and keys sat atop it, gleaming faintly in the moonlight. Amira was right. Her father was in the river.

“We’ll call 911,” she declared, even as a wave of hopelessness washed over her. And we’ll search along the shore. But we’re not going in the water.”

Sanaya couldn’t pull her eyes from the stone with the wallet and keys. It felt like she was looking at a grave marker. The night seemed to press in tighter, the roar of the river swelling until it filled her chest.

“Fine. Come on then!” Amira turned and began working her way along the bank, her small flashlight beam jittering wildly as she called out into the dark, “Baba! Baba!” The river swallowed her voice and carried it away downstream.

Get Up to Get Down

Deek burst to the surface choking, the river black and endless around him. The cold cut through his clothes like a thousand knives. He kicked weakly, lungs burning, every breath tasting of mud and iron. The current dragged him, tumbling him sideways, then downward again. He fought his way up, gasping for air. The roar of the river filled his head — not just sound but pressure, a living force pulling him into its depths.

Something struck his hip — a jagged rock hidden beneath the surface — and the pain flared white-hot, blotting out everything. He cried out, but the sound was swallowed by water. Still, the pain anchored him, reminded him he was alive. Kicking with what strength remained, he spotted a dark shape hanging over the river. It was a low-hanging tree branch! He lunged toward it. His muscles screamed, his breath came in ragged bursts, and his hands felt like stone. Somehow, impossibly, he reached it and thrust his hands upward, grasping. They closed around the rough branch and he clung there, the water still up to his neck, and his feet not touching the bottom.

Above him, the clouds broke. The stars spilled across the sky, sharp and clear, as bright as neon. He blinked the water from his eyes and found himself staring at a constellation he hadn’t thought about in years — the one his father had pointed out when he was a boy. That’s yours, his father had said. The lion watching over the travelers.

His grip faltered. His hands came apart, sliding off the coarse branch as if it had turned to glass. The current seized him again, dragging him backward, spinning him into the dark. He went under.

The world dissolved.

In his mind, he was standing on the planet Rust.

The sky was copper-red. The wind carried the dry scent of old metal. All around him, the cities of the giants lay in ruin — broken towers and rusting bridges stretching into emptiness. No movement. Only silence.

He thought he was alone. Then he saw the fire.

It flickered beneath a vast tree. Three figures sat cross-legged around it, a small pot bubbling over the flames. The smell — something savory and sweet — reached him.

Rabiah al-Adawiyyah looked up first. Her eyes shone like polished amber. “Assalamu alaykum, Asad,” she said softly. “The Lion of Islam. The Lion of Love.” She turned back to the pot and dipped a wooden spoon, tasting the broth as if his arrival had been expected.

Across from her sat Queen Latifah, wrapped in a cloak the color of deep plum. “I’m just here for the food, brother,” she said. “But I’ll say this — you got to get up to get down.”

Deek blinked, trying to make sense of it all. “What—where—”

Before he could finish, a third figure rose to her feet. Rania. Her hair was loose, drifting like ink in the red wind. She crossed the small space between them and took him in her arms. He felt her warmth, the familiar scent of her skin, and for the first time since the river, he wasn’t cold.

She drew back, cupped his face in her hands. Her palms were warm, strong. She said nothing. Her eyes were wide and dark, but within them he saw the stars — and there, shining in their depths, the same constellation. The lion watching over the travelers.

The pressure of her hands grew. Not painful, but insistent, as if she were trying to hold him in place. He tried to speak, to ask what she meant, but his mouth wouldn’t move. The warmth became heat. Her grip tightened until it was unbearable, light pouring from her fingers—

—and he was falling again, the river claiming him.

Making Calls

Sanaya scrambled through brambly bushes that clawed at her legs, scratched her hands until they bled, and tried to snatch her hijab from her head. Thank goodness for Baba’s leather jacket at least. She called 911 on the run, panting, and gave them a breathless description of her location. They said they would send a rescue team, but it would take a half hour. How useless.

Amira was up ahead, moving faster, shouting for Baba at the top of her lungs.

The mud sucked at Sanaya’s shoes, while rocks moved beneath her feet, threatening to turn her ankles. She debated with herself whether to call Mom. Her mother had been depressed and in pain, and Sanaya didn’t see the sense in adding to her problems until they knew for sure what had happened. The question resolved itself when the phone rang in her hand. It was Mom, of course.

Working to keep her voice calm and make it sound like everything was under control, Sanaya explained what had happened. At Mom’s insistence, she gave her the house address and the directions down to the beach.

The Sound of Palestine

Zaid Karim sat cross-legged on the thin carpet of the Atlanta airport chapel, having just finished praying Ishaa. The faint scent of disinfectant hung in the air. Beyond the door came the muffled hum of the terminal, but here it was still.

He was on his way home from Jordan. He’d gone to help his aunt bury her baby son, and had made a side trip to the Gaza Camp to deliver a large cash donation to the UNRWA representative.

The qanun

At the camp’s food distribution center, he had found a family of musicians performing for the refugees. The father sat on an overturned crate, plucking an oud, while his teenage daughter played the qanun and sang, her voice a small flame in the cold air. Two boys clapped rhythmically beneath her melody, laughing when they missed a beat.

The man’s wife and two other children, Zaid learned, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike months before. Yet there was no lament in the music. The song was about the orange harvest — how the whole village once turned out to gather the fruit, singing and calling to each other through the groves, their baskets heavy with organic gold.

The sound of the qanun in particular was the sound of Palestine itself – joyful, defiant, delicate but alive. It made Zaid’s heart soar. He stood among the refugees, humbled by their strength. This, he thought, was sabr.

His phone vibrated beside him, interrupting the memory. Rania. There was a sign on the wall that said no cell phone usage in the chapel, but there was no one else here at the moment, so Zaid answered the call.

“Assalamu alaykum Rania, what’s up?”

“Zaid,” she said. Her voice was tight. “I need your help. Deek is lost.”

“Lost? What do you mean—”

“At the San Joaquin. The river.” Her voice caught. “He’s gone. Meet me there, as fast as you can. I will text you the -”

“Rania, listen. I’m in Atlanta, I just—”

The line went dead.

Zaid lowered the phone, his pulse hammering. Then he raised his hands.

“O Allah, You are the Giver of life and the Rescuer of the lost. Grant Deek strength to hold fast, light to guide him, and mercy to carry him to safety. You know what we do not know. Protect him, Ya Rahman. Bring him back.”

He remained that way, palms open, as the sound of a departing plane rumbled through the floor beneath him.

Holding On

The vision of his wife, and the heat of her palms against his face, gave Deek an iron resolve he did not know he possessed. He felt utterly drained, yet he found the strength to keep his face above the swirling, racing water, even as it carried him along at a mad pace.

Again, a dark shape loomed ahead, not above the river this time but within it. It was a rock jutting from the current like the fin of some sleeping beast. With all the strength he had left, he swam toward it, not so much stroking with his arms as flailing them at the water. Yet he reached it. His chest slammed into the cold granite, arms wrapping around it. He clung there, trembling, his cheek pressed to the slick surface. His whole body shook with cold. He had lost feeling in his legs. His fingers would not close.

He clung there, not knowing why he bothered to continue trying. No one was coming for him, and he could not reach the shore on his own. He was going to die here. If that happened, he would take comfort in the fact that he’d raised two smart, strong daughters. And he’d done some good, hadn’t he? He’d donated large sums of money to important causes, and had saved Dr. Rana’s daughter, by the will of Allah. He’d started the process of establishing an Islamic school, and had secured his family’s financial future. All of that would continue. The trusts he’d set up would continue to pay his family, and the family office that the Indian kid was building – what was his name? Deek couldn’t think, couldn’t remember anything. The Indian kid, the family office, would do something…

But his wife. Rania didn’t care about the money, she was pure-hearted. She was better than he deserved. His dear wife was the saint of the family; she was the sun shining its warmth, and he was an anchor around her neck. Or maybe the anchor was around his neck, and it was this river pulling him down. All he knew was that Rania needed him. So he held on. Without hope, without warmth, without feeling in his hands, he held on.

***

Come back next week for Part 30 inshaAllah

 

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Asha and the Washerwoman’s Baby: A Short Story

The Deal : Part #1 The Run

 

The post Moonshot [Part 29] – Holding On appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

I remembered why I hate watching the news and why I am so uncomfortable when my daughter is near me when I watch it. She was sitting at the dining room table, deep in thought about how she could break up the number ten in three different ways. I was washing dishes with the news playing softly on my phone. College campuses filled the frame — students chanting across green lawns hemmed in by police in riot gear. It felt surreal, as if I were watching a war zone unfold on an Ivy League campus.

My daughter hears the shouting: “Free, free Palestine!” I try to mute the video, but it’s too late. Since our trip to Palestine last year, she has developed a kind of radar — anytime the word Palestine is mentioned within earshot, she rushes over to see what it’s about. She is drawn to her roots, pulled by something deep and familiar. She comes running to me, eyes wide with recognition and hope.

“Mama,” she says, “I want to go.”

In our home, justice isn’t something we just talk about — it is something we practice. We’ve discussed boycotts, what it means to use your voice with purpose, and how standing up to oppression is an act of faith. With all the protests these past months, she has joined them more than once, her small hands keeping rhythm with the drums as voices around her rose in unison.

But before she can finish her sentence, footage flashes across the screen of students being thrown to the ground and arrested. Confusion crosses her face. Her eyes search mine for an explanation. I froze. I realized in that moment something irreversible was happening — something I had hoped wouldn’t happen for a very long time.

My daughter was growing up in front of my eyes. These few seconds would shape her being faster than years of childhood ever could. For the first time, she was seeing just how unfair and unjust the world she lives in can be.

I tried to explain that some people don’t want others talking about the genocide happening in Gaza. Her brows furrowed. “But Mama, people are dying,” she said softly. “That’s never okay.”

That moment will stay with me forever: the first time my daughter experienced moral dissonance. It was a concept I had read about so many times, but I never felt the full weight of it until now. That painful awareness in her eyes that the values she has been taught to hold sacred do not always govern the world around her. For children, moments like this aren’t abstract. They aren’t “complicated.” They are simple and formative. They build the architecture of their belief systems.

Developmental psychologists like Lawrence Kohlberg tell us that as children grow, they move from obedience to conscience. They grow from doing what is expected to understanding why something is right or wrong. When that understanding collides with the punishments or silences of the adult world, they enter a moral freefall. Their conscience and consequence no longer align.

“Children are not born with distrust. They are taught it. They learn it by omission, by silence, by the lessons we are too afraid to name.” [PC: Melbin Jacob (unsplash]

For Muslim children today, this freefall feels endless, but still, they continue to fight the tide pushing them down. They scrape with all their might to hold on to any moral grounding that might stop their fall. 

What pushed them into this freefall? Realizing that their world punishes empathy toward Palestinians because it challenges the narratives of power. They realize that mourning the murdered is seen as defiance because the world refuses to acknowledge the oppressed.

Muslim children are taught that courage means standing for justice, but then they watch college students handcuffed for doing exactly that. They are told that honesty matters, but they see adults stay silent to keep their jobs. They see compassion rewarded only when it is convenient, and condemned when it challenges power.

This isn’t confusion. It’s something far deeper — it’s a spiritual and moral collapse. A wound that forms when their moral world shatters. Those in power have betrayed the very values they claim to uphold, and it has fractured our children’s moral foundation. In schools, we call it cognitive dissonance. In childhood, it simply feels like heartbreak.

Then we turn around and pretend to preach Social/Emotional Learning (SEL). We tell them to practice empathy. We tell them they must be self-aware. We teach them to make responsible decisions rooted in ethics. Yet the world they live in violates every one of these principles in plain sight. “Responsible decision-making” in our world has little to do with ethics. It’s about bottom lines, hidden agendas, and five-year plans that ignore human impact unless it aligns with profit or power.

How are we supposed to teach empathy when compassion for certain lives is punished? How can we model social awareness when silence is praised as professionalism? How can we ask for “responsible decision-making” when we, the adults, excuse violence because it’s “complicated,” —  which really means I don’t want to look closely enough to see the human cost?

For Muslim youth watching Gaza unfold, these lessons ring hollow. They are being asked to regulate emotions that adults are too afraid to name. They are being asked to build relationships in a world that others their faith. They are being asked to make “ethical choices” in a moral landscape that keeps shifting beneath their feet.

No wonder our kids are exhausted, anxious, and depressed. They live in a world that preaches empathy but rewards apathy. They live in a world that teaches inclusion but normalizes exclusion. The world keeps telling them, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Then we wonder why they don’t trust the systems that are meant to guide them. We wonder why they question everything. We don’t have a generation of children who “just listen” anymore because the world no longer makes sense.

The faith we once placed in authority no longer exists. We grew up believing the adults around us wanted to keep us safe. Our children are watching those same adults look away as their tax dollars kill tens of thousands of people who look and speak just like them. They are witnessing a moral dissonance so loud it drowns out every promise we make to them. Somewhere deep inside, their instincts whisper: trust no one.

Children are not born with distrust. They are taught it. They learn it by omission, by silence, by the lessons we are too afraid to name. When young people repeatedly witness injustice without repair, they internalize one of two messages: either morality is performative or they must carry the moral weight that adults have dropped.

And so they do.

They carry it.

They carry it in their sleeplessness and in their anger. They carry it in their posts, their protests, and their art. They begin to see everything as a cause because the world has shown them that indifference kills. Their restlessness is not rebellion…it is grief with nowhere to go.

Erik Erikson reminds us that adolescence is the stage of identity — of testing who they are against what the world says they should be. Albert Bandura’s social learning theory reminds us that children model what they see. So what happens when they are testing their limits in a world that models hypocrisy? When every adult in the room looks away instead of calling it out?

They learn that silence is safer than truth.
They learn that empathy must be rationed.
They learn that belonging requires erasure.

If we, as educators, want to heal this fracture, we have to start by being honest about it. We cannot ask students to “self-regulate” emotions we refuse to validate. We cannot praise “perspective-taking” while silencing their own perspectives with “It’s too complicated.” We cannot teach courage as a virtue while punishing its expression.

SEL without moral clarity becomes compliance training.
Character education without justice becomes performance.

When I think back to that night with my daughter, I realize she wasn’t just asking about Gaza. She was asking about justice itself — whether the world still has a conscience. I don’t want her heart to harden before it fully blooms. I want her to keep believing that justice, humanity, and truth still matter. I want her to keep believing that speaking for the oppressed is not a crime but a command.

As the chant for “cease-fire” echoes across the world today, people begin to find slivers of hope, but then the news breaks again: more assassinations, more bombings, more death. In that moment, I can’t help but wonder how deep this wound will go for our children.

They are living in a constant state of contradiction — hearing one thing on mainstream news while knowing, in their bones, another truth entirely. It’s a unique kind of dissonance. It is the dissonance that comes from watching the attempt to erase an entire society in real time: thousands killed, thousands more entombed beneath rubble, hundreds still breathing through dust and despair.

Yet, our children are still hearing people call this genocide “complicated.”

This is the work before us as educators and as parents: to rebuild moral trust. We need to show our children that the values we recite are not decorative words but living principles. We need to prove to them, through our actions, that integrity still exists somewhere between silence and survival.

We may not be able to undo the harm they have witnessed, but we can choose not to deepen it.
We can teach with moral courage.
We can speak with gentleness and understanding.
We can model what it means to be human in a world that keeps forgetting — because our children are watching, and one day, they will rise to rebuild what our silence allowed to crumble.

 

Related:

– Real Time Scholasticide: The War On Education In Gaza

– Ice Cream: A Poem On The Loss Of Childhood In Gaza

The post The Pedagogy Of Silence: What Muslim Children Are Learning About Truth appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

My daughters are obsessed (my son is unimpressed).

 If you are a parent of elementary school girls, you have most likely witnessed the social contagion that is K-Pop Demon Hunters. And while the name of the movie alone earned an automatic “no” the first few times my daughters begged me to let them watch it, I finally gave in. But, I made sure to sit and watch it with them—ready to pull the plug the second anything age-inappropriate popped up.

Yet, to my surprise, not only was I quickly pulled into the story but, by the end of it, I was an enthusiastic advocate of the movie. What excited me the most was that I realized the movie was full of themes that could easily be related to elements of the Islamic spiritual path, and that, in fact, I could use the film to teach my daughters about the greater jihad—the battle against one’s own self. So, here I will elaborate on some of the spiritual themes of K-pop Demon Hunters that you can bring up with your kids as they sing and play the songs on repeat.

First, a few important disclaimers:

One, this article contains a lot of spoilers. So don’t read it if you haven’t seen it–unless of course, you don’t mind.

Two, while the movie contains some Islamic themes, there are a few elements that some Muslim parents might find objectionable. One, of course, is that the movie revolves around pop-singers—so there is a lot of music throughout. Additionally, the characters at times wear clothing that would be considered immodest by Islamic standards. And there are a few parts where the characters develop crushes and romantic feelings toward other characters. If these are deal breakers, I would say just don’t watch the movie. Or at the very least, watch the movie ahead of time, make note of where those parts occur, and skip over them as needed.

However, if you are willing to overlook these elements, there are some great connections to make to the Muslim path.

Of Shayateen and Nafs al Ammara

First, let’s frame the basic story. In the world of the film, demons have always haunted the world, stealing souls and channeling them back to their king, Gwi-Ma. The trio that is Huntrix belongs to an ancient lineage of demon hunters who, along with being warriors, use songs of hope and courage that ignite their people’s souls,  bring them together, and create a shield that protects the world from darkness, the Honmoon.

Obviously, the idea of a demonic realm is easy enough to connect with the Islamic worldview. The world is full of shayateen who lay in wait, using every opportunity available to lead us astray from Allah’s path. Gwi-Ma represents Iblis, while his demon army symbolizes the many human and jinn shayateen who work to lead us astray. It is tradition that protects us from this. Our tradition also strives to preserve lineage–the various Islamic sciences and the various Sufi Tariqas that are protected by chains of transmission that lead all the way back to the Prophet Muhammad . We also use sacred sound to sanctify the world around us. Whether through recitation of the Quran or through dhikr, we employ our vocal chords to bring noor into the world. The angels hear our adhkar and fill the ether around us and expel the satanic forces of Iblis’s army.

Then there’s Rumi (whose Korean name means “sparkling beauty,” but is conveniently a homonym of the most famous Sufi poet in the world). As the Honmoon seems close to being sealed up for good, Rumi rushes to release Huntrix’s greatest single, “Golden.” The song is a celebration of arriving at self-realization with the refrain, “I’m done hiding. Now I’m shining like I’m born to be.” And yet it is on this line that Rumi’s voice strains. You see, Rumi has a secret: she is half-demon. She struggles to hide her demon patterns. Hoping that she can conceal them just long enough to seal the Honmoon for good, which will then rid her of the patterns.

We see a parallel to this in the Islamic concept of the Nafs al Ammara, the darkest—and most illusory—aspects of ourselves. This, our appetitive soul, manifests as patterns of behavior in our day-to-day—tendencies toward selfishness, arrogance, and avarice.

Self-Appraisal and the Case Against Extremism

Then enter the Saja Boys–a group of demons disguised as a boy band that threatens to steal Huntrix’s fans so that their souls can be given to Gwi-Ma. In other words, the lesser jihad against the legions of shayateen wages on in the world around us. It is an “externalization of the destitution of the inner state of the soul of that of humanity,”1, which manifests in the global atrocities and ecological crises we witness daily. Even as we face our own internal issues.

In fact, this even gives rise to new issues as the girls become infatuated with them—each lusting after a boy that meets their particular taste—and they lash out with their own form of religious extremism. The “Take Down” track they compose as a response is a representation of religious fanaticism—denouncing the demons, vowing to kill them all off, claiming there is no potential salvation for any of them. It is a counter-example to the Prophet Muhammad’s warning, “Beware of extremism in religion. Those who came before you were ruined by extremism in religion.”

In secret, Rumi is meeting with Jinu, the head Saja Boy, developing some empathy for the demon, and seeing herself in his story. She begins to see that underneath, he is not as bad as the mistakes he has made.  In this, Rumi is starting to come to terms with her own demonic aspects. She can empathize with Jinu. In this way, he becomes a sort of mirror for her ( an analogy often applied for companions on the spiritual path—that we help each other to our own faults). Then, at her bottom, after Jinu double-crosses her and exposes her to her bandmates, Rumi decides that if she is going to save the world, it has to begin with recognizing her demonic patterns, not hiding them and pretending they don’t exist, and harmonizing these two aspects of herself. This could be likened to the nafs al-lawwama—self-accusing soul, with its characteristics of disapproval, reflection, contraction, and self-appraisal. It denotes the active conscience stricken by guilt and self-reproach whenever God’s commands are violated and the lower self wins a skirmish with the rational mind.

Idol Worship and Spiritual Warfare

Rumi’s spiritual journey culminates at the Saja Boys’ final concert. They open their set with the song, “I’ll be your idol,” a song that, with lyrics like, “keeping you obsessed…I can be your sanctuary” and “I can be the star you rely on…Your obsession feeds our connection…give me all of your attention,” could not be a better fit with Islamic admonitions of idol worship—both external idols and the inner idols of our own desires, and the ways obsession with pop culture can take the place of an idol in our lives.

When Rumi arrives to sing her final song, she is only able to sing a song strong enough to defeat the dark forces of the world when she acknowledges her own demonic patterns, her nafs ammara, and harmonizes them with the higher aspects of herself—the purity of her fitra. And yet, in acknowledging them, she is able to keep them from taking her over. In this, she has achieved the nafs al mutma’ina, the satisfied soul.

In the Islamic tradition, spiritual mastery is not achieved by eliminating the nafs al ammara, but rather by surrendering it to the higher self. In other words, the nafs al mutama’ina is one that can direct its nafs ammara towards actions that serve it in the spiritual warfare against the demonic aspects of the dunya—our worldly life. For one whose soul is at peace, the lower aspects are still there but are in perfect balance.

Rumi uses her balanced soul to break the demons’ hold on their fans and to defeat Gwi-Ma’s army for good.

Navigating Pop Culture Through An Islamic Lens

In the end, this is just a movie. It is for entertainment and, of course, is no substitute for the formal study of the deen. At the same time, as Muslim parents, we are constantly trying to help our children navigate their relationship with pop culture. Our kids are constantly being introduced to new creative media through their friends (yes, even in Islamic schools), through billboards, commercials, and elsewhere. And while we often respond by trying to control what they come in contact with, it often feels like a lost cause–things just slip through. This doesn’t mean we have to adopt an “anything goes” approach, but perhaps we can also find opportunities to connect the morals and lessons conveyed through the entertainment we consume to our own Islamic values. In doing so, we can model for our kids how to consume entertainment while maintaining taqwa.

For example, with K-Pop Demon Hunters, when we sit down and watch it with them, we can vocalize the elements that are at odds with our value system (for example commenting, “I wish this character was wearing more modest clothing,” or, “Uh oh, I don’t think it’s appropriate for her to go and meet a boy on her own.”) However, we can also tap into their enthusiasm and make connections to our religious values (for example, “Wow, that really teaches us that idols aren’t always just statues, but can be anything we devote all our attention to and rely on.”) 

In this way, we can teach our kids how to engage with entertainment with the tools to discern which messages resonate with Islamic values and which ones don’t, whether or not we are there to shield them from it. 

 In a world flooded with sound and spectacle, that kind of vision is the real superpower. 

 

Related:

– Don’t Look Up – A Faith-Centred Parable Of Our Times

– Muslim Kids Reading Fantasy Novels – Yea Or Nay?

1    Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: the Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (Boston: Unwin Paperbacks, 1990), 3.

The post Until The Dark Meets The Light: A Muslim Interpretation Of K-Pop Demon Hunters appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Unlike obligatory actions which must be carried out at specific times or particular situations — outward acts such as the five daily prayers in their allotted times and Ramadan fasts; or inward acts of the heart like patience amidst trials or ordeals or remorseful repentance after sinning — there is no one-hat-fits-all-sizes for optional acts.

There is no one optional act that is the best in all situations, or for all people. Rather, as Ibn Taymiyyah wrote: “As to what you asked about concerning the best of acts after the obligations, this varies in accordance with people’s differing abilities and what is suitable for their time. Therefore, it is not possible to furnish a comprehensive, detailed answer for each individual.”1

This implies that we must each gain the spiritual intelligence to appreciate what deeds are of most benefit for us to do, given our abilities or particular circumstances. In other words, after fulfilling the fara’id and shunning the haram, our suluk should be tailored to our own specific strengths and abilities in respect to the best way to draw close to Allah and grow beloved to Him.

The path, in this sense, is a vast landscape, accommodating our individual needs or nature. We can, of course, try to self-diagnose. Or we can be wise and be prudent, and seek counsel from spiritually-rooted shaykhs and shaykhas of suluk. It’s about travelling intelligently.

II.

When it comes to optional acts of worship, we should focus on the acts we have the capacity for, are likely to be regular at, can perform well, and will best sharpen our sense of God-consciousness. This is the way to deepen faith and divine love. As for other optional acts, we try to have some share of them too, but not at the expense of ones that Allah has gifted us clear openings for.

Ibn Mas‘ud replied, when he was asked why he did not fast optional fasts more frequently: ‘When I fast, it weakens my capacity to recite the Qur’an; for reciting the Qur’an is more beloved to me than fasting.’2

III.

Not to belabour the point of spiritual intelligence, Imam Ibn Taymiyyah was asked about how faith can be increased and perfected, and if one must take to asceticism (zuhd) or to knowledge to attain this? His reply is insightful; he said:

‘People differ in this aspect. From them are those who find knowledge easier than asceticism. For some, asceticism is easier. Yet for others, worship is easier than both. So what is legislated for each person is to do what they are capable of from the good; as Allah, exalted is He, says:

“So fear Allah as much as you are able and listen and obey and spend [in the way of Allah ]; it is better for yourselves. And whoever is protected from the stinginess of his soul – it is those who will be the successful.” [Surah At-Taghabun; 64:16]

…It may be that a person does a deed of lesser merit and acquires more from it than from doing a deed of superior merit. So what is better is that he seeks what will benefit him more. That, for him, is best. He must not seek to do that which is most meritorious in an absolute sense if he is incapable, or if he finds it hard. Just like someone who reads the Qur’an, meditates over it, and benefits from its recitation, yet finds [optional] prayer difficult and does not benefit from it. Or he benefits from making dhikr more than he benefits from reciting the Qur’an. So whatever action is more beneficial and more pleasing to Allah is the best for him, than an act he cannot do properly but only deficiently and so loses out on the benefit.’3

Of course, if we are not careful, all of this critical consideration can be hijacked by the ego, so that we are deluded into false judgments about what is spiritually best for us. The ego must be removed from the driver’s seat. So while past scholars are still indispensable for learning spiritual guidance, there’s nothing like living shaykhs who are able to impart actualised, qualified tazkiyah instruction to seekers in these delirious times.

[This article was first published here]

 

Related:

– IOK Ramadan 2025: Good Deeds Erase Bad Deeds | Shaykha Ayesha Hussain

–The Forgotten Sunnahs: Ihsan, Itqaan, And Self-Reliance

1    Majmu‘ al-Fatawa (Riyadh: Dar ‘Alam al-Kutub, 1991, 10:660.2    Al-Tabarani, al-Mu‘jam al-Kabir, no.8868; Ibn Abi Shaybah, al-Musannaf, no.8909.3    Majmu‘ al-Fatawa, 7:651-2

The post Fard, Check. What Next? : The Best Deed After the Obligations appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Menopause, often whispered about and seldom discussed, marks a significant transition in every woman’s life. In the UK, most women reach menopause between 45 and 55 (average around 51), though perimenopausal changes can begin earlier, often in the early to mid-40s, and some women experience it outside this range.

For Muslim women, this change can feel even more complex, entwined with cultural expectations, spiritual practices, and evolving family dynamics. While medical resources are rightly covered by our Muslim physician colleagues, this article explores the emotional and relational dimensions of peri- and post-menopause. It considers how these phases can shape marriage, parenting, and identity, and how Muslim women can navigate them with faith, support, and grace.

Understanding the Emotional Landscape

Menopause is not only a biological milestone. It is also an emotional terrain shifting under your feet. Hormonal fluctuations may bring:

• Mood swings and irritability. Sudden changes in serotonin levels can lead to emotional volatility.
• Anxiety or low-grade depression. Anxiety may arise from changes in the body or identity. Some women experience a quieter, deep sadness as menopause approaches.
• A sense of loss or dislocation. Fertility and youth are tied deeply to self-image and societal roles. The loss of natural cycles can stir grief or existential questions.
• Relief or liberation. No longer facing menstrual cycles or contraception concerns, some women describe a freeing sense of autonomy.

From an Islamic perspective, recognizing these emotions as valid, even while striving to maintain patience, can be healing. The Prophet ﷺ said:

“No fatigue, nor disease, nor sorrow, nor sadness, nor hurt, nor distress befalls a Muslim, even if it were the prick he receives from a thorn, but that Allah expiates some of his sins for that.” [Bukhari and Muslim]

Women may also draw comfort from the lives of those closest to the Prophet ﷺ. Sayyidah Khadījah , for example, was a mature woman whose wisdom and dignity were deeply honored. The Prophet ﷺ remembered her long after her passing, saying:

“She believed in me when the people disbelieved, she trusted me when the people belied me, she shared her wealth with me when the people deprived me, and Allah blessed me with children from her and not from any other wife.” [Musnad Ahmad]

Her life demonstrates that maturity is not a loss but a stage marked by depth, contribution, and honor in the sight of Allah and His Messenger ﷺ.

Impact on the Marital Relationship

Menopause can subtly or dramatically shift the marital dynamic. The following highlights some of the how:

Intimacy and Libido

Changing oestrogen levels may decrease vaginal lubrication and arousal. For some, libido diminishes. This can cause:

• Discomfort or pain during intercourse, leading to avoidance or withdrawal.
• Hurt feelings, if either spouse misinterprets distance as rejection.
• Renewed opportunities, if couples communicate openly and explore alternative forms of closeness, such as affection, cuddling, conversation, and supportive touch.

The Prophet ﷺ reminded husbands and wives of their responsibility to one another:

“The best of you are those who are best to their wives, and I am the best of you to my wives.” [Tirmidhi]

This ḥadīth points to compassion and attentiveness as the norm for marital life. Together with the Qur’ānic ethic “live with them in kindness” [Surah An-Nisa; 4:19] and “you are garments for one another” [Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:187], it frames intimacy as a place for mercy, not pressure. In practice, couples can:

Menopause can subtly or dramatically shift the marital dynamic.[PC: David Dvořáček (unsplash)]

• Talk early and kindly. Use “I” statements about sensations and emotions (“I feel soreness / I’m worried I’ll disappoint you”) and agree on a shared plan for closeness during this phase.
• Prioritise consent and avoid harm (lā ḍarar wa lā ḍirār). If penetration is painful, pause. Explore solutions rather than pushing through pain.
• Broaden the meaning of intimacy. Affectionate touch, cuddling, massage, shared baths, and non-penetrative pleasure can maintain connection when penetration is difficult. Many couples also benefit from longer warm-up/foreplay, comfortable positions, adequate privacy and time, and lubricants (checking ingredients if that matters to you).
• Time it wisely. Choose symptom-lighter times of day; fatigue, hot flushes, or joint pain often fluctuate.
• Address the physical. A clinical check-in for urogenital symptoms, pelvic floor physio, sleep support, or treatment for dryness can make intimacy easier, and caring for health supports marital rights.
• Hold the fiqh balance. Spousal intimacy is important in fiqh, yet scholars also emphasize kindness, mutual satisfaction, and the prohibition of harm. Temporary adjustments or even pauses are recognised where there is credible hardship or illness, especially by mutual agreement. Rights are not a licence to coerce; they are a call to iḥsān (beautiful conduct).
• Reassure and repair. If an attempt is difficult, offer comfort, make duʿāʾ together, and try again another time rather than letting shame or resentment grow.
• Seek wise support. A faith-literate counsellor can help couples negotiate expectations, communication, and practical adaptations.

Menopause aware intimacy honors both fiqh’s regard for spousal rights and the Prophetic standard of gentleness, protecting wellbeing while keeping connection alive.

Role Shifts

Menopause may coincide with children entering adulthood, career changes, or a newfound quiet in the household. This may lead to a re-evaluation of marital roles. Some women flourish with more time for personal projects, worship, or deepening the spousal bond. Others feel unmoored without the familiar structure of motherhood. Husbands and wives benefit from acknowledging this inward journey and renegotiating roles with love and respect, guided by the Prophetic ideal of mutual support and kindness.

Parenting Through the Transition

For many Muslim women, parenting is a core identity. As menopause unfolds, children may be grown or nearing independence. This stage can feel like:

• Empty nest syndrome, an ache for purpose or belonging.
• Emotional tug as the mother, wanting to remain central in children’s lives while they claim their own time, space, boundaries, and identity, choosing how they live, what they believe, where they make home, whom they befriend or marry, and how they prioritize work, faith, and family.
• Opportunity for mentorship, duʿā, and building deeper, more balanced relationships, based on guidance rather than caretaking: checking in regularly without hovering, asking permission before offering advice, listening more than directing, making duʿāʾ by name for their needs, sharing skills or experience when invited, celebrating their independent decisions, agreeing healthy boundaries and rhythms of contact, and being available for practical help when requested.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

“When a person dies, all his deeds come to an end except three: ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge, or a righteous child who prays for him.” [Muslim]

As the family evolves, women may take comfort that their nurturing role continues through du‘a and guidance, even when the daily intensity of parenting diminishes. The Qur’ān also reminds us of the honour due to mothers:

“And We have enjoined upon man [care] for his parents. His mother carried him, [increasing her] in weakness upon weakness, and his weaning is in two years. Be grateful to Me and to your parents; to Me is the [final] destination.” [Surah Luqman; 31:14]

Community, Sisterhood, and Spiritual Identity

Menopause can feel like an invisible transition, often silent and rarely acknowledged within many Muslim communities. Yet opening dialogue can be transformative:

Menopause can feel like an invisible transition, but having peer support circles can help overcome isolation. [PC: Vonecia Carswell (unsplash)]

• Peer support circles, whether informal or virtual, allow sharing experiences of sleep troubles, mood changes, gratitude for newfound calm, and laughter about hot flushes.
• Imams or women’s counsellors knowledgeable in fiqh and women’s health can foster safe spaces to ask, “Is it permissible to pray when I am drenched in sweat? How do I manage fasting with hot flushes at suhoor?”
• Spiritual leadership repurposes this life stage. Older women can shape younger generations with wisdom, du‘a, and steadiness.

The Qur’ān itself honors the voice and concerns of women. When Khawlah bint Tha‘labah brought her distress to the Prophet ﷺ about her husband, Allah revealed:

“Indeed Allah has heard the statement of she who argues with you [O Muhammad] concerning her husband and directs her complaint to Allah. And Allah hears your dialogue; indeed, Allah is Hearing and Seeing.” [Surah Al-Mujādilah; 58:1]

This verse is a powerful reminder that women’s lived realities matter deeply in the sight of Allah .

The Prophet ﷺ also said:

“The best among you are those who learn the Qur’ān and teach it.” [Bukhari]

This opens the door for mature women to embrace teaching, mentoring, and guiding, drawing on their life experience to benefit the next generation.

Practical Strategies for Muslim Women

Here are some tangible ways to navigate this stage with resilience:

1. Educate yourself. Learn about symptoms, treatments, and self-care strategies, including diet, hydration, exercise, and sleep hygiene.
2. Open dialogue with your spouse. Frame conversations around feelings, not blame. Small shifts in communication can yield deep compassion.
3. Connect with sisterhood. Sharing breaks isolation.
4. Prioritize self-care and spiritual rhythm. Ensure you can observe prayer comfortably, even through sleepless nights. Some women turn insomnia into time for tahajjud, drawing strength from night worship. The Prophet ﷺ said: “The most beloved prayer to Allah after the obligatory prayers is the night prayer.” [Muslim]
5. Seek Islamic-medical guidance. Engage professionals who understand both health and faith. There are a number of Muslimah womb health and/or perimenopause experts and advocates online, such as Honored Womb, Fit Muslimah, and Barakah’s Womb.
6. Reimagine purpose. Let menopause be the prologue to new journeys such as mentoring, studying Qur’ān, or serving the community.

When to Seek Help

While mood changes and emotional shifts are normal, professional help is important if you experience:

• Persistent sadness or hopelessness that doesn’t lift.
• Severe anxiety, panic attacks, or escalating worry.
• Rage flashes – sudden, intense anger or outbursts that feel out of control, lead to verbal or physical aggression, or create fear/ongoing harm at home.
• Relationship breakdowns that feel stuck or irresolvable.
• Physical symptoms (e.g., sleep disturbance, pain, hot flushes) that significantly impact daily life.

Seeking help, whether medical or therapeutic, is not a deviation from tawakkul (trust in Allah ). It is a sign of wisdom and self-compassion.

Menopause is more than biological. It is a spiritual, relational, and emotional terrain that beckons Muslim women toward new chapters. It may stir grief or liberation, distance or newfound intimacy. It challenges identity and nurtures wisdom.

Within a faith that honors the dignity of every phase, menopause becomes an opportunity. By drawing on sisterhood, honest dialogue, renewal practices, spirituality, and faith-affirmed support, Muslim women can move through this shift with grace, finding in themselves new light, new connection, and renewed purpose.

 

Related:

– Purification Of The Self: A Journey That Begins From The Outside-In

– The Fiqh Of Vaginal Discharge: Pure or Impure?

The post The Muslim Woman And Menopause: Navigating The ‘Invisible’ Transition With Faith And Grace appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

On a cold Fresno night, Deek’s search for purpose draws him to the river’s dark pull—and to the brink of his own redemption.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13| Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27

* * *

“When the mother is safe, the family is safe, the community is safe, the world is safe. She is the sun from which warmth and love radiate. If she shines, her family blooms.” – Deek Saghir

Shark Alone

Deek woke up shivering, lying atop the covers in the sprawling hotel bed. The room was dark, with no light but the pale illumination of the night time city coming through the window. The window was open, and the curtains billowed as a cold breeze gusted in.

He checked his watch: it was only an hour past sunset. Alhamdulillah, he could still catch Maghreb. He closed the window, made wudu’, pulled on a pair of jeans and a brown leather jacket, and prayed.

After salat he sat cross-legged on the musalla, not knowing what to do. He had nowhere to go, no place to be, nothing to do, no one to be. It was said that a shark must keep swimming, or he would die. But why would he die? Could a shark drown in the sea? Or did he die of loneliness, weary of decades criss-crossing the oceans alone, killing to survive, wearing the scars of battle upon his scaly hide?

It was a mistake to think that sharks were evil. Allah created all things with a purpose. The shark had a purpose, and so too did Deek have a purpose, though he no longer knew what it was. He had no family to look after. He had no fortune to yearn for, since he’d achieved that and didn’t know what to do with it. He had no cryptos to manage, for he was out of that market.

He tapped the marble floor with a fingernail, then drummed on it with both hands, making a slapping sound against the hard surface.

He didn’t want to return to that local gym. They treated him like a long-lost relative who needed their support and kindness. It was embarrassing.

He was an Arab who’d grown up along the banks of a river, so in a way he was a creature of both sand and water, and found comfort in both. There was no sand around here, but there was water.

Foundation

A half hour later he stood upon the foundation of his unfinished, derelict house, the concrete cold beneath his boots. The wind came in long, sighing gusts from the west, fluttering the loose plastic sheeting that clung to rebar like ghosts. Somewhere nearby, an owl called once—long and low, like a warning or a question.

It was a bitter night. Fresno cold, dry and sharp. He zipped up his coat and stuffed his hands in his pockets, but the wind still found him. It crept down his collar and hissed through the empty house, whispering through joists and overhangs, promising nothing, taking nothing, leaving only the sound of moving air.

Below, the San Joaquin River was a ribbon of blackness, moonlight sliding across its surface like oil. From this height, he couldn’t see the banks clearly, only hints of motion—ripples, eddies, things unseen—and that same deep magnetic pull that rivers always had for him. A kind of whisper in the blood.

Rivers had frightened him since childhood. Not the crashing kind like the ones you saw in movies, but the slow, heavy ones. The ones that moved with their own patient will. They reminded him of people who never said much, who never showed emotion, who just kept going until one day they swallowed you whole.

Yet he couldn’t look away.

Somewhere, Rania might be praying. Or maybe reading in bed, a cold compress on her aching back. Sanaya and Amira might be curled together on the sofa, watching a movie they’d seen five times already. Lubna, probably up late studying teacher resumes, a mug of tea gone cold on her desk. Marco—who knew? Walking somewhere, talking to himself, fighting off the shadows only he could see.

And Deek was here. On a concrete slab in the dark.

Everything he’d done had been for his family. This new house wasn’t supposed to be his home, it was supposed to be the family home. A legacy they could grow into. A multi-generational property, a home to the Saghir family for a hundred years to come or more, though Deek was not accustomed to thinking in such terms.

He took his phone out and called Sanaya. He had no expectation that she would answer, yet she did, dully.

“Dad?”

“I bought a new house for the family. For all of us.”

“I don’t think Mom will want that.”

“Will you come see it?”

“What, now?”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a long pause. Finally Sanaya said, “Text me the address.”

Spooky

Driving up a winding road into the low hills north of Fresno, Sanaya checked the GPS repeatedly. It was dark outside, but the full moon provided a pale illumination that outlined the surrounding hills and mesas.

Amara chewed on a fingernail. “He bought a house out here? Where even are we?”

“Above the river somewhere. Fresno County. Remember, don’t say anything about Mom. She doesn’t want us to.” Mom had not been to work in three days. Her back still hurt, and she’d fallen into deep depression, barely rousing herself to eat. Sanaya had confiscated her pain pills, and now Mom wouldn’t talk to her.

“Whatever.” Amara spit a fingernail fragment onto the car floor.

“Don’t do that, it’s gross.”

“Ask if I care.”

Sanaya sighed. Amira had been constantly sullen and withdrawn lately. She was very attached to Dad, and had taken his absence hard. Sanaya didn’t know what was going to happen, how things would work out, but she herself felt weary. Her life had flipped. Those who were supposed to care for her had turned their faces away, and now she found herself caring for them. She’d become her depressed mother’s caretaker and her moody sister’s parent. Between that, work and school, she was exhausted.

Her nostrils flared with anger as she thought about it. But it didn’t matter. Bring it on. She could handle it, along with whatever other test this dunya gave her. Amara might be closer to Dad, but she was a lot more like Mom than she would ever admit.

Sanaya, on the other hand, knew in her heart that she’d been created from Dad’s mold. She carried his strength and determination, for he was a man who set his vision on a goal and never gave up, no matter what.

* * *

Deek watched as Rania’s brown mini-SUV came up the road, crunched along the gravel driveway, came to a stop, and disgorged Sanaya and Amira. He grinned with pleasure. He hadn’t been sure Sanaya would come, nor that Amira would come too.

The two of them approached to about ten feet and stopped, looking around, surveying the property. Sanaya wore only slacks, a light sweater and a hijab, and stood shivering in the frigid wind. Amira stood with her arms tightly crossed, biting a fingernail.

Deek walked to his daughters, took off his jacket and put it around Sanaya’s shoulders. Then he spread his arms out wide. “What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful up here,” Sanaya said, slipping her arms into the jacket sleeves. “But that’s not a house.”

Deek laughed. “Not yet. A year from now, inshaAllah, it will be a six bedroom, three bath house with a pool, hot tub, tennis court, you name it. Give me your wish list and we’ll build it. And we have fifty acres of land up here. Fifty acres! We could have horses.”

“It’s too far from school and work. I couldn’t live up here.”

“Come on Sanaya, don’t be like that. Give it a chance.” He looked to his younger daughter, who had not yet spoken a word. In the past she would have come to him and hugged him, and spoken up in defense of his choices.

Amara spat out a bit of fingernail. “It’s spooky. And I think you’re living in a dream world.” She turned and walked back to the car, kicking a rock out of her way.

Deek’s heart sank into his stomach. “Why did you come then, if all you want to do is put down what I’m doing?”

A Beautiful Thing

Sanaya gazed at him levelly. “Because Maryam Rana called me. She told me what you did. She’s been accepted into a treatment program at the Mayo Clinic. You did a beautiful thing, Baba. You saved her life.”

A rush of emotion threatened to flood Deek’s eyes with tears. Sanaya had not called him Baba in many years. At some point she’d switched over to the less personal “Dad,” and he had let it go, because you had to let young people be who they were.

“Alhamdulillah,” he murmured. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“It means a lot to me. She told me that you paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills. And the fact that no one in the community knows, that you didn’t make a thing out of it. It says a lot about you.”

Deek shrugged, embarrassed. “She talked about you. Called you whip-smart. She’s a sweet girl. I would do the same for you, your sister or your mother. I would do anything in my power to help you.”

“Are you sure about that? They say that charity starts at home, but sadaqah is not just money, you know. You told me something, once. You said that if anything ever happened to you, that I should take care of Mom, because she’s the sun from which warmth and love radiate. When she shines, our family blooms. And you said that mothers are the world’s heart, that when they are safe, the family is safe, the community is safe, the nation is safe, and the world is safe.”

“I said that?”

“Yes. Now I’m going home. It’s freezing up here. Aren’t you going back to the hotel?”

“In a while. I want to explore a little.”

Sanaya shook her head. “You’re crazy, Baba. And I’m keeping the jacket.” She turned and walked away.

Dark River

When the sound of the car had faded, Deek walked around until he found the path that led down to the river. Without making any conscious decision, he began walking downhill to the river. Unlike that last river visit, this time it would be dark. This thought slowed his feet, but he felt the river’s deep, beautiful waters calling to him. The river was pure and clean, and yes, ruthless as well. It was beneficent, yet would snatch the life away from any fool who approached it with less than utmost caution.

He had no plan or goal beyond a vague notion that the river could cure his angry emptiness.

The surface of the water was a black mirror that displayed a rippled reflection of the moon above. At the river bank, he rolled up his pant legs and climbed carefully down to the water’s edge. He put his wallet and keys beside a large rock, but kept his phone, putting it on flashlight mode. Still wearing his shoes, he waded into the frigid, black water.

The phone’s light seemed to shy away from the extreme darkness of the water, and served only to remind Deek of how untamed and merciless this river could be. The current was fast; rocks shifted beneath his feet; eddies rippled and splashed. Reeds danced in the night breeze.

He stayed in the shallows, the water just at his lower shins, yet even here the water cut into his legs with a ferocity that made him hiss through his teeth. It was Sierra Nevada snowmelt, as icy sharp as knives.

Rather than tranquility or clarity, Deek found himself filled with rage. Everything he’d done and accomplished had turned out to be useless. Well, if no one needed him, then he didn’t need them either.

A small boulder, about the size of a toaster, stuck up out of the water. Deek bent, wrestled it out of the mud, cocked an arm, and with a shout, heaved it out toward the center of the river, where it landed with an unseen splash.

He found another, bigger rock. This one came up easily, but was heavy. With a grunt he brought it up to his shoulders, then, using both hands, shot-putted it into the air, screaming as loudly as he could. The wind snatched away his scream as the boulder splashed down nearby, wetting him.

Going Back

Driving downhill a short distance away, Sanaya pulled the car to the side of the road and stopped.

“Did you hear something?”

“I thought the river looked awesome in the moonlight,” Amira remarked. “And it would be totes cool to have horses. But I didn’t want to tell him that. Why are we stopping?”

Sanaya craned her neck, peering into the darkness behind them. “I’m not sure it was a good idea to leave him alone.”

“Baba can take care of himself. He’s strong.”

“We should go back.”

Amira rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

Sanaya gunned the engine and cut the wheel, whipping the car in a 180 and causing the back wheels to fishtail. She hit the accelerator and the car leaped forward.

“What are you doing?” Amira gasped.

“Something’s wrong.” She sped up the mountain road, hugging the curves. This was not like her. Mom and Amira were the ones with second sense, not her. Yet she pushed the pedal and went faster, barely staying on the road.

Man Against Nature

Deek took another step deeper into the river, then another, until he was in up to his knees. His feet had gone numb from the cold. He spread his arms for balance and closed his eyes.

This was dangerous, he knew. The river was deep in the middle, and the bottom could drop out at any point. People drowned in the San Joaquin and Kings rivers all the time. If he slipped and fell, no one would know until his body turned up somewhere downriver.

He stood for a few minutes, braced against the flow, letting the icy water wash him clean.

“La ilaha il-Allah,” he breathed. “Muhammadur-Rasulullah.”

For reasons he could not articulate, he stepped in further, closer to the deep center. The water was up to his waist now. It was a stupid thing to do, but also thrilling. If he could defy this mighty river, or perhaps harmonize with it, he could do anything. It was a real thing, a real accomplishment that he could take pride in. Man against nature, wasn’t that the oldest and most primal struggle of all.

Or was the original struggle man against Shaytan? Confusion swirled through his mind. He lifted a foot to return to the shore, but a strong current lifted him and he lost his balance. The excitement vanished as panic flooded his mind. He waved his arms and took two quick steps, recovering his balance. The phone was gone.

Desperate, he lunged toward the shallows and slipped, falling completely into the water. He felt himself being pulled along the bottom. His head began to ring from the shock of the freezing current. He hardly knew up from down. Reaching blindly with his hands, he grasped a clump of reeds growing in the shallows. He seized them and used them to hold his position as his knees found the river bottom and his head broke the surface. He gasped desperately, sucking in air.

He was on hands and knees and the water was up to his neck. The current tugged at him hard, trying to drag him under again. It was a living thing that had tasted him and savored his fear, and would not release him until it consumed him. Deek was overwhelmed with terror, not of death but of the river itself. His mind froze, and he remained stuck in place, holding onto the clump of weeds like a lifeline. He didn’t have the energy to rise to his feet. The cold was in his bones now. He yearned for sun and warmth.

He remembered what Sanaya had said: Mothers are the sun from which warmth and love radiate. He needed Rania. He understood now how foolish and stubborn he had been. It was time to put all ego, resentment and pettiness aside, and go home to his wife. He gathered his strength and tried to rise, but he was weak, and the river snatched him away, dragging him toward the center, where the water was deep, lightless and unforgiving.

In The River

Sanaya circled the hulking shell of a house, peering into every shadow, while Amira ran to check the caretaker’s house.

“He’s not there,” Amira reported when she returned. “Maybe he took an Uber back to town.”

“That makes no sense. His car is here. Plus, no one passed us on the road.”

“Maybe he -”

Sanaya cut her off. “Stop talking and just listen.” She knew that Mom had an extrasensory gift of some kind, and it had been passed to Amira, but not to her. This did not bother her. Every child inherited something different from their parents, and all was a barakah. So she watched Amira intently as the girl turned slowly in a circle, eyes closed.

Amira’s eyes opened wide, and fear filled them like dark water. “He’s in the river.”

The hair stood on the back of Sanaya’s neck. “Let’s go!” The two of them began to run down the trail to the river below.

***

Come back next week for Part 29 inshaAllah

 

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Asha and the Washerwoman’s Baby: A Short Story

The Deal : Part #1 The Run

 

The post Moonshot [Part 28] – Dark River appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Deek builds his new financial team, explores a riverfront property, and shares a moment of brotherhood with Imam Saleh. But is it enough?

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13| Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26

* * *

Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “The world is a prison for the believer and a paradise for the unbeliever.”
– Sahih Muslim 2956

Everything You Love Will Be There

Lying in bed that night, trying to calm himself enough to sleep as a thousand thoughts whirled through his mind, Deek could still see it as if it were yesterday. The prayer rugs rolled out across the living room floor, the faint scent of oud lingering from his father’s sabha beads. Deek – eight or nine years old at the time – sat cross-legged beside little Lubna, the cool tile pressing through his thin cotton pants. Mama leaned against the sofa and smiled, while their father sat with his back straight, palms on his knees, eyes bright with knowledge and love.

“Children,” his father said, “in Jannah, there is no pain, no sadness, no hunger. There is no death. Everything you love will be there, but better.”

The words no pain, no sadness had washed over him like a lullaby, but the rest of it—everything you love will be there—that was what set his imagination alight.

In his mind, Jannah was him and Marco with every game they ever wanted to play. A perfect baseball diamond that stretched to the horizon, gloves that never tore, bats that never cracked. Two gleaming BMX bikes waiting by the fence line. Skateboards with the latest urethane wheels and endless smooth pavement to ride. No homework, no chores, no one calling them in before sunset. Just open sky, the smell of grass, and all the time in the world.

 

He could still hear his father’s voice that evening, low and certain: “And the greatest joy is that Allah will be pleased with you. You will never fear again.”

Years later, when Deek had his own family, Jannah meant something else. It was a place where Rania would be free of pain. Where he and Lubna could talk without pride rising like a wall between them. A place where Iraqis of all faiths and colors lived together in peace, where the Palestinians were victorious and free, and where no child ever cried from hunger.

And Marco—always Marco—would finally find himself there. He would know what he was meant to do, and he would live without the gnawing anxiety that had shadowed him all his life. There would be music and laughter, not in smoky bars but in the gardens of Paradise, where the rivers flowed not with liquor but with mercy.

Now, older and slower, Deek no longer pictured Jannah as a guarantee. He knew better than to assume his own worthiness, or to imagine who might be kept out. Faith had softened into humility. But maybe—just maybe—he and Marco would enter through the same gate, side by side, into that lush, forgiving world. A world free of poverty and loss.
A world where the joy of youth never ended.

The Offer

The next morning he logged onto the dashboard Zakariyya Abdul Ghani had given him, and was stunned to see that the job was done. All the outstanding medical bills had been paid. Deek hadn’t expected that. He’d imagined a few of the bills would be caught in bureaucratic limbo — an unreturned call, a missing invoice — but when he logged in to check the account, every item was reconciled, paid, and neatly logged in an online ledger.

He called Zakariyya to confirm, and the young man’s soft voice came through, calm and assured. “Yes, sir. I pulled a few all-nighters. I sensed your urgency in wanting it done quickly.”

That was enough for Deek. He drove straight to the office under the flight path. The same faint scent of cardamom greeted him when he walked in, the same rattle of glass from the window as a plane passed overhead.

Zakariyya stood from behind the desk, surprised. “Mr. Saghir. I didn’t expect you—”

Deek waved him down. “Relax. I’m not here to check your math.” He pulled a chair closer, sat, and leaned forward. “I’m here because I need someone like you. I’m setting up a family financial office. You’ve shown me you can handle pressure, and you don’t miss details. I want you to run it.”

The young man blinked. “Me? I’ve never done anything like that. I’m barely out of college.”

“You’re young, but that’s fine.”

He remembered a time years ago, when they’d done a remodel on the house and Deek had hired a twenty-three-year-old Iraqi immigrant named Fadil to run the job. The boy could barely speak English. Rania had thought Deek was crazy. But Fadil had a degree in civil engineering, experience as a tradesman, and had to start somewhere. He’d done the job well, and within a few years was running his own small construction firm. Fadil still called every Eid to say thank you.

Deek smiled faintly at the memory and added, “Sometimes taking a chance on a young person pays off.”

Zakariyya adjusted his glasses, clearly thrown off balance. “How much money do you need to manage?”

When Deek shared the figure, Zakariyya sat up very straight and whistled, then added, “MashaAllah, I mean. But sir, I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes,” Deek replied. “How much are you making now?”

The young man hesitated. “Fifty thousand per year.”

“That’s respectable. But I’ll triple it. One hundred and fifty, plus benefits, plus performance bonuses. You will search out and recruit the team.”

Zakariyya stared at him, speechless. “I… I don’t know what to say,” he repeated softly.

“Say bismillah,” Deek said. “And get started. Find an office space — one without planes overhead, please. Then let’s start with an accountant, an investment analyst, and an office manager. A legal advisor, but not full-time. Also, a Shariah compliance officer, but again, a consultant, not full-time. That last could be a remote position if we don’t have anyone local. I might have a few people in mind for other positions. I’ll keep you posted.”

A plane roared overhead, and the windows rattled again. But this time, Deek didn’t even flinch.

As he stepped out into the parking lot, the late afternoon light turned the pavement gold. He felt steady, almost serene. For once, he wasn’t patching holes or running from fires; he was building something that might last. Not just wealth, but order. Not chaos, but continuity. The only other thing he needed was his family. He had to find a way to cross this barrier, which was feeling more insurmountable every day.

The River House

Standing outside Zakariyya’s office, Deek’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw a message from Marcela Gómez.

I have a property for you. When are you available?

He typed a single word: Now.

A moment later, her reply appeared.

Meet me in half an hour. I’ll send the address.

The address dropped into his messages: a location he didn’t recognize, somewhere on the edge of the city, close to the river.

The road wound through farmland and low bluffs before ending at a half-finished driveway that curved uphill toward a skeleton of steel and concrete. The structure sprawled across the ridge — modernist lines, concrete, and pillars — but most of it was bare framing beneath a vast unfinished roof. Tall grass and weeds grew where floors should have been. A blue porta-potty leaned on its side, sun-bleached and cracked.

Marcela was already there, her SUV parked near a temporary construction trailer. She waved as he pulled up.

“Mister Saghir,” she called, “what do you think?”

He climbed out and took it in. The roofline was elegant, almost soaring, but the space beneath it looked more like a ruin than a home. “What am I supposed to do with this? Sleep under the stars?”

She laughed softly. “It’s true that it’s only ten percent finished. The builder ran out of money and walked away. But look at what you get — fifty acres of riverfront land.”

She pointed east. Through the tall grass, Deek could see the San Joaquin River glinting like hammered silver. Cottonwoods and valley oaks lined the banks, their leaves flickering in the breeze. Sprays of orange and red poppies illustrated the hillsides, making the scene look like a painting. The air was crisp and clean, though as he inhaled deeply, he caught the faintest whiff of skunk, which made his nose wrinkle.

“Down there,” she said, “are old trails that lead straight to the water. You could hike, fish, build anything you want. To find riverfront land in Fresno is almost impossible. This is a miracle waiting for money.”

Deek raised an eyebrow. “A miracle that needs plumbing and walls.”

Marcela gestured toward a small stucco cottage tucked near the tree line. “There’s a caretaker’s house. One bedroom, kitchen, bath. All finished. You could live there while the main house is built.”

He stood in silence for a long moment, surveying the land. The wind carried the scent of dry grass and river water. Somewhere below, a hawk cried.

Marcela folded her arms. “Don’t look at what it is,” she said. “Look at what it could be.”

Just Like That

“Alright.” Deek turned to her. “How much?”

“Six million dollars. I bargained them down from seven, and it wasn’t easy. You said not to bother negotiating, but I am Colombian; it’s in my blood. I would have felt like an idiot taking their asking price. I could maybe – maybe – get them down to five five, but it wouldn’t be easy.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

Marcela’s face went hard. “It’s a good price for this property. The question is, are you serious or not serious?”

Deek raised one arm in the air, fist pointing to the sky. “Six million it is. I’ll take it.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Just like that? You’re not kidding?”

“Just like that.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “You don’t hesitate, do you?”

“It’s worked for me so far.”

“The sale still has to go through escrow,” she said, handing him a small key ring. “But that’s a formality. These are for the caretaker’s house. You can check the place up -”

“Check it out.”

“That’s what I said. Check it out, hang out, even sleep there if you like. Might be best not to move your stuff in until escrow goes through, though.”

He took the keys. The metal was warm from her hand.

He hesitated, then added, “Marcela, I want to talk to you about something. I’m building a family financial office — investments, property, all of it. I want you to run real estate acquisitions. Homes, apartment complexes, whatever makes sense.”

She considered. “Actually, Mister Saghir, commercial real estate is where the profit is right now. Fresno is full of empty buildings — offices, strip malls. Oversupply means we can buy low. If you want income, that’s where it is.”

Deek smiled. “Then you’re the one I need. Come on board.”

Marcela tilted her head, half-amused, half-intrigued. “You don’t waste time.”

Deek held his palms up to say, “What’s the word?”

Imitating Deek’s decisive gesture, Marcela Gómez shot an arm into the air and declared, “I will think about it!”

Deek laughed. “Fair enough.”

The Caretaker’s House

After she drove away, Deek wandered down the slope, the tall grass brushing against his jeans. He reached the edge of the ridge where the land fell away to the river. The sun was high now, painting the world in gold and shadow. It reminded him of his childhood vision of Jannah: grass, a river, and time to play. Though he and Marco were not children anymore, they hadn’t played any sports together in a long time.

Below him, the water moved slow and heavy, glittering with light. Cottonwoods swayed, and red-winged blackbirds flashed through the reeds. A blue heron stood motionless in the shallows. The air was warm and thick with the smell of river mud and wild fennel.

Deek sat on the grass, watching the heron lift off in a single, slow beat of its wings. He took out his phone, snapped a photo of the river stretching wide and calm, and sent it to Rania.

He waited. The screen stayed dark. No reply.

He pocketed the phone and kept watching the water. The wind came down from the hills, rippling the grass around him like the surface of the river itself.

The caretaker’s house was smaller than he expected — smaller, in fact, than his hotel room. One narrow bedroom, a kitchenette, and a bathroom with a stand-up shower. No bathtub. The place smelled faintly of pine cleaner. Someone had left a few personal items behind: a chipped coffee mug, a paperback novel with a cracked spine, and a faded baseball cap hanging on a nail by the door.

The walls were rough plaster, the furniture plain but solid — a table, two chairs, a firm sofa. It was clean, though. That counted for something. He could live here. He’d lived in worse.

He opened the windows. Warm air drifted in, thick with the scent of wild grass. There was no AC unit, only a ceiling fan that ticked as it spun.

He wandered through the back door and discovered a small patio he hadn’t noticed before — a slab of concrete shaded by a vine-covered trellis, with a built-in barbecue facing the river. From here, he could see the water shimmering between the trees, slow and drowsy under the midday sun.

He pulled out his phone again. Still no reply from Rania.

He stood there for a while, listening to the wind and the distant call of a jay, then slipped the phone back into his pocket.

The Hoops at Masjid Madinah

He couldn’t bring himself to go back to the hotel. Instead, he drove to Masjid Madinah.

The air inside the masjid was cool and smelled faintly of carpet and rose water. After the prayer, Imam Saleh clasped Deek’s shoulder and said, “You look tired, brother. Come outside for a bit.”

They stepped into the parking lot, where a cheap basketball hoop and backboard were bolted to a rusted light pole. The asphalt was cracked, the rim slightly bent.

“Come on,” the Imam said, tossing Deek a ball. “Let’s play a few rounds. It’ll clear your head.”

Deek chuckled. “I’m not very good.”

“Neither am I,” the Imam said, already dribbling. “Bismillah.”

Twenty minutes later, Deek was bent over, panting, sweat running down his temples, while the Imam sank another shot with effortless grace.

“I thought you said you weren’t good,” Deek said, hands on his knees.

“I said neither of us was good. But you’re worse.”

They laughed. The sound echoed across the empty lot.

Still catching his breath, Deek nodded toward the hoop. “You ever think about putting in a proper court?”

The Imam shrugged. “There are a lot of things we’d like to do. But this isn’t Masjid Umar. This community isn’t wealthy.”

Deek wiped sweat from his forehead. “How much would it cost? Not just for a basketball court but everything on your wish list — masjid expansion, classrooms, basketball court, whatever you need.”

The Imam stopped bouncing the ball and tucked it into his side. For a moment, the only sound was the hum of the traffic on the main road nearby.

“Brother Deek,” he said finally, “you’re not the community piggy bank. I don’t want you to start seeing me that way — or for me to see you that way. I value you as a friend, and as a member of the community. That’s all.”

The words struck Deek harder than the Imam’s best shot. He nodded slowly, touched in a way he hadn’t expected.

“Understood,” he said. For the first time in a long while, he felt something like belonging. It occurred to him that this feeling of brotherhood and companionship was a tiny glimpse of Jannah, where such feelings would be universal, and loneliness would be a thing of the past.

“You and your family,” the Imam added. “You’re all welcome here.”

At that, Deek’s momentary feeling of contentment collapsed in on itself. Did the Imam know of his family situation? Was he giving him a message?

Deek suddenly felt very tired. He shook the Imam’s hand and trudged to his car. Loneliness might not exist in Jannah. But Deek lived on earth.

***

Come back next week for Part 28 inshaAllah

 

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Asha and the Washerwoman’s Baby: A Short Story

The Deal : Part #1 The Run

 

The post Moonshot [Part 27] – Everything You Love appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Masjid leadership in the U.S. often have sincere intentions to do what is best for their community. However, when faced with the choice between funding an expansion or investing in human resources, leadership frequently falls into what I call the Expansion Trap. This trade-off usually centers around accommodating the larger crowds that gather for Jumu‘ah, Taraweeh, and Eid prayers. Though these decisions are made with good intentions, they often lead to empty prayer halls, overworked staff, and the mismanagement of funds. To understand why this often occurs, we must first delve into the inner workings of the decision.  

The Drive for Expansion

At first glance, expansion feels like the most natural choice. A mosque’s primary purpose is to provide space for worship, so what better use of funds could there be than to welcome more believers in prayer? Additionally, expansion projects are highly visible and celebrated within the community. They serve as a symbol of “progress,” reflecting how success is often measured culturally by physical growth. While the outcome is tangible and exciting, it often comes with hidden, long-term consequences that weaken the very mission the masjid was built to serve.

The Question of Compensation

There is also the idea that those who work for the mosque should remain humble and not expect substantial income from mosque funds. Instead, people are encouraged to work for free for the sake of Allah ﷻ. After all, what deed is better than one done sincerely for the sake of Allah ﷻ? 

The Core Dilemma

This raises the question: to what extent does that justify fundraising for expansion, especially when the rows of the mosque remain empty during the five daily prayers? Furthermore, how can volunteers dedicate themselves solely to serving the mosque if doing so creates a financial deficit in providing for their families? 

Masjid Expansions: Counting the Costs

“Years go by collecting funds, sometimes from frustrated congregants, while the mosque remains empty.” [PC: Bayu Prayuda (unsplash)]

Let us first consider the reality of expanding the mosque to accommodate more worshippers during Jumu‘ah and the nights of Ramadan. Expanding the mosque leads to more overhead expenses for the mosque on a monthly basis. At the same time, the mosque is left empty for 25 out of the 30 days of the month. When a seasoned Mufti and Imam was asked about this disparity, he advised that our priority should be strengthening the community within the mosque by reviving a genuine concern (fikr) for the effort of da‘wah and practicing it in depth. This is not to say that accommodation and expansion should not be considered, or that they are not relevant or important. Rather, the argument is about where to place expansion on our priority list. If a mosque were to procure $250,000 over the year, how should that money be spent—or, in this case, in what cause should it be spent primarily?

Choosing to pursue an expansion project comes with significant trade-offs—massive budgets, long fundraising periods, and increased overhead expenses—making it one of the most common bottlenecks and financial pitfalls that mosques face, all while the daily rows of the mosque remain underutilized. You can’t meaningfully expand with just $200k. If expansion is pursued, it often means going all in—and suddenly the fundraising budget jumps from $250k to $2.5 million. Years go by collecting funds, sometimes from frustrated congregants, while the mosque remains empty.

The mosque’s primary focus often becomes raising and allocating funds for expansion, while everything else takes a backseat. One example is a mosque that raised over $2 million in a single week, yet allocated only about $70k for all its youth expenses for the entire year—including compensation for the youth director and the full cost of programming. That’s a mere 3.5%. These same mosques often voice concern about empowering the youth, yet their actions continue to fall short.

In reality, the mosque sets itself on a financially unfeasible path, always playing catch-up, and often bearing an unfinished look for years due to ongoing construction. If you feel like I’m describing your mosque, you’re not alone—many mosques in the West follow this approach. But if we truly want to be effective with our resources, we must ask: Is it practical? And is it justified?

Investing in People, Not Just Places

An Imam, meanwhile, is expected to manage and lead the community, while not sponsored for a single management training seminar that would equip him with the skills to do so. For active and dedicated members, the message becomes clear: the mission has more to do with what appears in the sight of the public than with what truly impacts the public.

Examples like these are not just common, but in fact represent the better end of what we are dealing with as a society. Focusing primarily on expansion may seem like an exciting vision for the mosque’s future, but the trade-offs carry severe long-term consequences. 

Allah ﷻ says:

‘The mosques of Allah are only to be maintained by those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, establish prayer, give zakah, and fear none but Allah. It is they who are expected to be rightly guided.’ [Surah at-Tawbah;9:18]

In other words, the true maintenance of a mosque depends on the quality of the Believers behind it—those who fear Allah and strive to carry out what is most beneficial for the community. 

This brings us to the real priority: human resources. There are two areas we must rethink—how we fundraise for human resources, and how we compensate them fairly. While funds are being raised, dedicated members, employees, and workers of the mosque often remain underpaid—or worse, not paid at all. The notion that expecting compensation for work done for the mosque is shameful (‘aib) is unjustly imposed. The proper balance is this: those serving the mosque should not make extraordinary demands for compensation, while those in charge must provide sufficient funding to support them in their livelihood.

The word sufficient is key here, because too often mosque boards live comfortably—even lavishly—while imposing a so-called “sufficient” lifestyle on their dedicated employees, leaving them barely above the poverty line, if not worse. Furthermore, those in charge often fail to invest in training and resources for the very Imams and staff who serve the community, since funding is reserved almost exclusively for expansion projects. And so we come full circle: the mosque’s facilities are expected to advance, while its dedicated members are left behind.

This is not to say that no work should be done solely for the sake of Allah ﷻ. Volunteering keeps us grounded and sincere—but it is best suited for those already financially independent, like a congregant with a stable career who offers his time after work to clean the mosque or organize programs purely for Allah’s ﷻ sake.

“While funds are being raised, dedicated members, employees, and workers of the mosque often remain underpaid—or worse, not paid at all.” [PC:Masjid MABA (unsplash)]

Dedicated employees, however, should not be expected to give their all while being underpaid. Our salaf often maintained a side income for stability, and that same wisdom holds true today. Providing Imams and staff with a fair salary—while allowing them space to earn modestly on the side—is both healthier and more effective for the mosque and its mission. That same member can now choose to go above and beyond their specified hours by volunteering for the mosque—not as part of their salary, but purely for the advancement of the mosque itself.

Truth be told, everyone who is part of the mosque carries a genuine and noble intention to contribute to the larger mission of da‘wah. Rare is the case where someone gets involved with the mosque for personal gain—because in reality, there isn’t much personal gain to begin with. In this sense, it is a pleasure and an honor to witness the hard work, the blood, sweat, and tears of mosque board members, Imams, and dedicated community members at large. We are all in it ultimately for the pleasure of Allah ﷻ.

A Warning for the Future

However, that same zeal and passion for doing good can sometimes blind us to the real consequences we may be incurring for our community. If mosques continue to expand without first strengthening their core members, it is only a matter of time before they follow the path of many churches—where congregants come only once a week. Over time, that presence dwindles until the mosque becomes nothing more than a place to visit, like a museum, eventually abandoned and sold off, just as many churches have been in our own time. What is most alarming is that some of this pattern is already beginning to creep into our mosques.

On the flip side, imagine a mosque that, though not grand or extravagant, is filled to 20–30% of its capacity on a daily basis. Congregants return regularly for weekly programs that foster brotherhood and sisterhood, making the mosque a true hub of community life. It becomes a safe haven—a place where people are guided by a motivated Imam who nurtures their spirituality, supported by a well-organized team of volunteers providing meaningful Islamic programming for brothers and sisters of all ages.

Solutions: Building Stronger Mosques

To create sustainable mosques, we can:

• Prioritize Human Resources: Allocate the largest share of funds to staff such as Imams, youth directors, and secretaries before considering major construction projects.
• Provide Professional Development: Invest in leadership and management training for Imams and staff so they can lead effectively.
• Fair Compensation: Ensure mosque employees and the Imam receive fair, livable salaries that allow them to focus on serving the community without financial strain. Their standard of living should reflect the average lifestyle of the community they serve.
• Balance Between Paid and Volunteer Work: Encourage volunteers who are financially stable to contribute their time, while ensuring dedicated employees are paid for their roles.
• Measured Expansion: Only expand when daily attendance and programming consistently exceed current capacity.
• Transparent Budgeting: Clearly communicate how funds are allocated so the community understands and supports the priorities.

The Path Forward: People Over Blueprints

Each of us in a community has a role to play, and each role must be supported differently. If we make human resources the primary focus of mosque funding—particularly Imams, secretaries, youth directors, and others—we can empower these individuals, ignite their spirituality, and shape the mosque into a second home not only for its dedicated members but for the wider community. With strong and effective members in place, a larger congregation will naturally follow, along with more successful and impactful programming for the mosque.

The future of the Muslim Ummah in the West depends on how we strategize our priorities within our sacred spaces. Every year, either a new mosque opens or an existing one announces plans to expand. Alḥamdulillāh, the financial and economic standing of our communities has improved—especially with the emergence of second- and third-generation Muslims. It took us decades to reach this point. Now that we are here, we must tread carefully and strategically. It is vital that we invest in human resources, provide flexibility for our most dedicated members—such as Imams—and focus on developing Believers, not just blueprints. 

May Allah ﷻ accept the efforts of everyone striving in the path of da‘wah, forgive them and their families, and unite us all together in His Eternal Gardens.

 

Related:

– What Is An Imam Worth? A Living Wage At Least.

– Selecting Members For Masjid Boards: Ideal Muslim Leadership

The post The Expansion Trap: Why Mosques Are Struggling Despite Fundraising appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Deek reconnects with Lubna, hires a young accountant, and shares a lunch with Marco that results in a stunning surprise.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13| Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25

* * *

“All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.” – Surat Al-Fatihah

An Invitation

He was on his way to the hotel when Lubna called to report that she’d filed the non-profit paperwork for the school and was scouting candidates for the board and teaching staff.

“Beautiful,” Deek said. “MashaAllah. We are going to build something amazing, inshaAllah.”

He heard the smile in Lubna’s voice. “I think you’re right. Have you found a location for the school?”

“No, but I met an exceptional real estate agent. I think she’ll be able to find what we need. Listen, you’re in charge of hiring teachers, and I wouldn’t infringe on that. I just want to ask if you’d consider Marco as the science teacher.”

“Your friend Marco? The one who can never keep a job?”

“Marco Feliciano Colón Tirado, yes.”

Lubna giggled.

“What?”

“Nothing. It sounds funny when you say it fast like that. Deek, we’re trying to run a real school here, not some scheme to do favors for our friends.”

“Hey. Marco has multiple science degrees, including in biology, physics, chemistry and I don’t know what else. He’s a genius. Could you at least review his resume and interview him? Then make whatever decision you feel is right. You have the final word.”

She sighed. “Fine. Tell your vagabond genius to contact me. And hey, big brother.”

Deek turned into the hotel driveway and parked the car. “Yeah?”

“You could come by and visit sometime. Anytime, really.”

Deek shut off the car, suddenly conscious of his breathing. He felt strangely moved. Lubna had never invited him to her home, except occasionally in Ramadan or on Eid, and those invitations had become fewer and fewer in between, because they never ended well.

Yet now it seemed she had forgiven him for a lifetime of meanness and verbal abuse. Or at least she was on the path to forgiving him. And she’d done it faster than he had any right to expect. There was no doubt which of them was the better person. It was Lubna, hands down.

“I could?”

“Yes… Hammo misses you.”

He restrained himself from laughing. “Did he say that?”

“You could come for dinner tonight. And bring Rania and the girls.”

“That’s problematic. But definitely soon, inshaAllah.”

A Terrible Miracle

After he hung up the call, he saw that Rania had finally sent a one-word reply to Deek’s question – of yesterday, for goodness sakes – about whether she had been at Jum’ah. Her reply consisted of one word: “No.”

So she’d read his mind again, mirroring what he’d heard from the Imam: Allah will take care of me. He put his head in his hand, thinking. He and Rania were connected in ways he did not understand. It was more than a marriage.

What had Imam Saleh said? This world is not sustained by wealth, but by Allah’s mercy. Whoever clings to Him, Allah provides in ways they never imagined.

Deek believed this. He’d seen it many times. He’d told the man at the gym how he and his family had fled Iraq in the middle of the night, and now he found himself thinking of the event that forced their flight. It was a terrible yet wondrous miracle that had happened to his father. This event, more than anything, had shaped his father’s personality and steered the course of his life. Lubna had been very small when it happened, and the truth had been kept from her. Deek wondered if she deserved to know.

He rubbed his cheeks vigorously with both hands. He didn’t want to think about these things. He had a lot to do.

Upstairs in his hotel room he made wudu’, changed into jeans and the old t-shirt he’d left home with, and prayed. Then he called Zakariyya Abdul-Ghani, the young accountant Imam Saleh had told him about. Zakariyya, who sounded young, said he could see Deek next week.

“I don’t usually work on weekends,” the accountant pointed out.

Deek explained that his business was urgent, and insisted on a meeting that very day, and the young man agreed, though he didn’t sound excited about it.

Deek made himself a sandwich with sourdough bread, albacore tuna, mustard and provolone cheese. He ate it quickly while surveying the financial markets on his computer, then opened the backpack with the cash, stuffed a few packets into his pockets, and headed out to meet Zakariyya.

Beneath the Flight Path

The accountant’s office was on the second floor of a low-rise building near the airport, its stucco walls sun-faded and the sign out front half missing. Inside, the narrow waiting area smelled faintly of printer toner and cardamom tea.

The young man himself rose from behind a desk when Deek entered. He was thin to the point of fragility, mahogany-skinned, a neatly trimmed beard, and large brown eyes that reminded Deek of a deer taking its first hesitant steps through the woods. His suit fit him awkwardly, as if it had been bought with ambition rather than cash.

“Mr. Saghir?” he said, extending a hand. “I’m Zakariyya. Please, have a seat. Would you like some tea?”

Deek sat. “No, but thank you. Are you Pakistani?”

“My family are Indian Muslims from Bihar state. But I was born in Los Angeles.” The boy’s voice was so soft Deek had to lean forward in his chair to hear. He couldn’t help noticing the accountant’s youth—he looked barely out of college—but when Zakariyya began talking about finances, the uncertainty fell away. His voice became steady, deliberate, precise.

“You said by email that you need help handling medical disbursements,” Zakariyya said. “That’s simple enough. We can open a dedicated account in your name, with me as an authorized manager but not a signer. You’ll transfer funds into it as needed, and I’ll process payments directly to hospitals or doctors once you approve the invoices. Everything will be logged and reconciled monthly. You’ll have full visibility online.”

Deek nodded, impressed despite himself. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

A faint smile touched the young man’s lips. “Masjid Madinah is one of my clients. I handle their payroll and donations. I also do work for a few small medical practices, so I’m familiar with billing systems. I can have you set up by the middle of next week.”

“I need it set up by Monday morning.”

Zakariyya sat back in his chair and smiled uncertainly. “I have other clients. I have to be fair to them.”

At that moment a roaring sound began overhead. It increased in volume until the windows rattled in their frames. It was the loudest sound Deek had heard in a long time, and it flashed him back to his youth in Baghdad, and the occasional explosions that had rocked the city. When the sound passed, he realized to his shame that he had come off the chair and dropped to one knee. He stood, brushing imaginary dust from his knees.

Zakariyya cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m sorry. We’re beneath the airport flight path. How about if I bring you that tea now?”

Deek nodded. “Yes, thanks.”

A Pop Quiz

While Zakariyya was gone, Deek steadied himself. He was deeply embarrassed. He looked around the small office. A tall bookshelf was crammed with books on financial management and accounting, but there were also books on history and philosophy. On the top shelf there were two different translations of the Quran, and one in Arabic only. Zakariyya’s diplomas and certifications hung on the wall behind him and Deek saw to his surprise that the young man had a B.A. in Economics, a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Accounting.

Zakariyya returned with the tea. The fragrance of cardamom filled the small office.

The teacup was hot in Deek’s hand. “You have a master’s degree? How old are you?”

Zakariyya smiled. “I’m twenty seven. I look younger.”

“Out of curiosity, do you know anything about cryptocurrency?”

The accountant nodded. “I did a minor in blockchain technology. The course had just been introduced. I’ve tried to stay up to date on the development of decentralized finance, layer 1s and 2s, NFTs, stablecoins, tokenized assets and so on. But I’m not an expert.”

Again Deek was impressed. Not many people outside the crypto world could have named those technologies. “Have you heard of a family office?”

Zakariyya blinked. “I feel like I’m back in school getting a pop quiz. Yes, of course. It’s the structure high-net-worth families use to manage everything in-house. Why do you ask?”

Deek sipped his tea. “Just wondering. It’s something I heard about. Listen, I’m going to give it to you straight.”

“Okay.”

Setting the teacup down, Deek pulled a banded wad of cash out of his pocket and set it on the desk in front of Zakariyya. “If you and I are going to work together, I need you to prioritize my business. Hire someone to help with the other clients if you need to, but I want you personally handling my business. That – “ he pointed to the stack of cash – “is ten thousand dollars. That’s not an advance. It’s an incentive for taking me on as a client. This – “ He pulled another stack of $10,000 out of his pocket and set it beside the first – “is an advance. I’m telling you what my needs are. If you do well with this medical disbursement, I could have more work for you. But I must be first priority, and I will pay for that privilege. If you don’t feel comfortable with this, that’s fine. I can find someone else.”

Zakariyya’s eyes had widened slightly. He nodded slowly. “I understand. Yes, okay. I’ll have it set up for you by Monday morning.”

“MashaAllah,” Deek said. “Excellent.”

They discussed a few details—security protocols, recordkeeping, how large transfers should be handled—then another plane thundered overhead. The window rattled again, and this time Deek resisted the urge to duck.

Child to Adult

Over the next few days, Deek stayed busy, partly to distract himself from his own thoughts. His mind kept wandering inexplicably to the tragedies that had befallen his family, and other families they had known, in Iraq. As well, he found himself haunted by the dream he’d had of the planet Rust. Was this a side effect of the Namer’s potion, that his dreams took on increased clarity and weight, and persisted like the bitter aftertaste of black coffee? It was as if he’d left some part of himself stranded among those giants, forever separated from his family by the vast, black gulf of space.

He made a number of calls and held a few meetings to arrange the surprise he had in mind for brother Faraz.

* * *

Zakariyya did indeed have the medical payments operation up and running by Monday morning, and Deek – not wanting to hear more of Dr. Rana’s effusive praise – emailed Dr. Rana to inform him.

* * *

Dr. Zuhair, the rich and handsome Egyptian engineer who was the board president at Masjid Umar, called him.

“I mentioned your offer to the board,” he said. “They feel I was hasty in rejecting it. They wish to accept your offer of a one million dollar donation. You will be granted a seat on the board, and Dr. Ajeeb will be fired, as you stipulated.”

Deek was shocked. “You told me that was impossible, that it was a violation of your integrity.”

“I still feel that way. But I was outvoted.”

“Well… I don’t want that anymore. I will donate a quarter million for now, but I don’t want a seat on the board, as I have enough on my plate already. And I don’t want you to fire Dr. Ajeeb. In fact I insist that you do not. That was a petty and vindictive demand on my part.”

“SubhanAllah. I am speechless. It’s as if you have grown from child to adult in two weeks.”

The condescending remark irritated Deek, but he let it pass. “My accountant, Zakariyya Abdul-Ghani, will arrange a cashier’s check or wire transfer, and will need a receipt for tax purposes. I’ll have him contact you.”

* * *

Public Enemy

He managed to convince Amira to have lunch with him. She was reserved, not her usual quirky, affectionate self. She wore a t-shirt that said, “FIGHT THE POWER.” Beneath it was a logo featuring a black and red flag, and a red rose.

Pointing to it, Deek said, “I didn’t know any young people still listened to Public Enemy.”

“Public who? This is a Rose City Antifa shirt.”

“A what?”

Amira laughed – the first time she’d done so during their meeting that day – and Deek smiled.

“Miri, honey,” he said. “Could you ask your mom to please call me?”

The laughter disappeared. Amira lapsed into silence, and on that somber note Deek drove her home and dropped her off. As he stopped in front of the house, he saw that the side gate and fence had been removed, and a variety of construction equipment was parked in the driveway. From the rear of the house, he thought he could hear the sounds of hammering, and the buzz of a wood saw.

“What’s going on? What is all this?”

Amira opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then shrugged and said, “Mom’s doing some work.” With that she exited the car and strolled into the house.

The Park Lunch

Marco called him out of the blue on Wednesday. “Lunch is on me,” he said, in that tone that dared Deek to argue.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, man. I got a spot.”

Deek drove to the rough end of town where Marco lived, parking a few doors down from a corner store with a faded sign that read Al-Quds Market. The owner, an elderly Palestinian in a gray kufi, waved from behind the counter. The place didn’t sell liquor—unique in this part of Fresno—and for that reason, it was a minor miracle of survival. Its shelves were stacked with pastries, candy bars, canned beans, and a glass deli case full of foil-wrapped meals that looked like they’d been made that morning in someone’s kitchen.

“Pick what you want,” Marco said, opening the deli case. “It’s all good.”

Deek glanced over the options: lasagna, chicken and rice, something that looked like grape leaves, and several containers of what appeared to be macaroni with tuna and mayonnaise.

“Two of those,” Marco told the old man, slapping a few crumpled bills on the counter. A few minutes later they left with the food and a couple of bottled teas.

They walked two blocks to a small park wedged between a laundromat and an auto repair yard. The grass was patchy, the benches scarred with initials and half-burned by cigarettes. A pair of homeless men slept under the shade of a fig tree, and a thin woman paced near the trash cans, mumbling to herself.

They sat on a bench with peeling paint. The park smelled of marijuana smoke and urine. Oblivious, Marco popped open his container and started eating. “Best five dollar meal in Fresno,” he said through a mouthful.

Deek smiled. The mac n’ tuna was actually quite good, with chopped black olives and a flavor of spicy mustard. Every now and then he glanced around the park, watching a shirtless man argue with a trash can, and his hand drifted absently to the knife sheath at his hip.

No Walking Away

“I’ve been doing a lot of gigs,” Marco said finally. “The new trumpet sounds like joy with butter on top.”

“That’s great, man.” The news made Deek genuinely happy. “I’ve been busy too. I’m founding an Islamic school.”

Marco looked up, eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”

“Yes. I think you’d be a good candidate for science teacher. Lubna’s the hiring manager. You want to put together a resume and call her?”

Marco stopped chewing. “Deek, don’t do that. I don’t need charity.”

Deek exhaled noisily, exasperated. “How is it charity? If anything you’re overqualified. And I have a feeling you’d be good with the kids.”

“It might be fun to be a teacher,” Marco mused. “When would it start?”

“Next school year. But if you take the job, you’d have to commit. No half measures. No walking away.”

Marco stared at the ground for a moment, fork idle in his hand. “Let me think about it.”

Deek nodded, watching a plane drift high above, glinting in the sunlight. “That’s all I ask.”

They finished the meal in companionable silence, the noise of the street rising around them — traffic, a distant siren, the crackle of a wrapper caught in the wind.

A Surprise

When the meal was finished, Marco said, “I have a surprise for you.”

“Okay. Is it my birthday and someone didn’t tell me?”

Marco sat up straight, cleared his throat, then began to recite in nearly perfect Arabic:

Aoothoo billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajeem,
Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Raheem,
Alhamdulillahi rabbil-aalameen…

He went on to recite all of Surat Al-Fatihah, the opening chapter of the Quran. His voice was strong and melodic, hypnotizing in fact, and although his accent wasn’t perfect – he couldn’t quite get the “dha” in “dhaalleen” – it was very good.

When he was done, Deek shot his fists into the air and said, “Allahu Akbar! That was amazing.”

“You’ve been saying you wanted to hear me recite the Quran.”

“It was fantastic. But… why now?”

In response, Marco recited the shahadah, the Islamic testimony of faith. Again, his Arabic was nearly perfect. As he did so, Deek felt goosebumps break out on his arms.

“So… you’re Muslim now?”

Marco smiled. “Obviously.”

Deek leaped up, grabbed Marco around the waist and lifted him off the bench and into the air. Marco laughed and demanded to be put down.

Deek set his friend on his feet. “Why now?” he repeated. “I’ve known you all your life. You’ve always been someone who knows everything but believes in nothing.”

“You’re wrong. I believe in you. I saw what you were like when you were poor, and I’ve seen what you’re like now that you’re rich, and I’ve realized that whatever life throws at you, you just get better. Part of that is because you’re an extraordinary human being, but I think part of it is the guidance of your faith. And I want that. I need it. Badly.”

Tears came to Deek’s eyes. Damn Namer’s potion. He sat heavily on the bench and covered his face with his hands. From the auto repair shop, he heard the sharp, stuttering “rat-tat-tat-tat… whirrrrr—clack” of an impact wrench removing the lug nuts from someone’s tires. A breeze gusted, and the leaves of the fig tree beside him rustled. A homeless man asked for change, and Deek looked up to see Marco give the man a dollar. The sun was bright overhead, but not hot. It was all beautiful.

***

Come back next week for Part 27 inshaAllah

 

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Day Of The Dogs, Part 1 – Tiny Ripples Of Hope

Searching for Signs of Spring: A Short Story

 

The post Moonshot [Part 26] – Beneath The Flight Path appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

It was the 27th day of Ramadan. After Fajr, it felt like any other day — ordinary, quiet — until the evening, when everything changed.

We hear about the passing of brothers and sisters in Islam, but losing someone close to you is different; most people aren’t prepared for it. That day replays in my mind, minute by minute. Twenty minutes before maghrib, I ran into my mother’s room, trying to wake her. My wife began CPR until help arrived, and we rushed to the hospital. I stood on the other side of the words we hear in movies: “We tried everything we could, but unfortunately, your mother has passed away.” I collapsed like a child, and in that moment, I accepted that my life would never be the same.

The Silence After the Burial

The first few days after my mother’s passing moved quickly. From the ghusl, the janazah, the burial, the steady stream of family and community who surrounded us with prayers, food, and support. In many ways, those early days carried me on autopilot. The structure of our faith and the presence of loved ones softened the initial blow. But then comes the question: what happens next?

“The stillness of a chair, the absence of a voice, the memories that return uninvited, sharp and vivid. That silence speaks volumes, but only to those who live inside it. No one else can truly feel that particular pain, because it belongs uniquely to you.” [PC: Silvestri Matteo (unsplash)]

Over the following week or two, people continued to check in: friends, relatives, colleagues, and even people we haven’t spoken to in years. They called, they visited, and they brought meals. Their kindness meant more than words could capture. Yet, slowly, life began to call them back to their routines. People moved on, and the days got colder. What they couldn’t see and what no one can truly enter into is the quietness of the home after everyone leaves. The silence that echoes through rooms once filled with laughter or simple conversation. The emptiness of a chair, the absence of a voice, the memories that return uninvited, sharp and vivid. That silence speaks volumes, but only to those who live inside it. No one else can truly feel that particular pain, because it belongs uniquely to you.

In those moments, a realization sets in: nothing can really prepare us for loss. No book, no story, no imagined scenario. Grief strips away our illusions of control and reminds us how fragile we are. We are vulnerable, we are temporary, and we are completely dependent. In that raw state, one truth becomes undeniable — Allah is in control of everything. He is Al-Ḥayy (The Ever-Living), while we are travelers destined to return to Him.

Learning the Phrase “Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn”

We grow up hearing the phrase: Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn. “Indeed, to Allah we belong, and to Him we shall return.” It is said almost automatically when we hear of someone’s passing or any kind of hardship. But what does it really mean?

The Prophet ﷺ taught us that when a calamity strikes and a believer says these words sincerely along with the duʿāʾ, “Allāhumma ajirnī fī muṣībatī, wa akhlif lī khayran minhā” — Allah promises to reward that person and to replace their loss with something better. [Sahih Muslim]

On paper, it is easy to read. But when the loss is someone so close: a parent, a sibling, a spouse, or a child, the words carry a weight that shakes your very being. This isn’t just “a calamity.” This is someone you saw every day, shared meals with, traveled with, laughed with, and someone who knew you almost as well as you know yourself. Suddenly they’re gone. The phone calls that once came so naturally now go unanswered. The little routines that felt permanent are no longer possible. And the question creeps in: Where did they go?

The truth is, they were never truly ours to begin with. They belonged to Allah . He is the One Who gave them life, sustained them, and protected them. We were simply entrusted with their presence for a time. Like a borrowed pen at school, which you use for a while, but eventually it must be returned to its rightful owner. The difference is, this “pen” was your whole world, your comfort, your love. And yet, even they must return to the One Who created them.

This realization is painful, but it is also freeing. Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn becomes more than words. It becomes a lens through which we see the reality of life, loss, and our ultimate return. We have returned the loved one to their rightful owner, and Allah is the best of caretakers.

What Should We Expect?

• Time doesn’t heal all wounds. People often say, “time heals everything,” but that isn’t true. Time allows you to accept reality, but it does not erase the wound. Nothing truly heals except recognizing the essence of life — that this world is temporary and the real life is the eternal one. Your loved one is not lost; they are simply ahead of you on the journey, and you will follow when Allah wills.

• You will feel lonely. Loneliness can feel heavy, but it can also be a gift. The Prophet ﷺ himself would retreat to Mount Ḥirāʾ in solitude before revelation. Use your moments of loneliness to turn back to Allah , to speak to Him , and to find strength in His Company. Going on hikes, walks, and looking at the creation of Allah while talking to Allah will help this feeling.

• Your heart will feel uneasy. Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. There will be days that feel normal, and then suddenly the weight returns. In those moments, hold fast to the promise of Allah: “Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest” [Surah Ar-Ra’ad; 13:28]. Fill those pauses with dhikr, with prayer, with the Qur’an — and you will find the unease gently softened.

• You will cry. Tears will come — and they should. Crying is not a weakness. It is mercy. The Prophet ﷺ himself cried at the loss of his loved ones. When his son Ibrāhīm passed away, tears flowed from his eyes. When asked about it, he said: “The eyes shed tears and the heart grieves, but we do not say except that which pleases our Lord.” [Bukhārī and Muslim] Let your tears flow, and let them turn into duʿāʾ for the one you have lost.

What Shouldn’t We Expect?

• Don’t expect the pain to vanish. Grief doesn’t disappear one day. It softens, it changes shape, but it never fully leaves. The absence of someone you loved will always be felt, and that’s a sign of the bond Allah placed between you.

• Don’t expect others to fully understand. Family, friends, and community may offer comfort, but they can never truly feel your exact loss. Each grief is unique. Expecting others to “get it” in the same way you do will only deepen the hurt. Instead, lean on Allah , the One who knows what is in every heart. This is your test and may not be theirs.

• Don’t expect the world to pause. For you, life has changed forever. For others, it continues as normal. People will move on, routines will resume, and calls will slow. This is natural. It doesn’t mean your loved one is forgotten, but it means you must carry their memory in your own way. Don’t have high expectations even from your closest friends and family.

• Don’t expect faith to erase sadness. Sometimes we imagine that strong faith means we shouldn’t feel broken. “I pray so I should be strong”. Yaʿqūb wept until his eyes turned white from sorrow over Yūsuf . Our faith isn’t as strong as Yaʿqūb , but even at that level, we learn that strong faith doesn’t remove sadness; it gives you the strength to carry it with patience and hope.

How Do We Prepare for Grief?

There is no manual for grief, no checklist that makes the pain easy to manage. But there are steps we can take to prepare our hearts and our families for the reality of loss.

Here are a few reflections that may help:

• Study the stories of the Prophets and Companions. Allah tells us: “Indeed, in their stories there is a lesson for those of understanding.” [Surah Yusuf; 12:111] We spend so much energy teaching ourselves and our children how to live in comfort and “succeed” in this world, but the greatest people who ever lived, the Prophets and Companions, endured the greatest struggles. Their trials drew them closer to Allah and became timeless examples for us. While we don’t ask to be tested, when we are, their lives remind us how to respond with patience, resilience, and trust in Allah .
• Teach your children who Allah is. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Be mindful of Allah, and He will protect you. Be mindful of Allah, and you will find Him before you… If you ask, ask of Allah; and if you seek help, seek help from Allah.” [Tirmidhī] From a young age, connect your children’s hearts to Allah through love. Let them know that even if the world is against them, they are never alone if Allah is with them. When a loved one leaves, they have returned to Allah . They may no longer be here, but Allah is always with you.
• Visit the graveyard often. The Prophet ﷺ said: “I had forbidden you to visit the graves, but now you may visit them, for indeed they remind you of the Hereafter.” [Muslim] Going only after a loved one passes can feel overwhelming, almost unbearable. But making it a habit beforehand softens the heart and normalizes the reality of death. The graveyard is not an end, but a resting place until the day that truly matters.
• Speak about the Hereafter openly. Allah says: “And this worldly life is nothing but diversion and amusement. And indeed, the home of the Hereafter — that is the [eternal] life, if only they knew.” [Surah Al-‘Ankabut; 29:64] Too often, we focus only on worldly success while neglecting to talk about the akhirah. Make it normal in your home to speak about the deeds that prepare us for eternal life. Let these conversations shape your family’s mindset and priorities. In the world that we live in, these conversations only come when reality strikes.
• Leave a legacy of good deeds. The Prophet ﷺ said: “When a person dies, his deeds come to an end except for three: ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge, or a righteous child who prays for him.” [Muslim] Show your children the good you do for your parents and grandparents. When your time comes, they will continue that chain of goodness. This is a mercy from Allah that it benefits the one who has passed and comforts the loved ones left behind, knowing their duʿāʾ still reaches their family member in the grave, and will help them in their most difficult times.
• Seek support from others. Grief can feel isolating, but Islam encourages leaning on community. The Prophet ﷺ said: “The example of the believers in their mutual love, mercy, and compassion is that of one body: when any part of it suffers, the whole body responds with wakefulness and fever.” [Bukhārī and Muslim] Reach out to trusted family, friends, or teachers when the burden feels heavy. Sharing your feelings is not a weakness; it’s part of healing, and it allows others to fulfill their duty of compassion toward you.

Grief is something we do not talk about often enough. Having faith is something we should be so thankful for. We are able to completely rely upon Allah , and with Him we are able to continue to live this life. Today we grieve, and tomorrow people might grieve for us. We ask Allah to forgive us for our shortcomings and allow the pain that we go through inside as a means of preparing to meet Him. May Allah allow us to be united with our loved ones in Paradise. Ameen.

 

Related:

– Death The Greatest Teacher: Three Life-Lessons From The Child I Lost

– Sharing Grief: A 10 Point Primer On Condolence

The post Unheard, Unspoken: The Secret Side Of Grief appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Once close partners against the U.S. occupation, Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban government now trade accusations of betrayal, revealing deeper crises of mistrust, militarism, and faith across the Muslim world’s most volatile border.

October 2025

 

Strained Relations Four Years After Taliban Takeover

Four years after a Taliban conquest of Afghanistan widely welcomed in Pakistan, relations between the two neighbors have struck a low as each accuses the other of supporting its insurgency, reaching a nadir this week with skirmishes on the border.

Taliban soldiers

Where the Taliban emirate accused Pakistan of supporting a Daesh underground, Pakistan’s military-led coalition regime has accused Afghanistan of supporting insurgents, including a namesake insurgency in northwest Pakistan’s Pashtun borderland. The more pressing insurgency in Pakistan stems neither from Afghan malfeasance, as Islamabad claims, nor is it an entirely domestic affair, as Kabul counters.

Buried among the rhetoric, blame-trading, and saber-rattling are several inconvenient truths that neither regime nor its cheerleaders seems inclined to acknowledge, but which are critical to factor into any solution.

Contrasting Claims and Misrepresentations

Pakistani accusers rightly note that insurgent leaders Nur-Wali Asim of the Mahsud clan and Gul Bahadur of the Wazir clan have received refuge in Afghanistan, and that attacks picked up pace since the Taliban return to Kabul in 2021. Afghan rejoinders rightly point out that the roots of Pakistan’s crisis are domestic and largely self-inflicted: a consistently militaristic policy in the borderland has failed for years regardless of insurgent leaders’ whereabouts, while none of Afghanistan’s other neighbors have faced such a problem despite their own insurgents’ “refuge” in the emirate.

The most extreme claims on either side resort to obfuscation. On one hand are exaggerated Taliban claims of Pakistani complicity in the American occupation of Afghanistan, which ignore the greater role of other states —especially Pakistan’s archrival India, a cheerleader of the occupation right to and beyond its end— and the respite that successive Pakistani regimes gave despite considerable American irritation. On the other hand are nationalistic claims, especially loud among supporters of the Pakistani military, that claim primordial Afghan hatred, conspiracy, and ingratitude.

Historical Ironies and Shifting Allegiances

The latter claim contributed to an atmosphere where thousands of Afghans have been callously and humiliatingly uprooted from decades-long refuge. Ironically, this claim is itself a misdirected rejoinder to longstanding claims by the preceding, American-installed government of Afghanistan, which claimed in ethnicized terms that the Taliban were merely a cat’s paw of scheming “Punjabi” Pakistanis. By painting opponents as Pakistani puppets, the Afghan regimes of 2001–21 disingenuously portrayed their own utter dependency on a foreign invasion as a sort of nationalist virtue against their neighbor’s meddling.

The claim that Pakistan’s insurgency has accelerated since 2021 misses the point that for much of the prior fifteen years, its deceleration had been assisted through Taliban mediation, which persuaded many such militants to help fight the United States in Afghanistan rather than fight the Pakistani government. This stance was particularly emphasized by the Haqqanis, who have had a decades-long policy of support for Pakistan as far afield as Kashmir.

Nor was it an exclusively Taliban stance: in 2004–05, Pakistani corps commander Safdar Hussain, who led the first campaigns in northwest Pakistan against Wazir and Mahsud insurgents, urged them to abandon revolt against Islamabad and focus on jihad against the Americans. An unamused United States repeatedly attacked deals between the military and the insurgents; for example, Sirajuddin Haqqani mediated at Miranshah between Bahadur and the military in 2006, only for American airstrikes to sabotage the agreement.

The Rise of New Militants

Qari Saifullah Akhtar

This prompted a number of Pakistani militants to disavow the Pakistani regime and take up arms. Many were longstanding fighters who felt betrayed by the state that had once backed them, and ignored the pleas of such scholars as the Usmani brothers, Muftis Taqi and Rafi, to stand down.

One such militant was Saifullah Akhtar, whom Rafi had known in the 1980s and complimented in a subsequent 1990s book that also saluted the Taliban movement; his newfound hostility to a regime within whose military he had significant contacts was particularly dangerous, yet he was eventually persuaded to leave Pakistan and fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, where he was killed.

A Balancing Act Between Foes and Allies

The modus vivendi that the Taliban adopted was to maintain ties with both sides of the Pakistan war, the army and the insurgency, in a manner similar to how the Pakistani military kept links with both sides of the Afghan war, the United States and the Taliban. Rejecting insurgency against Pakistan, on numerous occasions, Taliban mediation redirected Pakistani insurgents against the United States.

A number of secondary Taliban commanders did sympathize with the Pakistani insurgency against a state they saw as having betrayed them: a sentiment that no doubt retains currency in the rank-and-file. But this was always an informal minority: Sirajuddin, whose uncles Khalilur-Rahman Ahmad and Ibrahim Umari played a key role in coordination with Pakistani officers, also urged such Pakistani counterparts as Bahadur to focus their attention on the Americans in Afghanistan.

This preceded a major turning point in 2014, during a major campaign by the Pakistani army, yet this success relied in part on also internecine disputes among the insurgents after the elimination of a series of leaders.

A major factor was the emergence of Daesh, to which large parts of the insurgency defected. Although it opposed both rival governments in Islamabad and Kabul, Daesh’s principal target was the Taliban, whom it accused of inauthenticity and—ironically given today’s circumstances—servitude to Pakistan. The conflict with Daesh forced the Taliban to draw closer to Pakistani insurgents, such as Bahadur and Mahsud preacher Nur-Wali Asim, as a counterweight.

Reform Efforts Under Imran Khan

Imran Khan

A major factor in draining the insurgency was the major attempts at reform made by Imran Khan’s Insaf Party, which assumed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial government. Khan had drawn support in large part from his opposition to the American “war on terror” and Pakistani acquiescence therein: by all accounts, the Insaf government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa was a major improvement, and retains major support in the province to this day.

It also tried to incorporate the historically autonomous, but increasingly militarized, Waziristan borderland under its control, which Nur-Wali opposed as this approach promised to solve many of the grievances on which he drew.

Nur-Wali’s Hardline Stance

Though Nur-Wali reorganized the insurgency and, to an extent, its conduct, he refused to negotiate, painting his fight as part of a historical Mahsud resistance against British colonialism and a Pakistani state seen as its American-backed heir. In fact, the Mahsuds who fiercely fought Britain had largely supported Pakistan right up to the 2004 incursion in Waziristan—a product not of primordial Pakistani illegitimacy but rather involvement in the much more recent American war on terror. This stance was far harsher than that of the Taliban and even affiliated insurgents like Bahadur, and has precluded meaningful negotiations.

Insurgencies and Unneighborly Behavior

The Pakistani claim that the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 coincided with a sharp uptick in attacks within Pakistan ignores the fact that the previous decade’s decline owed in part to repeated Taliban mediation on Islamabad’s behalf. On the other hand, as I pointed out at the time, Taliban wariness of Daesh meant that they cultivated ties with Pakistani insurgents: famously, upon capturing Kabul, they executed Daesh leader Ziaul-Haq Zia but released the Pakistani insurgent leader Faqir Mohammad.

Yet this was not an inherently anti-Pakistan move: Faqir had been imprisoned by the previous Afghan regime precisely because he was seen as more amenable to negotiations with Islamabad, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, now Taliban interior minister, immediately held negotiations between Imran’s Pakistani government, including the military represented by spymaster Faiz Hameed, and militants like Bahadur.

Post-Imran Escalation and Missteps

Whether this would have succeeded is unknown—certainly some militants continued to snipe away at Pakistan regardless and might have never reconciled—but the 2022 coup that ousted Imran, and quickly courted relations with an anti-Taliban United States, escalating not through targeting insurgent units in Pakistan but bombing across the Afghan border—the sort of unilateral action that was bound to raise Taliban hackles. The Pakistani military, led by Asim Munir, has made a point of theatrical escalation with Kabul—yet its initial focus was not the Pakistani insurgency, which gained ground over 2023, but crushing Imran’s still-influential party through major, occasionally bloody, suppression and electoral manipulation.

Deportations and Counterproductive Policy

The response toward the insurgency has similarly been unimpressive and counterproductive to its stated aims, particularly the mass deportation of Afghans that began in autumn 2023. This was a political decision that aimed to give the impression of vigilance by whipping up anti-Afghan sentiments; in its rivalry with the Insaf party, the military establishment and its many hangers-on have portrayed both Taliban and Afghans broadly as scheming confederates of Imran in a sort of fifth column. This provoked widespread hostility among affected communities in the borderland.

It was also practically counterproductive: the mass deportations of Afghans across the border logistically confounded the task that Pakistan demanded of the Taliban, to intercept Pakistani insurgents. This was further complicated by the fact that Daesh remained an underground threat, assassinating many Taliban officials, fighters, and leaders, including Sirajuddin’s uncle Khalilur-Rahman, governor-general Daud Muzamil, and corps commander Hamdullah Mukhlis. With their own challenges, the Taliban are hardly in a position to solve Pakistan’s largely self-inflicted woes.

Half-Hearted Cooperation and Growing Misgivings

This does not, however, remove the fact that Taliban cooperation has been at best half-hearted. In part, this stems from its reluctance to alienate non-Daesh militants, who have, in fact, flared up in indignation whenever the emirate has tried to relocate them away from the Pakistani border. In part, it stems from misgivings toward a confrontational Pakistani military bent on scapegoating Afghanistan for all internal challenges. It also stems from an insistence that the Pakistani insurgency is a primarily internal issue: after all, the Taliban also hosts opposition militants from other countries, none of which have caused anywhere near the amount of trouble as the Pakistani insurgents. To this extent, the argument made by both Khan and the Taliban that the Pakistani insurgency stems from internal Pakistani grievances holds truth.

Parallel Rejections and Border Tensions

Yet if the Pakistani military has been aggressive, Taliban denials ring irrelevant if not hollow. The indignation the emirate evinced when Islamabad flirted with exiled critics is hardly more than that in Pakistan when it sees the likes of Nur-Wali given deferential treatment in Afghanistan. The rejectionism that Nur-Wali directs toward Islamabad is similar to that which Daesh directs toward Kabul. No state, Pakistan or others, tolerates repeated cross-border raids of the type the Taliban are unwilling to interdict for reasons more of political expediency than principle.

Structural Causes and Continuing Violence

On the other hand, the emirate’s ability to control the border has been severely circumscribed by such clumsy and destructive policies as the mass deportations of Afghans. The Taliban spent over a decade, even while fighting a guerrilla war against the United States, mediating with the Pakistani insurgency on behalf of the same military that now scapegoats it.

The Pakistani war is not a product of Taliban inaction: even if the Taliban surrendered every Pakistani insurgent leader from Afghan territory, the twenty-year militarization, social upheaval, and political disputes that exacerbated the war remain. Some twenty senior insurgent leaders have been killed, almost on a yearly basis, since the Waziristan conflict broke out in the mid-2000s, and there is little reason to suppose that the capture or killing of Nur-Wali or Bahadur would make a long-term difference without addressing issues in an approach that the military of late has flatly shunned. Bombing Kabul in pursuit of Nur-Wali might give some short-term catharsis and a few bragging rights, but it only threatens to exacerbate mistrust without addressing these underlying issues.

When these obvious points are raised, however, a military increasingly intolerant of contradiction lashes out.

Forward Steps and Barriers

The solution is not as complicated as it might seem. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan’s insurgents stem from the same geographic stretch, the border highlands, which both states have long struggled to control. The simplest task is, in military terms, joint security collaboration against both Afghan and Pakistani insurgents, and in sociopolitical terms, an improved and more accountable governance. A sensible policy would see Afghanistan and Pakistan cooperate on this region rather than trade mostly spurious accusations and recriminations.

The barrier to such commonsense is the exponential mutual mistrust, related to the two neighbors’ addiction to alliances that have only ever escalated the problem—for Taliban with Pakistani insurgents who are airily whitewashed as “good Muslims” regardless of the number of Muslims their war victimizes; and for Pakistan’s military with a United States that it has shamelessly courted since 2022, partly pursuant to its feud with Imran, regardless of the sociopolitical costs it brings to the country.

It is easier to scapegoat a neighbor through selectively remembered or distorted history rather than introspect and apply to them the same standards sought in one’s own country: so much for Muslim neighbors in the “Islamic emirate” and the “Islamic nuclear power.”

Related:

On the Pakistan-India Dangerous Escalation

Afghanistan’s Experiment: Progress and Peril Under Taliban Rule

 

 

The post Allies In War, Enemies In Peace: The Unraveling Of Pakistan–Taliban Relations appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

India, with over 200 million Muslims, hosts the third-largest Muslim population globally. Despite this, the country’s banking system has largely failed to cater to the community’s specific financial needs. This exclusion isn’t due to a lack of access or equal opportunity, but stems from significant theological differences between Islamic finance principles and the conventional banking system.

Socio-Economic Disparities

The Sachar Committee Report (2006) highlighted the socio-economic backwardness of Muslims in India. Despite constituting about 14% of the population, Muslims held only 7.4% of bank deposits and received just 4.7% of bank credit. This disparity limits their ability to access institutional credit for significant endeavors, such as starting businesses or pursuing higher education, thereby affecting their representation in business and wealth accumulation.

A 2015 analysis by the ET Intelligence Group of the BSE 500 companies further revealed that Muslim representation in director and top executive positions was a mere 2.67%, indicating a significant underrepresentation in corporate leadership.

Further, Muslims hold only 9.2% of gold assets, compared to 31% held by Hindu high castes and 39% by OBCs, highlighting their limited access to collateral for financial transactions.

Theological Foundations of Islamic Finance

Islamic finance is grounded in principles that promote justice, welfare, and ethical economic practices. Central to these principles is the prohibition of ‘riba’ (interest), as it is considered exploitative and unjust.

“Those who consume interest cannot stand [on the Day of Resurrection] except as one stands who is being beaten by Satan into insanity. That is because they say, “Trade is [just] like interest.” But Allah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest. So whoever has received an admonition from his Lord and desists may have what is past, and his affair rests with Allah. But whoever returns to [dealing in interest or usury] – those are the companions of the Fire; they will abide eternally therein.” [Surah Al-Baqarah: 2;275]

“O you who have believed, do not consume usury, doubled and multiplied, but fear Allah that you may be successful.” [Surah ‘Ali-Imran: 3;130]

Instead, Islamic finance encourages (1) asset-backed transactions:

Narrated by Hakim b. Hizam :  “I asked Messenger of Allah , I said: ‘A man came to me asking to buy something that I did not have. Can I buy it from the market for him and then give it to him?’ He said: ‘Do not sell what is not with you.'” [Jami` at-Tirmidhi 1232]

(2) profit and loss sharing:

Narrated ‘Urwah Al-Bariqi: “The Messenger of Allah gave me on Dinar to purchase a sheep for him. So I purchased two sheeps for him, and I sold one of them for a Dinar. So I returned with the sheep and the Dinar to the Prophet , and I mentioned what had happened and he said: ‘May Allah bless you in your business dealings.’ After that we went to Kunasah in Al-Kufah, and he made tremendous profits. He was among the wealthiest of the people in Al-Kufah.” [Jami` at-Tirmidhi 1258],

and (3) joint ventures, (4) fostering shared responsibility, and (5) economic inclusion.

Wealth in Islam is viewed as a means to promote circulation and mutual support,

Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger ﷺ as saying: “Charity does not decrease wealth, no one forgives another except that Allah increases his honor, and no one humbles himself for the sake of Allah except that Allah raises his status.” [Sahih Muslim: 2588]

and not as a commodity to be hoarded.

“O you who have believed, indeed many of the scholars and the monks devour the wealth of people unjustly and avert [them] from the way of Allah. And those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah – give them tidings of a painful punishment.” [Surah at-Tawbah; 9:34]

This approach aims to reduce economic disparities and promote a more equitable society:

Abu Wa’il narrated that Qais bin Abi Gharazah said:

“The Messenger of Allah came to us, and we were what was called ‘brokers,’ he said: ‘O people of trade! Indeed the Shaitan and sin are present in the sale, so mix your sales with charity.'”He said: There are narrations on this topic from Al-Bara’ bin ‘Azib and Rifa’ah.

[Abu ‘Eisa said:] The Hadith of Qais bin Abi Gharazah (a narrator) is a Hasan Sahih Hadith.

Mansur, Al-A’mash, Habib bin Abi Thabit, and others reported it from Abu Wa’il, from Qais bin Abi Gharzah, from the Prophet ﷺ. We do not know of anything from the Prophet ﷺ narrated by Qais other than this. [Jami` at-Tirmidhi 1208]

Legal and Institutional Challenges

The Banking Regulation Act, 1949, forms the backbone of India’s banking system, which is predominantly interest-based. This framework presents challenges for integrating Islamic finance, which operates on principles contrary to interest-based lending.

Various committees have examined the feasibility of Islamic banking in India. The Anand Sinha Committee (2005) deemed it incompatible within the existing legal framework, while the Raghuram Rajan Committee (2008) acknowledged that interest-free banking could provide financial access to excluded communities. However, in 2017, the proposal for Islamic banking was rejected, citing the need for equal opportunities for all citizens.

International Models and Secularism Concerns

Countries like the UK and Germany have implemented faith-based banking models, providing services that align with Islamic principles. Similarly, Muslim-majority nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia have successfully integrated Islamic banks alongside conventional ones, demonstrating that dual systems can coexist.

Critics argue that introducing Islamic banking in India could challenge secularism by creating a parallel economy. However, India already accommodates religious diversity in its economic and legal systems—such as Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) accounts enjoying tax benefits and the operation of Muslim personal law and waqf boards. Therefore, allowing financial models that address the ethical concerns of Muslims may enhance substantive equality without undermining secularism.

Potential Solutions: NBFCs and Cooperative Models

Establishing full-fledged Islamic banks in India faces significant legal and political challenges. However, Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) offer a viable alternative. Since NBFCs are not governed by the Banking Regulation Act, they can operate with asset-backed transactions in line with Islamic finance principles. An example is Cheraman Financial Services in Kerala, approved by the Reserve Bank of India in 2013, which provides interest-free financial services.1

Additionally, cooperative models and Islamic banking windows within existing institutions can provide services that align with Islamic principles, fostering economic inclusion and narrowing the participation gap between the Muslim community and others.

Conclusion

The debate on Islamic banking in India underscores a broader tension between a uniform legal framework and the need for economic inclusion of minorities. While establishing full-fledged Islamic banks may be legally and politically challenging, NBFCs, cooperative models, and Islamic banking windows within existing institutions offer feasible alternatives. What is needed is not rejection but regulatory innovation—approaches that can reconcile India’s secular commitments with the financial participation of one of its largest minority communities.

 

Related:

– Perpetual Outsiders: Accounts Of The History Of Islam In The Indian Subcontinent

– Meaningful Money: How Financial Literacy Amplifies Your Giving

 

1    https://prsindia.org/files/policy/policy_committee_reports/1242304423–Summary%20of%20Sachar%20Committee%20Report.pdf

The post Can India’s Financial System Make Room For Faith? appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Deek shops for a house, and has a strange experience in a local gym.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13| Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24

* * *

“He who loses himself to gain the world is the poorest of all.” — Saadi Shirazi

Chats And Bad Jokes

He spent the afternoon meeting with other real estate agents. A sweet but soft-hearted mom, then a surfer type with blonde dreads puffing on a vape.

The fourth was the worst. During a meeting with a broad-shouldered, bald broker in khakis, the man asked Deek about his ethnicity. When Deek said he was Arab, the broker joked that, “Anything’s better than a mud hut in the desert, right?” Deek felt his jaw tighten. He wanted to pick up the man’s laptop and throw it against the wall. Instead, he rose, smoothing his blazer. “Go dunk your head in the river.”

He walked out before his temper snapped and he personally drowned the man in the aforementioned river.

Discouraged, he called off the home search for the day. This was the moment when, before last week, he would have gone to a diner and buried his sorrows with a tuna melt and fries along with an ice-cold soda, followed by a slice of apple pie and a scoop of ice cream, or maybe a chocolate malt.

Food And Fortune

And in fact, now that the Namer’s potion had completely dissipated from his system, his desire for junk food, especially sweets, had returned. But the cravings were not as strong as before, and he was able to resist them. And he was motivated to resist them, because he’d noticed that since he’d quit eating junk food, he had more energy, his skin was clearer, and most importantly of all, the humiliating bowel urgency he used to experience was gone.

This brought to mind how he’d soiled himself in the Porsche, and he waved a hand to dismiss the unpleasant memory.

He went to his favorite Chinese restaurant, Imperial Garden on Blackstone near Herndon, and had a plate of grilled fish with braised green beans.

He would have liked to invite Marco for dinner, but his friend was putting him in an impossible position. Marco himself couldn’t afford to eat out, and he wouldn’t let Deek pay. What option did that leave?

As he ate, he kept thinking of that poor girl, Sanaya, lying in a hospital bed in that dim room, half-starved, dying of a rare disease. And here he was, eating a good meal and thinking nothing of it.

Wait – why had he called her Sanaya? The girl’s name was Maryam! Astaghfirullah. La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah.

Appetite gone, he pushed aside the last of the food and broke open the cookie to extract the so-called fortune, which read, “Customer service is like taking a bath: you have to do it again.”

The ridiculousness of it hit Deek like laughing gas, and he burst into a fit of laughter, which halfway through turned into something else. He braced his elbow on the table and covered his face with his hand.

A hand patted his shoulder, and he looked up to see the elderly Chinese waiter, medium height and as skinny as a stalk of bamboo, with thick black hair above a high forehead. “Gonna be okay, mister.”

“What are you talking about?” Deek looked at the man through bleary eyes. “I’m laughing.”

“I know, I know. Food on the house. No charge.”

“What do you mean? I can pay.”

The waiter waggled his hand. “No charge. Everything gonna be okay.”

In the car, Deek wiped his eyes, embarrassed by the emotion that had overtaken him in public. The waiter’s words echoed, simple and absurdly comforting: Everything gonna be okay. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. But he was discovering that there was one place he could always retreat, one practice that he could hold on to like a lifeline – salat. He’d been praying a lot more lately, and it was becoming a refuge. Which was something he very much needed.

Help Wanted

Back at the hotel, he prayed, then sat at his computer and transferred two hundred thousand dollars to Dr. Rana’s account. Checking his email, he saw that the man had already sent him scans of medical bills totaling over a million dollars. He didn’t feel comfortable paying such huge sums online or over the phone. He decided that he would see an accountant the next day. He texted Imam Saleh, asking him if he knew a good Muslim accountant.

It occurred to him for the first time that he needed an assistant. He had a lot of money to manage, and letting it sit in cash was not good, as it would be eaten up over time by inflation, taxes, and zakat. He didn’t have time to manage his money, handle these various philanthropic ventures he was getting into, shop for a house, cook healthy meals, and all the other daily necessities of life. In fact, he might need more than one assistant. How did rich people handle this stuff?

A wave of weariness swept over him. He thought that his body, on some inner level, might still be recuperating from the various physical injuries he’d incurred. He took the time to change into pajamas, then lay on his right side on the huge bed, hugged the pillow tightly to his chest, and fell asleep.

Current Of Dreams

He awoke for Maghreb. There was a response from Imam Saleh, with the contact info for a Pakistani accountant named Zakariyya. The man had graduated from Stanford but was still building his customer base. “Might be good to get in on the ground floor with him,” Saleh wrote.

He’d just finished praying when Dr. Rana called.

“Assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullah, Janab-e-Deek Sahib. I received the money you transferred. I only wanted to say shukriya from the depth of my heart. Your generosity is beyond expectation.”

Deek winced in embarrassment. “You’re welcome, Doctor. I need to see an accountant tomorrow to figure out what method I will use to pay the larger bills, but it will get done soon inshaAllah.”

“You must call me Sajid, please, Mr. Saghir sir.”

“And you should call me Deek. Our daughters are friends.”

“No, I cannot do that, sir. You have lifted a mountain from my shoulders. My daughter, my family, we will make dua’ for you day and night, inshaAllah. Please forgive me for what happened before. I did not know what test I was under. Khuda ap ko salamat rakhe.”

The call with Dr. Rana left Deek feeling sour. He’d chatted with the man a few times in the past, but Rana had never shown him this level of respect, nor displayed any real interest in his life. Suddenly, Deek was worthy of deference bordering on reverence? Why? Because he was rich now? Because he’d given Rana money? Wasn’t he the same man he’d been before? Well – that was life, he supposed. He’d better get used to it.

He paced the suite like a caged tiger. He knew that he had to do something. There was so much going on inside him. Since the Namer’s potion had worn off, loneliness had been rising inside him like flood waters, and now threatened to break the levees that protected his ability to think and work. A tornado of thoughts raged: Rania’s anger and pain, Sanaya’s coldness toward him, the frightening experiences of the last week, Faraz’s tears, the brothers in the masjid surrounding him as if he were a great tree and they were loggers trying to cut him down and pull out his pithy heart.

He remembered his visit to the river recently, and how it had calmed him. Those deep, beautiful waters called to him again. But even he was not crazy enough to go there alone at night.

Rania wasn’t answering his texts. Marco… Deek couldn’t bring himself to call. He pictured his old friend, sitting in that tiny apartment, and felt a wall between them that hadn’t been there before—the thick, invisible wall of Deek’s money.

So he decided to sweat.

Fluid Fitness

He pulled on gym clothes—new ones, tags barely off—and drove a mile down the road to Fluid Fitness, a slick little place he’d noticed in passing, its windows glowing with neon and posters of polished bodies in motion. Their slogan, plastered in chrome letters across the front, read: For People Like Us.

Inside, everything was spotless white and violet, like the interior of a spaceship. The sound system was playing music he didn’t recognize, all synthesized sounds and generic autotuned singing. He walked up to the front desk and asked if he could pay for the day only. The girl at the desk looked about nineteen, all eyeliner and indifference. She looked up from her phone reluctantly and gave Deek a slow up-and-down, lips twitching with something close to pity.

“Are you a bodybuilder?”

“No. I’m just naturally big.”

“We allow walk-ins,” she said, her voice flat as drywall. “Twenty bucks for the day. But…” She tilted her head. “This for reals isn’t the right fit for you. You might prefer Gold’s. They do heavy lifting there.”

Deek leaned on the counter. “I’m not a bodybuilder. And even if I was, so what? This is a gym, right?”

“This is a holistic, inclusive self-improvement environment.” This was a memorized response, Deek was sure.

He put twenty dollars on the counter. “Do I need to sign in?”

She sighed. “Fine. But there are rules.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “No heavy lifting. No grunting. No asking people how many sets they have left. No dropping weights. No, like, dripping. If you sweat, you need to wipe down. Also—no eye contact longer than three seconds. People find that aggressive.”

“I wouldn’t dream of sweating.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “And no sarcasm.”

Deek raised an eyebrow. “Anything else?”

“No protein shakes on the studio floor.”

“I’ll manage,” Deek said, sliding over the twenty.

Pleasure In Pain

It was a small gym, and sparsely populated. The weight rack was lined with pastel dumbbells—three, five, and ten pounds—like Easter eggs in neat rows. The heaviest were twenty, glowing neon yellow. Deek picked them up, feeling like he was curling two bananas.

A kid next to him, crop-top and man-bun, was filming himself with a ring light. “Day twenty of my biceps journey,” he whispered into the phone, curling pink five-pounders. He spotted Deek. “Bro. You’re, like, dominating the space.”

“I’m just lifting,” Deek said.

“Yeah, but your energy is alpha.” The kid winced like it was a slur.

A half hour later, he was on the shoulder press machine. Rules or no rules, he was working hard, moving from one station to the next without pause, and setting the machines on the highest weight settings. Pushing the weights felt good. The dumbbells were obstacles he could move. Concrete goals that he could achieve. His muscles were sore, but he took pleasure in the pain, for the soreness made him feel alive, and humbled him at the same time.

The Wrong Tone

As he completed a heavy bench press set, a slender, thirty-ish man with a clipboard appeared, polo shirt tucked in tight. His name tag identified him as Andrew.

“Sir?” Andrew’s smile was as thin as dental floss. “I’m the manager. You’ll have to leave. You’re setting the wrong tone.”

Deek sat up slowly, breathing hard. “The wrong tone?”

“You’re… intense,” the man said delicately. “Some of our members feel judged.”

Deek laughed. He couldn’t help it. “For lifting weights in a gym?”

“Not a gym. A holistic self-improvement environment.”

“You forgot to mention inclusive.”

The manager’s face reddened. “Yes, of course.”

Deek rested an elbow on his knee, studying the man. Andrew’s appearance was masculine, but there was definitely something effeminate about him. The way he curled his wrists, perhaps.

They really wanted to kick him out. Deek felt a rush of anger. Wanting to mess with the manager, Deek said, “My family came to America as refugees, and now you’re kicking me out of here as well?” Yet even though he’d said the words as a joke, there was truth in them, and the manager picked up on it, because his face went white.

“Oh! You are refugees?”

“From Iraq. My family fled in the middle of the night, one step ahead of the secret police. We hid in a truck with a false wall. We didn’t all – “ Deek paused, his throat tight. “We didn’t all make it.” He cleared his throat, embarrassed. What had started as a joke had turned into a confession.

Andrew put a hand to his chest. “Bless your heart.” Looking around, he clapped his hands and called out, “Gather round, everyone! Group huddle.”

“You don’t have to -” Deek began, but Andrew cut him off with a single finger to Deek’s chest.

The dozen or so patrons, all young men and women, gathered around.

“This is Deek,” Andrew said gravely. “He and his family are refugees. They went through the most awful experiences to get to this country. He might not know how things are done here, but we will make him welcome.”

The young people all nodded. One girl applauded lightly. Mortified beyond belief, Deek stood and said, “I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I’ll tone it down.”

The youth making the video offered his hand for a high five and said, “Your English is awesome. Let’s do a collab sometime.”

Deek had been ready to wrap up his workout, but now felt obliged to continue. He did a handful of slow, easy sets. As he was heading out, the girl at the desk handed him a laminated card. “One month free,” she said. “I think you’re so brave.”

In the car, Deek tipped his head back and laughed out loud. Americans would never cease to amaze him. They didn’t seem to know if they wanted to save the world or burn it to the ground. Both, he supposed.

In his hotel room that night, he texted Rania one last time: “We don’t have to be enemies.”

No reply came.

Realtor And Shark

The first thing he did the next morning was to check for messages from Rania or the girls. To his dismay, there were none. He texted the girls, inviting them to lunch tomorrow, which was a Sunday. Amira replied that she was attending her friend Salima’s birthday party. Sanaya simply responded, “No thanks.”

Checking his bank accounts, he saw that Rania had returned $70K of the last $100K he had sent her. He sat back in the desk chair, hands limp in his lap. What did this mean? Was she done with him? He felt like a car that had been drained of gasoline and now sat without spark or impetus.

He moped, then ordered an omelette from room service and ate it as he surveyed the crypto market on his computer. Prices were beginning to decline, though just a little. He knew the decline would accelerate. Many investors would hold firm, thinking it was just a dip. A lot of people would get hammered into poverty.

He needed to move, to do something productive. It was all he knew how to do. Specifically, he still needed to find a house. Like a knight donning his armor, he put on one of his fine suits, stood up straight, and went out.

In the course of his travels that morning, he stepped into an open house almost by accident — a modest property he knew wasn’t right, but it was on the riverfront and worth a look.

Inside, he paused to watch a debate between two real estate agents. The showing agent was a tall, sun-weathered guy in snakeskin boots and a cowboy hat. In front of him, a petite Latina with long black hair in a ponytail, and wearing an expensive-looking gray pantsuit and low heels, was ticking off points in rapid-fire, accented English.

“Your numbers are fantasy, Mister Dorian. The vacancy rate for properties in this price range is double what you claim. Do not insult me.” She snapped her fingers and waved at the house. “You take the deal now, or you’ll sit on this property another year while the weeds grow to your nose hairs.”

The cowboy sputtered, but the woman held up a hand. “Hold on.” She took out her phone, spoke in fast Spanish for a minute, then turned back to the cowboy. “We will increase our bid by three percent. You have twenty-four hours.” She began a rapid exit, heels clicking on the hardwood floor.

This was the agent Deek wanted.

He intercepted her, saying, “Excuse me.”

The woman stopped to look Deek up and down with sharp brown eyes. “I am not the showing agent. I am a buyer’s agent.” She resumed walking.

Deek ran after her. “That’s what I want! I’m a buyer.”

She stopped again and broke into a dazzling smile. “Bueno.” She extended her hand. “Marcela Gómez. Realtor, economist, shark when necessary.”

Fast And Fierce

Standing in the circular driveway, Deek told her what he wanted: privacy, land, something along the San Joaquin River, with actual river access. Something solidly built. The size of the house didn’t matter much, as he could expand it as needed.

“What you ask for is not cheap, Señor Saghir.” She rubbed her fingers together.

“I can pay.”

Marcela nodded briskly. “Leave it with me. I have cousins up and down this valley. In our country, Colombia, you have to be fast and fierce. If there’s a property to be had, they’ll, how do you say, smell it up?”

“Sniff it out.”

“Exacto. And I will get you the best price, even if I have to fight like a gehriyya to do it.”

“What’s a gehriyya?”

“You know. A fighter.”

“Oh. A guerrilla?”

“Gorilla is an animal, no?”

Deek smiled, restraining a laugh. “Don’t worry about the price. I just want a property that meets my needs, quickly.”

Marcela tilted her head. “Oh, money is not an object? Are you authorized to make that call?”

“It’s for me. I’m the buyer.”

Family Office

“Ah, bueno. Just that high net worth individuals usually leave such things to the family office.”

“What’s a family office?”

Marcela pulled back, looking him up and down. “You are only recently wealthy?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Marcela checked her phone, then looked up at Deek as if surprised he was still there. “I am a real estate agent,” she said. “Not a finance instructor. Are you serious about buying a house or no?”

“Yes, I am. But could you please explain the family office thing? Humor me.”

She sighed. “Very wealthy families do not personally manage their finances. They have a family office, which is basically their own company, run by experts who work only for them.”

Deek considered this, rubbing his chin. “You’ve seen this before?”

“Claro que sí. I have a degree in international finance, and I worked in such an office for one of the flower families. You think the sugar dynasties in Cali or the oil families in Medellín run around calling realtors and accountants one by one? You, Señor Saghir, are operating like a man with one hundred thousand dollars, not however many of the millions you have.” She waved her hand up and down to indicate Deek and his fine suit.

Deek nodded slowly. “What kind of people would run an office like that?”

“The Chief Investment Officer. An office manager, real estate director, security officer, a personal CFO to handle family matters, and so on. A lawyer, unless you hire an outside firm. Sometimes a, how do you say, filantropia director.”

“Philanthropy. Wow. That’s a lot of people. I would want people who know how to invest according to Islamic guidelines. No interest, no stocks related to gambling, alcohol, and so on.”

“Pues, I’m sure you can find such people in your countries, like Dubai. And that’s the end of the finance lesson. D – Y – O – R.” She punctuated each letter with a snap of her fingers.

He didn’t bother telling her that Dubai was not a country. They parted ways with the understanding that Marcela would call him when she found a house.

***

Come back next week for Part 26 inshaAllah

 

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Day Of The Dogs, Part 1 – Tiny Ripples Of Hope

Searching for Signs of Spring: A Short Story

 

The post Moonshot [Part 25] – Save The World Or Burn It Down appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

October is Islamic History Month in Canada, federally recognized since 2007 as an opportunity to “to celebrate, inform, educate, and share with fellow Canadians the rich Muslim heritage and contributions to society.” This year’s theme is “Pioneering Muslim Communities in Canada,” learning about and giving homage to those in our communities who first established Islam in these lands. From small islands to sprawling urban centers, every Muslim community in Canada started with at least one person who believed in Allah and created space for fellow believers to come together and build upwards.

In addition to the pioneering history of Muslims in Canada, we must consider more recent history as well: the realities of Muslims in a post-9/11 world, contending with the surveillance state, illegal detention and torture, and ongoing harassment of Muslims in Canada. Figures such as Maher Arar and Omar Khader must have their stories remembered, and lessons learned from, on just how fraught our existence as Muslims in Canada truly is. The work of people like Monia Mazigh must never be forgotten, as it is the work that so many of us will need to draw from in our own confrontations with state-led Islamophobia.

 – Journey of the Midnight Sun by Shazia Afzal

In 2010, a Winnipeg-based charity raised funds to build and ship a mosque to Inuvik, one of the most northern towns in Canada’s Arctic. A small but growing Muslim community there had been using a cramped trailer for their services, but there just wasn’t enough space. The mosque travelled over 4,000 kilometers on a journey fraught with poor weather, incomplete bridges, narrow roads, low traffic wires, and a deadline to get on the last barge heading up the Mackenzie River before the first winter freeze.

This stunning picture book makes the perfect Islamic History Month storytime choice!

– Minarets on the Horizon by Murray Hogben

This book gives us a detailed look at the Muslim presence in Canada, starting with the pioneer settlers from Syria/Lebanon and the Balkans in the early twentieth century and moving on to the more modern midcentury arrivals from South Asia and Africa. Told in their own words, the stories in this collection give us a rare insight into the lives of these pioneer Muslims.

Punjabi men in the timber mills of British Columbia; Lebanese Arab peddlers on foot or horse cart on the rural highways of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba; men venturing north on dog sleighs to trade for fur; young women arriving to start families and soon to become family matriarchs; shopkeepers serving small provincial towns and big cities; and finally, students and professionals arriving in the postwar urban centres.

Wherever they went, they bore the brunt of xenophobia and acknowledged kindnesses, as they adapted and sought out fellow worshippers and set up community centres and mosques.

– Al-Rashid Mosque: Building Canadian Muslim Communities by Earle H. Waugh

Al Rashid Mosque, Canada’s first and one of the earliest in North America, was erected in Edmonton in the depths of the Depression of the 1930s. Over time, the story of this first mosque, which served as a magnet for more Lebanese Muslim immigrants to Edmonton, was woven into the folklore of the local community.

Edmonton’s Al Rashid Mosque has played a key role in Islam’s Canadian development. Founded by Muslims from Lebanon, it has grown into a vibrant community fully integrated into Canada’s cultural mosaic. The mosque continues to be a concrete expression of social good, a symbol of a proud Muslim Canadian identity. Al Rashid Mosque provides a welcome introduction to the ethics and values of homegrown Muslims. The book traces the mosque’s role in education and community leadership and celebrates the numerous contributions of Muslim Canadians in Edmonton and across Canada.

– How Muslims Shaped the Americas by Omar Mouallem

In How Muslims Shaped the Americas, Mouallem explores the unknown history of Islam across the Americas, traveling to thirteen unique mosques in search of an answer to how this religion has survived and thrived so far from the place of its origin. From California to Quebec, and from Brazil to Canada’s icy north, he meets the members of fascinating communities, all of whom provide different perspectives on what it means to be Muslim. Along this journey, he comes to understand that Islam has played a fascinating role in how the Americas were shaped—from industrialization to the changing winds of politics.

Despite my distaste with the author himself, this book does an excellent job of exploring both Al-Rashid Masjid and the Midnight Sun Mosque (the very same one from the picture book!), as well as pausing to pay homage to the victims and survivors of the Quebec City Mosque Massacre in Grande Mosquee de Quebec.

– Hope & Despair: My Struggle to Free My Husband, Maher Arar by Monia Mazigh

This book traces the inspiring story of Monia Mazigh’s courageous fight to free her husband, Maher Arar, from a Syrian jail. From the moment Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was disappeared into the bowels of Bashar al-Assad’s dungeons, Monia Mazigh worked tirelessly against the Canadian government, security intelligence agencies, and media to bring her husband home and get him justice.

She began a tireless campaign to bring public attention and government action to her husband’s plight, eventually resulting in his release and return to Canada. Arar and Mazigh’s story is a chilling reminder to all Canadian Muslims of the realities of living under systemic Islamophobia, and is an important lesson to us all on resisting and holding our government accountable.

– Systemic Islamophobia in Canada: A Research Agenda

Systemic Islamophobia in Canada presents critical perspectives on systemic Islamophobia in Canadian politics, law, and society, and maps areas for future research and inquiry. The authors consist of both scholars and professionals who encounter in the ordinary course of their work the – sometimes banal, sometimes surprising – operation of systemic Islamophobia. Centring the lived realities of Muslims primarily in Canada, but internationally as well, the contributors identify the limits of democratic accountability in the operation of our shared institutions of government

– Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation by Jazmine Zine

Under Siege explores the lives of Canadian Muslim youth belonging to the 9/11 generation as they navigate these fraught times of global war and terror. While many studies address contemporary manifestations of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, few have focused on the toll this takes on Muslim communities, especially among younger generations.

Covering topics such as citizenship, identity and belonging, securitization, radicalization, campus culture in an age of empire, and subaltern Muslim counterpublics and resistance, Under Siege provides a unique and comprehensive examination of the complex realities of Muslim youth in a post-9/11 world.

This Islamic History Month, Canadian Muslim communities should take the time to honour our pioneering members, teach our youth about the Islamic history of Canadian Muslims, and educate ourselves on how to navigate living in this country that remains riddled with systemic Islamophobia.

 

Related:

From the MuslimMatters Bookshelf: Black (Muslim) History Month Reads

Muslim Women’s History: A Book List

The post Islamic History Month Canada: A Bookish Roundup appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

[Author’s Note: In October of 2023, Israel launched a genocide against Gaza. On October 13, Al Jazeera mentioned in a news article that ice cream trucks were being used as makeshift morgues due to the overwhelming numbers of deceased people needing a place to be buried.]

 

     In the summer, your mother throws open the windows of your little house, the breeze playing with the thin curtains, creating flowery ghosts. The tinkling music of the ice cream truck floats in, making you perk up like the housecat seeing a bird.

     You run outside, your sister following suit, her small legs never letting her catch up unless you slow down—but you don’t, not until you are behind the truck and the dry dust burns your eyes, not until it stops and the man inside leans out to greet the gaggle of children now gathering around the truck.

     While you wait in line, an airplane flies by. You flinch, but she waves at it. She hasn’t learned what you had to, and you hope, stupidly, that she never does. 

     You hand her the ice cream before grabbing your own. You want to savour yours for as long as possible, until it’s dripping down your arm in sticky rivulets that your mother will get annoyed at, but you know your sister will devour hers and ask for yours.

 

     She’s learning to draw. 

     She wants your crayons, and your mother makes you share. You whine, but nothing changes, so you hand her some paper and tell her to keep quiet. For a few minutes, it stays so, her stubby fingers gripping the wax as she drags it across the page, fascinated by the transfer. 

     When you’re engrossed in drawing your own landscape— your grandparents’ olive trees, in the village you visit every few weeks— she hits your arm hard enough to send a stray crayon streak across the paper. When you look up to yell, she shows you a paper— two stick figures sharing ice cream. She tells you that you’re the taller one. You laugh. My skin isn’t orange.

     You keep the drawing in your closet.

 

     You have a sister. 

     She plays with the neighbourhood girls on the roof every evening, till the Maghreb adhan calls them back inside. She wraps a headscarf halfway across her head and stands behind you and your dad as you pray. Your mother tries to fix it. It doesn’t stay. 

     When you’re praying for everything you want— safety, for yourself and your parents and the olive trees and those that care for them— she says, ya Allah, please let me own an ice cream truck when I’m old. 

     You laugh, but an Ameen still follows. 

 

     You have a sister. 

     Someone picks on her for her pigtails—someone from your grade. Your dad tells you nothing except that you are her brother. It’s your job to protect her. 

     The principal calls your dad the next day— Bruised knuckles and a bloody nose. Your dad says, he was protecting her. Should he not?

     He buys you both ice cream on the way home. 

 

     You have a sister. 

     She cries when the first bomb hits, and the second, and the third. 

     She throws up when you pull the cat out of the rubble, a bright red gash across its abdomen. It mewls pathetically, barely skin and bones, and you have to fight the urge to cry— boys don’t cry, especially not in front of their little sisters. You hold the cat close to your chest, caressing what’s left of her spotted fur, for which you’d named her Cow. 

 

     You have a sister.

     She stopped crying an hour ago, fast asleep now. Your mother drapes a white sheet on her, trying to hide her hiccups. She always hiccups when she cries. Your sister does the same. 

     The night air bites your skin, but you just climbed out of what used to be your room, and your blanket is still somewhere under all of it. You want to share your sister’s sheet, but she is much colder, and she’s hogging it up. 

     She hit her head under all the rubble, you’re sure of it. You tell your dad that he should wake her up. Shouldn’t we take her to the doctor?

     The tinkling music of the ice cream truck pierces the silence. You startle, mouth watering— an ingrained response. Baba, are we getting ice cream? Usually, your mother would not let you eat sweets before dinner, but you haven’t had dinner in days.

     The truck stops, and the ice cream man steps out, face grim and dusted with gray. Your dad gets up, wrapping the sheet tighter around your sister. They begin moving her. 

 

     You had a sister. 

     In the summers, you’d run after the ice cream truck, her far behind you, and you’d call the man inside by his name. You’d hand her the first cone so she wouldn’t complain, and you’d finish yours off first so she wouldn’t ask for it. She would pray with her scarf halfway off her head, and she’d pray to own an ice cream truck someday. 

 

     You had a sister.
     She will wake up on top of soft grass, a blanket of sunlight over her skin. She will wake to tinkling laughter and the sound of a flowing river. She will find the friends she cried over, and the cat she fed every day, feeding him even when her stomach rumbled. She won’t remember the smell of blood, the cold of nights spent under open skies, waiting for the next bomb, or pain that blossomed in a body not strong enough for it. But she will remember you. 

     And she’ll wait to share ice cream with you again.

 

Related:

– A Prayer On Wings: A Poem Of Palestinian Return

– If You Could Speak: A Poem

The post Ice Cream: A Poem On The Loss Of Childhood In Gaza appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.