We talk to journalist Ahmed Al-Najjar in Gaza, where harsh conditions and Israeli attacks belie Davos claims that “war” is over. We discuss Trump’s “Board of Peace” and more.

What does every new Imam need to know about being an imam? What do you do if you’re in a small community with minimal resources? How do you manage joining a new community, learning the ropes, and not biting off more than you can chew? In this episode, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy shares his advice for new imams, community building, and reflections on his own imam experience.

Shaykh Mohammad Elshinawy is a Graduate of English Literature at Brooklyn College, NYC. He studied at College of Hadith at the Islamic University of Madinah and is a graduate and instructor of Islamic Studies at Mishkah University. He has translated major works for the International Islamic Publishing House, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, and Mishkah University.

Related:

Don’t Take For Granted Your Community Imam I Sh. Furhan Zubairi

The Rise of the Scholarly Gig Economy and Fall of Community Development

 

The post [Podcast] The Parts of Being an Imam They Don’t Warn You About | Sh Mohammad Elshinawy appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Innocent people are being frozen out of basic banking services – and it all traces back to reforms rushed through after 9/11

Hamish Wilson lives a few miles away from me, in a cosy farmhouse in the damp hills of mid Wales. He makes good coffee, tells great stories and is an excellent host. Every summer, dozens of Somali guests visit Wilson’s farm as part of a wonderfully wholesome project set up to celebrate their nation’s culture, and to honour his father’s second world war service with a Somali comrade-in-arms.

Inadvertently, however, the project has revealed something else: a deep unfairness in today’s global financial system that not only threatens to ruin the Somalis’ holidays, but also excludes marginalised communities from global banking services on a huge scale.

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A longstanding aspirant statelet in the Horn of Africa shot to international attention this month when Israel announced its recognition of Somaliland, an otherwise unrecognized defacto state in northern Somalia that has existed since war engulfed the region in the 1990s. Because the issue of Somaliland secession is widely unknown to Muslims outside the region, this article will give a short summary of its history.

Colonial Contrasts

Somalis constitute one of East Africa’s major ethnic groups, organized in clans and clan confederations and tracing their history back centuries in the region: major clan confederations included the Isaq, who dwell largely in Somaliland, the Hawiye in central Somalia around Mogadishu, the Rahanweyn in western Somalia, and the Darod, scattered around the region. 

Today, Somalis are split across several countries beyond the eponymous Somalia. In part, this is a legacy of colonialism, when the British, French, and Italian empires waded into the Horn of Africa, where Somali clans and sultanates had already had a long history of opposition with Ethiopia. Djibouti became a French enclave; Somaliland and Kenya were British colonies; and the rest of Somalia was under Italian rule, with the exception of the Ogadenia region, named for the Ogaden clan within the Darod confederation that predominates in a region ruled by Ethiopia as its southeast province.

Italy’s defeat in the Second World War bequeathed most of Somalia to British rule, where it remained for a decade before official independence in 1960. The first British thrust into the region, some fifty years earlier, had been countered by the daring preacher and adventurer Mohamed Hassan, disparaged as the “Mad Mulla” for his twenty-year resistance. Hassan, from the Darod, had a mutual enmity with the Isaq confederation, which, unlike most others, Somalis do not remember him fondly. Somaliland had been a British colony for much longer than the rest of Somalia, and in fact was given independence a few days earlier in the summer of 1960.

Somalilweyn and its Discontents

That independence came after a long period of activism from Somali opposition parties, notably the Somali Youth League, which called for Somali independence and where support for the independence of the Somali peoples at large, not just those under British rule, was widespread in what became known as Somaliweyn or Greater Somalia.

A key roadblock to this idea was not just friction with neighbouring powers, notably an imperial Ethiopia whose rule of Ogadenia was widely unpopular, but also the balance of power within Somalia itself. Somaliland had become independent under its leading colonial politician, Ibrahim Egal, who was soon persuaded to join the rest of Somalia, for which he became prime minister. As a rule, Somaliland was a backwater, and much of the Isaq populace chafed; as early as 1961, there was a coup attempt that was speedily suppressed. In fact, as one of the few parliamentary democracies in 1960s Africa, Somalia’s first decade was generally marked by chaotic factionalism and in 1969 army commander Siad Barre led a coup; prime minister Egal, at the United States at the time, was imprisoned on his return as one of the many elites of his generation purged by the military regime.

Though Siad promised revolutionary change, siding at first with the Soviet Union in the Cold War against a Western-backed Ethiopia; what socioeconomic improvements he oversaw would be drowned by his own recourse to repression and corruption. A change in family law that contravened Islamic law in 1975 was an early flashpoint, and after a momentous war for Ogadenia in 1977-78 failed – where Somalia’s former Soviet allies switched sides to decisively join a newly communist Ethiopia – Siad’s dictatorship began to crumble from within. An early sign of the rupture came when Majerteen officers from Siad’s Darod confederation, led by Abdullahi Yusuf, attempted a coup immediately after the Ogadenia defeat; in its wake, Yusuf fled to Ethiopia, which supported him in a 1982 incursion into Somalia.

Corrosion under Siad

The 1982 campaign came even as Siad repressed another coup and purged his Isaq deputy, Ismail Abukar. Though Abukar was one of a number of cross-clan leaders imprisoned in this period, the Isaq clan in particular objected to Siad’s dictatorship; the previous year, a rebel Somali National Movement or Wadaniya had been founded by exiles in Britain. Though its membership was overwhelmingly Isaq – including former officials such as Ahmed Silanyo, police officers such as Jama Ghalib, army officers such as Abdulqadir Kosar, and clan leaders such as Yusuf Madar – the group importantly claimed to represent Somalia at large and, unlike its heirs today, rejected claims of secession.

Siad, by now bolstered with considerable weaponry by the United States, responded with an outsize cruelty that overwhelmingly targeted Isaq in the north and drove more into the insurgency’s ranks. By the late 1980s, an insurgency was in full swing and had overrun much of Somaliland. In response, in spring 1988, Siad’s son-in-law, Said Morgan, cut a deal with the Ethiopian regime to stop supporting one another’s insurgents before turning on Somaliland with savage ferocity.

The Harrowing of the North

Said Morgan, the “Butcher of Hargeysa”

Morgan’s destruction of Somaliland carries parallels with the Iraqi Baath regime’s meantime harrowing of its own, Kurdish northland, during the same period. Like the Baath’s murderous governor-general, “Chemical” Ali Majid did with the Iraqi Kurds, there is no doubt that Morgan and his lieutenants saw Isaq as a fifth column to be bloodily crushed. As with supposed voice recordings of “Chemical Ali”, there are letters supposedly from Morgan that call for the elimination of the Isaq confederation; whether or not these are genuine, there is no question, and ample reliable evidence, that Morgan and his lieutenants were willing to butcher the population in droves. One particularly infamous call by an officer was to “kill everything but the crows” that came to feast on corpses. In the process, Morgan flattened Hargeysa and killed thousands, particularly through aerial bombardment.

As did Iraqi Kurdish opponents of the Baath regime, Siad’s opponents characterize this massacre as a genocide of the Isaq. It did, however, occur among a general narrowing of the regime where Siad, despite his rhetoric of shunning clan prejudice, narrowed his group of loyalists to not only his clan but his own family; it is no coincidence that his son-in-law, Morgan and son, Maslah Barre, were increasingly prominent in the army. The Isaq clan were the most brutalized but by no means the only victims; Siad had already frozen out the Majerteen clan within his own Darod confederation, and his favouritism also alienated much of the Darod’s Ogaden clan, whose army officers increasingly defected. Similarly, the major Hawiye confederation predominant in Mogadishu was increasingly disconsolate. By the early 1990s, a mixture of revolts and mutinies ousted Siad and helped plunge Somalia into what was unprecedentedly described as a “failed state”.

Freedom and Independence?

In the process, the Wadaniya insurgents managed to capture Somaliland under the leadership of Abdirahman Tur; along with the Isaq confederation, the Darod Dhulbahante clan, led by such cooperative chieftains as Abdulghani Jama, now joined them. Wadaniya was more of a coalition than a fixed group, however, and its constituent camps began to fight for power. That this struggle was not as destructive as that of the remaining Somalia owed largely to the mediating role of chieftains and elders, who organized a number of conferences and elections.

Isaq chieftains such as Ibrahim Madar, son of the former Wadaniya leader Yusuf, were especially important and, with the rest of Somalia in disarray, began to push increasingly for secession. Somaliland was already de facto separate from the rest of Somalia, but the persistent agenda from the mid-1990s onward was for its recognition as a separate country. Since Somaliweyn had collapsed and Somalis were already split between other countries like Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, the argument ran, there was no point in Somaliland staying in a dysfunctional Somalia either. The moment also seemed propitious; in 1993, Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia after a long, difficult independence war.

Jama Ghalib

Even as the United States was leading a United Nations incursion into the rest of Somalia, Tur was removed in favour of the former Somalia prime minister Egal. Isaq commanders Tur and Ghalib, a former police inspector-general, opposed the secessionists and joined forces with Farah Aidid, Mogadishu’s preeminent commander who had first ousted Siad, and then the United States. However, in 1994-95, Somaliland “loyalists” of Egal managed to bloodily root out these Isaq dissidents in a series of battles at Hargeysa and Burao.

As a former prime minister of Mogadishu who had originally negotiated Somaliland’s addition to Somalia, Egal struggled to convince hardline separatists of his bona fides. Yet as his power increased, sidelining competitors by the late 1990s, he did indeed press toward a separatist agenda, and was even reported to have contacted the infamously anti-Muslim Israeli regime by offering cooperation against “Islamic radicalism”: this despite the fact that the original Wadaniya resistance against Siad had criticized his irreligiosity and dealt heavily in Islamic slogans, styling themselves “mujahids”; indeed, the Somaliland flag retains the Islamic shahadah. Somaliland was nonetheless seen favourably among foreigners wary of the conflict in remaining Somalia, and a considerable foreign lobby grew for its separation from Somalia and its recognition as an independent state. A year before his death in 2002, Egal held a referendum that opted for Somaliland’s secession as an independent state.

Somaliland, Puntland, and the Occupation of Somalia

However, secessionism was unpopular among the Dhulbahante who predominated in the Sool region of northern Somalia, between Somaliland and the coastal region of Puntland. Many Dhulbahante dissidents gravitated east toward Puntland, where Ethiopia’s former vassal Yusuf, had set up his own fiefdom and aimed to form Puntland as part of a federalist but united Somalia. When the American “war on terror” began, Puntland, and Yusuf more specifically, became a favoured client of the United States as a “counterterrorism” partner. In 2006, both the United States and Ethiopia invaded Somalia and ousted Mogadishu’s short-lived Islamist government, installing Yusuf in its place under a foreign occupation.

Yusuf’s place at the helm of an American-Ethiopian-backed regime in Mogadishu ensured that Puntland had Washington’s ear, but Somaliland’s major foreign lobby persistently argued for independence, while periodically cracking down against dissidents who favoured a united Somalia. The fact that the original 1980s Wadaniya resistance had rejected separatism was now conveniently forgotten; the fact that unionist Somalilanders such as Ghalib opposed the 2006 invasion ensured that they could be frozen out of the political elite with little repercussions.

On the other hand, even after Yusuf’s resignation, the Somali government and its Puntland wing attracted largely Dhulbahante dissidents in Sool who wanted their region to be separate from Somaliland and part of Somalia, either as part of Puntland or as a separate region. During the 2010s, when Somalia’s new federalist constitution was arranging new regions, the Sool region pressed its case: led by Ahmed Karash, the Sool region announced its loyalty to Somalia under the name “Khatumo” or finality, with support from both the central government in Mogadishu and the regional government in Puntland. There have been repeated clashes over this region, particularly Lasanod, since 2007.

Regional Rivalries

The replacement of relatively conciliatory Somaliland leaders such as Silanyo with hardline separatists like Musa Bihi, a former Wadaniya commander, helped harden this dispute. So did the attitudes of strongly unionist Somali leaders such as Mohamed Farmajo, who ruled Mogadishu in 2017-22, and Puntland leaders such as Said Deni, who was a rival to both Mogadishu and Hargeysa.

Regional rivalries also played into these disputes. A staunch centralist, Farmajo was long backed by Turkiye and Qatar, and opposed the United Arab Emirates, which was supporting a number of separatist actors in the region. He also tried to cultivate better ties with the new, similarly centralist Ethiopian ruler Abiy Ahmed. Ethiopia, which had a longstanding rivalry with Cairo, had meanwhile long found it convenient to play off the rivalry between Puntland and Somaliland, and the United States did the same. Saudi Arabia initially supported the United Arab Emirates in its dispute with Qatar, but has recently moved closer to Ankara, Cairo, and Doha.

The Somali government’s case was widely recognized abroad, but its own legitimacy was weakened by its reliance on the multipronged foreign occupation that had ousted the Islamists in 2006. Although a compromise brought back many Islamists, including the ousted former ruler Sharif Ahmed and his successor Hassan Mohamud, to the fold in 2009, cyclical squabbles over the makeup of the state and over an unpopular but essential foreign occupation have persisted. At their most extreme, Somali unionists resorted to the untrue claim that Shabaab, the main insurgent group, was a Somaliland agent, because many of its leaders were Isaq northerners. This was fantasy, but the claim’s very existence pointed to the difficulty of legitimation during a foreign occupation.

Road to Disgrace

After returning to power to remove Farmajo, Mohamud managed to secure Lasanod and announced the new Sool-Khatumo region as a separate region, under Abdulqadir Firdhiye. However, Puntland leader Deni, closely affiliated with Abu Dhabi, threatened secession in 2024. And at the end of 2025, Israel, closely linked by now with the United Arab Emirates, followed up its support for secessionists in other Muslim countries by recognizing Somaliland.

In a move whose criticism within Somaliland was swiftly suppressed, Somaliland leader Abdirahman Irro welcomed Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar and oversaw a generally shameless spree of welcomes for this new, supposedly groundbreaking relationship. Like other pro-Israel governments in the Muslim world, Hargeysa evidently supposes that ties to Israel will strengthen its international position, particularly with the United States. It is a disgraceful denouement to a political experiment that began with genuinely valid grievances but has morphed into an autocratically ruled fiefdom.

The fact is that the Somalia regime that ravaged Somaliland in the 1980s ceased to exist decades ago, and that the current Somaliland programme bears little resemblance to the Wadaniya insurgency of that period. Even as its government loudly cites the savagery of a long-extinct dictatorship in the 1980s to justify its separatism, Somaliland cracks down on dissidents and aligns itself with the most vicious regime of the 2020s.

[Disclaimer: this article reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of MuslimMatters; a non-profit organization that welcomes editorials with diverse political perspectives.]

 

Related:

– Op-Ed: Understanding The Somaliland Recognition Decision – A Counterargument To The Prevailing Muslim Consensus

– History of the Bosnia War [Part 1] – Thirty Years After Srebrenica

The post Op-Ed: Bitterness Prolonged – A Short History Of The Somaliland Dispute appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Lee Ayi reveals a disturbing secret, and Darius is pushed to demonstrate his abilities.

Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

* * *

Training Ground

When the clothes were stacked in a hamper and the lines had been taken down, Lee Ayi said, “Wait here.” She disappeared into the house and returned with a wooden training dao that I had not known existed, as well as my own spear.

I froze, remembering my father’s ruthless training. What was this? Like brother, like sister? The blood rushed to my head, and my face turned hot. I was not that little boy anymore, and even my father had stopped abusing me eventually. My entire body tensed. In that moment, I could hear the cowbells as the animals grazed in the far field. I smelled the faint, sweet musk of the safflowers, and could feel my own heartbeat in the wound on my shoulder.

Lee Ayi handed me the weapons. “Yong trained you, yes?”

I stood mute, one weapon hanging limply in each hand.

“You don’t have to answer. I can see it in every step you take. Even the way you work. Your balance, poise and economy of motion. The subtle flourishes you add when sweeping the floor. The way you shift your weight. Well, my father trained me as well, though not as thoroughly as Yong.”

I swallowed. “Okay, so?” The words came out dry and hoarse.

She waved to the circle of clear earth where the clotheslines had hung. “This is my training ground. I need to practice.” She clenched a fist, a gesture so unlike her that I shifted my weight to the back foot. “It’s part of me,” she continued. “It’s in my blood. But Husband does not approve of martial arts, nor any form of violence. So every Friday I wait until he goes to Jum’ah and I practice alone. This is my secret. Maybe the farmworkers see but they mind their own business. But you are here now. Will you keep my secret?”

“And what do you need me to do?”

“What?” She shook her head. “Nothing. Just keep my secret. Will you do that?”

A Negotiation

“What is the real reason Ma Shushu did not take me to town?”

Lee Ayi tipped her head back, regarding me. A slow smile appeared. “You’re a negotiator, eh? My brother taught you many things.” The smile vanished, replaced by a serious expression. “Can we just say that he wants your shoulder to heal, and leave it at that?”

“Is that the truth?”

“Part of it.”

Lee Ayi looked down, spotted a small stone that had found its way into her training space, picked it up and chucked it. Then she stood straight and looked me in the eye. “Your Ma Shushu does not want the Shahs to know you exist.”

I frowned. I didn’t know what answer I had expected, but this wasn’t it. “Why?”

“Nur was Shah Zheng’s only daughter. He married three wives, but he apparently lost his fertility and could not sire another child. He is an old man now, and you, as his grandson, are his only surviving descendant. You are thus heir to the family fortune. But Zheng has a younger brother, Osman. He now runs the family business in all but name. He is a ruthless, unprincipled man. Husband is afraid that if Osman knew about you, he would kill you.”

The thought that my mother’s family, instead of being happy to know me, might want to kill me, made me feel empty inside. I walked to the washing basin and sat on the stone rim, putting my chin in my hand.

“I’m sorry,” Lee Ayi said. When I did not reply, she said, “And my secret?”

I waved to her to go ahead and practice.

A Single Step

She began with empty hands, and at first I barely watched.

My thoughts were still tangled in what she had told me about the Shahs, about my mother’s family and the danger attached to my very existence. I sat on the stone rim of the washing basin, my chin in my hand, staring at nothing in particular while Lee Ayi stepped into the cleared circle of earth.

Her movements were confident enough, practiced, familiar. She knew the basic Five Animals stances, strikes and forms. Tiger, Crane, Snake, Praying Mantis, Dragon. The transitions were there, but sometimes incomplete. One time she flowed from one posture into the next and forgot the intervening strike entirely, leaving a small emptiness in the form that my eye snagged on instinctively. Her stances were serviceable but shallow, her steps sometimes too short, as if she were reluctant to fully commit her weight.

I watched without comment.

When she stretched a hand and requested the wooden dao, and I tossed it to her, something changed. Her posture straightened. She turned her hips fully into the cuts, using her whole body rather than her arms alone. The blade whistled softly as it passed through the air. She was not elegant, and her repertoire was limited. But she was effective. There was intention behind every strike.

With the spear, however, she struggled. Her grip was too far down toward the end, and her hands did not slide smoothly enough on the wood as she changed grips. She overextended on slashes and used her muscles to slow the spear down at the end of the movement, rather than using her body to bounce it back or whip it around, which resulted in slow recoveries. A couple of times I winced involuntarily. My father would have beaten me if I’d done that.

When she finished, she stood in the middle of the circle, hands on her thighs, breathing hard. Sweat darkened the collar of her tunic and ran down her temples.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

I gave a half shrug. “You’re strong. And fit.”

She gave me a sharp look. “That’s not an answer.”

“You’re pretty good with the dao.”

“And the rest?”

I threw up my hands and blurted, “Why are you asking me? I’m just a kid.”

She snorted. “You are that. But you know more than you reveal.” She wiped her face with her sleeve and regarded me steadily. “Show me something of your own.”

I felt my shoulder throb in warning. “What do you mean?”

“Something small,” she said. “One form. Slowly. We can’t risk you opening that cut.”

I should have refused. Every lesson my father had drilled into me screamed that this was a mistake. We kept our skills secret, we did not show them off. But something in her gaze held me there, not challenging, not pleading, simply certain. And anyway, she was family.

I stepped into the circle.

Dragon Surveys His Domain

The earth felt different beneath my feet, packed and bare. I took one wide step forward and dropped into a deep stance, sweeping my hands down to one hip, then drawing them up in a wide arc. The movement finished with my hands snapping back into a tight guard, balanced and ready.

I straightened and saluted, one fist against an open palm. The hand of war and the hand of peace.

“Dragon surveys his domain,” I said.

Lee Ayi stared at me. Her face had gone very still. “You are highly trained.”

I did not answer.

She extended the dao, handle toward me. I pursed my lips and grimaced. “You know I’m injured.”

“Your left shoulder is injured. Use your right hand.”

My nostrils widened as I inhaled deeply, then let it out. “Why?”

“I want to see.” Her tone was deadly serious.

I swallowed. “Only a little.” I took the dao and twirled it easily in my hand, closing my eyes, warming up my muscles.

I saluted with the dao, raising it above my forehead and parallel to the ground, then stepped slowly to my left, bringing the dao up in a number one roof block that flowed into a slash to the neck of an imaginary enemy. I continued with this slow motion dance, reaching around with my hand and pulling, slashing, then spinning away into a thrust that was only a feint that turned into another slash.

I stopped and faced Lee Ayi. “Crane circles the hill.”

She regarded me solemnly. “You killed two men.”

Shock widened my eyes as I remembered the two robbers I’d killed and buried in the peanut field. But how could she know? My brain raced, then I realized – feeling like an utter fool – that she meant the movement I had just done. It was a form, a prearranged sequence in which I killed two imaginary opponents.

“Yes.”

She gestured. “More.”

I twisted my mouth to one side. “Why?”

“My father taught me that sequence, but I forgot it. I want to see more.”

River Flow

I let out a breath that was almost a sigh. Then I took a long diagonal shuffle step one way then the other, attacking with a series of slashes from different angles as my feet danced lightly across the dirt.

As I moved, I fell into River Flow. There were no more cowbells, no afternoon sun heating my face. No Lee Ayi, even. Without plan or awareness, my movements sped up. I leaped up and came over the top with a thrust, but it was a feint that pivoted into a cutting diagonal slash at the last instant. My body had missed this. I was a flame of fire, my movements too fast for an untrained eye to follow. The dao was a part of me. Anything I could envision, I could do.

Many mediocre fighters fought with nothing but the blade, but I was better trained than that, and I threw kicks that snapped out and back, punches that made my wounded shoulder ache, and hits with the pommel of the sword that flowed into elbow strikes that flowed into short-range slashes and thrusts. Never was I out of balance, never did I hesitate or falter.

The dao was a shadow that darted behind my back and around my head, surged high and dropped low, and struck from unexpected angles. In River Flow my parents were not dead, and Far Away was not lost. There was only the movement and my imaginary enemies, and I was in harmony with them. When they pushed forward I slipped to the side to let them pass. When the enemy charged I parried and let him run into the point of my sword. When he slashed I side stepped and matched his slash, cutting along the length of his arm. There was no opposition, no clash. My father had repeated this many times: “The enemy tells you how to kill him.”

I forgot that my aunt was there. My movements became more dramatic. I moved as I used to in my solitary practice sessions, after my father had gone. At one point I did a forward somersault in the air, coming down with a vertical slash, which reversed into an upward slash intended to catch the enemy’s hand. These were movements my father could no longer perform himself, but had coached me through, and some were movements I myself had invented when I practiced alone, after he had gone.

I stopped when the pain in my shoulder reminded me where I was. I stood in the circle, breathing deeply but comfortably. I did not know how much time had passed. Perhaps enough to lower a bucket into the well twice and pull it back up.

Turning, I saw Lee Ayi’s face. She looked stricken. I knew immediately I had done the wrong thing. Stepping forward, I bowed deeply and offered her the sword with both hands, the edge facing me.

Not Gentle

She snatched the dao out of my hands. Her face was pale, her jaw tight. “You shame me.”

I looked away, my gaze alighting on the tall elms that sheltered the house. “That was not my intention.”

“I know.” She exhaled once, sharply. “I have never witnessed such skill. Not even from Cai Lee, and he was a grandmaster. How did you learn that?”

I met her eyes. My gaze was uncompromising. “My father trained me from the time I could walk. He was not gentle.”

“Fathers are sometimes not gentle. That doesn’t mean they -”

“Haven’t you seen my scars?” I nearly shouted. My nostrils flared as I yanked my sleeves up, showing her the many scars on my arms, from cuts my father had given me with the spear, the wooden dao and even the live dao. Some were pale and faded, while others were pink and raised.

She blinked. “I thought from the rough peanut vines, or the hoe.”

I pulled my shirt up and threw it on the ground. “And these?” My stomach and chest also bore long scars.

Her anger was gone, replaced by dismay. “Yong did that?”

“I told you. He was not gentle.”

Her lower lip trembled, and a pair of tears rolled down her dusty cheeks, leaving clean tracks. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“Your cut has reopened.”

I looked at my shoulder and indeed she was right. The bandage was stained deep red.

Gently, my aunt took my hand, led me into the house, washed my wound and re-bandaged it.

“You rest,” she said. “I will finish today’s housework. Don’t tell Husband about what we did today. Or about your wound.” She began to leave, then turned and said, “I’m sorry.”

When she was gone I lay in my bed, wishing that Far Away was here to cuddle up next to me and purr. I knew I had hurt Lee Ayi in more ways than one. I felt like my past was a heavy chain around my neck. It would always be there. I would never be free.

Moon Cake

In the late afternoon a man came to the house on horseback. He was perhaps thirty, dressed in a merchant’s jacket with brass buttons. His face was pale and slick with sweat. Lee Ayi ushered him into Ma Shushu’s treatment room and had him lie on the padded table and wait.

Ma Shushu and Haaris returned not long after. Haaris said he had a surprise for me and handed me a small box. Opening it, I found a round pastry of some kind.

“What is it?”

Haaris gaped. “You never had a moon cake? It’s filled with sweet bean paste and nuts.”

I wasn’t in the mood for Haaris’s unsullied, childish enthusiasm. I thanked him, deposited the moon cake in the pantry, and went back into the bedroom to lie down. This was not to be, however, as Ma Shushu popped his head into the room and asked me to come to the treatment room.

I found Haaris there as well. Ma Shushu was tending to the merchant. He had long, very thin needles that he heated in a candle flame, then inserted with quick, steady hands into the man’s scalp, neck and the backs of his hands.

The man on the table had his eyes squeezed shut. “My head,” he muttered. “Like a drum being beaten from the inside.”

Ma Shushu glanced up at me. “How was work today?”

“It was fine, sir,” I said, tucking my chin into my chest, feeling the weight of secrets bearing down on me. “How was Jum’ah?”

“Good, alhamdulillah. The masjid was full.”

“I have never been to a masjid, or a Jum’ah. I would like to go.” I waited to see how he would respond.

“Oh. Well. Let’s focus our attention on the patient for now. Darius, what I do is called acupuncture. It is an ancient method of healing. You may watch, but you must remain silent.”

I retreated a few steps, put my back to the wall, and watched. How strange this household was. My father had been a dangerous, half-broken man who abused me, drank, stole, and gambled away what little money he had. But he had never lied to me about anything. I was quite sure of that. Yet here in this beautiful, wealthy household, populated with kind and talented people, everyone lied. They lied to me and to each other, and I lied to them.

Did that mean that I was becoming less like my father, and more like these people? I was very confused.

“Darius, are you paying attention?” I heat the needles first to make sure they do not poison the blood.”

I refocused my attention. For good or ill, this life was my future. I must learn, work hard and do my best to fit in.

“Yes, Ma Shushu.”

* * *

Come back next week for Part 7 – Refugees At The Door

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:

Zaid Karim, Private Investigator, Part 1 – Temptation

Gravedigger: A Short Story

The post Far Away [Part 6] – Dragon Surveys His Domain appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

My arrest in Switzerland a year ago is part of a widening campaign to punish critics of Israel.

When organisers posted a TikTok promoting 45-minute pilates sessions, the video amassed 2m views. Now plans are afoot for female classes and youth clubs

It’s early afternoon on a gloomy day at the Jamia Usmania mosque in Bradford and a group of mostly elderly men have finished their midday prayers.

The assembly of mainly retired men would usually return to the familiar drumbeat of day-to-day life, but instead they make their way downstairs to tackle squats, glute bridges and the butterfly position in the mosque’s weekly 45-minute pilates class.

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At first sight, the western strip of the Sahara, yawning south of such famed Moroccan cities as Marrakech and Fez, and separating the Mauritanian desert from the Atlantic coast, might not seem an obvious site for regional competition. In fact, the Western Sahara, with its large phosphate reserves and its blue-hued stones, has been the main prize in a decades-long conflict that drew in the region’s major players with continuing repercussions today. This article will trace the background of the dispute up to a seminal moment: the “Green March” of November 1975, an extraordinary coup-de-main by Morocco’s monarchy that split the region with Mauritania and led to a conflict with Algeria and the Sahraoui Polisario Front that has yet to entirely ebb fifty years later.

Background

For centuries, Morocco was the premier power of the Islamic West, or Maghrib as the region was called at the time. Since local clans of the Amazigh or Berber ethnic group welcomed Idris bin Abdullah, a descendant of Ali bin Abi Talib fleeing the nascent Abbasids, a continuity has bound this western edge of the Muslim world, whose authority at its peak extended north across the Mediterranean and south into the Sahara. Nor was the trajectory of power one-way: a thousand years ago, a confederation of austere Sahraoui Islamic warriors, the Murabitoun, advanced north from the desert, taking over Morocco and entering Andalus to confront a Christian resurgence. We need not trace the trajectory of every faction that ruled Morocco to realize a close link between the regions around modern Morocco, a constant reference point for Moroccan nationalists.

Yet though its sultans, including the Alaoui dynasty that has ruled since the mid-1600s, frequently claimed a caliphal title as Emirul-Mouminin, they were not unchallenged among the Muslims of the West: to their east, the Ottoman sultanate arrived as far as Algeria through links with seafaring corsairs, and to the south they competed with such West African sultanates as the Songhai. Cycles of competition and coexistence marked Morocco’s relations with her neighbours.

In the colonial heyday of the nineteenth century, as France in particular swallowed up much of northwest Africa, Morocco’s position became both more critical to the Muslims of the West as well as more delicate. A sultan such as Abderrahmane bin Hisham (1822-59) could wield influence with largely autonomous religious leaders, such as his neighbour Abdelkader bin Mohieddin, who fought against the brutal French subjugation of Algeria; yet bruising encounters with the French army persuaded him not to overextend himself.

Hoping to modernize, the sultans of the late 1800s entered a pattern of negotiation, debt, and eventually a soft subjugation to the European power that had contemporary echoes in Istanbul and Cairo. If this was uncomfortable for Muslim rulers, its effect on them was scant compared to the periphery of their realms, where jihad and raids were repeatedly launched by clansmen and Sufi adventurers: often officially in defence of the Moroccan realm and with links but little long-term support from the sultanate.

Watering Eyes Amid Colonization

Such a Sufi leader was the fighting scholar Mustafa “Maelainain”, or “Water of the Eyes”, who preached among the Sahraoui clans in the far south. A prolific writer and occasional tutor of Moroccan elites, he nonetheless had considerable autonomy in what is now the Western Sahara and dealt with other local principalities such as the small Mauritanian sultanate of Adrar. Maelainain tutored both the Moroccan prince Abdelhafiz bin Hassan, a great-grandson of Abderrahmane, and Adrar sultan Sidahmed Ould-Aida, and acted in effect as a frontier warrior for both realms against France. Maelainain was already nearly seventy years of age when he began raids on French garrisons, building the town of Smara as a base for a relatively sophisticated force. He had some help from the sultanate as well as from France’s rivals, like Spain and especially Germany.

In 1906, colonial competition led to a division of privileges in Morocco, to which Sultan Abdelaziz bin Hassan, a great-grandson of Abderrahmane, unilaterally agreed. This dismayed many Muslims, including Maelainain, whom French propaganda portrayed as an ingrate and rebel. It was, however, urban Muslim opposition in northern Morocco that ousted Abdelaziz and installed his brother Abdelhafiz, unprecedentedly pledging loyalty on the condition that he use his position to wage jihad against the colonialists. Instead, once established, Abdelhafiz brutally purged his supporters.

Maelainain also broke with precedent by leading an army from the south into the Moroccan heartland in order to salvage the sultanate’s independence. Abdelhafiz made no move as his former tutor was defeated and repulsed south to his stronghold, Tiznit. The sultan even enlisted the aid of French soldiers to crack down on his own protesting subjects.

This in turn sparked an international crisis, Germany objecting to France’s direct involvement, and raised the colonial stakes higher for France. Both Maelainain’s former students, Ould-Aida in Adrar and Abdelhafiz in Morocco, gave way in 1912: Ould-Aida was forced to yield his realm and join the French army, and Abdelhafiz was forced first to sign away independence in favour of a protectorate and then to abdicate anyway. With Maelainain having passed away, his son Ahmed Hibatullah now took up the banner and announced himself sultan of Morocco. Known thus as the Blue Sultan, he made it as far as Marrakech before he was defeated in battle against the French army.

French newspaper from 1912 reporting on the “Blue Sultan” Ahmed Hibatullah’s campaign from the south.

Led by wily viceroy Hubert Lyautey, France employed a strategy of colonization in Morocco different from its summary wreckage of Algeria. The Moroccan elite of the time was coopted rather than crushed, symbolism around the monarchy was enhanced even as its power was stripped away, and this ensured a breathing space: unlike Algeria, where Arabic language and Islamic leadership had been systematically crushed, Morocco experienced a “soft colonization” that nonetheless deeply impacted the way its elites saw the world.

Spain Enters The Fray

The next major anticolonial resistance took place not against France but against Spain in the 1920s, in the Rif region of northern Morocco rather than the south. Like Maelainain, its leader, Mohamed Abdelkerim, had respected Islamic stock and managed an impressively organized army of clansmen, who spectacularly humiliated the Spanish army at Anoual in 1921. It took a major French intrusion to oust and exile him five years later, and French encouragement for Spain to turn to the Western Sahara in the far south, to which it had first laid claim in 1884 but would only manage to occupy fifty years later.

Sahraoui clans put up long-running resistance, often led by Maelainain’s family: his sons, Mohamed Laghdaf and Murabbih Rebbouh, and nephews, Mohamed Mamoun and Takiullah Ouadjaha, led resistance alongside preachers like Mokhtar Ould-Boukhari and commanders such as Aissawi Tibari, who led dozens of raids totalling thousands of miles across the desert. Even Sidahmed Ould-Aida, the ousted Adrar ruler, deserted the French ranks and joined the resistance, where he was killed. Nonetheless, by summer 1934, a joint French-Spanish campaign had secured the region; such leaders as Laghdaf and Mamoun preferred to deal with the Spanish rather than the dreaded French army. Spain was further weakened by a major civil war in which the eventually triumphant right wing of the army, led by Francisco Franco, fired the first shots by seizing garrisons in colonial Morocco.

French-ruled Morocco eventually saw a separate civil resistance, epitomized by the Istiqlal party led by Allal Fassi, largely based in the cities among ascendant intellectuals. This symbolically claimed loyalty to the Moroccan monarchy, and called for independence from colonial rule to rule over a “Greater” Morocco comprising the sultanate’s entire older realms. Mohammad V bin Yusuf, nephew to Abdelaziz and Abdelhafiz, was a particular pole of attraction, as he began to show more assertiveness during the Second World War when France, and indirectly its colonies, were overrun by Germany.

Independence And Its Limitations

No longer the imposing phantom of the past nor minded to reform itself, the 1950s French empire faced varying levels of opposition throughout North Africa. In Algeria, this featured a vicious war; in Tunisia involved unionist protest and smaller peasant revolt; and in Morocco, a mixture of both protest and revolt. France briefly stripped Mohammad of the Moroccan crown, but protests forced them to restore him, and he declared independence in 1956. Morocco supported the anti-French insurgency in Algeria and was keen to engage Mauritanian dissidents against France, such as Hurma Ould-Babana, who announced loyalty to Rabat.

At first supported by Morocco, Sahraoui insurgents led by Benhamou Mesfioui also overran much of the Western Sahara and besieged Spanish garrisons in 1957-58. But when Spain agreed to withdraw if Morocco took responsibility. The Moroccan government’s role transformed to that of controlling rather than supporting the revolt, preferring to engage with Madrid. Mohammad’s son and future successor Hassan II led the Moroccan army into the region to restore the situation, helped by friendly chieftains such as Khatri Ould-Joumani; to the dismay of such Moroccan expansionists as Fassi, Hassan II would ally strongly with Spain. In the Rif region, Rabat also crushed a revolt that aimed, among other things, to bring back Abdelkerim, the still widely influential scourge of the Spaniards.

Succeeding the throne, Hassan II spent the 1960s in hostility with newly independent Mauritania, which he saw as a French puppet and refused to recognize until 1969. However, relations were also tense with Algeria, which had wrenched independence through war but retained economic links with France as well as conceding the French government a small foothold in its deep south. After border skirmishes, a pattern emerged whereby Algeria, soon under military rule, and Morocco would house one another’s dissidents, who in the Moroccan case were largely leftists.

Spain had set up a regional assembly in the Western Sahara, which largely incorporated local chieftains and had limited influence. This was insufficient to stop protests in the Western Sahara, whose most notable leader, Mohamed Bassiri, disappeared. Though the Western Sahara is often treated as a case of opposite societies between Sahraouis and Moroccans, the situation was much more complicated, and many Sahraoui activists maintained at least a hopeful attachment to a Morocco whose government was, however, unwilling to risk its Spanish alliance, no matter how much Moroccan nationalists wanted.

Take the case of Khalili Reguibi, who had fought Spain in the 1950s and then joined the Moroccan army; he remained loyal to Morocco, but his frustrated son, Mohamed Abdelaziz, joined the Polisario Front, a leftist group that led an insurgency against Spain. This was less bizarre than it seems now: at the time, Moroccan nationalists could agree with Sahraoui nationalists that Rabat should help evict the Spanish colony; unfortunately, Fassi regretfully informed Sahraoui contacts, there was scant prospect. As late as October 1974, even Algeria, Hassan’s rival, informed the United Nations that the Western Sahara should join Morocco, and even Polisario originally requested the monarchy’s support. However, perhaps in part because of the longstanding negative experience with Rabat, a United Nations survey found widespread support for independence rather than joining Morocco.

The Green March And Its Discontents

Not until Spain’s impending withdrawal, in the last days of Franco’s rule, did Hassan stir into a flurry of action. He sent his prime minister, Ahmed Othmane, to Madrid to hammer out a joint administration of the Western Sahara with Carlos Arias-Navarros and Hamdi Ould-Meknes, the foreign ministers of Spain and Mauritania: this was to be an interim affair before a referendum. But in a spectacular fait-accompli, half a million Moroccans, unarmed and bearing only the Quran and the Moroccan flag, marched south into the Sahara with chants of takbir. This meticulously organized Green March, a scene to gladden the heart of any Moroccan patriot, was organized and led in person by Hassan II himself, flanked by Othmane and security boss Ahmed Dlimi, and widely applauded across the Moroccan political spectrum.

Ahmed Dlimi

This was in direct contrast to the reception in the Western Sahara. The Sahraoui assembly, led by chieftains such as Baba Ould-Hassina and Ould-Joumani, objected and even threatened to join Polisario to expel the Moroccan intrusion. Yet in an example of how quickly chiefly opinions could adjust to circumstances, two-thirds of the assembly joined Morocco over the winter while Dlimi followed up the Green March by imposing army garrisons. Though Sahraouis would be much better-placed in Moroccan officialdom than under Spain, thousands left the area, many decamping to the Algerian border town Tindouf, which became a de facto headquarters for Polisario’s “shadow government” led by Lamine Ould-Ahmed.

While Morocco and its junior partner Mauritania set about arranging administration, with Hassan’s chamberlain Ahmed Bensouda as governor-general for the Moroccan sector and Abdullah Ould-Cheikh his Mauritanian counterpart, Algeria supported Polisario. Not only Algerian dictator Houari Boumediene but also his leading lieutenants – future ruler Abdelkader Bouteflika, prime minister Moussa Abdelghani, and party chief Salah Yahiaoui – were intimately involved in support for the Polisario Front. The Algerian army clashed directly with its Moroccan counterpart over the winter, but Mauritania was an easier and softer target for Polisario. In summer 1976, its chief Ouali Sayed led a devastating raid into the heart of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott; though he was slain, a line of lieutenants, including his brother Bechir, Abdelaziz, Brahim Ghali, Sidahmed Battal, Ayoub Lahbib, and Brahim Hakim, would lead Polisario either on the battlefield or in international diplomacy.

Throughout the next fifteen years, the Western Saharan war had major regional and international repercussions: it cemented a simmering rivalry between Algeria and Morocco, helped bring down a Mauritanian government or two, and played into the Cold War with Morocco firmly in the Western camp. Though a ceasefire held for nearly thirty years, during which time such Polisario leaders as Hakim and Lahbib joined Morocco, the conflict has flared up again in the 2020s.

Conclusion: A Split In The Islamic West

So what are we to make of the Western Saharan conflict? Comparisons often made by left-leaning critics with Israel’s occupation of Palestine are plainly absurd: at no stage did Morocco descend to the level of viciousness, ethnic cleansing, or systematic massacres periodically on display by Israel, and there are undeniable historical, religious, cultural, and social links between Moroccans and Sahraouis that are plainly not true of Israelis and Palestinians. From the nineteenth-century desert mujahids to as late as the 1970s, Sahraoui leaders and groups often identified with Morocco, so much so that in 1912 the Blue Sultan set out to take the entire country and liberate it from France. Until the 1970s, Morocco’s own abstinence from reciprocating this solidarity owed more to an attempt to balance France out, if through an unpopular alliance with Spain, than any lack of public sympathy.

On the other hand, the Moroccan government itself has a record of using and discarding the region to Rabat’s convenience, whether in the days of Abdelaziz and Abdelhafiz or Hassan II. The harsher Moroccan tactics, such as Dlimi’s construction of a major “sand wall” in the early 1980s, resemble colonial tactics, even if comparisons with Israel are ridiculous. Moroccan protests that Polisario is simply a tool of the Algerian junta ignore its own militarized treatment. And the tensions accruing from a decades-long conflict have polarized the people of the Islamic Maghrib, foremost of the Western Sahara itself.

 

Related:

– From Algeria to Palestine: Commemorating Eighty Years Of Resistance And International Solidarity

– Islam In Nigeria [Part I]: A History

The post Green March In The Sands Of The Blue Sultan: Morocco And The Conflict Over The Western Sahara appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Blavatnik foundation is deeply enmeshed with Israel’s academic-military architecture of occupation.

A short phone call with my family in Gaza.

I took Visionaire, a course about making “dream duas,” the last time it was ever taught by Shaykh Muhammad al Shareef. While I thought I would continue to learn and deepen my understanding of his teachings for years to come, Allah had different plans. As I revisit the course in preparation for Ramadan this year, here are the basics of what I learned about making dua from the shaykh before his passing. 

It’s Sunnah to Aim for the Highest in Your Duas  

The Prophet’s final words were a dua. He was lying in the lap of his beloved wife, Aisha , and she just used a miswak to clean his teeth. His final words were, “Oh Allah, in the highest companionship,”1 referring to his desired station in the akhirah. Throughout this dua, we can see the final act of the Prophet was making a lofty dua. 

Following in his footsteps, we should also make huge duas that only Allah can fulfill. Dua is not about us, what we can have, or what we deserve; dua is about the One who will answer it. Thus, we raise our standards when it comes to dua without needing to be timid, moderate, shy, or embarrassed to ask Allah or anything we want.

If we can reach the zone of “slightly unrealistic,” we’ve started asking Allah at a scale that is fitting to His Majesty. We’ve reached that zone when we become confused or feel uncomfortable because we can’t figure out how a dua could ever come into volition. For example, someone wants to change their career and needs time and money for further education. Once they start struggling to figure out the logistics of how they would make ends meet without working full-time and balance their family life, that’s where Allah’s Divine capability intercedes. The duas we make should aim to reflect Allah’s infinite ability and not our finite human limitations.  

You Can Make Dua out of Pain or Pleasure

We can make dua from a state of pain or pleasure, and that Allah listens to both. 

Allah answers the duas of pain and desperate need and says so in the Quran.

“Is He [not best] who responds to the desperate one when he calls upon Him and removes evil and makes you inheritors of the earth? Is there a deity with Allah? Little do you remember.” [Surah An-Naml; 27:62]

The Prophet has also taught us that Allah guarantees to answer anyone who uses the specific dua of Prophet Yunus 2

 

“And [mention] the man of the fish, when he went off in anger and thought that We would not decree [anything] upon him. And he called out within the darknesses, “There is no deity except You; exalted are You. Indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers.” [Surah Al-Anbiya; 21:87]

The good news is that when we are trapped in the belly of the whale, so to speak, in our own lives, we know our pleas will be answered. However, if times of crisis are the only times when we make dua, we will find ourselves constantly needing to be in a disaster to perform this powerful act of worship. On the flip side, when we’re not in pain, we completely disconnect from dua and remain quiet. That sounds pretty sad and is a huge disadvantage to only make dua from pain. 

However, we can also make dua out of pleasure–ones that make us excited and put a smile on our faces. These duas are the ones we say, “I can’t wait to get into sajdah to make dua for this” because we’re looking forward to having them answered with so much anticipation. These duas can be separated into three broad categories: things we want to experience, things we want to own, and the type of person we would like to become. Being able to connect to the duas that encapsulate our dreams, is not silly or trivial. They build the intimacy in our relationship with Allah because we continue to ask and ask and ask from Him, even during the good times.

Finally, we should look for hacks to create optimistic duas we can feel excited for even during times of sadness and distress. If we are experiencing doom during a calamity, is there a happy future we can look forward to? We should try to make dua for that as a solution to the current crisis we are facing. For example, a woman has just given birth but has severe health complications and has been in the ICU for a week. While her family is distraught, hoping she’ll recover, they probably can’t think of anything else to pray for. Instead of repeating Ya Allah, give her a full recovery, maybe they can look forward to the mom enjoying her baby’s first birthday or high school graduation in full health. Ya Allah, let her bake the baby’s first birthday cake. Ya Allah, let her make a heartfelt speech about her baby’s accomplishments at his graduation dinner.  Doesn’t that sound optimistic, exciting, and so beautiful? Sometimes, it is easier to repeat a dua and stay consistent with asking for it when the dua itself looks on the brighter side of a painful, trying situation.

Give Your Dua an Emotional Charge

The undercurrent to making dua regularly and being truly committed to it is being moved emotionally in some way. As mentioned above, the emotions can range from negative to positive–sadness, desperation, outrage, fear, excitement, joy, anticipation, etc. Finding an emotional charge for a dua, and specifically a “dream dua,” entails knowing it can be real and imagining it as so. Using visualization techniques, such as making a collage of photos that represent what the actualized dua would look like or imagining what it might smell or sound like, can help build the emotional charge we need to fuel our dua habit. We will find even more excitement when we ask for something if we’ve taken some time to relish in what it would be like to have that dua answered exactly as it has been asked.

Dua is not just Spontaneous, it Involves Careful Preparation and Diligent Work

Dua doesn’t have to be a spontaneous string of words that come from fleeting feelings in our hearts at the given time of the dua. Dream duas that we commit to repeating often involve careful preparation. We must introspect on our current lives and the future lives we wish to live. We can try to visualize what those duas would look, smell, feel, sound, and taste like. We can explore all of the possibilities and brainstorm before committing to a select few. We can think about the words that best capture what we imagine. It might take 10 or 20 attempts to find the perfect wording for a dua and even involve input from others. The duas we make don’t have to be carefully guarded and secret; we are welcome to get help for them. 

The work doesn’t stop at coming up with the duas. We can commit to making dua according to a dua habit we devise. (Specifically in Visionaire, the dua habit involves making dream duas multiple times a day/night throughout Ramadan and for 6 months afterwards.) We can also commit to working on making those duas come true with our own efforts, keeping in mind that we seek the worldly means and trust in Allah .3

Grand Duas Help us Grow

As humans, there is no point where we’ve finally “arrived” or “made it” in our lives because things constantly change. We are either growing or dying in everything we do. There is always another mountain to climb; we just have to be the ones to find it. The champion MMA fighter Khabib couldn’t get any higher than being a world champion, right? What he decided to pivot to next was coaching a future world champion. He found another goal to fight for. Our grand “dream duas” benefit us by helping us find, and eventually achieve, our next growth. 

Moreover, dream duas can help motivate us, keep us focused on a clear vision, and hold ourselves accountable. If we find that there are duas we keep coming back to over 5-10 years, we can double down on investing in ourselves in those areas to complete our end of the bargain.4 We can do whatever we can in that area and leave the rest to Allah .   

Don’t Feel Guilty about Making Dua for Dunya 

There is nothing wrong with making dua for the dunya. In the Quran, we are taught to say a dua that asks for the best in this dunya.

 

But among them is he who says, “Our Lord, give us in this world [that which is] good and in the Hereafter [that which is] good and protect us from the punishment of the Fire.” [Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:201]

The key is that we are not exclusively making dua for the dunya. That feeling of guilt is coming from Shaytan, who is trying to prevent us from engaging in a good deed. We shouldn’t be shy about asking for anything from Allah. As a matter of fact, the more we ask, the happier Allah is and the closer we become to Allah through dua. 

Another form of guilt that can deceive us is feeling as if we shouldn’t ask for more if we’re supposed to be grateful for what we already have. However, Allah states that those who are truly grateful will experience an ever-increasing abundance of more to be grateful for [https://quran.com/ibrahim/7.] This dispels the idea that being truly grateful means that a person will never deserve, or desire, more.

I’m Too Scared to Make Dua for the Wrong Thing

Some of us may be faced with dua paralysis when we feel nervous that we are going to ask Allah for something that will turn out to be bad for us in the end. To quell this fear, we should look at the three ways in which Allah answers duas. The first answer to the dua is yes, and exactly what the dua asked for. The second answer is yes, but not now. It will happen later. And the third is yes, but I have something better for you. The protection from making dua for a bad thing is built into the way Allah promises to answer all duas, so make the dua and then leave the rest to Allah . We must have the best opinion of Allah and know that He will always send us good according to His all-encompassing knowledge5.  

Dua is a Lifeforce that will Change You

Dua is a lifeforce that reminds us of the miracles that we are. Aren’t humans just “ghosts inside a skeletal meat living on a rock hurtling through space?” Shaykh Muhammad reminds us.6 Our lives are a sign of Our Creator, the One who can do what we aren’t even capable of imagining or knowing. Thus, dua isn’t about us; it’s about the all-powerful and infinite God whom we worship. As a matter of fact, even non-Muslims know dua works–they just call it by different names like manifesting, the principle of positive attraction, etc. Even Shaytan knows dua works…and he shows us how intensely he understands that duas are not about the asker, but the Responder. Shaytan makes the craziest dua–to live forever and have the power to tempt and lead mankind astray. That is a scary level of yaqeen we can all learn from.

Dua is the only tool we have to rewrite our destiny. Dua is larger than us. Sometimes we feel like we have to change a lot of things in our lives in order to start or return to making dua. However, we don’t need to change; all we need to do is begin in order for dua to change us. Allah will outstrip our smallest baby steps at the onset of this journey and facilitate our progress as we strive to turn and ask from Him.7 So, what are we waiting for now? Get excited about making dua. Godspeed!

 

Related:

– Constructing Your Personal Arafah Dua List I Sh. Muhammad Alshareef & Sh. Yahya Ibrahim

– From The Chaplain’s Desk: Sayyid Al-Istighfar – The Greatest Dua For Seeking Forgiveness

 

1    https://sunnah.com/bukhari:44632    https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:35053    https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:25174    https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:25175    https://sunnah.com/bukhari:74056    https://quran.com/51/20-227    https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:3821

The post What Shaykh Muhammad Al Shareef Taught Us About Making Dua appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

JewBelong co-founder teams up with the Christian Broadcasting Network and Larry Huch Ministries.

Israeli forces bulldoze UN compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel Antiquities Authority takes part in new Brussels-approved project.

When my father evacuated to Italy I was hopeful my family would be next; my hope is now fading.

The horrors being imposed on Gaza today are a model for repression elsewhere.

We talk to Mohammad Marandi, cover resistance in Gaza, UK hunger strikes, pro-Palestine backlash in Australia and much more.

Muslims swept off the street by ICE, Somalis in Minnesota targeted by racism from the President of America, Palestinian activists illegally detained: post-Trump America is a hellish dystopia… yet one that many Muslims voted for.

In this episode of the MuslimMatters Podcast, Zainab bint Younus speaks to Imam Dawud Walid about the political and cultural pendulum swinging to the right after the leftist allyship of the 2010s, and the phenomenon of Muslims voting for Trump in the last election. She asks him about his book “Towards Sacred Activism” and what priorities Muslims need to keep in mind before choosing to engage with or seek allyship with political and cultural groups in the West. Are Muslims meant to be right-wing or left-wing? Tune into this episode for a deep dive into this contentious discussion.

Imam Dawud Walid is currently the Executive Director of CAIR-Michigan, member of the Imams Council of Michigan, and advisory board member of Muslim Endorsement Council (MEC) which is a national endorsement and support organization for Islamic chaplaincy. Imam Dawud has ijazaat in various disciplines of the Islamic sciences, has served an imam for many years, in addition to writing several books, authoring essays, and speaking at multiple institutions around the world.

Related:

Podcast: Priorities and Protest | On Muslim Activism with Shaykhs Dawud Walid and Omar Suleiman

Holding Onto Prophetic Etiquettes When Protesting: Encouragement And Advice For Muslim Human Rights Advocates

The post [Podcast] Should Muslims Ally with Conservatives or Progressives? | Imam Dawud Walid appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The principal role for which Naledi Pandor of South Africa is known is politics, but her principal interest lies in education. During the final year of her career in 2024, the septuagenarian foreign minister of South Africa gave an education in principled politics with perhaps the most concrete step of any government minister against Israel’s assault on Palestine when she took them to an international court for genocide.

There were personal costs to pay, of course, given the ferocity of Zionist propaganda that has accompanied the genocide. Most recently, in November 202,5 her visa to the United States was revoked in an extraordinarily petty move, which was nonetheless celebrated by Zionist organizations, many of which had spent months attacking both South Africa in general and her in particular for having had the temerity to challenge their bloody assault on Palestine.

But for Pandor, the vindication of being on the right side of history was well worth it. Speaking at Ottawa during a whirlwind trip through Canada just days before the cancellation of her visa, she described the feeling when, after months of personal attacks, professional snubs, and outright mistreatment by both local rivals and foreign peers, her case was found to have been valid all along: “Thanks be to Allah, it’s a wonderful feeling.”

Not that there was any let-up in the urgency of the Palestinian cause, of course. With the genocide still afoot, she emphasized the importance of civil society and mass, organized international solidarity. Palestine’s plight required, she said, that its supporters “build a united global front” in support. This front can not afford parochialism, sectarianism, tribalism, and hatred.

Background

Pandor grew up amid the downtrodden black majority in apartheid South Africa in a family with both educational and political roots. Her grandfather, Zachariah Matthews, was a professor renowned throughout Africa, who was exiled from his homeland after opposing apartheid in 1956 and became a diplomat for the newly independent Botswana before he passed away. Though he was also exiled, Zachariah’s son Joseph Matthews, Pandor’s father, ended up taking a different route: after apartheid ended, he left his father’s party, though he served a few years as minister in charge of police in a subsequent coalition cabinet. By contrast, Pandor, like her grandfather, spent her political career in the African National Congress, which has ruled South Africa for the past three decades.

The African Congress’s rise to power in 1994 came at the end of several generations’ worth of struggle, where they were the main, banned party representing South Africa’s downtrodden majority against the apartheid regime. Their leader, Nelson Mandela, is renowned in anticolonial circles for, among other things, his unfettered solidarity with Palestine, famously remarking, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” It was this internationalist solidarity that Pandor inherited; speaking at an event arranged by the Justice for All organization, she emphasized the need for human dignity and freedom across borders – highlighting, along with Palestine, the cases of Rohingya, Uyghurs, and Kashmiris as oppressed people deprived of their rights.

From South African Apartheid to Israeli Genocide

“Pandor stressed the importance of civil society as nimbler, more flexible form of activism than reliance on officialdom” [PC: Al Jazeera]

Israel’s supremacist regime over Palestinians has often been likened to apartheid; Pandor recounted the similarities in militarized townships, forcibly separated places for different races, and the seizure of land for European settlers. In some respects, the current situation is even more ludicrous: where the apartheid regime in South Africa handpicked puppets to impose on the majority black population, today Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and notorious neoconservative ideologue, is being trotted out as a prospective viceroy for a Gaza that does not want him.

But Pandor also emphasized certain key differences. In South Africa’s minority rule, the majority workers in unions were able to organize and protest on account of their importance to the South African economy, thus pressuring the same apartheid regime that deprived them. This is not applicable to Palestine, especially under the current genocide, where the role of international solidarity becomes that much more important.

Pandor stressed the importance of civil society as nimbler, more flexible form of activism than reliance on officialdom: civil society can also afford to stick to its principles in ways that officialdom may not. In taking political stances on principle, she remarked, “For some of us, we are there for freedom, for others we are there for the selfie – and actions will tell which one [is which].”

As an experienced diplomat, she lamented the limitations of even multilateral international bodies and particularly urged the reform of United Nations institutions to break free of the control of the major powers: “It is tragic that the body we rely on for peace and security,” she said, was dominated by five member states more responsible between them for global insecurity and war than the others put together.

The role of principled activism was therefore paramount for Pandor, who quoted Mandela’s advice to youth: “Be a person who makes trouble, but make good trouble.”

South Africa’s Fight for Justice, Home and Abroad

Fighting for a just cause dovetailed neatly with Pandor’s understanding of Islam, to which she converted earlier in life. The African Congress had a considerable amount of support among South Africa’s Muslim minorities, many of whom had been engaged in the campaign against apartheid. For Pandor, faith in Allah enabled her to withstand frequent barbed attacks from political opponents. These could go from sweeping bigotry, as evidenced by much of the attacks on South Africa’s current government in recent years, to the pettily personal: she drily recounted how rivals attacked a slight British inflection in her accent, having studied and taught in Britain in her youth.

Education was Pandor’s first job, and after a stint leading South Africa’s equivalent of a senate, the first woman to do so, she held a number of ministries largely related to educational advancement. She also served a brief stint as interior minister, and ended her ministerial career with five years as South Africa’s foreign minister. As a veteran politician well-versed in the cut and thrust of power, her initiative in a principled cause meant that much more. So too did her emphasis on the importance of civil society, something located well outside the realm of the corridors of power.

Since it threw off apartheid in the 1990s, South Africa has generally been seen as a leader on the African continent and is often catalogued among rising states in the international system. With that system having long been dominated by first colonial, and then Cold War superpowers’ competition, Pandor emphasized the importance of this moment in history: when these “Global Northern” powers, who have dominated international relations for centuries, are in flux. It was a huge opportunity, she said, for the “Global South” to reconfigure international relations to a more equitable keel.

It was only a few days later, after her trip to Canada, that Pandor found that her visa to travel to the United States had been revoked. This stemmed partly from a general hostility toward South Africa by the United States, especially during Donald Trump’s current reign, where far-right activists regularly and speciously claim that Pretoria’s anti-apartheid measures discriminate against the white minority.

This reached such a stage that Trump personally berated South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa for this fictitious oppression and offered asylum to white South Africans fleeing the country, a ludicrous proposition that even baffled many of its intended beneficiaries. And it also stemmed from a linked Zionist campaign against South Africa, which is accused of being in cahoots with Hamas to malign the Israeli state. Pandor, the highest-profile Muslim minister, a black veteran of the anti-apartheid movement, and the lady who took Israel to court, was a central target.

Throughout it all, the South African has kept a dry wit, a stiff upper lip, and an iron will. “Remain engaged until freedom is won,” she said at Ottawa. “That is all.”

 

Related:

– Who’s Afraid Of Dr Naledi Pandor? – Zionist Panic and a Visa Revoked

– When News Becomes Propaganda: Gaza, Genocide, And The Media

 

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