Introduction

Black Muslims in the United States are often referred to as “indigenous Muslims” (Love, 2017) who embody unique intersections of racial, religious, and national identities (Ahmed & Muhammad, 2019). This term highlights a long-standing and often overlooked presence of Black Muslims in the U.S., whose roots in American Islam predate many immigrant Muslim communities. Black Muslims have consistently shaped the religious, cultural, and political landscape of American Islam. Despite this historical significance, Black Muslims remain vastly underrepresented in educational research, particularly in higher education literature, where their student experiences are rarely examined. 

Although Black Muslims represent one of the largest racial groups practicing Islam in the U.S. (Schmidt, 2004), little is known about their educational realities, challenges, and resistance. Much of the existing research on Muslim students tends to focus on South Asian and Arab populations, often failing to account for how anti-Blackness operates alongside Islamophobia to shape educational experiences in distinct and compounding ways. As a result, the needs, identities, and insights of Black Muslim students are frequently overlooked in institutional responses to inclusion.

This article draws on existing literature to explore how systemic anti-Blackness and Islamophobia shape the lives of Black Muslim students, while simultaneously highlighting how they resist these forces through religious identity, cultural affirmation, and educational aspiration. In doing so, this work aims to challenge the erasure of Black Muslim voices in academic research and to contribute to a broader understanding of how race and religion intersect within the educational experiences of minoritized students. Centering Black Muslim students is not only necessary to address an ongoing gap in the literature, but also critical for building more just and inclusive educational environments where their histories and identities are affirmed.

Historical and Sociopolitical Context

To understand the present-day experiences of Black Muslim students, it is essential to first consider the historical and sociopolitical foundations of their identities. The positioning of Black Muslims in the United States must be understood through the legacy of white supremacy and racial exclusion. Auston (2017) argues that the practice of Islam in the United States has long been shaped by racial hierarchies rooted in anti-Black racism. For Black American Muslims, Islam has historically served as a vehicle for resisting structural violence, segregation, and racial inequality. 

The emergence of the Nation of Islam (NOI) during the Jim Crow era is a prime example. As Akom (2003) details, the NOI developed in response to racist policies and environments that excluded Black communities. Within such contexts, Islam became both a spiritual and sociopolitical force shaped by resistance. In an ethnographic study with high school students affiliated with the NOI, Akom (2003) found that these students developed a “Black achievement ideology,” allowing them to excel academically while resisting school norms that clashed with their religious and racial values. Their resistance manifested through peer support, cultural pride, and redefining success on their own terms. Although the NOI’s theological framework differs from Sunni or Shi’a traditions, its significance lies in how it historically enabled Black students to maintain their identities within oppressive educational systems.

“Black Muslim students navigate educational spaces that are often hostile to both their racial and religious identities.” [PC: Wadi Lissa (unsplash)]

Despite the richness of Black Muslim contributions to American Islam and social justice movements, their experiences within education remain largely overlooked. Ahmed and Muhammad (2019) and Rahman (2021) both note that very few studies have focused on Black Muslim students, particularly at the collegiate level. This underrepresentation stems from an anti-Black perspective that fails to take seriously the contributions and experiences of Black Muslims (Rahman, 2021). 

Cole et al. (2020) emphasize the importance of understanding students’ multiple identities, especially those shaped by intersecting systems of race and religion. As such, analyzing Black Muslim student experiences requires an intersectional approach that can capture the compounding effects of multiple forms of oppression. For Black Muslim students, their marginalization is compounded by an entanglement of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia that demands an intersectional lens. Their marginalization is not only compounded by racism and Islamophobia, but also by the lack of recognition and support for their unique religious practices and cultural expressions within academic spaces (Auston, 2017).

Intersectionality and Compounding Marginalization

This intersectional framework helps us better understand how Black Muslim students navigate educational institutions that are often ill-equipped to support either aspect of their identity. Black Muslim students navigate educational spaces that are often hostile to both their racial and religious identities. Auston (2017) underscores how the dual stigma of being Black and non-Christian in a predominantly white, Christian-majority society places Black Muslims at a unique disadvantage. She mentions how “current manifestations of Black Muslim engagement with the unique intersectional impacts of marginalization arising out of the combination of being Black and non-Christian…is cumulative. To a large extent, Black American Islam has always been about the struggle for racial equality and religious freedom, shaped by the intersectional concerns necessitated by the fight on multiple fronts against state power, anti-Blackness, and entrenched White supremacy” (p. 20). Unlike their South Asian or Arab counterparts, whose experiences with Islamophobia may be racialized differently, Black Muslims face a historically entrenched anti-Black racism that predates and shapes their religious marginalization.

Ahmed and Muhammad (2019) further demonstrate how Black Muslim youth actively challenge these overlapping oppressions through spiritual grounding, community involvement, and cultural affirmation. These youth are not passive recipients of discrimination, but rather active agents who resist and reframe their realities.

Resistance and Black Muslim Brilliance

This active resistance forms the basis of what Rahman (2021) terms “Black Muslim brilliance,” a framework that reframes student agency and excellence through cultural and religious affirmation. A central theme across the limited but growing scholarship on Black Muslim youth is their strategic resistance to systemic marginalization. Rahman (2021) explores how Black Muslim students often opt out of U.S. educational systems entirely in favor of international or faith-based educational spaces. Drawing from an ethnographic study across Senegal and several U.S. cities, Rahman (2021) found that youth sought environments where Islamophobia and anti-Blackness were less pervasive. These spaces allowed students to nurture their spiritual and intellectual growth in affirming ways.

Rahman (2021) articulates the concept of “Black Muslim brilliance,” describing how these youth harness education as a tool for both personal empowerment and community uplift. She mentions how educational opportunities provided in faith-based settings often instill within students a commitment to addressing the social issues that impact Black communities. This brilliance is not defined solely by academics, but by a comprehensive growth grounded in justice, communal responsibility, and a strong sense of identity.

Similarly, Akom’s (2003) study of NOI students shows how alternative frameworks of success rooted in Black pride, religious commitment, and cultural resistance can produce academically successful students who do not conform to dominant educational norms. These examples suggest that Black Muslim youth are not struggling due to a lack of ability or aspiration, but rather due to structural barriers that deny the legitimacy of their identities.

To fully grasp the complexity of Black Muslim student experiences, it is important to distinguish them from those of other Muslim groups in the U.S. While Islamophobia impacts all visibly Muslim groups in the U.S., the experiences of Black Muslims are distinct due to the historic and ongoing realities of anti-Blackness. Auston (2017) argues that Black Muslim identities are forged in struggle, whether that is against slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, or religious exclusion. The convergence of racialized Islamophobia with entrenched anti-Black racism renders their experiences different from those of other Muslim groups. Recognizing this distinction is crucial in creating institutional responses that address the specific needs of Black Muslim students.

Conclusion

Black Muslim students occupy a liminal space at the intersection of race and religion, where both anti-Blackness and Islamophobia shape their educational experiences. They navigate an educational landscape that often fails to recognize and validate their intersecting identities. The historical and sociopolitical context of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia is crucial in understanding how Black Muslim students experience marginalization, but it is equally important to highlight their transformative responses to these challenges. 

Black Muslim students’ educational journeys are deeply shaped by their struggles against both racism and religious exclusion. However, their agency offers us crucial insights into how education can and should be transformed to truly affirm the identities and aspirations of all students. From resistance strategies in school to international educational pursuits, Black Muslims continually seek and create spaces that affirm their identities and values. To address the systemic inequities they face, both educational institutions and scholars must recognize their unique experiences and challenges and take meaningful action to create an inclusive, supportive, and just educational landscape. Educational institutions and scholars must begin to take seriously the voices and needs of Black Muslim students as central figures in the ongoing struggle for equity, belonging, and justice in education.

***

References

Ahmed, S. & Muhammad, H. (2019). Black American Muslim youth: Navigating environments, engaging new pathways. In Political Muslims: Understanding Resistance in a Global Context, 23-51.

Akom, A. A. (2003). Reexamining resistance as oppositional behavior: the Nation of Islam and the creation of a black achievement ideology. Sociology of Education, 76, 305-325.

Auston, D. (2017). Prayer, protest, and police brutality: Black Muslim spiritual resistance in the Ferguson era. Transforming Anthropology, 25(1), 11-22.

Cole, D., Hypolite, L., & Atashi, A. (2020). Black Muslims. In Islamophobia in Higher Education: Combating Discrimination and Creating Understanding. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Love, E. (2017). Islamophobia and Racism in America. NYU Press.

Rahman, S. (2021). Black Muslim brilliance: Confronting antiblackness and Islamophobia through transnational educational migration. Curriculum Inquiry, 51(1), 57-74.

Schmidt, G. (2004). Islam in Urban America: Sunni Muslims in Chicago. Temple University Press.

 

Related:

– The Black Muslim Experience In K-12 Education

– Top 10 Books On Black Muslim History

 

The post Faith, Identity, And Resistance Among Black Muslim Students appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11

“This world is a prison for the believer and a paradise for the unbeliever.” — Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī)

Li Huangfeng

Deek made calls to various crypto asset management firms in Los Angeles and San Francisco. One, “Blockchain Asset Management!” in San Francisco – BAM! for short – showed immediate interest and enthusiasm, connecting Deek to a manager named Li Huangfeng, who asked for screenshots of Deek’s wallets, showing his balances.

Hearing the Chinese name, Deek smiled and let his shoulders relax. The Chinese were giant players in the crypto world. Deek knew it was silly to stereotype that way, yet he felt irrationally safe in Huangfeng’s hands.

Also, he liked Huangfeng’s direct approach. He sent screenshots showing a crypto portfolio worth $50 million, and told Huangfeng that there was more in other wallets. Without hesitation, Huangfeng booked Deek a first class plane ticket to San Francisco, and promised to have a driver waiting to pick him up. Deek loved the respect and pampering that Huangfeng was giving him.

Parallel Worlds

On the third day since checking into the hotel, he went to the airport wearing one of his new tailored suits. It was dark gray, made of a microfiber that was durable yet as soft as silk. With it, he wore red leather shoes and a crimson red dress shirt open at the neck, with no tie, and with a three day growth of rough beard, all because what the hell, he could wear whatever he wanted and look how he wanted. He was the man here, he was the star of the moment.

With him he had a leather satchel he’d purchased at the hotel shop, a handful of Marco Polo envelopes, a notepad and pen, and a sandwich from the hotel kitchen, to eat on the plane.

The sandwich turned out to be unnecessary. He’d never flown first class before, and it was a trip. The seat was wide and comfortable. As soon as he sat, the attendant brought him a glass of apple nectar. In the air, he was given a hot towel to clean his hands, and then a hearty lunch consisting of an albacore tuna sandwich with cream cheese and sprouts.

Instead of making him happy, however, the experience left him feeling sad. Only a few rows behind him, people were making do with peanuts and diet Pepsi. It was as if there were two parallel worlds. In one, people with money were treated with kindness and respect, without regard to their character. In the other, people who were just as worthy, and maybe more so, were given scraps.

Pre-Apocalyptic Scene

The driver who picked him up at the San Francisco airport introduced herself as November. She was a small, lean African-American woman with long braided hair and a hard-edged face. Her voice was clipped and professional. In spite of her small stature, she carried an air of extreme competence. Deek knew he would be safe with her, and that she was not someone he should mess with.

He hadn’t been to downtown San Francisco for a few years, and it seemed worse for wear. There were more homeless people, panhandlers and shuttered storefronts. Tourists wandered through this pre-apocalyptic scene looking confused, as if they had signed up for a grand cruise and found themselves on a rusting fishing boat.

Sitting in the large, climate-controlled towncar, peering through tinted windows at the passing streets, Deek saw a thin young woman with two children – one of them a baby – and a dog, sitting on the filthy sidewalk. All looked ragged and hungry, and as beaten down as sheets of tin. On a piece of cardboard, the woman had scrawled, “Tried everything.”

The message touched Deek. He knew exactly the feeling. He’d been there, hopeless and out of ideas. If not for Rania supporting him, he might have been in the same position as this woman.

“Stop the car, please,” he said.

“Affirmative, copy that.” Without hesitation, November stopped the car, even as traffic began honking and backing up behind them.

“Give me a minute.” Deek exited the car and approached the woman. In spite of it being a summer day, the street was shaded by the tall buildings on either side, and a cold wind whipped down the steel and glass gully. The sidewalk smelled of urine. He stood looking at the woman for a moment. Her clothing and person, and those of the children, were clean. But they were all fencepost-thin, and the woman’s eyes looked as tired as if she’d been rowing against the current on the Mississippi River for a hundred years, seeing grand yachts churn past, none of them caring to throw her a line.

Fifty story skyscrapers, corporations worth billions, and families living on the street. So much for the greatest nation on earth. Thinking this, Deek realized that he was criticizing himself in a way. He was rich now. For him to make money, someone else had lost it. He was the one percent. He was part of the leech class.

“Take a picture,” the woman said bitterly. “It’ll last longer.”

The Idea of a Feeling

Deek took out his wallet and removed all the cash he had left from the $5,000 he’d transferred to his bank account. It was about $2,200. He gave the entire sum to the homeless woman. She gasped, her mouth wide but eyes narrowed in suspicion, and said, “What do you want?”

“Nothing. Take it.” When she made no move to take the money, Deek took a blue handkerchief from his pocket. It was superfine cotton, made in Germany. He wrapped the money in it, then set it on the sidewalk before her.

He hustled back to the car. As they pulled away, he saw that the woman had taken the money and was getting up with her kids, off to buy food perhaps.

“Most of my protectees don’t do things like that,” November said, and her voice was softer than it had been previously.

Deek made no reply. It felt good, giving away that money, but again, the emotion was dulled, like the idea of a feeling rather than the real thing. Now he found himself remembering what Zaid had said about donating money to help the people of Gaza. He also thought about his friend Marco, living in a broken down SRO, and his sister and her family, who always struggled financially. He took out his phone and began to tap out a message to Marco, then paused. He took a deep breath, and deleted the text. All in due time.

I Could Just Wait

At Market and Seventh, a man ran into traffic. He wore ragged jeans, with no shoes or shirt, and a canvas bag on a strap around one shoulder. His red hair was long and partially matted. November hit the brakes, but was unable to prevent giving the man a gentle tap with the front bumper. Enraged, the man screamed, drew a bicycle u-lock from his bag, and smashed it into the towncar’s front hood, denting it.

“Ya Allah!” Deek exclaimed. He gripped the seat, wondering what he should do, if anything. Yet November sat calmly, not even honking the horn. Once again, the man yelled something unintelligible and struck the car.

“You’re not going to do anything?” Deek demanded, wondering if this was a cowardly question. After all, he was twice the driver’s size.

“Negative. I mean, I could,” November admitted. “He’s probably homeless and mentally ill. But yes, I could neutralize him in two seconds and hold him for law enforcement. If they incarcerate him, which is not certain, he’ll likely be beaten by other inmates, and by the time he gets out, he’ll have lost his meager stash of possessions, wherever they are. Meanwhile, you’ll be late for your meeting. Or I could wait for him to get distracted by the next thing and wander off.”

“Oh. Okay.” Deek relaxed, and within a few seconds, as November predicted, the homeless man continued on his way, as did November and Deek.

“You’re a good person,” Deek commented.

“I’m following your example, brother.”

This made Deek smile. “Do you talk to all your clients this way?”

“Negative. Most of my protectees are rich, calloused VIPs with zero empathy. I hear their conversations. They don’t even know that the poor exist, and if they do, they blame them for their own plight. You’re different. I mean, you must be rich too, or you wouldn’t be meeting with my boss, but you have a soft heart, and I mean that as a compliment. Don’t lose that quality.”

This touched Deek, yet made him feel sad at the same time for reasons he could not articulate. “Thank you,” he said.

Chinese Food

Fifteen minutes later, he found himself sitting at a huge marble table in a conference room on the fortieth floor of a San Francisco skyscraper, with stunning views of the undulating urban hills of San Francisco. He could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, and the steel blue Pacific stretching away like a promise and a warning of things to come. The room was chilly, with a faint scent of lime cleaner.

Across from him sat Li Huangfeng, who was younger than Deek expected, along with a broad-shouldered, 60ish African-American man in a cream seersucker suit. The man looked as smooth and hard as black marble. He introduced himself as Henry Turner, founder and CEO of BAM!.

“I wanted to reassure you,” Turner said, “that Li is one of my best and brightest. You are in good hands with him. Whatever you need, give the word and BAM! We’ll make it happen. If you need cash in exchange for crypto, we can supply as much as a million dollars right now, for a fee of two percent.”

Turner went on to explain all the services his company offered, and ended with. When he concluded, he shook Deek’s hand with an iron grip and departed.

“Alright!” Li said cheerfully. “You hungry? How about if we order Chinese food and get to work? I know absolutely the best Chinese restaurant in town.”

Deek massaged his hand. Turner had practically crushed it. “Sure,” he muttered. “Chinese sounds great.”

They got to work. The food – sautéed garlic green beans, crispy tofu, lemon pepper fish, and bean dumplings – was indeed delicious.

Milestone Investments

Li Huangfeng did several things for Deek, and probably earned himself a small fortune in commissions in the process.

First, he offered Deek any one of a variety of “seasoned” offshore corporations based in the Turks and the Caicos, a Caribbean island that Deek had not heard of but apparently was a popular offshore banking haven. Some of these corporations already owned considerable assets. Deek chose a corporation called Milestone Investments that owned fifteen Victorian-style homes in San Francisco, some of which contained multiple apartments, and which collectively earned $170,000 per month in rent.

For this, Deek paid twenty-two million dollars, which was a massive investment and a fifth of his net worth, but it guaranteed that no matter what might happen with the cryptocurrency market, he would own real-world, income-earning assets, inshaAllah. The houses were handled by a real estate management firm. Deek didn’t have to do anything at all.

After this deal was made, Deek wandered to the window. He could see water in three directions, and the paved arteries of this great city, rising and falling with the terrain. From here, one could gain no glimpse of the misery on the street. He remembered November saying that most of the executives she drove didn’t know the poor existed.

Was that what it meant to be rich? To reside within an illusion, thinking it was real? To surround yourself with luxury, believing yourself a resident of Paradise, when in fact you were destined for Hell? To imagine you would live forever, while slowly dying inside and out?

Deek had just spent twenty-two million dollars as if he were buying a couple of movie tickets. How many lives could he save with that much money? He shook his head, not knowing the answers to these questions, and returned to the table to get back to work.

He was given a credit card and debit card, both in the name of Milestone Investments, as well as online access to the corporate account. Beyond the $22 million purchase price, he deposited another $10 million worth of crypto into the account, then swapped the crypto for Euros.

Next, Li helped him set up a trust fund that would automatically send $30,000 per month to Rania’s bank account, $7,000 per month to Sanaya’s account, and $3K to Amira’s account, which would increase to $7K once she turned 18. He could have sent the girls much more, of course, but he didn’t believe they were mentally and emotionally prepared for great wealth.

Halliburton Zero

He smiled, imagining the girls’ reactions. At the same time, he felt his soul quiver with doubt. What if the girls got carried away? What if they used the money to party or spend recklessly? He swallowed hard, then brought his attention back to Li.

Next, not wanting to wait until the first of next month, he logged into his new offshore account and initiated an immediate transfer of $100,000 to Rania’s bank account.

Lastly, he accepted BAM!’s offer to convert $1 million worth of crypto into cash on the spot, and actually convinced Turner to increase it to $1.5 million.

Four hours after they had begun, they were finished. On impulse, Deek hugged Huangfeng, who exclaimed, “Oh – okay!” Turner came in and extended his hand for a shake, but Deek – fearing the man might actually break his bones this time – said, “BAM!” and gave Turner a fistbump.

When he walked out, he carried a Halliburton Zero briefcase with a million and a half dollars in fifty and hundred-dollar bills. It was heavy in his hand, and he felt like everyone he passed in the hallways and the elevator was looking at him.

He had a long day ahead of him. By the time the day was done, he intended to give away the entire million and a half.

Deek wasn’t about to fly back to Fresno carrying a million and a half dollars in a briefcase. He considered renting a car, but November insisted that she was at his exclusive disposal and would drive him all the way back to Fresno.

Monroe “November” Evans

Traffic was heavy on the 580 out of the Bay Area, but once they hit the long, empty stretch of Interstate 5, November said, “I could play music or an audiobook, or we could converse.”

“Tell me then,” Deek replied. “Is November your real name?”

“Real name’s Monroe Evans.”

She glanced at him in the rearview mirror, and their eyes met. He noticed for the first time that her eyes were not black, but a lovely golden brown, like morning sun shining on a redwood tree. On top of that, she was fit, beautiful, and smart. A man could fall for a woman like that. But, Deek reminded himself, he already had a wife that he loved. He averted his gaze and watched the orange groves slipping by outside the window.

“So? Where did November come from? You don’t seem particularly cold-hearted.”

The driver laughed. “You’d be surprised. It was a bone-cold November in Japan six years ago. Gets so cold you wonder if your blood is flowing; shivering in your bunk with all your clothes on, fantasizing about Hawaii. I was a Marine Corps executive protection specialist. Not an obvious choice for someone of my stature, but I was a Division One championship wrestler and Jiu-Jitsu black belt, as well as an excellent marksman. We protected generals, politicians, and even Japanese VIPs.”

Even as the woman spoke, Deek noticed her eyes never stopped moving. Rearview mirror, side mirrors, back to the road. Check the time. A glance at Deek.

“One day,” November went on, “we’re guarding a high-level summit. The summit comes under attack by a dozen North Korean agents. Let me tell you, those North Koreans are death cultists. Long story short, I ran out of ammo, dropped into hand-to-hand, broke one attacker’s neck, and when the other stabbed me, I took the knife out and cut his throat. Later, one of my mates said, ‘I don’t know what’s scarier, November in Japan, or you.’ Guys started calling me November, and it stuck.”

Honor is Huge

Deek grunted. “You remind me of someone.”

“Someone bad, I suppose.”

“On the contrary. The best man I know. A hero.” He wanted to add, He saved my life last week, but Zaid had told him not to talk about what happened, and he knew that was wise.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Affirmative.” Deek caught Evans’ gaze in the rear-view mirror and grinned.

“What about you?” Monroe “November” Evans asked. What’s your story?”

Deek told her his whole story, then added, “That hero I told you about? He thinks I should return to my family.”

“I get it,” November said. “It’s not easy. She betrayed you in spirit, if not deed. And she demeaned you. You’re an Arab. Honor is huge in your culture. Such things are not easily forgiven.”

“Yes! Thank you.” How strange that this African-American soldier understood him better than anyone else.

Forgive and Be Forgiven

“But I’ve also read a bit about your religion. I’m interested in world religions – after all I’ve seen, I feel like there has to be something greater than the muck and barbarity of this world – so correct me if I’m wrong, but Islam emphasizes forgiveness, does it not? Forgive others and be forgiven by God. That kind of thing.”

Deek nodded but only said, “Yeah. You’re right.”

“I’ll tell you something else. I’m from South Carolina. My grandmother was active in the women’s rights movement back when a thing like that could get a Southern black woman killed. She used to say, ‘Lift as you climb.’”

Deek glanced at November’s profile in the mirror. “What does that mean?”

“It means that as you progress in life, as you climb the ladder, you bring your people with you. You don’t leave them behind. You lift them up along with you.”

Deek grunted. “I was always going to do that.” He fell silent, and November let him be. She connected her phone to the car’s speakers, and the car filled with the sound of Bob Marley crooning, “Could you be loved…”

To Deek’s right, a shallow mountain range separated the Central Valley from the coast. To his left, vast orange groves carpeted the low hills. Beyond them, the land fell into the fertility of the valley. The orange farms went on for mile after mile, representing tremendous wealth, but wealth of a different kind – the kind that proceeded directly from Allah.

As soon as this thought formulated in Deek’s brain, he realized it was silly, for all treasure was a trust and a test from Allah, whether an orange, a crypto token that existed only as the figment of a computer’s binary imagination, or a child who never stopped loving you.

He let his mind drift, thinking about the ways he could have been a better brother to Lubna, a better friend to Marco, and a better husband and father. His eyelids grew heavy, and soon he found himself in a land where time, distance, and the limitations of human perception had no meaning.

***

 

[Part 13 will be published next week 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:

Uber Tales: A Driver’s Journal

All That is In The Heavens [Part I]: Outnumbered, But Not Outgunned

The post Moonshot [Part 12] – November Evans appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Muharram: A Time of Reflection and Reaffirmation

The month of Muharram is the first month of the Islamic calendar, it is one of the four sacred months mentioned in the Qur’an [Surah At-Tawbah, 9:36]. This month holds deep historical and spiritual significance for Muslims. It is a time when warfare is prohibited; a time of reflection, and a time of reaffirmation of some of the core Islamic values and principles that Islam has been founded upon, such as faith, perseverance, sacrifice, and moral courage.

The 10th of Muharram, known as ‘Ashura or Yawm ‘Ashura, holds deep spiritual and historical significance for Muslims today. Among the many events associated with this day, two stand out as monumental signs of Allah’s Mercy and Power: the deliverance of Prophet Musa and his followers from Pharaoh, and the safe landing of Prophet Nuh’s Ark on Mount Judi.

Another deeply saddening event that occurred on ‘Ashura was indeed the horrendous massacre of Hussein, the beloved grandson of the Prophet Muhammad , who was martyred in Karbala while standing for justice and truth. These narratives are not mere historical occurrences, but are intricately woven with profound lessons that resonate with Muslims today.

Let’s look at four of the most important lessons of ‘Ashura:

1. Trust in Allah

Trust in Allah during times of trials and tribulations is demonstrated when, on the day of ‘Ashura Allah saved Prophet Musa and his followers from the oppression and tyranny of Pharaoh. It was an extremely daunting moment for the followers of Prophet Musa , as they stood at the Red Sea, with the menacing army of Pharaoh relentless in pursuing them. However, Prophet Musa had his complete and unwavering trust in his Lord. He affirmed:

“Indeed, with me is my Lord; He will guide me.” [Surah Ash-Shu’ara; 26:62]

 

At that moment, a miraculous event unfolded as the sea was divided, allowing Prophet Musa and his followers to cross over, while Pharaoh and his army were drowned in the depths of the waters. Muslims today face many forms of oppression—be it political, social, or personal. The story of Prophet Musa teaches us that even in the darkest moments, faith and patience can lead to relief and victory.

When injustice seems insurmountable, as Muslims, we are reminded that Allah is in control, and He comes to the aid of those who place their trust in Him alone.

2. Perseverance in the Face of Rejection

Persevering in the face of rejection is the key lesson derived from the life of Prophet Nuh . On the same blessed day of ‘Ashura, it is believed that Prophet Nuh’s Ark came to rest upon Mount Judi, marking the conclusion of the Great Flood. After enduring centuries of ardent preaching and relentless rejection from his people, Prophet Nuh was commanded by His Lord to construct an Ark; which would be a sanctuary for the righteous. As he embarked on the monumental task of building this vessel in the heart of the desert, his people mocked him; however, he remained resolute and firm.

The Qur’an describes the event as follows:

“And it was said, ‘O earth! Swallow up your water. And O sky! Withhold [your rain].’ The floodwater receded and the decree was carried out. The Ark rested on Mount Judi, and it was said, ‘Away with the wrongdoing people!’” [Surah Hud; 11:44]

Prophet Nuh’s story is a testament to steadfastness and endurance. In a world increasingly moving away from moral and spiritual values, Muslims are reminded to remain committed to truth and righteousness, even when they feel isolated or mocked. Like Prophet Nuh , it is important to always conduct oneself with integrity and uphold ethical principles, even when such actions may conflict with the prevailing societal norms.

3. The Martyrdom of Hussein

The city of Kufa, Iraq, today.

Hasan and Hussein were the grandsons of Prophet Muhammad . He loved them immensely. Ibn ‘Umar said: ‘I heard the Prophet say, ‘They are my two sweet-basils in the world.’” [Sahih Bukhari].

‘Ashura is also the day when the poignant martyrdom of Hussein took place, a day characterised by profound brutality. During the reign of Yazid, the son of Mu’awiya, the Muslim community was deeply fragmented, and the people of Kufa wanted Hussein to be their leader. They inundated him with letters while he was in Makkah, pledging their unwavering allegiance should he accept to be their leader. Hussein decided to accept the pleas of the people of Kufa and embarked upon his journey towards the city.

Sadly, by the time he reached Kufa, the people had betrayed him. A myriad of circumstances culminated in a harrowing and unjust battle, in which the martyrdom of Hussein , the beloved grandson of Prophet Muhammad , took place.

To make matters worse, he was beheaded and his head was desecrated with a stick in a vile and mocking manner by Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, a general and governor of the Umayyad Caliphate, who was also the mastermind of the wicked campaign of Karbala. This was a barbaric and heart-rending act of profound disrespect towards Hussein , who hailed from the noble lineage of the Prophet and who was deeply cherished by him and whom he affectionately referred to as one of his “two sweet basils in the world.”

Defiance of Tyranny

The triumph of Hussein in this instance was not a worldly victory, but rather a resounding affirmation in the Hereafter. His success is manifested in the form of martyrdom, serving as a testament to the invincible, steadfast faith amidst the onslaught of tyranny. It illustrates the exquisite beauty of perceiving life as a dual existence – impermanent material world and the eternal world of Paradise. This is elucidated in the Qur’an:

“Never say that those martyred in the cause of Allah are dead—in fact, they are alive! But you do not perceive it.” [Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:154]

As well as in the Prophetic hadith:

“Verily, the souls of martyrs are in green birds, hanging from the fruits of Paradise, or the trees of Paradise.” [al-Tirmidhi]

Hussein is respected as one of the most esteemed members of the Prophet’s lineage. His unshakeable patience and steadfastness in the face of oppression serve as exemplary models for all Muslims. The tragedy of Karbala is deeply rooted in moral and spiritual significance, teaching Muslims the paramount importance of upholding justice in all circumstances.

Today, truthfulness is frequently sacrificed for the sake of power or fear; however, the lessons derived from Karbala serve as a reminder that faith devoid of action and principles devoid of sacrifice, are meaningless. Above all, principles and integrity will always champion righteousness over power.

4. Commemorate ‘Ashura by Fasting

The best way to commemorate ‘Ashura is by following the example of the Prophet , and this is through fasting on the 10th of Muharram. The Prophet urged us to fast on this day to commemorate and celebrate the victory of Prophet Musa over Pharaoh. To differ from earlier practices, we may observe a fast either on the day preceding or following ‘Ashura.

Fasting on ‘Ashura is a means of expiation of the sins of the previous year. Prophet Muhammad said:

“Fasting on the day of Ashura, I hope, will expiate for the sins of the previous year.” [Muslim]

Faith and Patience

In conclusion, ‘Ashura is not just about reminiscing or mourning the past events – it is about embracing and living by the key moral principles extrapolated from these events. Whether reflecting on the salvation of Prophet Nuh , the victory of Prophet Musa , or the sacrifice of Imam Hussein , Muharram unites Muslims around a common theme: faith and patience in times of adversity.

“O you who have believed, seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, Allah is with those who are patient.” [Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:153]

The Muslim Ummah today is plagued by disunity and a lack of leadership rooted in values. ‘Ashura serves as a powerful reminder for every Muslim to reaffirm our dedication to the tenets of truth, justice, patience, and gratitude. From Prophet Musa , we learn about the importance of placing our trust in Allah during adversity. Prophet Nuh’s life teaches us the virtue of perseverance in the face of challenges. From Hussein , we are inspired to embody resilience, uphold the truth, and make sacrifices in the pursuit of justice.

 

Related Posts:

From The Chaplain’s Desk: The Sanctity of Muharram And Ashura

The Month of Allah | Muharram

The post From The Prophets To Karbala: The Timeless Lessons Of Ashura For Muslims Today appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

“Sometimes I think I can see right through myself. I see what I’ve become. And I don’t like it.”

— Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress

What Happened?

Zaid Karim sat with his feet on his desk, and a handful of magnetic darts in his lap. He pitched one, too hard. It hit the round metal dartboard and bounced off. He flung another, and it stuck right in the center.

“Yes! Right in your eye.”

He threw another.

“Boss!” Jalal, Zaid’s assistant and trainee P.I. threw his hands up. He was an athletic, broad-shouldered young man with green eyes and crewcut blond hair. One of those Palestinians who looks more European than Arab. He’d just gotten married, and sometimes Zaid caught him staring at a framed photo of his wife instead of working. But in general he was an excellent assistant, who took the ethics of the job seriously. More seriously than Zaid himself, at times.

“I can’t work like this,” Jalal complained. “Do you want me to find this girl or not? You’re the one who taught me that the first 24 hours are critical.”

“Did they pay us?” They’d been hired to find a nineteen year old Bangladeshi Muslim girl who had gone “missing.” Zaid wasn’t worried. He’d worked three similar cases in the past, with teenage Muslim girls who went “missing.” Once with Lonnie, and twice on his own. Every time the family put out a flyer implying the girl had been kidnapped, starting a panic in the community. And every time it turned out the girl had run away from home. Too much school-related pressure from the parents, or culture clash between immigrant parents and their USA-born daughters. In one case the girl was pregnant, and had just completed an abortion when Zaid found her. He brought her home, but never told the parents about the pregnancy.

“They paid a thousand up front and a thousand more when we find her.”

“Cheapskates. We’ll never see that second grand.”

“Boss.” Jalal sat back from the computer and raised his hands in supplication. “What happened to you? Where’s the man who put his life on the line to find a missing child?”

Zaid glared at his assistant. “This is not that.” Though perhaps it was, who knew?

“We’ll find her. Look at her Instagram, then follow the trail. Relatives, friends, or boyfriend.”

Bite Something

He threw another dart. It hit the exact center of the board and stuck, displacing the previous one. He felt a vicious sense of satisfaction. If he couldn’t do anything else right in life, he could stick these stupid darts to the bullseye.

He knew he was being a jerk, and furthermore a bad detective. But he was in a foul mood, and couldn’t bring himself to care, any more than a snake in its desert hole cared about political, social or spiritual revolution and reformation. All the snake wanted was to hide and sleep, and every now and then bite something.

Jalal made an exasperated noise, but before he could complain further, Zaid said, “Fine! I have things to do anyway. Call me when you have a line on the girl. Don’t go looking for her in person! Just find a digital trail. We need to make sure we’re the ones who physically bring her home, or they’ll claim she showed up on her own, and they won’t pay us the second half.”

It was a warm day, and the car was a baked potato on a sheet pan. He started the engine and ran the AC. He had barely slept last night. He’d dreamed of one of the men he’d killed, the driver. They’d been sitting in a Yemeni coffee shop, having a conversation as blood welled from the man’s chest. The man complained that the coffee had no taste, and Zaid pointed out that he was dead. The man looked shocked, then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed into a pile of ash and bones.

A few years ago the city had planted palm trees along this previously barren stretch of East Belmont. They stretched toward the sky, tall and proud, uncompromising. Muslims one and all, standing in ranks like the believers at Badr. Zaid himself was a gnarled oak, twisted, nearly unkillable, and harboring life in his way, but plain and fruitless.

Agent of Destruction

He couldn’t kill one more human being. He couldn’t continue to live like this, functioning as an agent of destruction in this already mad world. He was at the end of his rope with this private detective gig. But what else could he do? He had no other training, no other skills.

He began to drive. He needed to talk to someone, but who? His friends could literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. Tarek Anwar was dead. Zaid had found his body two years ago, half in and half out of an abandoned refrigerator, the heroin needle still sticking out of his arm like a parasite that had died with its host.

His best friend, Saleem Haleem, who worked as a project manager at a homeless shelter, was at ‘Umrah. Yahya, the Kenyan sufi who lived like an ascetic and saw auras, was speaking at the ICNA conference in Baltimore. Titus Palumbo was a police detective, and Zaid felt it was best to stay away from him for now. As for Imam Saleh, he would not understand. He was a man of faith, a decent and peaceful man. Zaid’s lifestyle was beyond his ken.

As his mind worked he had been driving, and he looked up to see that his subconscious had already made the decision for him. He had come to a stop in front of the Bookazon bookstore, one of many money laundering fronts owned by his childhood friend Amiri Sulawesi, known by everyone else in the world as Badger. Zaid happened to know that Badger dropped by here often.

Coming here made sense, in a twisted way. Zaid needed advice on how to escape violence. And what greater expert was there on the subject of violence than Badger?

A Bad Day

The bookstore was small and overfull, with books cramming the shelves and stacked on the floor. A handful of youths – probably students at City College down the road – browsed, or sat in armchairs, reading. The clerk at the counter – a paper-white, thin young man with a ponytail, whose name Zaid had forgotten – Jimmy, Jerry? – claimed he didn’t know anyone named Badger.

“I’m quite sure no one with a name like that would be associated with our store,” Jimmy sniffed.

Zaid wasn’t in the mood. He had a clear memory of this pale, skinny fool addressing Badger as, “Mister Badger Sir,” like he was a character from a children’s story. He circled around to the back of the counter and seized the young man by the throat with one hand, the other hand going to the knife clipped to his pocket.

“Listen, Jimmy, you might not remember me but I remember you, and I know very well that you know Badger, so get him on the phone and tell him that Zaid Karim wants to see him, before I lose my patience and use you to test the edge of my knife. Do you understand? Nod to tell me you understand.”

The clerk’s face flushed as red as a beet, and his entire body went stiff. With eyes averted, he made helpless pawing motions in the air.

Zaid realized that the man was terrified into paralysis. This happened sometimes with chokes. People fell into profound fear states that shut down the higher mind entirely. Shocked at his own violence, he released the young man and stepped back.

“I’m so sorry, Jimmy. I apologize. I’m having a bad day. Do me a favor and make the call, alright?”

The clerk coughed and cleared his throat, holding out a hand as if to ward Zaid away. To his credit, he said, “Screw you, creep. And my name is Jerry.”

Zaid nodded, smiling. “Of course. Jerry. My apologies. I really do need you to make that call, though.”

Still red-faced, and not taking his eyes off Zaid, Jerry got on the phone, spoke for less than ten seconds, then hung up and spat two words at Zaid: “Fig factory.”

No Witnesses

That was all Zaid needed to hear. Two years ago he’d gone to Badger to request a favor. The price had been to act as lookout on one of Badger’s raids. Zaid had reluctantly agreed, only to find himself sucked into a massive gunbattle between Badger’s crew and a Samoan gang. He’d saved Badger’s life, and had watched helplessly as Badger’s henchwoman Pinky shot a naked lady in a shower. When it was all over, they had retreated to an abandoned Arkadian Foods fig processing plant in the countryside to patch up their injuries. Zaid had been emotionally devastated, until he learned that the naked lady had survived.

He was surprised that the gangster-killer was still using the same hideout.

The old fig factory, out in the countryside southwest of Fresno, was unguarded. A long gravel road led to a high fence and a rusted iron gate secured with a huge padlock. Miles of empty fields stretched out around him—no houses, no witnesses, just silence. There was a new signpost, with a triangular red and yellow sign declaring, “Hazardous Waste Site.”

If something were to happen to him here, his body would never be found, he was sure of that. Sure, Badger was a friend, but he was also a killer with a heart as cold as stainless steel in the Arctic.

Fig Factory

The padlock was not locked. Zaid opened the gate and drove up to the factory’s loading dock. For some reason a number of stray cats stood about the property, as if waiting for something to happen.

The rollup door was open, and he drove right into the factory, parking beside a nondescript gray Corolla. Badger was as rich as a Saudi prince, but his cars were always plain.

The factory interior smelled of rust and old syrup. The combination was sickly sweet, and made Zaid’s stomach rumble in discomfort. An immense complex of pipes and vats occupied the north side. The scattered furniture was aged, though the makeshift first aid clinic in one corner was better equipped than in the past. A heavy-duty first aid kit was laid open on a folding table, its contents sorted with clinical precision—bandages, syringes, surgical scissors, and a bottle of iodine.

A large wooden table held a scattering of weaponry, including shotguns, rifles, handguns and bullet proof vests.

Where there had been mattresses on the floor in the past, there were now three pairs of bunk beds. A portable battery pack hummed faintly, feeding power to a hot plate, a dented oscillating fan, a phone charger, and a tiny mini-fridge, all wedged together beside a stack of ammo boxes and what looked like a Quran with no cover. That last item surprised Zaid, but gave him some hope that Badger still retained a shred of faith.

The voluptuous Hispanic woman named Jelly sat cross-legged on one of the cots, sharpening a folding knife against a ceramic plate. Pinky, her petite lesbian lover, lounged nearby with a massive pearl-handled revolver in her lap and a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. A young man Zaid did not know sat on the floor in the shadows, black hair to his shoulders, eyes dark and unreadable, watching Zaid with a look that might have been curiosity or disdain.

In the middle of it all was Badger. Short and wiry, seated on an upturned bucket like a child’s throne. A ray of sun painted a yellow stripe across his hard brown face. His expression was not welcoming, and Zaid knew right away that he’d made a mistake in coming here.

Eight Years Ago

Eight years ago, Zaid had been part of a robbery along with Badger’s father, Malik Sulawesi. Malik had been shot protecting Zaid, and had bled to death in Zaid’s lap, in the back seat of a car, on the way to the hospital. The crew had dumped Malik’s body in the driveway of the hospital, abandoning him to his corporeal fate.

No one alive knew this. It was a secret that Zaid had buried deep in his own mind, on a level that even he did not visit.

After Malik’s death, Badger had gone on a campaign of vengeance against the gangsters he believed responsible, killing more people with his guns than a carpet-bombing run would have done. While all the while the man responsible was his own best friend.

The last time Zaid had visited Chausiku Sulawesi – Badger’s mother – the woman had implied that she knew Zaid’s secret, and had threatened to tell Badger if Zaid ever bothered her again. Ever since then, the possibility of such a revelation had been nagging at Zaid’s heart like a dog worrying a bone.

Badger glanced sidelong at Zaid, lips twisting into a cold smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you again, Stick. Funny, right? Life got this way of makin’ the past come back around. Like the cosmic powers-that-be wanna force you to examine all your dark, dirty secrets. You ever notice that?”

Zaid tensed. What was Badger implying? He studied his murderous friend. Badger was slender to the point of being delicate, and those who did not know him sometimes fatally underestimated him. Zaid never made that mistake.

Avoiding the connotations of Badger’s comments, and ignoring Badger’s unwelcome use of his old nickname, Zaid said, “What’s with the cats?”

Badger shrugged. “Jelly started feedin’ ’em, and they kept comin’.”

Scars

“Look at you,” Badger went on. “What happened to your face, homie? You look like you went ten rounds with a cotton harvester.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Oh yeah? Show me.”

Zaid had not come here to entertain others with his scars, but what the hell. Badger’s mind was like a supercomputer, and computers functioned on data. The more information you fed them, the more useful the answer.

Matter of factly, without embarrassment or hesitation, he pulled his t-shirt off and let Badger study the mass of twisted skin that covered his left shoulder; the long, fiery scar that ran up his left arm; and the pockmarked bullet scar on his right shoulder.

“Now for the featured attraction.” He put his t-shirt back on, and pulled his pants down to his knees. The skin on the front and inside of his thighs was a frightening, chaotic mess of scars atop scars. They were not neat lines as one might get from a knife wound, but scores of misshapen, twisted rents and tears of all shapes.

Badger whistled, long and low. “You was tortured.”

“Ay Dios,” Jelly whispered.

Zaid pulled his pants back up.

“Who did that to you, Stick?” Badger demanded. “Gimme their names and I’ll exterminate ‘em all.”

Zaid regarded his old friend solemnly. “I already did that.”

Badger did not ask for names or details. He merely grunted and said, “Good man.”

No Future

“Fool prolly makin’ it all up,” the young man offered from the shadowy corner where he crouched. “Prolly had a car accident.”

Zaid looked at the youth. His soulful eyes were deep and haunted beneath a mop of curly dark hair. He was not more than nineteen, yet radiated anger and sorrow, as if already resigned to a bleak ending that hadn’t yet come. The sad part was that, working for Badger, the young man had no future. He’d already thrown his life away, and didn’t know it yet.

“Shut up, Ofelio,” Jelly said lazily. She was lying back now on the cot, her long black hair fanning out on the small pillow. The tight jeans and t-shirt she wore barely contained her figure. Zaid remembered the time they’d nearly killed each other, when she’d pressed a gun to his forehead as he had put a knife to her femoral artery. Her breath had been spicy, and her eyes as deep as the Mariana Trench. She was watching him closely now, fascination in her gaze as she twirled a knife between long, manicured fingers.

Zaid’s eyes flicked to Pinky, the diminutive and insanely jealous Asian killer. Her eyes darted rapidly between Jelly and Zaid, her slender fingers nervously twitching at the handle of a pistol she never hesitated to use.

“So,” Badger went on as if the young man had not spoken. “Watchu doin’ here, Stick? Must be pretty bad if you come to see me.”

“I came to talk to you,” Zaid said at last. “Not your whole crew.”

Badger’s lips twitched into a half-smile, the slightest nod acknowledging old bonds. “Just protocol, Stick. You know how Jelly and Pinky get when they miss the action.”

“What about the big mouthed kid? Who’s he?”

“I’ll show you who’s a kid,” the young man snarled, standing and drawing a long dagger.

“You better sit down, Ofelio,” Badger remarked, “if you know what’s good for you.”

Ofelio took a step toward Zaid. “Naw boss, I’ma show you that this guy is all talk.”

Zaid wondered what was going on with the kid. Was he jealous of Zaid’s friendship with Badger? Was he new to the crew, and feeling a need to prove his chops? Or was he just crazy? Nevertheless, a threat was a threat.

“Act like you have an ounce of brains,” Zaid said, “and sit down.”

Later, he wondered why he had said this. Was it a half-hearted attempt at deescalation? Or was he actually trying, on some poorly illuminated subconscious level, to provoke the young man?

Regardless, Ofelio took another step forward and raised his long dagger.

Suddenly, fluidly, Zaid drew the large folding knife from his right-side front pocket, snapped it open and flung it hard and fast. The blade and handle were black, and in the gloom of the factory the weapon was little more than a shadow flicking through the air. The blade embedded itself deep in Ofelio’s thigh. The young man screamed and fell to the ground, clutching at his leg. “He stabbed me! The fool stabbed me!”

Badger threw back his head and roared with laughter. He laughed so hard he fell off the bucket. Rolling on the floor, he clutched his stomach and guffawed as the young man moaned in pain.

Seeing this, Zaid could not stop the corners of his mouth from quirking upward into a smile, though he hated himself for it.

“You never even warned me!” Ofelio shouted.

“Why would I warn you? This is real life, not a kung fu movie.”

“Pinky,” Badger commanded when he’d recovered himself. “Patch the kid up. Jelly, make us some tea. You know the kind I like.”

A Taste for Murder

Badger sat back down on the bucket. “Never mind the kid. Just say what you wanna say, Stick.”

“I killed three men the other day.”

“Oh yeah?” A genuine smile touched Badger’s lips. It occurred to Zaid that although Badger’s mission had started out as one of revenge, somewhere along the way he’d developed a taste for murder. The very mention of it pleased him, like an addict talking about his drug of choice.

“And it wasn’t even for me. I was helping out a brother in trouble.”

“That’s the only way you would kill, Stick. For someone else. I’m the opposite, I only kill for myself. That’s why you’re the hero of this story, and I’m the villain.”

“What story?”

“Life.”

“The thing is,” Zaid said, “I did it easily. I didn’t even consider alternatives. I cut those men down like the grim reaper. This isn’t who I am. It’s not who I want to be. I need a way out of this life and away from violence. So I thought, who understands violence better than Badger? Understanding a thing means you know both sides of it.”

Badger nodded slowly. “You need to achieve escape velocity, huh? But you know better than anyone—ain’t no easy roads out here. Just circles.”

Zaid met Badger’s gaze, resolute. “Then help me break the circle.”

Badger watched Zaid carefully. “You think,” Badger finally began, voice calm and measured, “you can just step away from violence, like it’s a barrio you grew out of. Made some money, wanna move to a gated community. But violence isn’t geography, Stick. It’s gravity. It pulls you, holds and don’t let go.”

Zaid tilted his head, listening, but silent.

“It’s basic physics. Every action,” Badger said, tapping his chest, “ripples outward endlessly. All the killing you’ve done has changed you. It’s inevitable.”

“I know,” Zaid murmured. “But that’s the problem. It was too easy. Killing them shouldn’t have felt so—”

“Natural?” Badger interjected softly. He leaned back, the bucket creaking quietly. “Marx spoke about alienation. Workers lose themselves when their actions become commodities. The same happens with violence. When you detach the act from the self—when killing becomes automatic, instinctive—you’ve become alienated from your humanity. The self is lost in the process.”

“Then how do I get it back?” Zaid asked, barely audible.

Jelly came with a small folding table and a tray and silently poured three cups of tea, handing one to Zaid. The silver cup was small and ornate. Zaid sipped it, reveling in the rich flavor of chocolate and peppermint that flooded his mouth. It was delicious.

On the other side of the warehouse, Ofelio was moaning nonstop as Pinky tourniqueted his leg, cleaned the wound and began to stitch it up. Zaid felt no remorse for what he’d done, and that was the problem.

An Anchor

Badger’s eyes hardened. “You want to reclaim humanity, you must reclaim agency. Choose consciously. If violence must occur, it can’t be reflexive. Anarchists understood this. Any genuine action must originate from deliberate choice, not necessity or impulse.”

Jelly had pulled up a chair and sat sipping her own tea and listening to the conversation. The pressure of her eyes upon him was like the constant emanation of a space heater.

Zaid frowned. “You’re not exactly a pacifist yourself.”

“No,” Badger admitted, sipping his tea. “But I never lie to myself about why I do what I do. The moment violence becomes easy, you become a slave to its gravity. Breaking orbit means making different choices—deliberate choices that reflect your values, not your reflexes. You need an anchor.”

“An anchor,” Zaid echoed softly.

“Exactly.” Badger stared directly into Zaid’s eyes. “Find an anchor outside violence, something strong enough to pull you free from its orbit. Art. Community. Philosophy. Pick a different center of gravity. Otherwise, you remain trapped in violence’s perpetual cycle.” Badger leaned forward, voice lower. “You’re troubled not because of the act, but because you’ve glimpsed clearly what you’re capable of. So decide who you gon’ be, Stick, and mean it. Otherwise, these streets gon’ keep decidin’ for you.”

Zaid finished his tea and stood. Badger was making sense. Except for one thing.

What About Allah?

“What about Allah?” Zaid challenged. “The person who remembers Allah and the one who does not are like the living and the dead. If I have learned anything in life, it’s that everything begins and ends with Allah. I know this better than I know my own name. So how can you, or me, or anyone, make a true change without the light and guidance of Allah?”

Badger shrugged. “You’re the Muslim, you figure it out.”

“You don’t consider yourself Muslim anymore?”

“Come on, homie. After all I’ve done? I’m a monster, I know it. Could be I’m a sociopath. I display all the markers.” He made quotation signs with his fingers and recited: “Pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others. Failure to adhere to social norms. Lack of remorse. Don’t matter what I consider myself, ain’t no God about to forgive me.”

“You’re cherry-picking. I took an abnormal psychology class in the pen. Sociopathy also includes impulsiveness, irritability and an inability to form meaningful relationships. None of which I see in you. Anyway, Allah forgives, brother. Don’t you know that? If you come with an ocean of sins and make tawbah, Allah will come with forgiveness greater than that.”

“Could I be forgiven?” Jelly asked.

“Of course. You feed cats. There’s mercy in you, which means you are open to receiving mercy as well.”

Badger laughed. “You better get goin’, Stick, before you convert my crew and steal ‘em away.”

“You have a copy of the Quran,” Zaid persisted.

“Do I?” Badger’s surprise was genuine.

Zaid gestured. “Right there on top of your ammo boxes.”

“Actually,” Jelly said with uncharacteristic shyness, “that’s mine.”

Zaid studied the beautiful young woman for a moment, then, on impulse, and knowing it was probably a bad idea, took out his wallet and handed her one of his cards. “Text me and I’ll give you my wife’s number. You can talk to her about God, the Quran, faith, or whatever you like.”

Badger stood. “You’re crossing a line here, homie.” His voice was low and dangerous.

Zaid met his old friend’s eyes. “I don’t think I am.” He waved his arm to encompass the dilapidated factory. “I want more than this for you, Badge. You’re capable of so much more. I care about you.”

“See that!” Badger gestured to his compatriots. “That’s sincerity. That’s why I never murdered this dude, and never will.”

“How heartwarming.”

In the first aid clinic, Ofelio had been treated and sedated, and was asleep. Pinky walked over to join the group, carrying Zaid’s knife. Zaid tensed. Pinky had never liked him. But the petite Asian killer tossed the knife gently, and Zaid snatched it out of the air. It had been cleaned and disinfected.

“Thanks,” he said.

The fig factory suddenly felt not just like a hideout, but a tomb. Badger was a dead pharaoh, already wrapped and mummified, while the crew members were his acolytes, worshiping him even beyond death. There was no life here, no truth, no answers. Badger could perhaps point the way toward something true – that Zaid was a human being with free will, and the capacity to make different choices – but Badger himself was stuck in his own nightmare, and was so used to it that it seemed like home.

Zaid walked to his car, backed out of the factory and drove away, thinking of Badger’s final comment – that he’d never murdered Zaid, and never would – and what it might imply.

***

[Part 12 will be published next week 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

Gravedigger: A Short Story

 

The post Moonshot [Part 11] – The Fig Factory appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

[…contd.]

As Turkiye mends its fences with a long-running Kurdish insurgency led by the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), the first part of this two-part series focused on Kurdish activity in and immediately after the First World War, where European powers occupied much of the former Ottoman realm only to be driven from Turkiye. This second part will focus on the first major Kurdish revolt against the modern Turkish state, the revolt of Naqshbandi preacher Mehmed Said in 1925, and its aftermath.

From Independence to Subjugation

Having fought the European powers to a standstill in the early 1920s, by the mid-1920s the Anatolian resistance was in a much stronger state and recognized as the government of Turkiye, seen as both an independent power and a useful bulwark to the Bolshevik Soviets who had taken over Russia and northern Eurasia. This gave Kemal Atatürk tremendous room to manoeuvre; rather than live up to the rhetoric of jihad and Muslim brotherhood that had marked the independence war. However, he would resort to far more limited and limiting aims of forming a Turkish nation-state.

At the 1923 Lausanne Accord, Atatürk agreed to relinquish Iraq and Syria, with the ownership of Mosul deferred till later. Muslims, Arabs, Kurds, and Turks outside Turkiye who had fought under an Islamic banner were left to their own devices. The rise of nation-states over the next decades would automatically split up the Kurds between Turkiye, Iraq, and Syria in addition to the prior frontier with Iran. An early step in the consolidation of the Turkish nation-state was the removal of Vahdettin Mehmed VI (Wahiduddin Muhammad) as sultan and then his successor, Abdulmecid (Abdul-Majeed) II, who had supported the resistance against the occupation, as caliph.

These measures, coupled with an increasingly open secularism and centralization of power around his own personage, alienated many of Atatürk’s original colleagues in the revolt against the occupation. An astonishing number of these Turkish leaders, in fact, went into opposition: they included Kazim Karabekir, Fuat Cebesoy, Ibrahim Refet, and Huseyin Rauf – who had most recently served as Atatürk’s “prime minister” in the last years of the war. Other dissidents included Nurettin Konyar, corps commanders Tayyar Egilmez, who resigned from the army to join this party, and Deli Halit (Deli Khalid)- who was bizarrely killed in a fight at parliament by Atatürk’s enforcer Ali Cetinkaya.

The Kurdish uprising leader Sheik Said Efendı

These were not the only quarters of discontent. Kurds had supported the new Turkish state against an Assyrian revolt, led by a Christian minority whose leaders were heavily supportive of Britain in both Iraq and Turkiye at this time, now Kurdish officers, including Halid Cibran (Khalid Jibran), from the Cibran clan, and Ihsan Nuri, planned a revolt. Halid’s brother-in-law was a revered Naqshbandi preacher, Mehmed Said (Muhammad Saeed) of Piran, who in early 1925 mounted a revolt in the region around Diyarbakir.

The revolt employed both Islamic and nationalist characteristics: Said abhorred Ataturk’s abolition of the caliphate and secularization, but echoed the nineteenth-century sheikh Ubaidullah Khalidi in his advocacy of Kurdish separatism. Said’s brother Sheikh Abdurrahim engaged an army patrol ahead of schedule, but once lit, the fire spread rapidly. Notably and unusually, not only the sheikh’s followers but also chieftains from various clans -including Begs Kadir, Mustafa, Rashid, Salih, and Yado Aga- joined the revolt. Said himself was influential among the region’s Zaza Kurds, and one major follower, Sheikh Serif (Sharif), was both a religious and clan leader. There were, of course, exceptions: Musa Beg opposed the revolt and was killed in battle. The minoritarian Alevi Kurds in Dersim also opposed the Sunni rebels, and longstanding Kurdish activists such as the Cemilpasazade family also kept their distance. Said’s attempt to contact Mahmud Ibrahim, the son of the Millan chieftain and Ottoman militia commander, went unanswered.

Nonetheless, the revolt initially captured Bingol, Elazig, and Palu to lay siege to the region’s major city Diyarbakir. The city’s tough corps commander was Hakki Mursel, a veteran of the wars with Russia who styled himself “Baku” after his battlefield experience in Azerbaijan. He held out for reinforcements against the Kurdish siege, which were soon dispatched under Ataturk’s aide, Kazim Dirik.

In the aftermath of the revolt, Atatürk cracked down hard. His loyalists, including Ali Cetinkaya and a Kurdish officer called Ali Saip, set up a show trial that accused Said of treasonous collaboration with Britain. That some other Kurdish elites had recently entertained relations with Britain might have contributed to this impression, but there is no evidence of this in Said’s case: in fact, Britain was increasingly coming to see Atatürk’s Turkiye as a bulwark against the Soviets. Just before his hanging, Said signed off to the Kurdish judge Saip with the chilling words, “I like you. But you and I shall settle our account on Judgement Day.” Saip himself would be falsely accused of attempting to assassinate Atatürk a decade later. 

This marked the start of a long crackdown on Kurdish elites: also executed was Seyid Abdulkadir, who by all accounts had nothing to do with the revolt. But the crackdown extended elsewhere as well: the opposition led by Kazim Karabekir was implausibly accused of having conspired in the revolt, and their party was immediately banned. A year later, when Atatürk survived an attempt on his life, Kazim and the other dissident leaders were systematically hounded out of public life.

Said’s revolt was a watershed moment not only for Kurds in Turkiye but for Turkiye itself: it marked the start of a progressive concentration of power around a foreign concept of the nation-state. Though he abjured the extraterritorial ambitions of Turkish nationalists, Atatürk shared the common nationalist idea that heterogeneity was a weakness and sought to fashion a new, modern type of Turkish citizen: the Kurds were simply treated as backward specimens of “mountain Turk” who would have to be “civilized” by force. This provoked revolt, notably led by Ihsan Nuri at Agridag, which was crushed with greater brutality in the early 1930s. Led by such hardline Kemalists as Kazim Dirik, the regime began a policy of social engineering that, while not restricted to Kurds, was particularly violent in their case. Repression, including against as basic a fact of life as the Kurdish language, was ferocious; in the late 1930s, the Dersim Alevis, who had opposed the 1925 revolt, were themselves brutally crushed.

A Long Shadow

Kazim Karabekir and Kemal Ataturk

It is often claimed that Kurds are the world’s largest nation without a state; this, however, internalizes the same nationalist logic that produced nation-states in the early twentieth century, that each ethnic group must have a distinct state. More to the point is the overwhelmingly harmful impact that nationalist homogenization and government centralism throughout the region have had on Kurds, who have been split between four states in Turkiye, Iraq, Syria, and Iran–respectively known as Bakur (North Kurdistan), Bashur (South Kurdistan), Rojava (West Kurdistan), and Rojhilat (East Kurdistan).

Experiences often varied: in Syria and Iraq, the atmosphere grew increasingly fraught with the emergence of Arab nationalism led by rival wings of the Baath party. Iraq, originally been relatively open, but where Barzani leader Mala Mustafa remained one of several charismatic rebels, and Iran in the 1970s backed one another’s Kurdish opposition as the two neighbours entered a major war that lasted through the 1980s. A particularly brutal assault by Iraq’s Baath regime on its Kurds ensured that when an opportunity came in the 1990s, the Iraqi Kurds set up a practical American protectorate in Bashur, a duopoly led by the feuding Barzani and Talabani cliques. Though they maintained links with Kurds abroad, they also had complicated relations with the governments that other Kurdish activists opposed.

Though Turkish politics opened up after the Second World War, the deep state maintained a close watch on politics and jealously sought to guard Atatürk’s legacy. Crackdowns on Kurds resumed in the 1980s when Abdullah Ocalan, a Stalinist activist who formed a personality cult, led a new revolt that differed in style from previous Kurdish revolts but shared their aim of throwing off rule by a military-led Turkish government, and worked closely with the Syrian regime of Hafiz Assad. Ankara eventually persuaded Assad to relinquish Ocalan, who was captured in 1999 even as his organization was repeatedly pursued into Bashur. Though many Turkish officials, including Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, were themselves Kurds, they could not shake a solidly uncompromising military and bureaucratic establishment that again domestically reared its head in the late 1990s, when it cracked down on Islamic practice with the close support of the United States and Israel. 

As a consequence, Islamic activists in Turkiye came to see this ideological autocracy as a shared enemy with the opposition Kurds. The Islamic-leaning AK party that came to power in 2002 repeatedly sought to bury the hatchet with Kurdish insurgents, meanwhile taming the military. This process stuttered in the mid-2010s when American support for the Karkeran’s Syrian wing emboldened the main organization in Bakur to return to insurgency. That provoked yet more cross-border Turkish incursions, this time into northern Syria (or Rojava, West Kurdistan). Only a decade later, with Washington losing interest in the Syrian misadventure and a pro-Turkish Islamist government in Damascus, did negotiations resume, with the ethnically Kurdish Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan playing a major role.

Importantly, it was Turkish nationalist leader Devlet Bahceli, whose party has traditionally abhorred concessions of Kurdish rights, who opened up negotiations with Ocalan. The Turkish parliament proved similarly receptive, and in May 2025, Ocalan announced the disbandment of the Karkeran in return for cultural rights. It remains to be seen whether this will play out as negotiated, but it marks a rare opportunity to end a century of injury for the Kurds of Turkiye and take a more organic approach to Kurdish rights in the region.

 

Related:

– Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire: Trade Across an Inverted Imperial Divide – MuslimMatters.org

– Part I | The Decline of the Ottoman Empire – MuslimMatters.org

 

The post Nationalism And Its Kurdish Discontents [Part II of II]: Kurds And Turkiye After Ottoman Rule appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

This spring, Turkiye’s AK government, led by Tayyip Erdogan, secured what promises to be a momentous agreement with the longstanding Kurdish insurgent group, the Parti Karkeran Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) led by Abdullah Ocalan, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state for the better part of four decades. This comes a hundred years since the first Kurdish revolt against the Turkish Republic, the 1925 revolt led by the Naqshbandi sheikh Mehmed Said against the republic’s founder, Kemal Atatürk. This first of two articles on the Kurds in Turkiye will examine the background of Kurdish activism during the final years of the Ottoman sultanate.

Background

As a multiethnic Islamic sultanate, Ottoman rule from Istanbul was systematically undermined by the nineteenth-century emergence of nationalism, which both undercut Islamic universalism and provoked unrest among the sultanate’s Christian minorities, often with support from rival European powers such as Britain and Russia. As a European import, nationalism had a limited appeal until Istanbul’s own attempts at centralizing administrative reforms, which often met a sharp backlash outside the corridors of power. As fellow Muslims who had enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy under traditional leaders such as chieftains and preachers, few Kurds welcomed Ottoman centralism and a number of major families, notably the Bedirkhans (Badr Khans) of Bohtan, resisted these measures, as well as sociopolitical upheaval caused in the borderlands with Russia and Qajar-ruled Persia. In 1880-81, the Nehri Naqshbandi preacher Ubaidullah Khalidi b. Taha led a major attack on Iran, and only relented under the pressure of Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II before briefly challenging the Ottomans in turn.

Ubaidullah’s dissatisfaction with Ottoman and Qajar rule, as well as his insistence on an autonomous if not independent Kurdish frontier, has made him renowned as a proto-nationalist. He adopted a stance that would be echoed in many future Kurdish leaders, including his son Seyid Abdulkadir: official loyalty to the government, but parallel negotiations with foreign powers with a view to securing autonomy from centralism. In fact, the vast majority of Ottoman Kurds remained loyal to the government, and Abdulhamid increasingly armed them under the command of Millan chieftain Ibrahim Milli to fight Armenian nationalists backed by Russia during a bloody, undeclared war at the turn of the century. Stressing his title as caliph, Abdulhamid was nonetheless widely resented by a wide number of people, particularly the intelligentsia, by this point: his secretive, wary rule during a period of decline was increasingly resented and when he was ousted in the so-called Young Turk coup of 1908, traditional Kurdish leaders were among the few who rallied to his cause. Millan chieftain Ibrahim in Syria and the Barzinjis Saeed and his son Mahmoud in Iraq launched brief and unsuccessful revolts against the new regime.

Homogenization

The Young Turk coup, which brought together a mishmash of ideological and political trends united only by their desire for change, promised a more representative government, but in fact, proved far more repressive than its predecessors. Though a number of the Young Turks were Kurds, and though such Kurdish notables as Seyid Abdulkadir were given senior positions, in fact power soon came to rest with a militaristic clique that, in the “civilized” fashion of the day, viewed Ottoman heterogeneity as a potential weakness and increasingly sought not only centralizing but also culturally homogenizing practices, with the particular promotion of Turkish identity often at the expense of other identities.

Notable Kurdish families and leaders, including the Bedirkhans, Babans, and the Cemilpasazades (Jamil Pashazadas), were forced to operate underground. Others, such as the Barzanis, who had a record of rather heterodox religious activity but enjoyed a widespread following in what is now northern Iraq, briefly rebelled. Several Kurdish clans broke off their relations with the Ottomans; when, during the Balkan War of 1912-13, Istanbul came under threat, one chieftain, Abdulkadir Dirai of the Karakecili, expected that the Ottomans would fall and rebelled, only to be imprisoned once they survived. Other Kurdish clans remained loyal to the sultanate and were often employed against their local rivals.

Ibrahim Milli [PC: haberercis.com.tr]

Often, government responses were coloured by the assessment of individual officials who were not themselves necessarily Turks: for instance, Mehmed Fazil (Muhammad Fadil) and Suleiman Nazif, two of the firmest opponents of the Kurdish rebels in Iraq, were respectively Caucasian and Kurdish. For their part, some of the Kurdish intermediate class -which had historically been autonomous links between their communities and the Ottoman sultanate- were increasingly equivocal, doubting the feasibility of the Ottoman state and prepared to break away should it fall to foreign intervention. It was in this context that an explicitly nationalist idea of Kurdishness came about.

Throughout the devastating First World War that followed, Kurds fought in huge numbers for the Ottoman state: as many as three hundred thousand Kurds lost their lives in the Ottoman cause, and major units in the eastern frontline against Russia were largely Kurdish. The war saw communal displacement and upheaval on an unprecedented level, and not simply by the Ottomans’ enemies: though Russian-backed Armenian nationalists had been extremely brutal against Muslim civilians, the Ottoman state responded with a wholesale assault on the Armenian populace at large, which was massacred and systematically displaced. This was to date the worst assault of any Muslim government against a dhimmi minority; it was also a precursor to ideas of homogenization that would emerge after the war.

During the war, a handful of Kurdish notables, including Abdulkadir’s nephew Seyid Taha of Nehri and some of the Bedirkhans, openly colluded with Russia as it briefly captured the borderland. This availed them little as Russia soon collapsed, but was less momentous than the role of Arab counterparts -again, against the vast majority of loyalist Arabs- who helped Britain advance in Arabia and the Levant. Eventually, the Ottomans were forced to sue for peace in the autumn of 1918, whereupon their remaining opponents -France, Britain, and Greece, with a smattering of Italian and Armenian nationalist forces- occupied Istanbul and the surrounding countryside. The recently installed Ottoman sultan, Vahdettin Mehmed VI, sought to cut his losses, purge the Young Turks, and enter a disadvantageous peace with the victors: he hoped that a shared dislike of the Young Turks, who had brought the sultanate to ruin, would enable the European victors to view him with sympathy, but they instead aimed to split the Ottoman heartland between them. In this context, Kurdish nationalists, led by an Ottoman Kurdish general called Mehmed Serif (Muhammad Sharif), also sought the establishment of an independent Kurdistan.

Resistance and Collaboration

By contrast, other Kurds, as well as Turks and Arabs, fought this occupation of Muslim territory. In  Anatolia’s heartland, they were led by a number of renegade Ottoman generals: Kemal Atatürk, Kazim Karabekir, Ibrahim Refet (Bele), Fuat Cebesoy, and Vahdettin’s former negotiator, Huseyin Rauf (Orbay). Although the palace treated them as rebels, they insisted that they were liberating the sultan from foreign subjugation, and their argument was given strength by the European powers’ uncompromising stance toward Istanbul. They employed Islamic arguments of jihad that intermixed with already existing resistance elsewhere, both in Anatolia as well as Iraq and Syria, and these at least originally united many Kurds with Arabs and Turks.

Though the sultan and Atatürk reached an uneasy agreement by the end of 1919, in spring 1920 Britain sabotaged this with a full-scale crackdown in Istanbul. This forced the remaining parliament to flee to Ankara, where Atatürk set up a “shadow government”. The last humiliation for the sultanate came in the Sèvres Accord: though Vahdettin had hoped that he could salvage a good deal through cooperation with the occupation, in fact, the European powers decided to split up his lands and thus lent credence to the Ankara-based parliament’s call for a jihad. Although the Accord rewarded Mehmed Serif’s lobbying with a vague reference to Kurdistan, in actual fact this came after a year of fierce fighting between Britain and large parts of the Ottoman Kurdish population.

Kurdish participants in resistance included several Kurdish chieftains: Ali Bati of the Haverkan clan, Abdurrahman Aga of the Shernakhlis, and Ramadan Aga of the Salahan. Similarly, Karakecili chieftain Abdulkadir Dirai and Millan chieftain Ibrahim’s son Mahmud were released from prison to lead Kurdish forces. But the political uncertainty and ambiguous jurisdiction of the period, and suspicion and rivalries among the participants often clouded events. For instance, when Bati captured Nusaibin in May 1919, the army led by Kenan Dalbasar wrongly suspected him of French-backed subversion and drove him out, where he was killed. Similarly, when Istanbul sent a governor, Ali Galip, to arrest Atatürk that autumn, he was accused of being in league with French-backed Kurdish secessionists, causing the palace huge embarrassment. Finally, in early 1921, a particularly ruthless Turkish general, Nurettin Konyar, uprooted a largely Alevi Kurdish revolt by the Kocgiri clan in eastern Anatolia, with a ferocity that alarmed even his colleagues in the resistance. This revolt had demonstrable links to the British occupation and to Serif’s secessionists, thus cementing a suspicion of Kurdish agitation that was to resurface again.

In fact, Kurdish collaboration with Britain was the exception to the rule. Resistance was especially fierce in British-occupied Iraq, in whose north Ottoman veterans such as the Young Turks’ former defence minister Ismail Enver encouraged Kurdish revolt among historically rivalled clans such as the Zebaris, the Barzanis, and the Surchis. Participants included Mala Mustafa of Barzan, Karim Fattah of Hamawand, Faris Agha of Zebar, Mahmoud Dizli of Hawraman, Nuri Bawil of the Surchis, Abbas Mahmoud of Pizhdar, and Mahmoud Barzinji. Their local rivals backed Britain, along with opportunists such as Seyid Taha as well as chieftain Ismail Simko of the Shikak clan, a marauding freebooter on the Turco-Persian borderland who had once fought for the Ottomans but often changed sides.

Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji (Kurdish: Mahmud Barzinji (1878 – October 9, 1956) was the leader of a series of Kurdish uprisings against the British Mandate of Iraq. He was sheikh of a Qadiriyah Sufi family of the Barzanji clan from the city of Sulaymaniyah, which is now in Iraqi Kurdistan. He was styled King of Kurdistan during several of these uprisings. [PC: Alamy Stock Photo]

In summer 1921 Britain, at their wits’ end and by now reconciled to the inevitability of a Turkish victory in Anatolia, decided to cut their losses and set up a nominally independent Iraqi state under Faisal I bin Husain, who had supported them against the Ottomans in Arabia but been deprived of a kingdom when France had conquered Syria from him in 1920. The new state would be largely comprised of Faisal’s followers as well as parts of the largely Arab Iraqi intelligentsia from Ottoman rule: though Ataturk was not averse to letting go of Baghdad, the Turks and British both laid claim to Mosul, which was believed to contain vast deposits of oil.

In summer 1922, Ankara dispatched Sefik Ozdemir (Shafiq Ozdamir), the descendant of a notable Mamluk family who had most recently fought France and, during the World War, encouraged a shared Muslim opposition to the European foe. Far more than other Turkish officers, Sefik won the trust of Kurdish clansmen, supporting Karim and Abbas in battle against the British occupation. Unable to trust the weak Taha or the adventuresome Simko, Britain turned instead to Mahmoud Barzinji, who promised to repel the resistance if they let him rule Sulaimania. Once installed there, however, he made contact with Sefik and joined the revolt to announce himself shah of Kurdistan.

It was not until 1923 that this joint Turkish-Kurdish resistance was defeated. Though Mahmoud Barzinji was expelled from Sulaimania, British rule in the Kurdish region was extremely tenuous, and he was able to return repeatedly over the next few years. In order to beat him and other Iraqi opponents, Britain relied on massive aerial bombardment, a novel technology a the time that wrought havoc on the Kurdish countryside in a process that would be repeated by one government or another against Kurdish rebels over the next century.

[…to be contd.]

 

Related:

– The Role Of Kurds In The Dissemination Of Islamic Knowledge In The Malay Archipelago

– Calamity In Kashgar [Part I]: The 1931-34 Muslim Revolt And The Fall Of East Turkistan

The post Nationalism And Its Kurdish Discontents [Part I of II]: Kurds In An Ottoman Dusk appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

“Those with gold in their pockets gather, but in the hush of their greed they learn that voices of love grow faint. So they end up dining alone—no one dares place real trust upon them.”

— Chinua Achebe, A Man of the People

Travelize

When Zaid ended his salat and stood, Deek repeated, “I don’t know what to do next. I’m not ready to go back to Rania. She needs to show me something. I need a sign from her.”

“Why don’t you show her something? What signs have you given her?”

These interrogatives threatened Deek’s mind with turmoil. Instinctively he resisted, pushing the questions away.

When he did not answer, Zaid said, “Why don’t you check into a hotel for a few days?”

“I’m not liquid yet. There’s cash coming, but at the moment I’m down to a hundred and fifty bucks.”

“Didn’t you just offer me a million dollars?”

“Yeah but in crypto. It’s in a crypto wallet. Not cash.”

“Aren’t there any hotels that accept crypto?”

Deek stared at the lean, scarred detective for a moment, then slapped his own forehead. “Of course! Travelize! It’s a crypto company that lets you book hotels or flights with crypto. Man, I actually own Travelize tokens. What a dummy I am.”

His phone charge was down to 10%, but he did a quick search. There were several hotels in Fresno that worked with Travelize, mostly Motel Sixes, Hampton Inns and Comfort Inns, but there was also the Ramada, a Marriott, and – boom! – the Marco Polo, a high-end boutique hotel that had just opened in north Fresno two years ago. In dollars the Venetian Suite was $1,550 a night, but Travelize accepted a wide range of cryptos. Deek booked a room for a week. With the wealth he now possessed, fifteen hundred dollars a night was nothing.

Allah, Deen, Family

Zaid told him that the Namer had said he could keep the flannel pajamas. Somehow this made Deek happy. This place was special. He was only sorry he hadn’t met the old woman. Or at least he assumed she was old, though now that he thought about it he had no idea.

As the two of them extinguished the candles and exited the house together, Deek paused. “I can’t believe we’re leaving it unlocked. It’s nuts.”

Zaid said nothing, but looked troubled.

“You’re going to tell me again,” Deek said, “that I should go back to my family.”

Zaid waved this off. “It’s up to you. But really, what else is there? Allah, deen, family, doing work you love, and doing good in the world. And by the way, if you really want to give away a million dollars, give it to some of the charities operating in Gaza. The situation there is beyond dire. It’s unspeakable. And you purify your wealth in the process.”

Deek grunted. That was a good idea.

“I was thinking,” Deek said, “of changing my name to Asad.”

Zaid raised his eyebrows. “Changing your name is a big thing.”

“Not my family name. Just my first name. And not even legally, just in daily use.”

“So you want me to start calling you Asad?”

“No… I’m not sure. I’ll let you know.”

They parted ways with a handshake.

The Marco Polo

The Marco Polo Hotel was stunning. The four-story hotel had only 20 spacious suites – five per floor – with each modeled on a theme based on Marco Polo’s travels. The lobby was furnished with elegant velvet-upholstered armchairs, featuring carved wooden frames and cushions in shades of aquamarine or deep wine-red. Live olive trees in planters, stretching up toward the high ceiling, while Murano glass sculptures of seabirds caught the sunlight streaming in through the windows and refracted it in every direction.

On one side of the lobby, a full sized vintage gondola had been installed as a reading nook, with velvet upholstery inside. A young woman in a flowing yellow dress sat inside it, looking at her phone, while a tall, bald man in a suit – presumably her father – sat nearby, reading the Los Angeles Times.

Deek checked into the Venetian Suite, on the fourth floor. For a moment he simply stood in the doorway, the keycard warm in his hand, as his eyes swept across the room. Everything glowed in sun-washed gold—cream-colored drapes drawn open to tall windows, a vaulted ceiling painted with soft clouds, and polished marble floor that caught the light like water. The silence was broken only by the delicate sound of trickling water.

In the center of the room, rising from a round base of veined Carrara marble, stood a fountain. White and flawless, carved with meticulous detail. Three lion heads—fierce, proud, unmistakably Venetian—spouted arcing streams of water into a shallow basin. It was beautiful. And utterly absurd.

He walked a slow circle around it, unable to stop himself from staring. The lions’ eyes were narrowed in eternal judgment. He felt like they were staring at him.

He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. The mattress barely shifted beneath his weight, and the silken sheets were so smooth they felt unreal beneath his fingers.

Dislocation

He knew it wasn’t rational. He’d paid in full. The suite was his for the week. But payment wasn’t the same as permission.

He looked around again—at the fountain, the chandelier that sparkled like crystal rain, the velvet chairs, and the desk that looked like it had been stolen from a Renaissance library—and the ache returned. A soft, hollow pang in his chest. Not quite grief. Not quite fear. Just… dislocation.

He remembered the couch he’d grown up with—brown corduroy, cracked at the seams, with stuffing poking out the arm. It smelled like frying onions, baby powder, and dust. The floor in that apartment had creaked. The heater had hissed. The entire family had shared one bathroom, and he and Lubna had shared a bedroom, sleeping in a bunk bed. Deek on the bottom, Lubna on top. But it had been home.

He stood again and wandered to the writing desk. It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the drawers lined in blue velvet. Inside one drawer, he found thick, cream-colored paper and a pen that looked like a relic from some old Venetian council chamber. He didn’t know what to write. He didn’t even know how to sit in a chair like that.

The minibar was stocked with bottles he couldn’t pronounce. The music panel on the wall offered a playlist labeled Venezia Notte. He didn’t touch it.

The First to Pray

His father often used to tell him that any part of the earth on which a man prayed would speak for him on Yawm Al-Qiyamah. Deek wondered if anyone had ever prayed in this room. If not, he could be the first.

He wandered into the bathroom, which looked like a room in a palace, with a cream-colored marble floor polished to a mirror shine, a massive arched mirror, a freestanding octagonal bathtub set into a niche decorated with Venetian mosaic tilework, and cabinets that appeared to be cherry wood or walnut. Plush white slippers and a thick white robe rested on a wooden bench near the tub. Deek picked up the robe, and his eyes widened. It was monogrammed DS – his own initials!

It was too much. It was not the luxury that overwhelmed him, but the strangeness of it. With shaking hands he performed wudu’, then used a towel as a musalla, praying ‘Ishaa in the sitting room. It calmed him, and reminded him that some things did not change. Allah was still Allah, and always would be. He, Deek, was a servant of Allah, and – by the grace and will of Allah – always would be.

A Long Way From the Moon Walk

He turned off the lights, one by one, but couldn’t figure out the chandelier. There was no visible switch. So he changed into the bathrobe and lay down on the bed in the illuminated room, the soft gurgling of the lion fountain filling the silence.

He thought about Rania, and wondered what she was doing at that moment. Probably quilting. Sewing quilts was her favorite hobby. Every friend she’d ever had probably owned at least one or two, given as gifts on birthdays, anniversaries and baby showers. She said that the hour she spent quilting before bedtime relaxed her and helped her sleep.

This was a long way from the Moon Walk Motel and its sagging mattress. Somehow he’d been more comfortable at the Moon Walk. Until he was kidnapped, anyway. He hadn’t thought much about the kidnapping. The killing of those men was like a movie scene in his mind. Grand and cinematic – cue the music. He felt no guilt or remorse. Those thugs had gotten what they deserved. He certainly remembered the pain of the beating the men had given him, and the terror he’d felt, yet it was remote now.

He had money now. Enough to stay here, to buy security and silence, along with cool air, bottled water and simulated serenity. But no one had told him what to do once he got here.

Fair Weather Friends

The next morning, the suite smelled like sunlight and saffron. Deek sat on the edge of the silk-draped bed in a plush monogrammed robe, a room service tray spread out across the coffee table beside him. His fingers, still stiff with sleep, tore a buttery croissant in half. The flake-crackle of crust and the warm scent of honeyed pastry filled the air. He dipped it into a demitasse of strong espresso, the bitter steam rising to his face, then chewed slowly, listening to the low sound of the marble fountain gurgling like a small spring.

The suite was silent, padded in velvet and marble, but Deek’s mind was restless. He’d slept too well, too deep—waking with a vague disorientation, as if he’d surfaced from under warm water only to realize he didn’t know the shore.

He unlocked his phone, almost absently, and saw the red dot: 9 new voicemails. He frowned. There had been only three yesterday. And he didn’t recognize any of the numbers except that of Faraz, the bright, enthusiastic facilities manager at Masjid Madinah. Faraz, a 35-ish Bangladeshi American who treated the English language like a rapper’s hummed tune, was into crypto too. The two of them had bounced ideas and strategies off each other for years. Many times Faraz had invited him back to the masjid kitchen and brewed some coffee for the two of them as they talked about cryptocurrency developments.

He listened to Faraz’s message first, whose voice was bright and animated:

“Yo, Deek! Brooo! SubhanAllah man, I seen it! Don’t even try to act low-key, I been tracking you on Pump—your wallet straight up exploded. You always had the eye, wallahi. You flipped that New York Killa like a champ, bro, three hundred to four milli? I told my cousin, I said, ‘This guy? He’s him. He’s him.’ Look, we gotta catch up, man. I’m talkin’ coffee, donuts and graphs. Lotta brothers tryna connect with you now—real talk. You the main event. Hit me back.”

Deek blinked, mid-sip. The espresso turned to charcoal in his mouth.

How the hell does he know?

Then he remembered. Pump fun usernames were tied to wallets. And Faraz traded too—they’d swapped strategies back in the day, even co-invested in a few doomed meme coins. If Faraz had his wallet address, he could’ve been watching the whole time.

Everything on-chain is visible. That’s the point. No one knows your identity, but they can see exactly what’s in your wallet. And if they know your wallet address, they know what you’re holding.

He put down the tiny cup and leaned back, thumb hovering over the next voicemail.

A young voice. Pakistani accent.

“Assalaamu alaykum, brother Deek. This is Anas—I work for Sierra Engineering? We met at Jummah once. Anyway, I’d love to grab coffee if you’re free.”

Delete.

Next. A slow, oiled voice. Palestinian maybe.

“Brother Deek! This is Nabeel. You remember my dealership—Royal Auto, right off Shaw? Come by anytime, let’s break bread. I’ll even give you a deal on an S-Class.”

Delete.

Six more. All variations on the theme: Salaam, coffee, lunch, maybe dinner. Some tried to play it casual. Others sounded like they were calling a long-lost cousin. One even said, “We should hang out again,” though Deek couldn’t remember ever hanging out with the guy in the first place.

He stared at the screen, thumb hovering.

They wouldn’t have said two words to me a month ago. Now I’m a millionaire on-chain, and suddenly I’m a long-lost brother.

A curl of bitterness tightened behind his ribs. He was sitting in a palace, his breakfast likely costing more than his old car payment, and yet it all felt… exposed. He hadn’t asked for attention. He’d bought New York Killa on a gut feeling and sheer desperation. He didn’t want to be anyone’s poster boy or networking opportunity.

He deleted the remaining messages, one by one. The tap-tap-tap of his thumb sounded final, almost satisfying.

Then he opened a message to Faraz:

Appreciate the congratulations. But I didn’t want people knowing. Disappointed you shared that without asking. Would’ve expected better from you.”

He stared at it for a moment, then hit send.

The phone felt heavier in his hand. He set it down beside the untouched slice of melon and leaned back, listening to the lazy fountain and the faint creak of sunlight through the heavy drapes.

All this marble. All this gold. And still, the old feeling settled back into his chest like it never left. He was alone. Still stuck in the closet, choking on his own sweat and isolation. Only the view was better.

Charts on Cracked Screens

A text reply came from Faraz:

Astagfirullah, wallahi I’m sorry bro. I didn’t mean to put you on blast. I just got hyped. You know me, I get loud when I’m proud. You been grindin’ since forever. I won’t say a word to nobody else. Just happy for you, akhi.

Deek sighed. He knew Faraz meant well. That brother had been riding shotgun in the struggle—back when they were both scraping coins together, watching charts on cracked screens, chasing the same wild trades and sharing bad coffee in the masjid kitchen.

He remembered Faraz’s smile as he poured Turkish brew from a dented kettle, steam rising, the aroma cutting through the masjid’s dusty storage smell. The way his eyes lit up when he said, “If you ever catch a true moonshot, bro? You better remember who made your coffee when no one else believed in you.”

Deek smiled in spite of himself.

He typed, slowly:

It’s alright. Just lay low with it, yeah? And we’ll link up soon, inshaAllah.

Steak and Italian Shoes

He went out that day and bought two flat screen computer monitors with the $5k he’d transferred to his bank account. He ate at the hotel restaurant, which served high-end American food like Angus steak, wild-caught salmon and gourmet burgers. Deek still had no desire for junk food of any kind, and found himself eating healthy, balanced meals. He sat in a corner of the restaurant, eating alone, reading crypto news on his phone. More voicemails came in. He deleted them all without listening.

The hotel had its own clothing store, providing tailored suits and Italian shoes. Deek bought three outfits. All of this was billed to his room and paid for with crypto.

He set up his workplace and resumed trading. The Namer’s potion continued to do its magic. His body had nearly completely healed from its injuries, and he felt energetic and strong. His mind was sharp and clear as well, while his emotions were curiously dulled. He found himself making the best crypto trading decisions of his life.

A few of the speculative AI tokens he’d bought recently had crashed to almost zero, but two were up considerably, and one of them had done a x30, netting him more than ten million dollars. He sold 90% of it and parked half the money in USDC stablecoins for now. It was always good to have a stablecoin war chest in case of mid-cycle corrections. The other half he dropped into some very low cap – less than $500K – AI related tokens, as well as a meme coin and a new NFT trading site. By the end of the day, he was up another ten million, bringing his net worth to over one hundred million dollars.

The Namer’s Potion

The spacious, air conditioned hotel office was a far cry from the cramped and stifling closet he’d worked in for five years, and he found himself resenting Rania for putting him through that, for hiding him away like some deformed and crazy uncle.

The Namer’s potion was still working inside him, though. While in the past this resentment might have simmered in his gut, growing worse with each day, now he found himself able to dismiss it. He reminded himself that she’d worked and supported the entire family for five solid years while he lost money, throwing it down the drain of one bad investment after another.

Several times that day, Rania sent texts saying, “Why don’t you respond to my messages?” Deek replied, “Busy at the moment. We will talk soon.”

He missed Rania and loved her. They’d been through so much together. He remembered when they had first married, when they lived in that cramped little apartment on Millbrook Avenue, with the threadbare carpet, and the air conditioner that kept breaking down in the middle of summer, leaving them sweating like horses, cranky, and exhausted. Whenever the heat became unbearable they walked hand in hand to Einstein Park on Dakota, where they ate lunch outdoors in the shade of an elm tree. They fought, but they loved each other, and forgave everything.

But she’d said he was an anchor around her neck. The words haunted him. Every time he thought about going back to her the words rang in his head. Anchor around my neck. That wasn’t how you spoke about someone you loved.

Sitting there in that palatial suite, as comfortable and cool as a head of broccoli, Deek hated himself and his own clenched, self-centered, unforgiving heart. The feeling was so strong that it broke through the Namer’s potion, making him wince and rub his face in shame. Why was he like this? Why did he hold onto grudges like a man in quicksand holding onto a rope, when in reality the rope was on fire? Why was he so unbearably proud? Why couldn’t he be the bigger person, the better person? Why was he now richer than he ever dreamed, yet all alone?

That night, Deek woke up at two in the morning and ordered a mac n’ cheese from room service, because he could – the kitchen was open 24 hours – and because Latifah. If she could do it, so could he. They brought it to him in a metal goblet, as if he were an earl or a duke, but he wasn’t, he was  a count – the Count of Crypto, counting his crypto. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, half asleep, eating the creamy, tangy concoction with a long metal spoon. His legs were crossed and his chin lowered in the posture of a mendicant, assuming a position of humility before the passing crowds, begging for whatever filthy coins they might drop into his goblet.

Where was everyone? Where was Rania, Sanaya, Amira, Lubna, Zaid, Marco, Rabiah Al-Adawiyyah, and Queen Latifah? All the people who loved him, and he loved them?

He never finished the mac n’ cheese. His chin dropped to his chest, his eyes closed, and the spoon slipped from his hand, clattering onto the marble floor. If a crow had peered through the window, it might have thought he was dead, or awaiting death’s arrival. It might have called out to him. Or it might have simply watched and waited.

***

[Part 11 will be published next week 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

No, My Son | A Short Story

 

The post Moonshot [Part 10] – The Marco Polo appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

“Be bold, be brave enough to be your true self.” – Queen Latifah

A Foolish Indulgence

Bandar dropped the bucket of popcorn. The greasy kernels spilled all over his lap and onto the floor. He cursed and tried to rise, dumping the liquorice onto the floor as well, but the armed man seized his shoulder and pulled him back down. He shot a glance over his shoulder to his bodyguard, who began to stand, until the scarred man flicked open a knife and put the point to Bandar’s throat.

“Tell him to sit and relax,” the man whispered. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

Bandar waved to the bodyguard to sit, and the hulk did so reluctantly.

“I asked if you know who I am.”

Sweat broke out on Bandar’s forehead. He closed his eyes. “You are the Palestinian detective. I don’t remember your name.”

“Zaid Karim. Why did you send men to kidnap Deek Saghir?”

“I don’t know what you are talking a-”

Zaid jammed the gun harder into Bandar’s ribs, making him grunt in pain, and snarled, “Listen, dope king -”

Bandar was outraged enough to momentarily forget his fear. “I don’t sell dope! Who told you that? Liquor and smokes, that’s my game.” In fact the Sinaloa cartel had tried to pressure him to use his network of shops as fronts for dope peddling, but he had refused, even when they threatened his life. So how dare this upstart accuse him of being a drug dealer?

“Whatever. I’m not in the mood for games. Answer my question.”

“He stole a car from my son.”

“That’s crap. I know Deek Saghir, he’s not a thief.”

“So my son is a liar?”

“You tell me. Is your son trustworthy?”

Bandar looked around. A few people were looking their way, annoyed that they were talking in the theater. But it was still just the previews, and in the darkness no one could see what was happening. Bandar was acutely aware of the gun against his ribs and the knife at his throat. He’d never felt so vulnerable in his life. He saw now that these Saturday movie nights were a foolish indulgence. Pain surged in his stomach, and he pressed a hand to it. Yet in the midst of it all, he sighed, for he had to admit that his son Shujaa was not trustworthy at all, and had most likely lied to him. And because of that, three of his men were dead, most likely killed by the maniac beside him.

A Name Spoken In Whispers

In spite of his fear, and his realization that Shujaa had played him, he put on a show of bravado and said, “I have more men where those came from.”

“And I have a lifelong friend who would do anything for me.”

“What friend?”

“Badger.”

Bandar’s blood went as cold as ice. This was a name he’d heard spoken in whispers, the way one spoke the name of a demon. Badger was an independent killer who robbed and murdered drug dealers. It was said he had wiped out entire gangs, and was utterly remorseless. The number of men he’d killed could not be counted.

“That’s right,” Zaid said, reading Bandar’s reaction. “I’ll pit my Badger against your thugs any day. And if it comes to that, we won’t stop with your men. We’ll put you down too.”

“What is it you want, Zaid?” Bandar said finally.

“Don’t come near Deek Saghir again. I swear to you, if you harm him again or even look in his direction, I will return, and it won’t be to talk, and you won’t see me coming.”

“Done.”

Zaid jammed the gun harder into Bandar’s ribs. “And return the car. Leave it in the parking lot at Masjid Madinah, with the keys in it. Within one hour.”

Grimacing in pain, Bandar nodded. Shujaa would catch fire for this. It was back to Yemen for the little punk.

A theater employee approached, wearing black pants and a red vest, and shining a dim flashlight their way. “Hey. What’s going on here?”

Zaid Karim stood and walked out, leaving Bandar with popcorn in his lap and a sheen of sweat covering his entire body.

Queen Latifah

Once again, Deek dreamed that he was in the desert of southern Iraq, seeking the elusive cache of silver from the kingdom of Ur. He expected to encounter Shaykha Rabiah again, and a part of him dreaded her rapier-like judgment – but no -this time it was Queen Latifah, the famous actress and rapper, sitting casually in the shade of the ruined wall of an ancient caravanserai. She wore a flowing green robe and a green scarf that draped her head and chest, and was eating mac n’ cheese from a small pot. Deek could smell the cheddar tang, and it made his mouth water.

“What’s up, Deek?” Latifah said.

“Isn’t it a bit hot for mac n’ cheese?”

“Not for me. This is Vermont white cheddar, baby. I would kill for this. Check this out. If you tell me a secret, I’ll tell you one.”

There was something wholesome and real about Latifah that made you trust her. A trickle of sweat ran down Deek’s face, and he wiped it with a dusty sleeve.

“I’m looking for a hidden treasure,” he said. “It’s somewhere near here. It’s priceless.”

Latifah laughed. “If it’s priceless, how would you spend it?”

Deek frowned. “That’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it? Well, I promised you a secret too. Here it is: I’ll never say no to mac n’ cheese, even at two in the morning.”

Deek scoffed. “I already knew that. I’ve known you since we were kids, remember?”

Latifah looked astonished. “I remember that now!” The wind kicked up a swirl of ochre dust, and Latifah covered the pot with her scarf. “My old friend Deek. Let me give you some advice. Be bold, be brave enough to be your true self.”

“This is my true self. I am determined to be rich. It’s my destiny.”

“I don’t think so. I mean, you might be rich, who can say? But I think your true self is the man who loves his wife, and thinks she’s an angel, and loves his daughters, and wants to make them happy. I should know. We’ve known each other since we were kids, remember?”

“I was thinking of changing my first name to Asad.”

“Lion! It suits you. There’s power inside you, dormant. If you unleash it you could change the world.”

“You speak Arabic?”

“I do here.”

It’s Over

Deek awoke to the smell of candle smoke and the sound of cats meowing at the back door. The sky through the window was black, but the room was lit by five votive candles on the floor. From the kitchen came the soft murmur of the Quran being recited. He climbed out of bed, picked up a candle, and found Zaid Karim in the kitchen, seated at the candle-lit table, listening to the Quran on his phone and eating a sandwich that -judging from the powerful fishy smell- contained sardines.

“No wonder the cats are meowing, with that stench. Have you fed them?”

Zaid laughed. “You settled right in, it seems.”

“What is this place?”

“I told you in the note.”

“The Namer’s house.”

“Yes. She’s a Miwok medicine woman. Her real name is too difficult for most people to pronounce. She means everything to the people around here.”

“She’s a miracle worker. Look at me.” Deek held his arms out wide. “They beat me half to death, and I feel almost recovered. And I’m thinking more clearly. She could market this potion and get rich.”

“She’s happy with who she is.”

Deek shrugged. He felt like he was back in one of his recent dreams, with Shaykhah Rabiah asking him, Who are you? Or Queen Latifah telling him to be his true self.

“I don’t even know where we are, man,” Deek commented. “This doesn’t look like Fresno.”

“It’s definitely Fresno. East Belmont.”

Deek raised his eyebrows. East Belmont was the worst part of Fresno. No sane person went there, especially at night.

“I thought East Belmont was a no-man’s-land.”

“Hey, watch it. My office is in East Belmont, not four blocks from here. It’s a poor neighborhood with working-class people, that’s all.”

“So what’s next? How long do I have to stay here?”

“You don’t. It’s over. You won’t be bothered again. And I got your car back, it’s parked out front.” He reached into a pocket, then held up the keys and jiggled them.

“Really?” Deek snatched the keys and went outside to his car. There it was in the narrow driveway, as beautiful as ever. A minute later, he came back in and held something up triumphantly. “Bag of wavy chips, right under the seat where I left it!”

Zaid rolled his eyes. “I’m so glad I rescued you and recovered your car, so you could have your potato chips.”

Deek snagged a few chips and popped them into his mouth, then grimaced. The chips tasted overly salty, greasy, and disgusting. He dropped the bag on the table.

“They don’t even taste good,” he complained. “What did this Namer woman do to me?” On impulse, he took a tomato out of the basket and took a bite. The tangy, acidic flavor flooded his mouth. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted in his life. He groaned out loud. “This is incredible!”

Zaid nodded. “Her medicines are tailored to the person. Whatever she gave you is exactly what you need at the moment.”

Brutal and Hard

Deek’s face grew serious. “You have no idea how grateful I am. You truly saved my life. When you leaped into the van wearing your hat, I knew I was safe.” For a moment, he choked up and could not continue. He rubbed his eyes and cleared his throat. “Do you want a million dollars? Download a crypto wallet, and I will send you a million dollars in crypto right now.”

Zaid held up a palm. “I did this as a family favor, not for money. But if you’re determined to pay me, my rate is seven hundred dollars a day plus expenses. I’ve put in two days on this, so with expenses, call it fifteen hundred.”

Deek stared. The man was saying no to a million dollars? A bitter thought came to him, though the bitterness was distant somehow, not acidic and fiery as it would normally be for him.

“You don’t believe,” Deek said, “that I really have that much money, do you?”

“Oh, I believe it. I always believed in you, remember?”

Deek nodded, letting the shadow of bitterness go. “Yes, I remember. You told me to go the distance.”

“Did I?”

“You said, ‘Life is waves, peaks, and troughs. Prove you can persist, show that you can go the distance, and you will succeed, inshaAllah.’”

Zaid smiled. “MashaAllah. Yes, you’re a highly intelligent and determined man. I believe you one hundred percent. It’s just that…” The detective rubbed his face with one hand. “What I did was brutal and hard. It was necessary, but such things are not easy on the heart, Deek. If I were to take so much money for it, I would feel dirty.”

Deek didn’t know how to feel about that. It almost seemed like Zaid was saying that his money was dirty. That wounded his pride, and in any other circumstance might have angered him to a degree that he would have held a grudge. But considering what Zaid had done for him, he decided to let it go.

The New Generation

“What do I do now?”

Zaid shrugged. “Whatever you want. If you’re asking me, I say go back to your family.”

“You sound like Queen Latifah.”

Zaid frowned. “Is she that elderly sister at Masjid Madinah?”

“No, Queen Latifah the rapper. She told me to be bold and brave enough to be my true self, and she says my true self is a man who loves his family.”

“You know Queen Latifah the rapper?”

“Sort of.” He snapped his fingers. He had forgotten about the messages from his family. “Feed the cats for me, will you? I have to do something.”

Zaid laughed again, but picked up the bag of cat food and a candle and headed out back. Deek retrieved his phone and settled into a chair.

He read the messages from his daughters first. They always texted. Youth of their generation considered voice calls and even voicemails old-fashioned, rude, and even aggressive.

It seemed to Deek that a lot of the new generation’s ideas came down to the avoidance of reality. The reality of the professional workplace, which required people to show up on time, dress appropriately, and write in complete sentences with proper grammar. The reality of honest communication, which must be face-to-face, not TikTok and YouTube-based. Even the reality of the male and female gender, which was what it was, not what people imagined it to be.

This was something that Deek liked about Islam, though he was by no means a good example of a Muslim. Islam was a religion created by Allah for human beings as they truly were, in all their glory, brilliance, love, misery, and self-degradation. Everything from the prohibitions of intoxicants and gambling -two of the most socially destructive sins ever invented- to the worship practices of salat, Hajj, and fasting in Ramadan, which were all powerful communal spiritual experiences, not to mention physically transformative.

Even Islamic economics: zakat -which was a tax on long-term capital holdings rather than income-, and the prohibition of charging interest. Taken together, these were brilliant strategies to prevent the exploitation of the poor and stop the accumulation of vast wealth in the hands of a few people, while maintaining the free market. It was amazing stuff, providing real solutions for real people.

Still A Team

There were two texts from Sanya, his elder daughter. “What’s up, Dad? Hearing strange things from Mom. Everything alright? Let me know.” And, “Just checking in.”

That was typical Sanaya. She found emotional expression embarrassing. It was always straight to business with her. She used brevity like a shield against the world.

He replied: “All is well. Mom and I are just having a fight like we do. Not a big deal.”

Amira’s messages were more anxious and poignant:

“Baba, I don’t know what’s going on, but come home and work it out. We’re a family. I walk in your shoes and you walk in mine.”

This made Deek sad, or at least he thought it did, for the sadness was distant, not painful. Amira’s words came from an old blues song, “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” and was something he always used to say to the girls when they were young. “Nobody knows what it’s like to walk in your shoes except your own family. I walk in yours every day, and you walk in mine.”

Amira’s next message read, “This is a mid-life crisis, isn’t it? Mama says you apparently made a lot of money, that’s a barakah, right? The new car is fly. But Mama is upset, and I don’t like that. You better get back to me today or I will hunt you down.”

That made Deek laugh. There were a few more messages like that. But the last message cut through the strange anti-emotional armor that surrounded him and pierced his heart: “Don’t leave me, Baba. We’re supposed to be a team!”

He stood and took a deep breath. He’d always imagined that if he hit it big in crypto, all their lives would change. And he still believed that. But he’d thought it would happen for all of them together. Things had spun out of control very quickly, and he found himself in a place he didn’t recognize, literally, in a life he could not have predicted.

He wrote to Amira and explained about the crypto windfall and how it would better all their lives, inshaAllah. He ended with, “We’ll never stop walking in each other’s shoes, I promise. We’re still a team. I love you.”

Mixed Message

He sat and braced himself. Time for Rania’s voicemail:

“As-salamu alaykum habibi. First, I want you to know that I have requested a transfer to a different department at the hospital, so I won’t be working with Dr. Townsend anymore, and I’m not having lunch with him anymore either.”

Deek supposed that was good news, and it was a significant gesture on her part, as he knew she loved the intensive care department. But hearing her talk about her “work husband” again – even if she hadn’t used that phrase – set Deek on edge. A thought occurred to him. He’d vowed to drug the man who was flirting with Rania, and drown him in the river. It was a matter of honor. The man was trying to seduce a married woman – a married Muslim, Arab woman. Deek was going to seriously consider the viability of killing the man. But later, not right now. He didn’t feel the requisite rage at the moment.

“Come home,” Rania continued, “and let’s talk things out. I don’t even know where you are. You can’t just disappear. Zaid told me that you’re okay, but that’s all. I don’t know what to believe about this crypto stuff. If you really made so much money that’s amazing mashaAllah, but you’ve been at it a long time, and suddenly you have a new car and there’s $100K in our account. It seems weird.”

Deek stopped the message. There was more, but the fact that she still didn’t believe him made his nostrils flare. She was the one who had been deceiving him, not the other way around. He had never lied to her about anything in their lives, except for little things like how many sodas he’d drunk that day or how many cookies he’d eaten, or if the pimple on her chin was noticeable. He didn’t need this hassle.

He went looking for Zaid, and found the man on the back patio, praying as the cats lounged about him.

Deek winced from the guilt that surged in his chest. He himself had not prayed a single salat since Jumu’ah. What kind of Muslim was he? Allah had blessed him with all this wealth, the culmination of years of hard work, and he had not put his head to the ground to show his gratitude.

***

[Part 10 will be published next week 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

The Covenant: A Short Story

 

The post Moonshot [Part 9] – A Religion For Real Life appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Even as it tightens its gruelling genocide of Palestine, Israel seized the opportunity to launch a long-awaited assault on Iran that began a shooting war between the two regional powers at the start of summer.

The attack, for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu-Mileikowsky and much of the Israeli establishment has lobbied for a quarter-century, interrupted stalled negotiations over the country’s nuclear programme, wiping out much of Iran’s military command before Tehran rallied with its own missile attacks on Israel. In the process, a West that has scarcely bothered to conceal its partiality for Tel Aviv has scrambled to cover for Israel’s escalation, giving Netanyahu-Mileikowsky a welcome respite from international attention over the Israeli-enforced starvation of Gaza.

Background

It is almost ten years to the month since the 2015 Geneva Accord between the United States and Iran, meant to limit and negotiate the terms of Iran’s usage of nuclear energy. Although Ali Khamenei’s regime has long officially disavowed nuclear armament, Israel and its cacophony of -largely but not exclusively neoconservative- cheerleaders in the United States have long insisted that Iran is on the threshold of nuclear armament and called for an invasion of Iran. This was one of the motivations behind the generation-long war on terror, one where Iran ironically helped the United States overthrow their mutual enemy, the Baath regime in Iraq, before fighting over the spoils in that unfortunate country.

Neoconservatives in the West, and countless Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu-Mileikowsky himself, have made no secret of their ambition to oust Khamenei’s “Islamic revolutionary” regime, and searched for one pretext after another to affect this. The fact that the United States shared several mutual enemies with Iran in the region -largely among Sunni Arab groups independent of the monarchies that Washington prefers as its vassals- helped delay the push, as did the heavy cost of the war on terror in terms of American wealth, life, and prestige.

Having unilaterally scrapped the 2015 Geneva Accord with Iran in his first term, Donald Trump promised to make another one of his much-vaunted deals as he entered his second term. While his sincerity in the course might be questioned, even the formality of talks was too much for an Israel then knee-deep in genocide, and at last starting to attract some criticism, however muted and meek, over its genocide of Palestine. Israel has repeatedly insisted, without even the pretence of a regard for factuality, that Iran was remote-controlling its various Palestinian opponents, and Netanyahu-Mileikowsky resorted to his decades-long argument that Tehran was days away from nuclear armament.

On a personal level, Netanyahu-Mileikowsky is ensnared in corruption allegations: this means that his next stop after dethronement might well be a prison, and gives him every incentive to continue a war that retains widespread support in an Israeli society shorn of any consequences of war. On a systemic level, as Israeli sentiment shows, lashing out at one neighbour or another is always welcome in Tel Aviv, especially given the embarrassment caused by crackdowns against activists who tried to draw attention to the Israeli starvation of Gaza. Given that Israel enjoys an essential carte blanche from Washington in the region, there was little to stop Netanyahu-Mileikowsky, perched at a comfortably safe distance in Greece, from escalating into a war against Iran before any deal could be made.

Wipeout

Thus, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iran that quickly wiped out the Iranian military and praetorian command. These included lead negotiator and former defence minister, Ali Shamkhani; army commander Hossein Bagheri; praetorian military commander Hossein Salami; praetorian air force commander Amir Hajizadeh; and military commander Gholam-Ali Rashid. Also reported killed was Esmail Ghani, who leads the praetorians’ external operations, though his death remains unclear; subsequently, additional leading commanders Mehdi Rabbani and Gholam-Reza Mehrabi were also reported killed. It was a stunning blow to Iran’s military leadership; these were not simply generals but battle-hardened officers who had cut their teeth in the 1980s Gulf war with Iraq and subsequently dominated Iranian military adventurism in the region from Pakistan to Yemen.

A man walks past a billboard displaying images of top Iranian commanders and scientists killed in Israeli strikes early Friday, in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

That was, however, not the end of the Israeli aggression: aiming to oust Ali Khamenei and Massoud Pezeshkian’s government entirely, Israel continued to hammer away at Tehran with indiscriminate airstrikes, which have killed many Iranian civilians. The attack bore similarities to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq -another misadventure encouraged by Israel in general and Netanyahu-Mileikowsky in person- where the attackers mercilessly bombarded the same people they claimed to liberate. The Iranian equivalent of Ahmad Chalabi -the Americans’ would-be vassal in Iraq right until it was discovered that he was cozy not only with Israel, but also with Iran, and thus discarded- is the exiled claimant of the hated Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Pahlavi, whose father was ousted in the 1979 Iranian revolution when he was just a teenager. Reza has since lived a comfortable exile abroad, reportedly having never worked a day in his life, but the echo chamber of Iranian monarchists, who yearn for the return of one of the Middle East’s most brutal, elitist, and tyrannical monarchies, gives Israel a handy client on which to lean.

A “Splendid Little War”? Unlikely

Unlike previous Israeli provocations -as in spring 2024– Iran was not slow or cautious in responding; though its air-defence has been exposed as alarmingly inadequate, it does possess a considerable missile arsenal, which has in turn been launched at Tel Aviv and sent the cossetted denizens of Israel’s capital scuttling to underground bomb shelters. Despite the clear aggression of the Israeli assault, which drew widespread condemnation even from regional states otherwise wary of Tehran, however, the calculus of pro-Israeli Western elites, whereby an Israeli inconvenience is more noteworthy than the deaths of thousands of Muslims, means that European leaders such as Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have interrupted their hesitant criticisms of the Israeli genocide to issue full-throated solidarity with Israel. Tel Aviv also attacked Yemen, claiming to have killed Houthi military commander Muhammad Amri.

Though the Israeli military cannot function without American protection and support, Tel Aviv is clearly angling for a full-blown American involvement in the campaign. Given that a considerable proportion of Trump’s more isolationist followers balk at foreign adventurism, but that a considerable proportion also share the American elite’s unfettered enthusiasm for Israel, this puts the United States in an interesting position. There are already reports of American warships heading in the direction of Iran, though whether they will actively partake in the Israeli assault or simply guard their own key sites is unclear. As yet, Iran has not resorted to closing the important straits in the Persian Gulf, perhaps fearing that this would give the United States a pretext to attack. On the other hand, the presence of thousands of Americans in Israel also means that Iran will have to tread with care to avoid an American assault.

If Trump’s past actions -in Afghanistan (2017), Syria (2025), and Yemen (2025) among others- are any indication, it is likely that he will give Israel a window of unchecked leeway but, if Iran rides out the storm, instead decide that it is no longer worth his while and return to talks. What is certain is that despite Trump’s words, the so-called “war on terror”-a pretext for attacking Muslim countries throughout the region, invariably with Israeli incitement- is still alive and kicking. If Gaza marks the most genocidal phase, Iran might mark a turning point.

-by Ibrahim Moiz for MuslimMatters

 

Related:

–  Israel Seeks Escalation For Latitude – The Regional “Conflict” Widens

– Debunking Beheaded Babies, Concert Rapes, And Human Shields: Hasbara Words That Work For Israeli War Crimes, Apartheid, And Genocide

 

 

The post Genocidal Israel Escalates With Assault On Iran appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

 

Student loans, often accruing crippling amounts of interest, are often taken as a given for Muslims in the West seeking higher education – but it doesn’t need to be that way! A Continuous Charity, a USA-based charity, is here to provide the option of a riba-free future for young Muslims pursuing post-secondary education.

In this episode, Faizan Syed, the co-founder of A Continuous Charity, speaks to Zainab about what ACC can do for Muslims seeking riba-free higher education in the West, and what that means for our communities at large. If you’re a university student, parent of a university student, or just want to help your community, this episode is for you!

Related:

Should I Take A Quarter Of A Million Dollars On Interest For Medical School Or Live A Terrible Life With Crushed Dreams Forever?

[Podcast] Interest-Free Student Loans with A Continuous Charity | Abdullah Syed

The post [Podcast] A Riba-Free Future with A Continuous Charity | Faizan Syed appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

“For so many Indians, the events at Pahalgam is when history begins. Never mind 500,000 troops occupying Kashmiris. Never mind mass graves, enforced disappearances, torture camps & extrajudicial killings. Tourists expect to be safe where residents don’t have any human rights.” -Azad Essa

 

At the time I wrote this article (May 14, 2025), the news coming out of India, Pakistan, and Kashmir continues to churn rapidly. On April 22, an attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, killed 28 civilians, mostly Hindu tourists and one Muslim tourist. India blamed The Resistance Front, linked to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, though the group later denied involvement. In retaliation, India launched Operation Sindoor (precision missile and drone strikes across Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Punjab), claiming to target militant camps. Pakistan accused India of hitting civilian areas, including mosques, and responded with its own strikes on Indian military sites under Operation Bunyan-un-Marsous. What followed was the first large-scale drone war between the two nuclear states, claiming dozens of civilian lives. 

Though full-scale war was avoided and a tentative U.S.-brokered ceasefire was reached on May 10, it exposed India’s increasing reliance on the “Israeli model”: striking alleged “terrorist infrastructure” with broad impunity, even at the cost of civilian lives, bolstered by a slick propaganda machine that cast the strikes as surgical, moral, and necessary.

Many, from across the subcontinent to the Middle East to mosque pulpits in America, have used the language associated with analysing Zionism to make sense of the violence. This parallel is not incidental. As journalist and Al-Jazeera columnist Azad Essa argues in his book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, the ideological and tactical convergence between Zionism and Hindutva has created a shared architecture of war crimes with impunity. Essa, a South African journalist of Indian descent, provides readers with an incisive recounting of history; how India has increasingly mirrored Israel, not just in military strategy, but in its ethno-nationalist project, legal repression, and media manipulation.

A Survey of Zionism and Hindutva Parallels

The book opens by laying out the ideological foundations of Zionism and Hindutva. Both movements emerged with the goal of defining their respective homelands – Israel and India – as ethno-religious states. Israel’s apartheid regime in Palestine functions not only through military occupation but via a matrix of laws, bureaucracies, and land policies designed to erase Palestinian identity.

India, however, originally refused to recognize Israel at the United Nations in 1948 and voted against its admission. This was part of India’s anti-colonial foreign policy, which viewed Zionism as a settler-colonial movement akin to European imperialism. But public sympathy for the Palestinian plight began to erode in the 1990s, particularly after the 1991 Gulf War and India’s economic liberalization, where the formal establishment of full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992 marked a sharp turning point. Even as India began purchasing Israeli weapons (which Essa details extensively), it continued symbolic support for Palestine at the UN; a dual stance that persisted until the Modi era, where open admiration for Israel and right-wing Zionism replaced older rhetoric entirely.

Yet, even during India’s officially pro-Palestine decades, the ideological roots of Hindutva grew. The RSS and Hindutva movement have long envisioned a Hindu Rashtra – a nation purified of what they consider “foreign” elements. For example, Essa quotes M.S. Golwalkar, who in 1939 insisted that “foreign races” in Hindustan “must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture . . . or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizen’s rights.”1 Likewise, in Israel, views like that of Ze’ev Jabotinsky (founder of the expansionist Revisionist Zionism) paved the way for an ethno-state (“Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population—behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”). Essa traces these ideological convergences, noting how India’s BJP and Israel’s Likud are not aberrations but extensions of their founding logics, both seeking demographic engineering.

Palestine, Kashmir, and Dissent

Essa draws a direct line to India’s own efforts in Kashmir: the revocation of Article 370, the introduction of new domicile laws, demographic engineering, and the repression of dissent, all under a framework that mirrors Israeli mechanisms of control. In both cases, civilians are cast as potential terrorists, and state violence is sanitized through the language of security and sovereignty. He draws a direct comparison to the Nakba and its subsequent erasure of Palestinian villages, noting that India has similarly renamed Kashmiri landmarks, flooded the region with military personnel, and introduced new “domicile” laws to enable non-Kashmiris, mostly Hindus, to settle, mirroring Israeli settlement strategies in the West Bank. 

Perhaps most jarring alongside Israel’s blatant disregard for international law is India’s similar manipulation of legal frameworks to criminalize dissent. Laws like the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) have been used to jail activists, journalists, and students without trial: Catholic Priest Stan Swamy, student activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam among them. In March, the UAPA was invoked to silence protests in solidarity with Palestine. Indian police often demolish homes in Muslim neighborhoods under the pretext of punishing rioters, an echo of Israel’s punitive house demolitions. In both cases, the goal is to break the will of the population and warn others against defiance.

Ultimately, Essa argues that the alliance is not merely about ideology or weapon sales -though those are significant, evidenced by India’s extensive use of Israeli drones in the current conflict- but about exporting a model of control. He warns that the Israel-India partnership is a test case for a new form of authoritarianism masked by democratic veneers. India has learned to deploy soft power -tech, Bollywood, yoga- to mask its fascist tilt. During Operation Sindoor, Indian media seamlessly echoed government lines, with a female Muslim officer paraded in press conferences to deflect accusations of bigotry. Within this framework, the deaths of 28 tourists in Pahalgam become pretexts for escalating a settler-colonial logic already decades in motion – one now increasingly backed by Gulf capital and Western complicity.

The Precarity of Indian Muslim Identity

One of the strengths of Essa’s work lies in its critique of the political dynamics within India. The acknowledgment that it was not under the BJP but the Congress government of Rajiv Gandhi that certain pivotal actions occurred, such as the reopening of the Babri mosque for Hindu worshippers, and the normalization of ties with Israel, underscores the non-partisan nature of anti-Muslim hatred: “Whereas the political and social foundation of Hindutva had been laid by Hindu nationalists, it was the Congress party who had helped normalize the ideology. It follows, naturally, then, that when Rajiv Gandhi took over in 1984, the idea of normalizing ties with Israel had become tangled with the very demand of progress, liberalism, and technological advancement of India.”2 It dispels the notion that these issues are confined to a particular political party, instead, far more entrenched in the evolution of the country itself.

Given the above, the comparison between India and Israel, Kashmir and Palestine, makes the current moment a particularly volatile one for using this framework of analysis for Hindutva and Zionism. As an Indian-American Muslim, I do wonder if these parallels do not implicitly make those unfamiliar with the history put Indian Muslims at a crossroads. In other words, some analyses view Indian Muslims as analogous to collaborators, sell-outs of the Ummah. This misreading flattens history and regional contexts, and overlooks India and Pakistan as state-on-state warfare, wherein Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with its own record of military coups, political repression, and U.S.-aligned operations. Imran Khan continues to languish in inhumane jail conditions.

Additionally, for all their similarities, there do exist distinctions between Zionism and Hindutva. Their origins, logics, and conceptions of indigeneity can differ in critical ways. Zionism emerged as a nationalist movement to establish a homeland for Jews, a diasporic people historically persecuted across Europe. Zionism is centered on a restorative settler-colonial logic, where Jews, regardless of origin, are defined as indigenous to the land of Israel. Hindutva, by contrast, does not imagine an exiled people returning but rather an indigenous majority reclaiming dominion over a homeland allegedly corrupted. As Essa outlines, Hindutva treats native Muslims and Christians not as external enemies but as internal contaminants, descendants of conquerors or converts who have betrayed the authentic civilizational essence of India. Hindutva does not seek partition but purification. In other words, Zionism and Hindutva converge in form but differ in origin.

Indian Muslims, far from being state proxies, are themselves targets of a majoritarian ethno-nationalist project. Of course, it is a moral imperative that those who can afford to voice opposition do so, or at the very least avoid echoing Hindutva jingoisms or cheering state violence, especially when it targets civilians, no matter what side of the border. But we must also acknowledge the structural precarity Indian Muslims live under, many of whom have sacrificed livelihoods, safety, and even their lives in pursuit of justice.

Conclusion

The dust has yet to settle after the ceasefire; the region remains taut. The violence of the past weeks are not anomalies, but manifestations of an ideology that rewards majoritarian cruelty and reframes it as righteous duty. These geopolitical conflicts are not insular. What followed after the Pahalgam attack is not a break from history but proof that the convergence Essa traces has never been theoretical.

May God preserve all innocent life, grant justice to the oppressed, and may we resist, always, the temptation to cheer power over principle.

 

Related:

– The Graveyard Of Normalcy – New Report Uncovers Egregious Human Rights Violations In Indian-occupied Kashmir

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

1    pg.44, Hostile Homelands2    pg. 24, Hostile Homelands

The post [Book Review] Hostile Homelands: Drawing Parallels Between Hindutva And Zionism In Historical and Present Day Context appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

“Were the world the possession of a single man, it would not make him rich … because it is passing away.”
– Rabiah Al-Adawiyyah

Who Are You?

Deek dreamed that he was walking through the Al-Hajarah desert of his native Iraq. It was a forbidding land, with a mosaic of stony plains, wadis, ridges, and gullies. He’d heard a rumor that the the Half-Buried Ziggurat of Šar-Ḫadīdu, part of the ancient kingdom of Ur, held a huge hidden cache of silver drachmas. He wanted that money, and would stop at nothing to get it.

He had drunk the last of his water and his throat was parched, but he must have that treasure.

As he trudged through the sweltering landscape, he passed a knot of Bādū shepherds, tending their sheep in the arid washlands. They called to him, offering to share water and flatbread with a weary traveler, but Deek did not trust them. What if they only wanted the secret of the treasure? Licking his cracked lips, he walked on.

He dropped behind a stone to hide from a group of shadowy men driving battered 4×4s and carrying rifles.

He encountered a woman praying on a rug in the shadow of a crumbling watchtower. Her abaya was drawn across her face, but she seemed young. He was about to pass her by when she ended the prayer and spoke his name.

“Deek Saghir, son of my sons.”

Deek cleared his throat. “Yes?”

“I am Rabiah Al-Adawiyyah.”

Deek knew her. She was an Iraqi poet and ascetic who had lived in the 8th century. She was famous for her deep piety. Deek cast his gaze at the ground so as not to offend the holy woman’s modesty.

“My father,” he said, “often told me that you were our ancestor. But our village shaykh said that he was wrong, that you never married, and spent your life in worship.”

“Child Deek,” she replied. “Who are you?”

Deek was confused. If she knew his name, why was she asking?

“I’m looking for a hidden treasure of silver,” he explained. “It’s near here.”

“I did not ask what you are doing. I asked, ‘who are you?’”

Deek’s eyebrows knitted together. “This is me. I am determined to be rich. It’s my destiny.”

“If that is all you are, then you are nothing.” Rabiah turned away and began to recite the Quran, her soft voice carrying clearly across the desert sand.

Deek walked on. The sun was high in the sky and beginning to burn. His waterskin was bone-dry, and each breath tasted like dust. He wasn’t going to make it. It had been folly to come out here. He was wounded by Shaykha Rabiah’s words. What did she mean that he was nothing? He had struggled mightily to find this treasure, and was still struggling. He was determined and focused. That was more than 99% of people could say.

His legs gave out. With the words, “Who are you?” echoing in his mind, he fell on the hot sand and lay prostrate.

Clear Mind

Deek’s face was hot. He waved a hand beside his cheek, mumbling, “I’m me, that’s all. I’m just me. That’s something, not nothing.” He opened his eyes to find himself in a small bed that just barely fit him, covered with a geometric-patterned quilt. The sun beamed through the window, shining on his face.

He didn’t like the way Rabiah Al-Adawiyyah had turned away from him at the end. Was she disappointed in him? She was a saint, and he was an ordinary man. What did she want from him?

Wait… that wasn’t real. That was a dream. He blinked several times, trying to understand where he was. Sitting up, he felt a twinge of pain in his ribs. He was dressed in blue flannel pajamas that he did not recognize. Lifting the shirt, he saw that his entire torso was bandaged.

He remembered. The kidnapping, the terrible beating they’d given him, and Zaid Karim blazing in like the angel of death, killing the kidnappers and saving him. The pain in his ribs was not nearly as bad as it had been last night. He opened and closed his mouth. His jaw was sore, but worked just fine. He touched his nose and found it also bandaged.

He was not worried. In fact, now that the morning brain fog had cleared, his mind was sharp and clear. He didn’t feel much of anything, emotionally. Instead, he was like a machine that had been designed to observe, calculate, and strategize. He still remembered Rabiah Al-Adawiyyah’s probing questions and comments. He understood that she expected more from him spiritually. But at the moment, this did not disturb him.

The room in which he sat was made of white painted brick. On the walls were shelves that held colorful woven baskets, a stone axe and obsidian knife, and other objects that might have been tools or weapons; as well as abalone shells, something that looked like a rattle, and a feathered headdress mounted on the wall. It was as if he was in a Native American museum.

His two suitcases stood in one corner. Zaid must have gone back to the Moon Walk motel to retrieve them.

He was desperately thirsty. Rising slowly, he put on a pair of slippers he found beside the bed, went through a door and found himself in the bathroom. The mirror above the sink showed a face that did not look as bad as he expected. His eyes were slightly bruised and swollen, and his nose was bandaged, but on the whole he felt much better than he should, based on his memory of what the thugs had done to him.

The Namer’s House

The small sink operated with a foot pedal, of all things. Pumping the pedal, Deek drank greedily and washed up, then went to find someone to talk to.

He discovered that he was alone in the small house. There was another bedroom, decorated similarly to his own. The modest living room, sparsely furnished with a sofa, table, and chairs all hewn from natural oak, also had shelves on the walls, but these held glass jars and bottles that were filled with herbs, spices, and colored liquids. There was no television, phone, or any electronics that Deek could see. Not even a refrigerator in the little kitchen, though there was an ancient-looking oven and stove. There were unlit candles everywhere, most of them in votive glasses.

His phone sat on a little table in the kitchen, beside a candle, a box of matches, and an ashtray. In addition,n there was an assortment of foodstuffs, including a loaf of bread, a few tins of sardines, a small block of cheese wrapped in cloth, jars of peanut butter and jelly, a basket of tomatoes, a bowl of oranges, and a bag of dry cat food.

Beneath the phone was a note:

“Akhi Deek: You are in the Namer’s house. It’s a safe place where you can recuperate. She treated your wounds and gave you healing medicine, so you should feel better. She’s gone to the coast for a day, but help yourself to the food. You can use your phone, but don’t make any calls for now, and remember there’s no electricity. Do NOT talk about last night’s events to anyone! I need to get to the bottom of what happened. I’ll see you later tonight, inshaAllah. Burn this note. – Zaid.”

Wealth for Wealth’s Sake

Deek read the note over again, then crumpled it, lit it on fire with a match, and set it in the ashtray to burn. No electricity? Sinks with foot pumps? Shelves with axes and potions? He couldn’t tell if he was in a Western movie, a Grimm’s fairy tale, or a spy thriller. In any case, he was alive, so alhamdulillah for that.

Compulsively, he turned on the phone. There were text messages and missed calls from his wife and both of his daughters, and voicemails from numbers he did not recognize. He would read and listen to them later.

He checked his crypto balance. The altcoin rally he’d been waiting for the last two years was in full swing. His portfolio was up to 90 million.

This was what Rania, Lubna, and others had not understood about crypto. It was extraordinarily volatile, but it was cyclical, and it was a waiting game. You had to have the knowledge to know what to buy, but after that, it was all about being patient and waiting for the next parabolic bull rally. Crypto bull cycles could be insanely profitable, to a degree unimaginable in any other asset class.

Deek had been through one such euphoric rally before – that was when he’d made the $200K – but he’d held the tokens too long and lost it all in the inevitable bear market collapse. After that, he’d waited three years for the next bull cycle, and it was finally here. His knowledge and patience had paid off. All he had to do was recognize when this monster run was peaking, and get out in time.

If he played his cards right, he could hit a net worth of half a billion dollars before this bull cycle ended. The thought was mind-boggling. He had no idea what he would do with the wealth he already possessed, let alone half a billion dollars. But it wasn’t about that anymore.

His friend Marco had multiple college degrees. He’d once told Deek that receiving the first diploma had been a thrill – as it was for everyone- but that after that, each successive degree meant less. For Marco, studying wasn’t about the degrees anymore, but the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. It had occurred to Deek more than once that Marco, who was not Muslim, was following with great dedication Allah’s command to “Read!” – But was missing the second part: “In the Name of your Lord Who Created…”

The point was that Deek felt the same way about growing his cryptocurrency hoard. Now that he was at almost a hundred million, it was no longer about securing a better future for himself and his family, but about perfecting the investment process itself. Making the right choices, timing the market, seeing the numbers grow. Excellence and wealth for the sake of excellence and wealth.

As he thought this, he heard a distant echo of Rabiah Al-Adawiyyah’s voice saying, “If that is all you are, then you are nothing.” But he pushed it aside.

Urban Wasteland Oasis

There was no lock on the front door. How was he supposed to be safe in a house with an unlocked door? He opened it and stepped outside to find himself looking at a garden in the middle of a wasteland. The house’s small front yard was gorgeous, filled with flowers and herbs. Bees buzzed resourcefully, and butterflies flitted from rose to bird of paradise to carnation. There was a narrow driveway, but no garage.

Beyond this house, however, the neighborhood consisted of crumbling homes with bare earth yards, junked cars, empty lots strewn with trash, a house that had burned to the ground, and an abandoned house that was boosted up on pillars of bricks for some reason.

What city was this? Was this even Fresno? He’d never seen anything like this in Fresno.

He went inside and explored further. There was a back door that exited off the kitchen.

Stepping out, he found himself in an earthly imitation of Paradise. The backyard was huge, many times larger than the house, and enclosed by a wooden fence. The entire space was filled with fruit trees and herbs, rows of vegetables, and bird feeders. Everywhere he looked, he saw birds hopping, darting, and feeding, including hummingbirds. There was a covered patio with chairs and a glass table, and several empty food bowls. As Deek stood there, four cats of various colors trotted up to him, meowing and rubbing against his legs. He retrieved the bag of cat food and filled their bowls, and watched them munch happily.

The Namer’s backyard

He considered. Based on the poverty-stricken neighborhood, the lack of a lock on the front door, and the herbs and potions in the house, he concluded that the Namer must be some sort of neighborhood medicine woman. She treated the people here, and they respected and protected her. Or perhaps they feared her. Or both.

Also, based on his own physical condition, which was better than he had any right to expect, and on his strangely clear state of mind, he deduced that the Namer had given him some sort of healing potion. The woman was clearly a genius. She could market these potions and make a fortune.

Money Management

Speaking of fortunes, it was time to manage his assets. He must not fail to make the most of this opportunity. First, he changed the settings on his Coinbase account, linking it to his own personal account instead of the joint account. Then he sold $5K worth of Solana and sent it to his bank account.

Using Phantom, Solflare, Trust Wallet, and Coinbase wallet, he created multiple sub-wallets and began to distribute the assets. For each wallet he created, he wrote the secret phrase – a list of 12 or 24 random words – on an encrypted text file on his phone. Later, he would save the phrases on an encrypted thumb drive and store it in a safe deposit box.

He sold the five dozen or so nearly valueless meme coins that he still held, and began to invest in blue chip cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Cardano, and Chainlink. He also bought a number of large-cap utilities on the Solana chain, including DEXes (decentralized exchanges) like Orca and Raydium, a launchpad, a streaming audio service, and a few popular games. Lastly, he put about $10 million in more experimental tokens, not tiny microcaps this time, but mid-cap AI tokens similar to the Alpha101 that had made him a fortune.

When this was done, he did a search for asset management firms that specialized in crypto. There were many in the USA, including in San Francisco, and others in London, Switzerland, and Germany. Several in Singapore and Hong Kong, and three in the Caymans. He called all three of the Caymans firms and got voicemail each time. Apparently they didn’t work on Saturdays down there. Too busy relaxing at the beach. He left messages explaining that he had earned a lot of money in crypto and needed guidance.

For a long time, he lost himself in these tasks, as he always did with crypto. Cryptocurrency fascinated him, and he never grew bored of it. The cats lounged at his feet, and occasionally he reached out to pet one. At some point, he realized he was hungry. He went inside and made a sandwich of sardines and tomatoes of all things – not something he would normally choose. He had no craving for chips or sweets. What had the Namer done to him? She could seriously be rich if she wanted.

His body needed more rest, so he returned to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

Shake the Earth

Zaid needed to confront Bandar Tzan’ani, but he wasn’t interested in assaulting the man’s fortified compound in south Fresno. Killing those three men yesterday had shaken him and left his soul as turbulent as a thunderstorm. He’d gone home, parked the car, and wept. They had not been the first men he’d killed, nor even the last since Panama. But taking a human life was an enormity that should quake the earth itself and make the heavens weep. It was not to be done and forgotten.

To make matters worse, he’d made no attempt to negotiate and delivered no warning. He’d cut the men down in cold blood. Tactically, it had been the sound choice. There really had been no other option, and one could say the men deserved it. Without a doubt, this had not been their first crime. Zaid wouldn’t be surprised if collectively, those three men had a river of blood on their hands.

But it didn’t matter. Who was he to say who deserved what? The experience left him feeling like an assassin.

Nevertheless, he had a job to do. He’d made some calls, and learned that Bandar had a certain ritual that he repeated every Saturday night. That was perfect, as it would allow Zaid to confront the man in a public setting, which would force them both to behave. Hopefully.

Zaid had two goals: one, he had to make it clear to Tzan’ani that Deek Saghir was off limits. Two, to take responsibility for the killing of Tzan’ani’s men. If the Yemeni king of liquor and dope was determined to pursue this conflict, then Zaid wanted to make himself the target of the man’s wrath, rather than Deek.

Saturday Night at the Movies

It was Saturday night, and Bandar Tzan’ani settled into a middle seat at the River Park Regal cinema. He always reserved his seat in advance, and he always reserved the seats on either side and directly in front, to make sure that he had plenty of private space and an unobstructed view. His hulking bodyguard was seated in the row behind him and a few seats over. Bandar had a large bucket of popcorn, a soda, and a box of red liquorice. His wife would not let him eat such things, but in this theater he was king.

The previews had just begun, and he was already smiling. He cherished these weekly movie excursions. In fact, he lived for them.

About a year ago, he’d begun experiencing pains in his abdomen. He had not gone to the doctor, as he was afraid of what they might say. He told himself it was stress. The only pleasure he had anymore was his Saturday night movie outing. He changed up the cinema regularly for security purposes, but he had to admit that the River Park Regency, with its huge screens and surrounding restaurants in the mall, got more attention than all the others.

Here at the movie house, he could forget the world for a solid three hours. And if it was an action movie or a western, so much the better.

Hollywood hardly ever made westerns anymore. Why was that? Bandar absolutely adored movies like Open Range, True Grit, Red Hill (though it was modern and Australian), Django Unchained (though not a true western), and above all, 3:10 To Yuma. Though, as for The Revenant, the director should be thrown off a high cliff for making that depressing abomination.

He’d thought about building a private cinema in his compound, but it wouldn’t be the same. He liked the excitement of seeing new releases, hearing people laugh or cheer, and the feeling of losing himself in the crowd.

So it was a bit of a downer, to say the least, when the movie had begun and the lights dimmed, and a lean young man with a scarred face and wearing a brimmed hat sat in the seat next to Bandar and casually planted the barrel of a gun in his side.

“How’s tricks, Bandar?” the man said. “Do you know who I am?”

***

[Part 9 will be published next week 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:

Kill the Courier |Part 1 – Hiding in Plain Sight

The Albatross and the Quran: A Short Story

 

The post Moonshot [Part 8] – The Namer’s House appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

“He who sows winds, reaps storms.” – Spanish proverb

“If you stare into an abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

On Alert

Zaid Karim pulled into the motel parking lot and parked in a dark corner. Rania had said that Deek bought a black Porsche, and there it was, parked in front of room 9, looking like a black diamond in a hayfield among the twenty or so dented sedans, aging Japanese cars, and dirty trucks in this lot. The lights in room 9 were still on, but the curtains were firmly closed. A white van with tinted windows idled in the center of the lot, dirty exhaust pouring from its tailpipe into the chill night air. That was suspicious, and it put his senses on alert. He decided to remain in place and monitor the van before making any move.

Kidnap

Manuel “Manny” Cesar wasn’t sure whether he believed in God or fate, but both were great when they put food on your plate. As it turned out, there was no need to lure the target, a man named Deek, out of the room, as the car thief exited room number 9 entirely on his own. Shujaa had given a description of the guy, and it matched exactly. He was built like Oscar, tall and overweight, but with a mass of curly hair and a short beard. He carried the car keys in one hand.

Manny gunned the van and pulled up next to the Porsche. Oscar leaped out and shot Deek with a high-voltage, military-grade taser. The big man crashed to the ground like a tree, and Manny and his vatos were on him like killer bees, dragging him by the knees, no time for wait or please. They hauled him into the van. The kid snatched the car keys, jumped in the Porsche, and peeled out. Manny was only a few seconds behind. The whole thing went down smoother than mantequilla on a hot tortilla.

They’d already laid out a tarp on the floor of the van to prevent bloodstains. As Manny drove, Oscar and Poison taped Deek’s hands, feet, and mouth, then proceeded to beat and kick him as they cursed, calling him a filthy Arab and a fat slob. The thief screamed in pain and terror, but the tape muffled his cries.

Pursuit

Zaid had hardly shut the engine off and settled back in the seat to study the scene, when the door to room 9 opened, and Deek walked out. Zaid opened his car door to get out, but immediately the white van sped forward, men poured out and tased Deek, then threw him into the van, which sped away. Zaid leaped out of the car with his gun drawn, but the whole thing happened so fast. He didn’t think the kidnappers had even seen him. He jumped back into the car and started in pursuit.

The van drove southeast, skirting the edge of the warehouse district. Zaid followed from a distance, not wanting to be spotted. At night, this area was all shuttered warehouses, dark train yards, and empty streets. He was afraid they might take Deek into one of the warehouses. Depending on the level of security, it could make it hard to help him. A moving target was always easier.

When the van turned west on Altura Street, Zaid saw his chance. Altura was a rutted road with a railroad crossing that had a steep incline. You couldn’t speed down this road, it was impossible. There was nothing around but a railroad yard on the left, and a milk factory on the right. A half mile down, Altura exited onto Amsterdam Street, an extremely dark street that ran under the freeway. There was nothing at all on that stretch of Amsterdam, just empty lots filled with illegally dumped trash.

There was a shortcut to get around Altura, which Zaid only knew about because he’d taken a case involving the abandoned milk factory that rose now on the right. Someone had been sabotaging the factory, shutting down production two or three times a week. The lady who owned it hired Zaid to find out who was responsible. It turned out to be the owner’s husband, who was VP of production. He was having an affair with his secretary, and wanted to drive his wife to despair so she would sell the factory. He would then divorce her, take half the money in the settlement, and move to Brazil with the secretary. All very cliched, and perhaps obvious to an outsider, but the wife hadn’t seen it coming.

The husband went to prison, and the wife did indeed sell the factory, but so far, the new owners had done nothing with it. It had been sitting idle for a year.

The factory was gated, but the security road that encircled it was not. On the other side of the factory, there was a short, unpaved road that led to Amsterdam Street. It was a longer route than Altura, but the security road was well paved. He could circle around and enter Altura from the other side, cutting the van off.

Zaid turned onto the security road and hit the accelerator. The tires squealed as he took the curve like a stock car racer. He circled the factory in record time, shot down the dirt road, and bumped out onto Amsterdam, which was deserted. He sped on the wrong side of Amsterdam for a hundred meters, then turned onto Altura.

Sure enough, here came the van, still working its way slowly around the potholes, heading right toward him. Zaid parked his car behind a telephone pole, stepped out onto the road, and drew his gun.

Fourth Degree

Manny cursed. It had been a stupid idea to turn onto Altura. He’d forgotten that it was under construction. He was just trying to get to that deserted stretch of Amsterdam, where they could dump this fat car thief amid the piles of old mattresses, broken washing machines, and rotting garbage.

They’d beaten the man badly. He lay on the tarpaulin, moaning, covered in blood. Served him right. Poison wanted to kill Deek, but Poison wanted to kill everyone. They hadn’t been hired to kill him. Just to send the message that if you messed with Mr. Z you got the fourth degree, and it wouldn’t be fun, son.

Manny was watching the road carefully, trying to steer around the potholes, and glanced up to see a man standing not twenty feet in front of the van, pointing a gun directly at him. The man was lean and muscular-looking, with black hair to his shoulders and a nasty scar on the upper part of his face. He wore jeans, black boots, a red and blue windbreaker, and a fedora, of all things.

“What the -”

Targets In the Dark

Zaid opened his eyes wide and narrowed his focus. The front seat of the van held a driver and a passenger. Behind them, there appeared to be a partition. Zaid sighted, and shot the driver through the windshield, then shot him again. The van careened off the road, narrowly missing him. As it passed, he fired quickly, barely aiming, not expecting to hit his target. Yet he did. He saw the passenger’s head jerk violently to the side as a bullet smashed through his skull. The van crashed into the security fence around the milk factory, then stalled, coming to a stop. Zaid dashed toward it.

Who Would Have Guessed?

Manny heard a flat, sharp sound. A small, neat hole appeared in the windshield, surrounded by emanating cracks. He felt like he’d been punched in the chest. He looked down and saw blood seeping through his shirt. The man had shot him in the chest, who would have guessed?

His first thought was that he’d known this would happen one day. He’d hurt a lot of people in his lifetime. His grandmother, Abuela Anita, used to say, “Quien siembra vientos, recoge tempestades.” He who sows winds, reaps storms. The evil you put into the world always came back to you. He’d convinced himself that he wasn’t an evil man, but his heart knew better. If only he’d listened to it.

This reminded him of Sunday mornings at Abuela’s table, when she made chilaquiles, tamales, huevos rancheros, atole, pan dulce, and coffee. All his surviving family – those who weren’t in prison or the grave – would gather around to feast, talk and laugh. He hadn’t been to Sunday breakfast lately, why was that? He’d been slippin’ and trippin’, and now he was done.

The next bullet entered his chest from the side, clipping the edge of the left atrium of the heart that Manny had refused to listen to. He had a sudden vision of his Tio Ramirez, who’d spent half a lifetime incarcerated at San Quentin before committing suicide. Manny had visited Ramirez a few months before he killed himself. Ramirez’s eyes were hollow and tired that day, full of pain and regret. Speaking on a phone from the other side of a glass partition, Ramirez quoted some philosopher named Nietsche: “If you stare into an abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you.”

As he died, Manny stared into the abyss, and the abyss stared back with wet black eyes that neither rhymed nor reasoned, but bored remorselessly into his soul.

A Universe of Pain

Deek drifted in a universe made entirely of pain. He didn’t know who these men were, but the two tattooed Mexicans who were with him in the rear of the van had been insulting and cursing him as they beat him, calling him car thief and other things. “Never mess with Mr. Z,” one of them said. Deek had no idea who that was. He would have told them that he was no car thief, that he paid for the car fair and square, but his mouth was taped shut.

His nose and mouth were full of blood, and he swallowed a mouthful of it so he wouldn’t choke. His jaw felt crooked, and the sides of his torso felt liquid and broken. Blood ran into one eye, stinging and blinding him, and he blinked rapidly, trying to clear it.

Patience is at the first blow, Imam Saleh had said. This thought ran through Deek’s head like a mantra as he mumbled, “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’oon,” again and again.

The two men had quit beating him at least, and now sat on the side seat against the wall of the van.

He heard a sharp sound like a firecracker, then another, and he was thrown against the partition that separated the front seats from the rear cargo area. The two kidnappers were thrown to the floor as well, one of them landing atop Deek. The man they called Poison rose with a curse, drew a large handgun from his waistband and opened the rear door of the van. An instant later a gunshot rang out and Poison tumbled back into the van with a bullet hole in his forehead.

The man who’d been thrown atop Deek – Oscar – shouted, “Chingada!” and scrambled to his feet. Yanking Deek to a sitting position, Oscar kneeled behind him and put a knife to his throat.

Showdown

A moment later a man wearing a brown fedora stepped into the van, gun in hand. Even with all his pain, Deek grinned, making the tape pull against the corners of his mouth. Tears sprung to his eyes as he wept with relief. It was Zaid Karim Al-Husayni. The man, the hero, the legend.

Because of his indirect familial relationship to the Palestinian-American private investigator, Deek knew more than most people about the dangers Zaid had faced and overcome. The man was a juggernaut, a one-man avalanche. As a youth he’d robbed banks all up and down California, spent six years in a maximum security federal penitentiary, been pardoned by the president of the USA after he saved a woman’s life in a prison riot, had survived innumerable assaults in the course of his job, and had killed a Panamanian drug kingpin in hand-to-hand combat. All that and more.

Deek didn’t know how Zaid had known of his predicament, or how he’d found him, but thank God. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah. Patience was at the first blow! If you showed sabr, Allah would make a way.

Death was written in Zaid’s eyes as plain as a newspaper headline, and Oscar must have seen it, because panic infused the kidnapper’s voice as he shouted, “Stop! Drop your gun or I’ll cut this pendejo’s throat!”

Far from dropping the gun, Zaid raised it and sighted on the kidnapper’s head. “You kill him,” he said grimly, “and it will be the last thing you ever do in this world.”

“We work for Bandar Tzan’ani! You can’t mess with him.”

Deek saw the flash of recognition in Zaid’s eyes. But the legendary P.I. was as focused as a laser beam. He breathed slowly and deeply. His knees were slightly bent, his shoulders relaxed. He looked like a lion about to pounce.

“We can make a deal!” Oscar shouted as he kneeled behind Deek, hiding his face behind Deek’s head. “I let him go, you let me go.”

“I’ll make a different deal,” Zaid replied calmly. “What do you say, Deek?” He winked at Deek, and Deek thought he understood.

Deek winked back. An instant later he flung his head backward, smashing the back of his skull into the kidnapper’s nose. Oscar dropped the knife as his hands flew out in shock. Deek pitched himself sideways. Two shots rang out as Zaid put one bullet in Oscar’s face, and another in his chest.

“I shoot you and you die,” Zaid said, holstering his gun. “That’s the deal.”

Death Is Good Enough

Zaid cut Deek’s bonds and removed the tape from his mouth.

“The man of the hour!” Deek shouted, or tried to. The pain in his jaw was terrible, and he winced as he gripped it.

“Are there any more of them?” Zaid asked seriously. “Another car?”

Deek climbed slowly to his feet. Even with all his injuries, and with the coppery taste of blood still coating his mouth, he felt exhilarated. He and Zaid had shown these guys what was what! What a rush! “No,” he mumbled, for his jaw would not work properly. “Just this piece of garbage.” He punctuated the last word with a kick to the dead kidnapper’s face, but the movement caused a massive wave of pain in his side, and he groaned.

“Come on,” Zaid said, taking him by the arm. “Death is good enough. They are facing worse trials now than what we can give them.”

Oscar had confiscated Deek’s phone when they kidnapped him. He needed that back, as it held his crypto wallets and the protected file with the secret keys. He shook off Zaid’s arm, went through the dead man’s pockets and found the phone.

The Namer

Deek didn’t realize that Oscar had cut him until Zaid pressed a cloth against the side of his neck and said, “Keep pressure on this.” The hard-bitten detective put an arm around Deek and helped him to Zaid’s car. The pain of Deek’s wounds, especially his jaw and hand, filled his eyes with tears, and he watched blearily as Zaid shut the van’s doors, opened the gas cap, stuffed a rag into the fuel neck, and lit it. Zaid then hurried to the car, and they took off.

In the movies people always set something to blow then depart coolly, not looking back. But Deek was not that cool. He turned his head just in time to see the van jump into the air as it exploded in a fireball.

“I need to go to the hospital,” he tried to say, but the words sounded more like a moan than anything intelligible. The wave of energy he’d felt when Zaid had freed him was receding, leaving behind a glittering shoreline of pain.

“Don’t try to talk. I think your jaw is dislocated. I could try to reset it but I’m not experienced at that, so I’ll leave it to the Namer. Your nose is definitely broken as well.”

“Hospital,” Deek moaned.

“Can’t take you to the hospital. I just killed three men. In defense of my life and yours, but you never know how the cops will see it. Trust me, the Namer will take good care of you.”

Deek didn’t understand what Zaid was saying. The what? The Namer? He sat back in the seat, still pressing the cloth to his neck, and closed his eyes. Rain was falling again, and the rhythmic snick-snick of the wipers snagged at Deek’s mind and eased him into another state of consciousness. The pain of his wounds blissfully receded.

Human After All

He found himself remembering a night from when he was twelve years old. He was in the car with his parents and Lubna, returning from eating at the Old Spaghetti Factory. It was raining, and the wipers were on, and Baba began to sing a traditional Iraqi song called Hayatna, matching it to the rhythm of the wipers.

Mama joined in, and Lubna as well, but Deek refused to sing. He was too cool for that, and he cared more about American rock music than old Iraqi ballads. He mocked Lubna, telling her she sang like a crow.

Why had he been such a horrible punk? No wonder she hated him. He’d been nothing but a bully to her growing up.

What if he bled to death right here in this car seat? He would never get a chance to tell Lubna how sorry he was, and that she was actually a great singer, and that he had only been jealous at how much closer to their parents she was back then.

He snapped out of the reverie. The full intensity of his wounds hit him like another booted kick. He felt in his pockets for his phone, and took it out. The screen was cracked, but alhamdulillah it still worked.

He called Lubna. As it began to ring, Zaid snatched the phone away.

“I told you not to talk. Calling your family right now is not a good idea. You’ll scare them. You’re not dying. The cut on your neck is superficial. If it had been a little deeper you’d be dead now, but you were fortunate, alhamdulillah. We’ll get you patched up, I promise.”

Deek nodded and sank into the seat. Glancing at Zaid, he noticed that the detective’s arms were trembling on the steering wheel, and the man’s face was as pale as a high moon. What was wrong with him? As his mind slipped into darkness, it dawned on Deek that maybe the rescue had not been as easy for Zaid as it had seemed. Maybe he’d been frightened, or maybe the act of killing had shaken him up. Maybe Zaid, in spite of all the legends and stories about him, was human after all.

***

[Part 8 will be published next week 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:

Trust Fund And A Yellow Lamborghini: A Short Story

As Light As Birdsong: A Ramadan Story

The post Moonshot [Part 7] – The Abyss Stares Back appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

[Part 1] [Part 2]

The ten best days of the year are upon us! Just as we prepare du’a lists in Ramadan, so too are these blessed days the perfect opportunity to pour our hearts out to our creator. This Dhul Hijjah, Shaykh Yahya Ibrahim provides guidance on how to perfect the art of du’a so that we may turn to Allah in the best way.

In the third episode, Shaykh Yahya shares different strategies and the etiquette of making du’a in the best way, right in time for the Day of ‘Arafah.

 

Related:

[Dhul Hijjah Series] Calling Upon the Divine: The Art of Du’a (Part 1)

Embracing the Sacred: A Heartfelt Journey Through the First 10 Days of Dhul-Hijjah

The post [Dhul Hijjah Series] Calling Upon the Divine: The Art of Du’a (Part 3) appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The ten best days of the year are upon us! Just as we prepare du’a lists in Ramadan, so too are these blessed days the perfect opportunity to pour our hearts out to our creator. This Dhul Hijjah, Shaykh Yahya Ibrahim provides guidance on how to perfect the art of du’a so that we may turn to Allah in the best way.

In the second episode, Shaykh Yahya teaches us about the different types of du’a and how they contribute to the spiritual purity of our worship, as well as the “psychology of du’a.”

The post [Dhul Hijjah Series] Calling Upon the Divine: The Art of Du’a (Part 2) appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

My Wake-Up Call

I remember sitting in my nonprofit’s office in 2020, staring at a donor’s request: “Can you accept stock donations?” I had no idea how to answer. Despite running a successful organization, there was so much about finance I still didn’t understand. That question became my wake-up call.

While others were perfecting their sourdough starters during the pandemic, I found myself reading books about personal finance and money management. I searched everywhere for resources that approached financial literacy from an Islamic perspective, but came up empty-handed. So I started with what was available – books like “The Latte Factor” by David Bach and John David Mann – and began the work of filtering these mainstream financial concepts through an Islamic lens. This journey would ultimately transform how I thought about money, wealth, and giving as a Muslim woman.

From Checkbook Charity to Strategic Impact

I remember the first time I learned about Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs—charitable giving accounts that let you contribute assets and recommend grants to charities while receiving an immediate tax deduction). DAFs truly transformed how I distributed my zakat. I realized I could give significantly more than previous years – not because I earned more, but because I finally understood how to give smarter. Instead of just writing checks, I learned to donate appreciated stock, reducing my tax burden while increasing my charitable impact.

This financial knowledge wasn’t just about personal gain—it revealed a critical connection between money management and serving others. Had I understood this earlier, it would have transformed my early career decisions. For instance, when I first started in the nonprofit sector, I worked for two years without taking a salary because I mistakenly believed that being paid would somehow diminish the spiritual rewards of my work. I now realize this mindset was counterproductive. By undervaluing my own financial well-being, I was actually limiting my long-term capacity to give and serve. Financial literacy taught me that being compensated fairly and managing money wisely actually amplifies our ability to help others sustainably.

Allah tells us in the Quran:

“Those who spend their wealth in the cause of Allah and do not follow their charity with reminders of their generosity or hurtful words—they will get their reward from their Lord, and there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.” [Surah Al-Baqarah: 2;262]

The Ripple Effect of Strategic Giving

Let me share a recent example that demonstrates the power of intentional financial planning. Last year, an organization that supports Deaf and Deaf+ Muslims in our community was raising funds for critically needed programs. Their initiative focused on expanding American Sign Language resources and developing Culturally & Linguistically Appropriate Services tailored to our diverse Muslim community. The organization had identified significant gaps in accessibility that many community members faced when participating in religious gatherings, educational workshops, and social events.

“Those who spend their wealth in the cause of Allah and do not follow their charity with reminders of their generosity or hurtful words—they will get their reward from their Lord, and there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.” [PC: Christian Dubovan (unsplash)]

Because I had learned to manage my finances strategically over the previous two years—setting aside specific amounts for charity, tracking my giving goals, and researching impact opportunities—I was able to contribute meaningfully to this initiative without compromising my other financial responsibilities. I made a substantial donation that aligned with my values of inclusion and community support, while encouraging others to participate at whatever level felt right for them.

The impact multiplied beautifully beyond my initial contribution. Today, the organization offers weekly ASL classes, has hired Deaf instructors, and has developed specialized resources that serve many families who previously felt disconnected from community activities.

This experience reinforced my belief that financial empowerment isn’t just about personal security—it’s about expanding our capacity to support initiatives that align with our deepest values and strengthen our community bonds.

The Prophetic Model of Financial Management

Abu Hurairah narrated that the Prophet ﷺ said: “While a man was in a barren tract of land, he heard a voice in a cloud saying: ‘Irrigate the garden of so-and-so.’ The cloud moved and poured its water over a rocky area. The water collected in a channel, so the man followed it and found a person standing in his garden, directing the water with his shovel. He asked him: ‘O servant of Allah, what is your name?’ He said the name that was heard from the cloud. He then asked: ‘Why do you ask about my name?’ He replied: ‘I heard a voice in the cloud which poured this water, saying: “Irrigate the garden of so-and-so,” mentioning your name. What do you do with it?’ He said: ‘Now that you have asked, I look at what it produces and give one-third in charity, my family and I eat one-third, and I reinvest one-third back into the garden.'” [Sahih Muslim]

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ showed us that smart financial management enables greater giving. The gardener’s secret in the above hadith wasn’t just in giving – it was in his systematic approach. He divided his harvest into thirds: charity, family needs, and reinvestment. 

I’ve adopted this principle in my own life, creating specific budgets for sadaqah while ensuring I’m also building long-term financial stability.

Practical Steps to Get Started

For young Muslims just starting their financial journey: You don’t have to wait until you’re “wealthy” to make a difference. Start with these practical steps:

1. Set up automatic transfers for charity (even if it’s just $5/month). Use platforms like A Continuous Charity or LaunchGood’s monthly giving program to automate your sadaqah.

2. Learn one new financial concept each month. Resources I recommend:

• Sign up for Fatimah Jangana’s Finance Girlie’s newsletter Financial Literacy for Muslim Women
• “Smart Women Finish Rich” by David Bach
• The “Islamic Finance Guru” podcast with hosts Mohsin Patel & Ibrahim Khan
• Follow @ZoyaFinance and @itsmalakkudaimi on social media for regular Islamic finance tips
• Join Sheikh Joe Bradford’s community to understand your Islamic education and financial journey

3. Join or create a giving circle. A giving circle is a form of collective philanthropy where a group of individuals pool their money, time, and knowledge to support causes they care about, amplifying their impact through shared decision-making and community-based giving. Organizations like the American Muslim Community Foundation (AMCF) can help you start a giving circle with friends or family. My friends and I started with just $100 each per year, and our collective impact was far greater than what we could do individually. 

4. Track your giving and watch how it grows with your financial knowledge. Use apps like Mint or YNAB to track both your spending and your giving. I use a simple Google Sheet that I review annually. And, yes, I have seen my giving grow year after year. 

5. Study the prophetic examples of combining commerce with generosity. Read about Khadijah (RA) and how she used her business acumen to support the early Muslim community. Read about other Muslim women who gave generously. Re-read the Seerah with this lens. Books I have enjoyed: 

• Khadija Bint Khuwaylid (The Age of Bliss) by Mehmet Buyuksahin
• Women Around the Prophet by Muhammad “Ali Quib
• Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources by Martin Lings

The Divine Connection Between Wealth and Impact

Remember the cloud that was commanded to rain on the gardener’s land? That wasn’t just a story about blessings – it was a lesson about the divine connection between smart money management and impactful giving.

It’s 2025, and I’m still learning. But I know this: understanding money isn’t just about materialism – it’s about maximizing your ability to help others. Whether it’s supporting Palestine relief efforts, contributing to a sister’s medical fund, or helping establish a new masjid – your financial literacy is a tool for change.

Your Next Steps

Want to dive deeper? Here are some immediate actions you can take:

1. Calculate your actual zakat properly – Islamic Relief and Zakat Foundation offer free zakat calculators online
2. Open a no-fee investment account – Look into halal options at Sharia Portfolio or Azzad Asset Management
3. Join an online Islamic finance community – Muslim Women and Finance on Facebook has members sharing tips
4. Schedule a financial “date” with yourself monthly – Set aside just 30 minutes to review your finances and giving goals
5. Attend a workshop – Organizations like Sharia Portfolio and AMCF offer regular webinars. Sign up! 

The world needs more Muslims who understand both wealth creation and generous giving. Start now, start small, but start with intention. When you combine financial knowledge with the desire to serve, you unlock a powerful form of ibadah that can transform not just your life, but your entire community.

The best investment? It’s investing in your ability to help others.

 

Related:

– Money And Wealth In Islam: The Root Of All Evil?

– 3 Urgent Financial Questions to Ask A Potential Spouse

 

The post Meaningful Money: How Financial Literacy Amplifies Your Giving appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.

Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

 

“To say goodbye is to die a little.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

A Happy Life

Zaid Karim Al-Husayni sat on the sofa with his wife Safaa, talking quietly. It was a little after sunset, and it was raining hard. He held his wife close, his arm around her shoulders. She was warm, and her hair smelled of lavender drifting on the breeze across the rooftops of Baghdad as Arabic music played in the distance and the adhan sounded from a thousand masjids.

Or at least that was how Zaid imagined it. Here in Fresno, California, all he heard was two cats fighting outside and a motorcycle accelerating in the distance. But these sounds were far away. Inside the apartment, all was hushed. It was a place of security and love – something he desperately needed after a rough day pursuing his chosen career as a private investigator.

Safaa’s phone, sitting on the kitchen table, rang quietly.

“Do you want to answer that?” Zaid asked.

“No.” She snuggled up against him, putting her arms around his neck. “I don’t want to move from this spot.”

From the bedroom came the sound of Hajar and Anna playing and laughing. It made Zaid smile. How wonderful that Hajar had an unexpected sister, and that Anna had found a happy life finally. Two years ago she had lost her father, been sold into slavery in Panama by her mother, and only through the most extreme effort and personal sacrifice had Zaid managed to rescue her. Now she was a member of the family.

What a blessing, what a barakah. SubhanAllah, alhamdulillah. He’d made good money on that Panama job, and had leveraged it to expand his P.I. business and buy two more mobile homes, but that paled next to the great blessing of having his family back together.

Safaa’s phone rang again. Zaid gave her a look that said maybe she should answer, but she shook her head stubbornly and let it go to voicemail.

Scars

Zaid and Safaa spoke of their love for each other, the mistakes they’d made in the past, and their plans for the future. Safaa reached up to his face and fingered the scar that ran from his hairline, across his right eyebrow to the bridge of his nose – a legacy from the torture he’d experienced in Panama.

“We could see a plastic surgeon about this,” she said, not for the first time. “There will always be a scar, but a good doctor could make it almost invisible.”

“Is it ugly?” Zaid knew the answer. He looked like a Bond villain or a prison escapee. When he met people their eyes shot to the scar, and he saw the signs of fear in their gazes.

“Ya Zaid Karim, ya habibi, nothing about you could ever be ugly. You’re as beautiful as Mars in the evening sky. You, to me, are the whisper of the wind, saying there is goodness and love in the world. But I know you’re self-conscious about it.”

Zaid smiled. “There you go with the poetry again. You’re stealing my thing. I’m supposed to be the lyricist.” Ever since he and Safaa had been reunited, she’d been so tender with him, so sweet. Even more than when they’d been newlyweds. It still amazed him that this was real, he wasn’t dreaming. This was the new Safaa, this was his life. SubhanAllah. Allah worked in mysterious ways, but when you trusted Him with your whole self, holding nothing back, incredible things happened.

“What about your scar, what do you want to do?” Zaid said, mostly just to tease her.

“What scar?”

He reached out and fingered the small, star-shaped scar on her forehead, just below the hairline. It was pale against her dark skin, though in reality you could barely see it unless you knew where to look. He knew she’d gotten it as a child, from scratching a particularly bad mosquito bite.

“Oh, you!” She smacked his arm.

Cousin Rania

Safaa’s phone rang a third time, and this time she let out an annoyed huff, strode to the kitchen and snatched the phone up, answering with, “Yes?”

Her face went from annoyance to concern. “Oh,” she said. “Oh my gosh. Yes, he’s right here.” She covered the phone’s speaker with her hand and mouthed, “It’s my cousin Rania. Deek has gone missing.”

Zaid took the phone. Rania sounded as if she’d been crying. Zaid listened with growing incredulity as Rania explained that Deek had supposedly made millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, bought a sports car on the spot, then packed his bags and vanished. He wasn’t answering his phone, and she was frightened and worried.

“I don’t care about the money,” Rania said. “I told him that I wanted the house and half the money, but I was just mad. I want him back. And if he won’t come back, I want to know that he’s safe. I’ll pay you.”

“Don’t be silly, you’re family. Anyway, from what I recall, Deek loses his temper but gets over it quickly. He’ll probably be back before you know it.”

“I’m scared.”

“I’m going to look for him. I need to know where he might go.”

“I don’t know!”

Safaa heard Rania’s raised voice coming through the phone and gestured to say, what’s going on? Zaid waved his hand to say, it’s fine.

“Take a deep breath,” Zaid said in a soothing tone, “then say la ilaha il-Allah.”

Rania did so, and Zaid had her do it twice more.

“I want you to think,” Zaid said. “You know him. Where would he go?”

“Right. Sorry. Maybe his sister’s house, but Lubna has a crowded home and little patience. And she doesn’t like Deek. Never has. Maybe his friend Marco, but they haven’t spoken lately.”

Zaid took both numbers, and called them. The sister had not heard from Deek, but the call to Marco hit paydirt. Deek was at the Moon Walk Motel.

Gun and Knife

Five minutes later, wearing the battered brown fedora that had been a gift to him from his late mentor, Langston “Lonnie” Brown, Zaid opened the door to this car. The olive green 1969 Dodge Dart GTS was a performance-oriented, two-door hardtop sedan, with a V8 engine that could generate 330 horsepower. It was a true muscle car, and was Zaid’s most prized possession, after the fedora.

The car contained a hidden compartment known as a trap, built into the space where the CD player would normally go. To activate it, you had to close all the doors, be seated in the driver’s seat, start the car, activate the rear defroster, then swipe a credit-card sized magnet across the top of the dashboard. Zaid did all this, and the trap popped open. Inside it was a thousand dollars in cash, and his gun, a Glock 49.

He didn’t always carry the gun on his person, but years of P.I. work had given him an instinct for when the path ahead was dipping into danger. Or maybe it was just his PTSD at work. In any case, he removed the firearm from the trap, and holstered it. At only 7.3 inches in length, the Glock 49 was one of the most compact 9 millimeter pistols one could buy, yet reliable and a good shooter. Zaid found it unobtrusive and easy to carry.

He headed west. Aside from the gun, he had a pair of four inch Cold Steel folding knives clipped to his front pockets. They were assisted openers, meaning they would spring open with just a touch of pressure from his thumb. He never went anywhere without at least one knife – a habit that had saved his life more than once.

A Step Back

He was aware that he was not the same man he’d been before Panama. His body had healed and become stronger than ever, but his heart was still brittle and sore. This soreness manifested itself not as an inclination to break, but as a quickness to violence in marginal situations. Where in the past he might have been willing to walk away or negotiate, now he had little tolerance for evil, and worried less about consequences.

This was not only the result of the trauma he’d experienced in Panama. Two years ago his Uncle Haidar’s apartment building in northern Gaza had been bombed without warning by the Israelis. Haider was Zaid’s father’s younger brother, the youngest sibling. He and his wife and four children had lived in Gaza City. The youngest child at the time was a baby named Munir, only a month old.

The apartment building was shattered. Over thirty people were killed. Uncle Haidar was killed, along with three of the four children. Haidar’s wife Faiza survived. The baby, Munir, was hit by a shell fragment while Faiza was nursing him. It entered the top of his head and went out the other side.

Now, two years later, Aunt Faiza and Munir were in Jordan. Munir could not speak or walk. Periodically he lapsed into seizures. Zaid had seen this with his own eyes, while talking to Aunt Faiza on Skype. Whenever it happened Zaid managed to hold himself together just long enough to get through the call, after which he would hold his face in his hands and weep as Safaa held and comforted him.

These events – the torture in Panama, and the murder and maiming of his relatives – had affected him on a deep level. There was a hardness in him now. An unwillingness to bend or compromise. He felt like he’d taken a big step back.

He knew this was not good. Before Panama he’d been working on his internal state, trying to achieve a more peaceful way of being, and to eliminate the thought patterns he’d acquired during his six years in prison. But it was difficult to reconcile a desire for a peaceful existence with what he’d experienced in Panama, and with what had happened to his Palestinian people – and was still happening. How did one commemorate, mourn or even deal with a Nakba that never ended?

A Simple Job

The rain had abated but the streets were wet, shiny and nearly deserted. As Zaid drove, his eyes moved constantly from the road ahead, to the rear view mirror, to the side mirrors. Even when he didn’t do it consciously, part of his mind recorded every car that passed or followed him, just as his mentor Lonnie Brown had taught him. Was anyone surveilling or following him? Did anyone display undue interest? Was anyone driving erratically or behaving suspiciously?

Zaid wasn’t surprised to hear that Deek had made a fortune in crypto. The man had always been intelligent and determined. Zaid only hoped that Deek had not gotten himself into trouble. Money could do strange things to a person. This seemed like a simple job – find Deek and bring him home – but the streets of Fresno were never to be underestimated, and Zaid knew from experience that what he imagined might happen and what actually would happen were sometimes very different things.

All Zaid knew for sure is that success in any venture could not be had without guidance from Al-Hadi, the One Who Guides. You could scour this world down to its bones, but sometimes the answers were simply not there. Illumination came from on high, and was given to all – the sun shines for all, as his Panamanian friend Niko used to say – but not everyone opened their eyes to it. The other thing Zaid knew was that if you followed the guidance that came from Allah – not only the literal guidance of the Quran, but the secret guidance imprinted on your own heart – then you were already a success, no matter what might manifest on this earthly realm.

This was something he’d tried to tell Deek a few years ago, when the big man had been at a low point in his cryptocurrency odyssey and had spoken to Zaid confidentially about suicidal thoughts he was experiencing. But Deek was an “I” kind of guy. I can do it, I cannot do it, I failed, I succeeded. I, I, I.

Zaid’s advice about submitting the “I” to the “He” – the personal to the Eternal – had fallen flat. Ever since that conversation he’d worried about Deek. Now that the man had apparently succeeded with the cryptos, Zaid found that his worry had not diminished.

Room 9

Still lying on his back in the concave, drooping bed, Deek gazed at the ceiling. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so alone. He’d been separated from his family before, but this time felt more decisive, as if the bridge had been blown up behind him. Nor was he Tariq bin Ziyad, burning the ships behind him so that his army would have no choice but to conquer Spain. No, it was more like he was an allied spy in Nazi territory, and had dynamited the bridge that would enable him to escape back to his own people.

As always when he and Rania fought, it was hard to tell who was at fault. But he thought that this time it was more her than him. It used to be that he pushed her buttons and she got mad, then he became hurt and angry in turn. But lately it seemed that Deek himself was one big button. Everything about him bothered her.

If he’d failed with the cryptos that would have been one thing. She could have said that the last five years were a waste, that Deek was a failure and she was tired of carrying him. He wouldn’t have liked it, but he wouldn’t have been able to respond beyond continued pleas for her to hang in there a little longer.

But he hadn’t failed, he had succeeded! He’d done it! He’d pulled off the reversal of a lifetime. Yet here he still was, alone. He thought about this “work husband” of Rania’s. If he knew the man’s identity he would drug him, kidnap him, and dump his body in the San Joaquin River. Maybe he could hire Zaid Karim to find out the man’s identity. But no, Zaid would not take such a job. He was yet another man of principle and integrity. Deek snorted at this thought. Having principles just meant you were afraid to do the things that truly needed to be done.

As he often did when he was bored, he decided he was hungry. There had to be a 7-11 nearby. He’d make a food run and grab a pre-made tuna sandwich, a bag of chips and a soda.

The Man With The Plan

Manuel “Manny” Cesar, accompanied by three vatos whose loyalty and viciousness he trusted, eased the van into the parking lot of the Moon Walk, and looked around.

“Ojo, there’s the Porsche 911, pretty as a gun, son. Time to have fun.”

Oscar, a tall man with a gently rounded belly, slicked back hair and puppy dog eyes, laughed. “There he goes, rhyming again. Get your mind on the job, esse.”

Manny turned to glare at the big man. “You got a doubt I can knock it out?” The glare was for form’s sake. He knew Oscar could fight like a rhinoceros when needed.

Oscar waved his hands in surrender. “No, jefe. I was kidding. I know you’re the man with the plan. ‘Cept you brought us to the wrong place, fool. This is the Moon hotel, not the Moon Walk.”

“Don’t be stupid, esse,” Manny said with irritation. “The sign is burned out, that’s all. There’s the pendejo’s Porsche, right there. You think anybody else gonna park that bombshell at this mo-tel? You got the brains of a sperm cell.”

Oscar didn’t like that and sat back sullen-faced. He shoulder bumped the man next to him, a hard-as-cement, heavily tattooed killer named Poison. “Watchu say?” Oscar demanded. “We at the Moon hotel or the Moon Walk?”

Poison said nothing. He rarely spoke, a fact that Manny appreciated.

The last of their group was the kid, a teenager with good hands and fast reflexes, whose only job was to drive the Porsche back to Mr. Z.

The Porsche was parked in front of room number nine, that was fine. He would need to find out for sure what room the car thief was in, and even then he wasn’t crazy about the idea of breaking down a motel door. The FPD, or more likely the county sheriffs, would be here in ten minutes. Didn’t need cops barging in like triceratops.

Better to lure this Deek hombre out of the room somehow, snatch him up and take him to a private location where he could be beaten into the ground, nobody around to hear the sound. Meanwhile one of his men could take the car back to Mr. Tzan’ani, or Mr Z as his employees called him.

When Mr. Z sent Manny out for side work, it was usually just burning down rival shops, pressuring liquor distributors for a better price, or intimidating non-Yemeni shop owners into selling. The price of doing business, no room for forgiveness. Mr. Z was Father Christmas, making money with a quickness.

Now and then it was something personal. Beat up an American boy trying to date one of the Yemeni girls. Escort one of Mr. Z’s cousins or nephews to rehab and made sure he stayed.

It was fascinating how much like Mexicans these Yemenis were. They even carried the same prayer beads. Like Mexicans from the other side, same faces, same pride. Manny was comfortable working for them. And Mr. Z paid well – that was the key. That sweet cha-ching. A pile of dinero to make him a pharaoh, a rich vaquero, putting himself primero. For that, there was nothing that Manny would not do, up to and including cold-blooded murder.

***

[Part 7 will be published next week 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:

Hot Air: An Eid Story [Part 1]

A Ramadan Quran Journal: A MuslimMatters Series – [Juz 10] The Covenant

The post Moonshot [Part 6] – Down These Mean Streets appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

There’s just no stopping time from passing us by. We wake up, look at our phones, start answering emails or doing chores or having conversations, and at the end of the day, have no idea where the time has gone. In this ferocious tempo, it is easy to overlook the quiet moments that matter most. But then Allah , in His infinite Mercy, provides us with sacred windows. Moments to pause, to breathe, to realign. The first ten days of Dhul-Hijjah are an example of this divine opening; an opportunity to not simply reset our calendars but also to recalibrate our hearts.

Rediscovering the Power of These 10 Days

“By the dawn.”

“And by the ten nights.” [Surah Al-Fajr: 89:1–2]

When Allah swears by something, we lean in. These ten days are unparalleled—even greater than the final nights of Ramadan. The Prophet Muhammad said, “There are no days on which righteous deeds are more beloved to Allah than these ten days.” [Bukhari]

A dear friend once asked me, “If these days are so incredible, why do they pass without leaving a trace on us?” That question stayed with me. Because honestly? We let them pass. We get distracted. We think we’ll try harder next year.

But what if there is no next year?

What if these are our last ten?

Would we scroll aimlessly then? Or would we raise our hands more? Bow our heads longer? Whisper du’a with more desperation?

The Day of Arafah: A Day Unlike Any Other

The ninth day of Dhul-Hijjah—the Day of Arafah—is a spiritual summit. It was the day Islam was completed. It is a day when fasting erases the sins of the past and future year. It is the day when du’a is heard more intimately.

“The best supplication is that of the Day of Arafah.” [Tirmidhi]

Last year, as Maghrib approached, I was sitting on the carpet with my children, all of us quiet after a long fast. I asked each of them what they wanted from Allah. My five-year-old said softly, “I want Jannah… and a puppy.” We chuckled, but my heart swelled with emotion. Because on Arafah, even such innocent wishes feel as if they might flutter straight to the heavens.

This year, I explained to my older kids what made Arafah special. We read the ayah: “This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as your religion.” [Surah Al-Ma’idah; 5:3]. My son looked up and said, “So it’s like… Islam’s graduation day?” And in a way, yes—it’s the culmination of divine guidance.

We made du’a lists together. We reflected on our mistakes. And as the sun began to set, they asked if they could repeat their du’as, just to be sure Allah hears them. That level of trust—it’s what we all seek.

As a mother, watching their small faces light up with hope as they made heartfelt requests reminded me how pure du’a can be when it’s untarnished by doubt or hesitation. It reminded me to return to that kind of sincerity myself.

Inspired by the Past

“The first ten days of Dhul-Hijjah are an example of this divine opening; an opportunity to not simply reset our calendars but also to recalibrate our hearts.” [PC: Ed US (unsplash)]

The early generations didn’t treat these days lightly.

Saeed ibn Jubayr, a student of Ibn Abbas, would keep his lamps burning through the night—not to stay awake for the sake of it, but to fill those hours with prayer. Imam al-Shafi’i’s generosity increased so much during these days that people assumed he had come into wealth. Hasan al-Basri fasted daily during Dhul-Hijjah, simply because he understood how precious every moment was.

I once read that Umar ibn Abdul Aziz would cry during these days—not out of fear alone, but out of overwhelming hope. He knew that these moments carried a closeness with Allah unmatched by any other time.

Their actions weren’t rituals. They were love letters to Allah .

What You Can Do—Right Where You Are

You don’t need to be on the plains of Arafah to experience their mercy. You just need presence.

Fasting: Even a few days, especially Arafah, brings immense reward.

Dhikr: Make your mornings echo with takbeer, tahlil, tahmid, and tasbih.

Charity: A small act done quietly may weigh heavily in the scales.

Qur’an: Ten minutes a day can reopen a conversation with your Creator.

Du’a: Pour your heart out. Write your wishes. Whisper them with faith.

Repentance: These are the days to come home to Allah , to unburden your soul.

My children took turns announcing the takbeer in the house: “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha illa Allah…” Their voices bounced off the walls with joy. Even my youngest learned to say “Alhamdulillah” after finishing their iftar juice, understanding that gratitude isn’t just an action—it’s a lifestyle, especially during these days.

One day, my middle child came to me and said, “Mama, when I fast on Arafah, does it really erase all my bad stuff?” I said, “Yes, by Allah’s Mercy.” He paused and said, “Then I want to make this my best day ever.” It humbled me. Because sometimes, they understand what we adults forget: that Allah’s Forgiveness is near—closer than we think.

Udhiyah: A Legacy of Love and Trust

The act of sacrifice—Udhiyah—is not about meat or mere ritual. It’s about surrender. It’s about recalling Prophet Ibrahim’s unwavering obedience, and Ismail’s calm trust in Allah .

“Their meat will not reach Allah, nor will their blood, but what reaches Him is piety from you.” [Surah Al-Hajj; 22:37]

In our home, we try to make it a family tradition. My kids help decorate the boxes of meat. We speak about what sacrifice really means. I once asked them, “What would you give up if Allah asked you to?” One of them said, “My tablet, but not my cat.” It was honest. And that honesty is where growth begins.

We told the story of Ibrahim and Ismail in bedtime story form. I could see my daughter’s eyes widen as she realized what trust really looked like. She asked, “Would I do that if Allah asked me?” It opened up a beautiful discussion on faith, trust, and obedience. These are the seeds we hope will bloom in their hearts long after Eid is over.

We also created a “giving wall”—a place to pin up names of people we wanted to help that Eid. Neighbors, refugees, people we only knew from afar. It became more than just a ritual; it became a family mission.

Share the Blessing

Let these days ripple beyond your own ibaadah:

Share a daily du’a with your family or friends.

Bake with your children and gift treats to your neighbors.

Reconnect with someone you’ve drifted from.

Sponsor an Udhiyah anonymously.

Smile with the intention of sunnah—yes, it still counts.

You can even invite your non-Muslim friends to share a meal. Sometimes a conversation over tea does more dawah than a thousand words.

Our Family’s Dhul-Hijjah

Our home isn’t always serene. There are messes, tantrums, and skipped routines. But we try. We hang paper stars on the wall to count the days. We play the takbeer loudly every morning. We break our fasts together. And sometimes, we just sit quietly and let the barakah fill the room.

Involve even young children in the first 10 days of dhul-hijjah [PC: Ramin Labisheh (unsplash)]

We’ve started journaling these days—each of us writes down one thing we’re grateful for. One day, my daughter wrote, “I’m thankful for the smell of Baba’s coffee during fajr.” Another wrote, “I’m thankful for the feeling I get when I make du’a after crying.”

These are not just reflections. They are gentle awakenings.

One evening, I asked my daughter, “What do you love most about Dhul-Hijjah?” She paused and said, “It feels like Allah is listening more.”

That moment stayed with me. It reminded me that these days aren’t just about big gestures—but about nurturing a quiet awareness of Allah, even in the smallest voices.

A Gentle Sample Day

You don’t need perfection. Just intention.

Before Fajr: Wake gently. Let the quiet of dawn carry your du’a.

After Fajr: Read a few verses. Let takbeer fill the air.

Mid-morning: Give. Even a dollar. Even a smile.

Afternoon: Reflect. Share a prophetic story with your family.

Maghrib: Make du’a as the sky softens. Include your children.

Evening: Repent. And write one blessing you noticed today.

These aren’t just sacred days on a calendar. They are handwritten invitations from your Lord.

Let’s answer.

With full hearts.

With quiet awe.

With trembling hands raised to the sky.

May Allah let us witness these days with sincerity, and may we exit them lighter, closer, forgiven.

 

Related:

– [Dhul Hijjah Series] Calling Upon the Divine: The Art of Du’a

– Dhul Hijjah With Kids In The Home And Palestine On Our Minds

 

The post Embracing the Sacred: A Heartfelt Journey Through the First 10 Days of Dhul-Hijjah appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

[Full Khutbah by Mazin Khalil built upon the khutbah delivered by Sheikh Yassir Siddig of Texas, may Allah honour and elevate him]

 

Alhamdulilah, Alhamdulilah

We Praise Allah by His Essence, the greatness of His Attributes, the height of His Status, the vastness of His Glory, the grandeur of His Majesty, the exaltedness of His Mention, the execution of His Command, the clarity of His Proof, the nobility of His Name, the abundance of His Knowledge, the continuity of His Patience, the abundance of His Forgiveness, the beauty of His Praise, the vastness of His Gifts, the answering of His Supplications, the generality of His Benevolence, the swiftness of His Reckoning, the severity of His Punishment, the knowledge of His Torment, and the might of His Authority.

عَنْ عُبَيْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ مِحْصَنٍ الْخَطْمِيِّ قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ مَنْ أَصْبَحَ مِنْكُمْ آمِنًا فِي سِرْبِهِ مُعَافًى فِي جَسَدِهِ عِنْدَهُ قُوتُ يَوْمِهِ فَكَأَنَّمَا حِيزَتْ لَهُ الدُّنْيَا

 “Whoever wakes up safe in his home, healthy in his body, and has food for the day, it is as if he has the entire world.” [Ibn Majah]

 In December of 2024, we heard the news that Khaled Nabhan, may Allah have mercy upon him, was killed a year after he lost his entire family, consisting of his grandchildren, his son, his daughter-in-law, and several other members of his family. People who spoke with Khaled noted his beautiful character, smile, and graciousness, all of which underlined something important. Khaled mentioned that there was not a single night in which he and other people in Gaza slept, that they would think they would see the morning because of bombs being dropped on them and the atrocities that they had to live through.

This idea is something that is extremely foreign to you and me. There is not a single day that I have gone to sleep that I thought a bomb would be dropped on me. There have been instances in which I have walked outside of my home, hopped in my car, or gone around and have been afraid to be stopped by the police because that is the reality of being a black man in America, but never have I had to think the way Khaled has. It’s heartbreaking to say, but in a few weeks, his (Khaled Nabhan’s) death most likely won’t continue to trend worldwide, and it’s hard to admit. Still, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we’ve become almost numb to the killing of our Muslim brothers and sisters.

An Invisible Genocide

Today’s Khutbah is about another genocide that is made invisible, and how we should strive to do our best so we are never genuinely desensitized to the killing of any of our Muslim brothers and sisters. It is about another genocide going on that is made invisible. This genocide is happening to Muslims, being enacted by people who claim Islam, enforced by countries who wear the thobe and have Islamic slogans. This genocide is in Sudan, my home nation. And it is one that we have been quiet about. Whether intentionally or not.

Before we get to that, let’s dissect the hadith I mentioned earlier. Abdullah ibn Muhsin states that the Messenger of Allah stated that whoever awakens secure in his property, with a healthy body, and has food for the day, then it is as if he has owned the world.

A “Rich” Country

Sudan is a country that literally, when translated, means “land of the black”; it comes from the Arabic word “Aswad” or “sawdan”. This is the name that the Arabs gave to the land when they entered it and found that the people there were extremely dark-skinned. Historically, Sudan has had the oldest civilization in the world, the Nubian kingdom: a civilization that is alluded to throughout Islamic history. Scholars often argue that Hajir, the wife of Ibrahim , was Nubian, and that the story of Musa , happened in Sudan because of the description of the River Nile as it makes an S shape past the delta in the tafsir of the story of Musa’s mother as she sent him down the river. Or that even the event of Musa against the sorcerers was in a place in the Northern state of Sudan in what is present-day Dongola.

Historically, the kiswa for the Kaba’a used to be shipped from Sudan to Saudi Arabia. Sudan has 12 rivers that run through it, with the most famous being the Nile, a river that is called one of the Rivers of Jannah alongside the Euphrates and Tigris in Iraq. Sudan exports 3.2 billion dollars worth of gold yearly, 662 million dollars worth of petroleum, 654 million dollars worth of oily seeds, 425 million dollars worth of ground nuts, and 379 million dollars worth of raw cotton. Most of these exports are to the UAE, Egypt, Italy, China, and Turkey. In 2022, Sudan was the world’s largest exporter of oily seeds (654 million), insect resin (194 million), and groundnut meal (75.6 million). Sudan has 4-6 cows per human head, which means if we decided to take over the world with just our cattle, we would be unstoppable. It is about 728, 200 squared mile after it split, and prior, it was 1, 861, 484 square kilometers. The US is 3,809, 525 square miles for reference, so 1/3 of the US can fit in Sudan.

I could continue on with the statistics, but what these show is that by all metrics, Sudan is a rich country. A country that should be thriving, but in fact, we see the opposite. We see a military that has parasitically infected the country, metastazing to every corner, and a paramilitary force that has sucked the life blood of the country. One thing that is important to mention is that both of these forces, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which are the former Janjaweed, have been propped up by various external entities in the past and during the current struggle. You have Egypt which is afraid of losing regional power due to the Sudanese revolution, the UAE stealing Sudanese gold and propping up the RSF by giving them supplies to continue their reign of terror, Russia and the USA, and even Israel as well.

Homeless, Hungry, and Persecuted

What does all of this have to do with the hadith that I mentioned earlier?

عَنْ عُبَيْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ مِحْصَنٍ الْخَطْمِيِّ \قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ مَنْ أَصْبَحَ مِنْكُمْ آمِنًا فِي سِرْبِهِ مُعَافًى فِي جَسَدِهِ عِنْدَهُ قُوتُ يَوْمِهِ فَكَأَنَّمَا حِيزَتْ لَهُ الدُّنْيَا

 “Whoever wakes up safe in his home, healthy in his body, and has food for the day, it is as if he has the entire world.” 

In Sudan, people have been forced out of their homes, literally at gunpoint by the RSF, and all of their things looted, stolen, and their homes taken apart to the point that even their roofs are stolen. Families are tied up within their homes and women are raped in front of the men, and if the men try to defend them, they are shot and killed within their very homes. Imagine everything you have worked to earn, someone comes and just robs you of it, and this is happening on the scale of millions.

That is the property aspect of that hadith. What about the rest? The healthy body part.

Currently, every 3 hours, a Sudanese child dies of starvation. The country has a population of about 48 million people, of those 48 million, about 15 million are internally displaced, meaning being refugees in their own country, forced to flee from their homes because of the RSF and the SAF. Of the 48 million, about 26 million people, more than half of Sudan’s population, are projected to die of starvation by the end of this year. Women who have had to flee have had to resort to unthinkable things to feed their families, both from SAF and RSF soldiers and even aid workers in places like Chad. Those who study migration patterns have found that birds have altered their migratory patterns because they are flying over Sudan and feasting on the corpses of the dead that litter the streets. Imagine that. Birds have changed their migratory patterns because of this. There are widespread diseases now affecting people due to malnutrition. Or other horrific stories of RSF leadership stating that the goal is demographic change in Sudan, which means that rape is a tactic that is being used. Or the stories that we hear about families having their children tied up, gasoline poured on them, and then the children being lit on fire. Or of children being kidnapped and taken to other parts of Africa. Or mercenaries from Colombia being found in Sudan.

In terms of owning his sustenance for the day, there is absolutely no work in Sudan. There are no jobs currently, so the country is literally being moved by remittance, which is the diaspora working and sending money home. The price of everyday items has increased by 10-fold. People who were supporting their own families here, are now also supporting 7 or 8 other families, those who are their relatives and those who aren’t back home.

I recently saw a GoFundMe for a student. It was raising $3000 for her tuition to continue schooling because her schooling was stopped due to the war like millions of other students. Imagine, there are multiple cohorts out there in Sudan who have not graduated high school, middle school, college, medical school, engineering school, law school, because their education had to be put on pause due to something completely out of their country, not once, not twice, but multiple times over. And in this particular case, she had to relocate to Egypt, where her father suddenly died. And he was the breadwinner for the family, and her tuition was due, or else she’d be kicked out of school for not being able to pay. This particular fundraiser came to me a few days before its deadline. And I did my best to advocate for this, but slowly I watched the donations stop coming in, despite this being a goal I have raised past before several times including for Charityweek just as the MSA here has done, and so many other instances and then the deadline day came and I broke down in tears. This was something that was happening to millions of other students.

The One Body

The Prophet has stated in a hadith that you and I have heard multiple times: that the Ummah is like a body, and if one section of it aches, the rest can’t function properly. What happens if a portion of it aches and we ignore it? How can we continue to function?

We are the best of nations to gather on this planet despite being the last because we are the Ummah that enjoins the good, and forbids the evil, and rushes to do good deeds. And of those good deeds is helping others.

On Qiyama a man will be brought before Allah , and Allah will say to him, I was hungry and you did not feed me, and the man will ask, ya Allah, How is it that you were hungry? And Allah will reply that you saw a servant of mine who needed help and was hungry, and you did not feed him, or else you’d have found me there. [Muslim]

In another hadith, the Prophet mentions that whoever sees an evil, he should stop it with his hands, and if he can’t, he should stop it with his tongue, and if he can’t, he should hate it with his heart, and that is the weakest form of iman. How can we have the weakest form of iman if we don’t even know about what is happening?

And there is a reason for this. Sudanese people are not the perfect victims. We aren’t OVERTLY being occupied by another country. We aren’t light-skinned enough for the media. In our culture we try to carry ourselves in a dignified manner, so we just keep mum about what is happening to us, which is why it is so hard to find people to be interviewed, but if you want to see what is happening in Sudan, there are images and whatsapp groupchats that will tell about it and show you what is happening.

***

The Role of the International Community

While the international community has provided some assistance, it is far from sufficient. The scale of the crisis requires a coordinated and sustained effort from all nations. As Muslims, we have a duty to advocate for increased humanitarian aid and to support organizations that are working on the ground to alleviate the suffering of the Sudanese people.

The Silence of the Ummah

However, dear brothers and sisters, what is even more alarming is the silence of the Ummah in the face of this crisis. We, as Muslims, are bound by our faith to stand up for justice, to help the oppressed, and to support our brothers and sisters in times of need. Yet, our response to the situation in Sudan has been largely muted.

The Prophet Muhammad said,

“The example of the believers in their affection, mercy, and compassion for each other is that of a body. When any limb aches, the whole body reacts with sleeplessness and fever.” [Muslim]

Are we truly feeling the pain of our brothers and sisters in Sudan? Are we reacting with the urgency and compassion that our faith demands?

Our Responsibility as Muslims

The teachings of Islam place great emphasis on the concept of Ummah, the global community of Muslims bound together by faith. The Qur’an and Hadith are replete with references to the importance of brotherhood, solidarity, and mutual support. Allah says,

“The believers are but brothers, so make settlement between your brothers. And fear Allah that you may receive mercy.” [Surah Al-Hujurat; 49:10]

Our Prophet Muhammad also reminded us of our collective responsibility. He said, “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” [Sahih Bukhari]. This Hadith underscores the importance of empathy and solidarity. We are reminded that our faith is incomplete if we are indifferent to the suffering of our fellow Muslims.

The Dangers of Apathy

Apathy and indifference are dangerous. They lead to a weakening of our collective strength and undermine the principles of justice and compassion that are central to our faith. When we turn a blind eye to the suffering of others, we risk becoming complicit in their oppression. Our silence can be interpreted as tacit approval of the injustices being perpetrated.

Allah warns us against neglecting our responsibilities in Surah Al-Ma’idah, verse 2:

وَتَعَاوَنُوا عَلَى الْبِرِّ وَالتَّقْوَىٰ وَلَا تَعَاوَنُوا عَلَى الْإِثْمِ وَالْعُدْوَانِ ۚ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ ۖ إِنَّ اللَّهَ شَدِيدُ الْعِقَابِ

“And cooperate in righteousness and piety, but do not cooperate in sin and aggression. And fear Allah; indeed, Allah is severe in penalty.”

We must remember that our actions, or lack thereof, have consequences. The silence of the Ummah in the face of injustice not only fails those who are suffering but also tarnishes the image of Islam. We must strive to be true ambassadors of our faith, demonstrating through our actions the principles of justice, mercy, and compassion.

***

The Call for Unity

It is imperative that we awaken from this state of apathy and rise to the occasion. The Ummah must unite in its efforts to bring relief and support to those suffering in Sudan. We must remember the words of Allah in Surah Al-Imran, verse 103:

وَاعْتَصِمُوا بِحَبْلِ اللَّهِ جَمِيعًا وَلَا تَفَرَّقُوا

“And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided.”

Unity in Action

Unity is not just a concept; it is an action. It means coming together, setting aside our differences, and working collectively for the greater good. It means raising our voices in solidarity, advocating for peace, and providing tangible support to those in need. It means holding our leaders accountable and urging them to take a stand against the injustices happening in Sudan.

One way to foster unity is through community initiatives. Mosques and Islamic centers can play a pivotal role in raising awareness about the situation in Sudan and organizing relief efforts. Educational programs, fundraisers, and advocacy campaigns can mobilize the community and create a collective impact.

The Power of Dua’

In addition to practical actions, we must also turn to Allah in prayer. Dua’ is a powerful tool that connects us with our Creator and brings His Mercy and Guidance into our lives. The Prophet Muhammad said, “Dua’ is the weapon of the believer.” (Hakim). We should make sincere dua’ for the people of Sudan, asking Allah to grant them relief, peace, and justice.

Allah reminds us in Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 186:

وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌ ۖ أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ الدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ ۖ فَلْيَسْتَجِيبُوا لِي وَلْيُؤْمِنُوا بِي لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُونَ

“And when My servants ask you concerning Me, indeed I am near. I respond to the invocation of the supplicant when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me [by obedience] and believe in Me that they may be [rightly] guided.”

Let us make dua’ with sincerity and conviction, trusting in Allah’s Wisdom and Mercy.

اللَّهُمَّ اهْدِنا فِيمَنْ هَدَيْتَ وَعَافِنا فِيمَنْ عَافَيْتَ وَتَوَلَّنا فِيمَنْ تَوَلَّيْتَ وَبَارِكْ لنا فِيمَا أَعْطَيْتَ وَقِنا شَرَّ مَا قَضَيْتَ إِنَّكَ تَقْضِي وَلاَ يُقْضَى عَلَيْكَ وَإِنَّهُ لاَ يَذِلُّ مَنْ وَالَيْتَ تَبَارَكْتَ رَبَّنَا وَتَعَالَيْتَ

O Allah, guide us with those whom You have guided, grant us well-being among those You have granted well-being, be an ally to us along with those whom You are an ally to, and bless what You have bestowed upon us, and save us from the evil of what You have decreed.  For verily You decree and none can decree over You. He whom You support can never be humiliated. Glory is to You, our Lord, You are Blessed and Exalted.

عِبَادَ اللّهِ  إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ وَإِيتَاءِ ذِي الْقُرْبَىٰ وَيَنْهَىٰ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ وَالْبَغْيِ  يَعِظُكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ

Servants of Allah. Indeed, Allah orders justice and good conduct and giving to relatives and forbids immorality and bad conduct and oppression. He admonishes you that perhaps you will be reminded. 

اُذْكُرُوا اللَّهَ الْعَظِيمَ يَذْكُرْكُمْ واشْكُرُوهُ يَزِدْكُمْ واسْتَغْفِرُوهُ يَغْفِرْ لكُمْ واتّقُوهُ يَجْعَلْ لَكُمْ مِنْ أَمْرِكُمْ مَخْرَجًا   وَأَقِمِ الصّلَاة

Remember Allah , the Great – He will remember you. Thank Him for His favors – He will increase you therein.  And seek forgiveness from Him – He will forgive you. And be conscious of Him – He will provide you a way out of difficult matters. And, establish the prayer.  

 

Related:

– Prayers For The Persecuted: A Global Du’a

– 5 Steps To Grow From Passive To Active Bystanders During The Genocide Of Gaza

 

The post [Khutbah] Sudan: A Forgotten Crisis That Demands Our Attention appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Talha reports that Allah’s Messenger said,

“Apart from the day of the Battle of Badr there is no day on which the Shaytaan is seen to be more humiliated, more rejected, more depressed and more infuriated, than on the day of  Arafah.” [Mishkat]

All of this is only because of his beholding of the abundance of descending mercy (on that day) and Allah’s Forgiveness of the great sins of His servants.

Aisha , reported also that Allah’s Messenger  said,

“There is no day in which Allah sets free more  souls from the fire of hell than on the day of Arafah.” [Muslim]

Allah’s Messenger is also reported to have said,

“The best supplication is the one on the day of Arafah.”

 

Dear Hajji… if Allah offered you anything you wanted, and Allah PROMISED to respond, what would you ask for?

In Hajj, you will have so much time to make dua’, especially when at Mount Arafah. You will have so much time to ask for whatever you want. The gates will be wide open … so what do you want?

I’ve seen people prepare their clothes, their money, their passports…every material thing, but when they reach the holy sites, at the blessed times … they go to sleep! Unprepared, not knowing what to say or ask for.  I usually wake them up and whisper to them, “Please make dua’ for me.”

InshaAllah, this will not be your story and your example. Today, inshaAllah, you are going to prepare a HUGE list of things that you are going to make dua’ for.  I can’t tell you what a difference it will make when you come to Arafah KNOWING everything that you want to make dua’ for!

The best dua’ you can make in your life is the dua’ at Arafah! Now, let’s get ready for it!

USE A PEN & PAPER or TYPE IT OUT & PRINT (Mobiles have too many distractions and batteries run out. Keep this paper for the rest of your life and make it a memory to last a lifetime).

You are going to sit down and write and write and write what you want to ask Allah for!

Dua Categories to fill in:

– Regarding my EMAN, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my HEALTH and ENERGY, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my HEREAFTER, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my FAMILY, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my FINANCES, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my EMOTIONAL HEALTH, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my SPOUSE, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my CHILDREN and even those not yet born to me, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my CAREER OR BUSINESS, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my SOCIAL LIFE, what would I ask for?

– Regarding my EDUCATION (Islamic or secular), what would I ask for?

– Regarding my COMMUNITY and UMMAH, what would I ask for?

– Regarding the LEGACY that I’ll leave behind after I die, what would I ask for?

 

Step 1: Before you set off for Hajj (and especially before the day of Arafah arrives), with the above slices of life to get your creative juices flowing, write down on neat and beautiful paper everything that you want to make dua’ for! Make a draft and rewrite. Use English, Somali, Urdu, or even Martian if that is more meaningful to you!

Step 2: If you typed it out, print out this list on special paper and keep it handy.

Throughout the coming days leading to Hajj, if you remember anything else that you want to make dua’ for, include it on the list.  (Once you clear your mind, new ideas will take their place).

Step 3: Get familiar with the list you made, read it often, and take it with you for Hajj. When you are in Tawaf, or during Hajj, and especially on Arafah day, pull it out, raise your hands to Allah , and ask your Creator from the bottom of your sincere heart!

 

Here is an example of my dua’ for my children (you’re welcome to copy some of it, inshaAllah)

Dua’ for my Children

O Allah, I beg you with Your Blessed Names as the One and Only, the Most Relied upon. I call out to You by Your Greatest Name – the Eternally Living, the Sustainer of All, to bless my children with Taqwa and fear of You ya Allah.

Ya Allah, increase their life span and bless their health, strengthen them with obedience and worship of You.

Ya Allah, help me raise up the young, strengthen the weak, and cure the unwell.

Ya Allah, strengthen their bodies, tune their hearing, sharpen their sight, clear their confusion, mend their wounds, and make them whole.

Ya Allah, with Your Mercy protect them from illness, sin, mistakes, errors and misguidance.

O Allah, cause them to obey and love me and their mother, without rebellion, sin, error, or disrespectfulness.

Ya Allah, help me raise them well with high akhlaq and firm ethics of righteousness that blesses them and me in this life and the next.

Ya Allah, I entrust to You my future progeny, for no trust is lost with You. I entrust You with clearing them of impediments, ailments, and immorality and allowing them to maintain Islam and Tawheed of You alone for generations to come after I am long departed.

Ya Allah, I trust in You to guard them from evil that spreads by night, or envious eyes sharpened by the light of day, and from the jealousy of hateful, untrue friends.

Ya Allah, protect my children from all sides, above and beneath, right and left, front and back.

Ya Allah, let my children be a reason for honour and a righteous source of my pride. Let them be loved by those who love You and turn their hearts to my children.

Ya Allah, bless my children with a good share in this Dunya, in Knowledge that leads to You, in Your obedience, in character and love.

My Allah elevate my children’s status amongst others and grant them successful positions that bring happiness, piety, and wealth.

Ya Allah, bless them with purity, charity, mercy, helpfulness, and knowledge of You that they share with others.

Ya Allah, protect my children from humiliation and dishonour. Bring them joy that will make me happy.

Ya Allah, bless them with a hard work ethic and academic excellence. Bless them with careers that will be of use to our ummah and their future families.

Ya Allah, bless their hearing, sight, and other blessings of health, intelligence, and character.

Ya Allah, let my children and those entrusted to me in responsibility be proof for me on the Day of Judgement, Ameen

I send the most complete prayers of peace and salutations upon my Prophet Muhammed , his family, and companions.

Ya Allah, we seek Your forgiveness as a family for all the times we spoke when we should have listened; became angry instead of patient, and acted when we should have waited.

Ya Allah, I seek Your Forgiveness for indifference when I should have encouraged, criticized when I should have educated, and reprimanded when I should have forgiven.

Ya Allah, forgive those who wrong us and let my prayer for them be light for me and protection from them.

I take refuge in the perfect words of Allah from His Anger and Punishment and from the evil of His Creation and the touch and appearance of devils.

Ya Allah, I call upon You and want none but You. I call upon You, with all Your Names, for all Your Kindness that removes harm and secures tranquility. I call to You with Your treasured Name that unties the binds, cures the ailments, and replenishes the weak. Ya arhama-raahimeen renew our faith & expel any doubt and provide us endless barakah!

 

May Allah accept all of our dua’s.

 

Related:

– Help! I Can’t Make Dua For More Than 30 Seconds On The Day Of ‘Arafah

– Beyond Longing – Dua: A Deliberate Act Of Divine Love

The post Constructing Your Personal Arafah Dua List I Sh. Muhammad Alshareef & Sh. Yahya Ibrahim appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.