Grief, an emotion, an exclusive state of being; a membership to which one never wants, but is nevertheless served. Thousands and thousands before me have lived through it, and many thousands more will come after me who will experience the aching pain of grief. I know for sure, each one of those lived experiences will be as unique as the leaves that drop from the trees at this time of year. As I finish yet another salah where I’m wiping away tears with my prayer garment, I feel an intense throbbing, deep inside my heart, a struggle that erupts out as tears. It seems to have no end. 

It is a Sunday night, which means work tomorrow; the beginning of yet another week where I will carry my invisible yet ever-so-heavy grief around with me: finding that smile when greeting others, listening attentively, and communicating, because, as expressed in every language, life must go on. It’s now a little over a year since I lost my father. I have carried on in the best way I can, making sure I only cry behind closed doors. You see, the problem with that is, you are then always expected to carry on – so the invisible weight of grief becomes even heavier on the already constricted heart. 

Understanding Fate

At times, usually when I’m driving, I remind myself of the immense blessing of grieving for my father well into my forties. Allah , Ar-Rahman, blessed me with a kind and loving father for over four decades – a gift many hundreds of people have not been privileged to have. I have seen close friends and family lose loved ones at much younger ages, and they have carried on beautifully. Why then does my heart hurt in this way? Am I an ungrateful soul? I’m not sure I know the answer to this. Can a grateful heart not feel pain?  Isn’t pain also an emotion felt by the living, just as gratitude is? Just because I cry, does it mean I am not accepting of Allah’s beautiful and perfect decree in my life? 

It is the human in us. The very thing that differentiates us from all of Allah’s Creation is our ability to feel continuously. We love and are loved, but this does not mean that we don’t experience sorrow or are exempt from hurting others. We can be grateful, yet have endless tears. This is what makes us humans with hearts: a heart that is more than an organ, a heart that feels. This is what my year-long exclusive membership to the emotional field of grief has taught me. It is one of the many emotional states that will now be with me – until I myself leave this dunya. I can hide it, but I cannot avoid it. I may never find the right words to describe it, but every inch of my beating heart will feel it every single day. 

Grieving As A Believer

“Life has to go on, but how should a heart carrying the badge of grief carry on?” [PC: Duniah Almasri (unsplash)]

Life has to go on, but how should a heart carrying the badge of grief carry on? The Qur’an and the Seerah of Prophet Muhammad are my answer. You would think worship is easier for the one who loses someone dear, but no one talks about how you freeze with worship when grieving. How the heart has a yearning to connect with its Lord, but the mind remains still, lost and struggling to move. It is then that the years of holding the mus’haf close to the heart help revive it for worship. It is then, -knowing that the tears running down Muhammad’s (saw) face after losing his infant child, knowing he continued with his role as the last Prophet of Islam-, that this helps you take steps towards living life. We know about all the losses in his life, from before his birth; from the death of his father, to losing his mother, grandfather and then later his beloved wife and uncle. The seerah weighs heavily with death and grieving, but life, purpose and calling upon Allah continue. It is then that you are reminded of what a real human experience of grief is, because in the example of the Prophet Muhammad , we know is for us the ideal believer and human. 

I don’t think anyone truly learns to live with grief. I think it can be soul-consuming; we either park it somewhere or find a way to carry it with us – but it is always there. At times, the intensity of missing someone, remembering their face, the pain they lived with, the sacrifices they made, all of this and more, can make us feel lost and detached from the every day of life. It is for these moments that having a daily relationship with the Qur’an brings focus back into our day, allowing us to understand how life can feel bearable.

For many years now, I have run a group of daily Qur’an recitation with other sisters. We recite ten verses a day and read the translation of the same ten verses. This has been running for over a decade now, but it was in my year of grief that the group was my anchor and I realised the true blessing of having a daily relationship with the Qur’an. For all the verses I had read and learnt about, they came as a soothing balm in my time of hurt. It allowed me not to be dismissive of feelings but rather gave meaning and purpose to the overwhelming fear that comes with mourning someone we love. It is a form of therapy, but with the Words of Allah – His Speech – how can we not find comfort in it? 

 “Your Lord has not forsaken you” [ Surah Ad-Duha;93:3]

Dua’ – A Gift For The Deceased And For The Living 

After a year-long journey of wiping away tears at night and walking with a forced smile during the day, I have taught myself to make dua’ for my father’s soul in a way I have not done so before. There is an enormous comfort in knowing that when we make dua’ for a departed soul, they benefit from it. 

Abu Huraira narrated that “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘Verily, Allah Almighty will raise the status of his righteous servant in paradise, and he will say, ‘O Lord, what is this?’ Allah will say, ‘This is (due to) your child seeking forgiveness for you.’” [Sunan Ibn Majah]

I cannot express in words how much relief this provides me. To know that my good actions can aid my father now allows me to continue; it allows me to want to do good, and it also helps this private experience to feel acceptable. 

Allah , The Most Wise, in His Wisdom permitted us, His servants, to know about this; to know that we can benefit those who have left the dunya. This knowledge that He has shared with us of the unseen is of great benefit for both the living and the dead. 

Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah (saw) said: “When the human being dies, his deeds end except for three: ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge, or a righteous child who prays for him.” [Sahih Muslim]

It is by knowing this that a grieving believer can refresh and re-intend to carry out good. It is by knowing that I shall make every tear a means of dua’ for my father, but also live such a life that I do both: attempt at being a righteous child of my father’s, but also leave behind children who will also pray for me in this way. In order for this to happen, there is much work. And this is faith. This is what faith is like for us Muslims. It is not something confined to our prayer mats, but has to be present when we do everything else; and this includes when and how we grieve, too. It is only because of faith that I am able to navigate the waves of sorrow and understand its permanent residence in my life. 

 

Related:

– Unheard, Unspoken: The Secret Side Of Grief

– Sharing Grief: A 10 Point Primer On Condolence

The post Keeping The Faith After Loss: How To Save A Grieving Heart appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The protests were hijacked by Reza Pahlavi and notions of Persian supremacy, then brutally repressed by a violent regime

In late December, Iran experienced the beginnings of an uprising driven primarily by economic pressures, initially emerging among merchant bazaaris and subsequently spreading across broader segments of society. As events unfolded rapidly, calls for regime change became the focus of international attention. Consistent with its response to previous protest movements, the Iranian government once again opted for repression rather than engagement, violently suppressing demonstrations instead of allowing popular grievances to be articulated and addressed.

As visual evidence circulated depicting the accumulation of bodies at Kahrizak, it became increasingly evident that the primary instigator of the violence leading to these fatalities was the Islamic Republic itself, which has refused to tolerate civil unrest and has consistently responded to popular mobilisation with force.

Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish writer. Mehdi Jalali Tehrani is an Iranian political commentator

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Every dictatorship eventually collides with a problem it cannot solve by expanding prisons, perfecting surveillance, or laundering repression through emergency laws. That problem is conscience. Not the decorative conscience wheeled out in constitutional preambles or Friday sermons, but the dangerous, embodied kind: people who insist on calling crimes by their proper names, who refuse to perfume mass violence with the language of “security” or “complexity,” and who behave — almost scandalously — as if power were still accountable to principle.

Pakistan’s rulers understand this problem well. They have built an entire governing philosophy around neutralizing it.

In Pakistan today, Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan occupies precisely this intolerable space. He does not command mobs. He does not control institutions. He does not benefit from the romantic mythology reserved for martyrs or political prisoners. What he possesses instead is far more destabilizing to a regime addicted to fear and confusion: moral coherence. He behaves as if ethical clarity were not a public-relations liability to be managed but a responsibility to be exercised.

That posture — quiet, disciplined, unyielding — explains why he matters. It also explains why he is dangerous.

Moral Presence in an Age of Managed Brutality

Authoritarian systems are, above all, management projects. Pakistan is no exception. It manages narratives, crises, alliances, dissent, and public memory with the meticulousness of a corporate risk department. What it cannot manage — what consistently escapes its spreadsheets and talking points — is moral presence.

Moral presence is disruptive because it refuses translation. It refuses to convert injustice into “context,” mass killing into “geopolitics,” or repression into “stability.” It insists that some acts are wrong regardless of who commits them, how eloquently they are justified, or how many uniforms are involved.

Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan’s politics operate in this register. His participation in the Gaza solidarity flotilla was not a publicity stunt or an exercise in symbolic humanitarianism. It was a direct refusal to outsource solidarity to press releases. At a moment when Muslim rulers perfected the art of condemning genocide in the passive voice — where Palestinians are always “dying” but never being killed — he chose presence over prose.

He crossed a line Pakistan’s generals, bureaucrats, and their Western patrons desperately prefer remain blurred: the line between rhetorical sympathy and embodied accountability.

That decision reverberated far beyond Gaza. It landed squarely in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and in the quiet calculations of a regime that understands — perhaps better than its critics — how contagious moral consistency can be.

Two Consciences, Two Cells

Pakistan’s current moment is defined by a grim symmetry. Its two most morally resonant political figures now occupy opposite sides of a prison wall.

Imran Khan, jailed, censored, and methodically erased from public life, embodies the conscience of mass politics: the inconvenient truth that popular legitimacy cannot be indefinitely manufactured, managed, or extinguished. Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, still free for now, embodies something the regime finds equally threatening: proof that ethical clarity does not require state power, mass rallies, or electoral machinery.

The regime grasps this distinction instinctively. Mass leaders can be isolated, demonized, or imprisoned. Moral leaders are harder to neutralize. They do not rely on crowds or cycles. Their authority travels horizontally, through example rather than command. It accumulates quietly, beneath the regime’s noise, until it becomes impossible to contain.

This is why Senator Mushtaq’s activism has sharpened rather than softened. Through the Pak-Palestine Forum and the Peoples Rights Movement, he has rejected the regime’s preferred compartmentalization — one in which Palestine is mourned abstractly while Pakistan is governed brutally, one in which foreign oppression is lamented while domestic repression is normalized.

He insists, instead, on linkage. That insistence is unforgivable.

The Crime of Consistency

Dictatorships do not fear hypocrisy. They depend on it. Hypocrisy is the lubricating oil for authoritarian rule. What they cannot tolerate is consistency.

“Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan’s politics operate in this register. His participation in the Gaza solidarity flotilla was not a publicity stunt or an exercise in symbolic humanitarianism. It was a direct refusal to outsource solidarity to press releases.” [PC: @SenatorMushtaq, US Social Media Company X]

To denounce Zionist apartheid rhetorically while collaborating with its regional enablers is acceptable. To mourn Palestinian corpses abroad while disappearing Pakistanis at home is standard operating procedure. To oppose domination — imperial, military, or ideological — without qualification is destabilizing. It deprives power of its favorite alibi: “context.”

This is what unites the figures Pakistan’s current rulers find most intolerable.

Barrister Shahzad Akbar’s insistence that law should function as principle rather than weapon cost him safety and exile. Imaan Mazari’s defiance — amplified rather than tempered by her mother, Dr. Shireen Mazari — ruptures the convenient fiction that human rights must be suspended in imperfect governments. Dr. Mazari’s tenure as minister for human rights is dismissed not because it failed, but because acknowledging it would complicate the intellectual laziness of liberal gatekeepers.

Dr. Yasmin Rashid’s endurance, Ammar Ali Jan’s principled radicalism, and the courage of Baloch and Pashtun leaders resisting erasure under conditions bordering on colonial occupation all represent variations of the same threat: they refuse to turn politics into branding. They insist on substance where power prefers symbolism.

The regime’s response is uniform: criminalization, vilification, disappearance. Consistency is met with coercion because it cannot be bargained with.

The Unnamed Majority and the Regime’s Real Fear

To focus only on prominent figures, however, is to miss how resistance actually survives.

Dictatorships are not undone by heroes. They are undone by accumulation — by the steady aggregation of small refusals. A taxi driver who speaks honestly despite surveillance. A teacher who refuses to recite official lies. A lawyer who takes a case she knows she will lose. A journalist who documents one more testimony before the knock comes.

These people will never be celebrated. That is precisely why they terrify power.

Authoritarianism survives by convincing people that their courage is singular. Fear isolates. It interrupts accumulation. It persuades individuals that resistance is futile when, in fact, it is shared.

Pakistan’s rulers invest obsessively in fear because they understand this arithmetic.

Palestine as a Moral X-Ray

Linking Palestine to Pakistan’s internal crisis is not a rhetorical excess. It is an analytical necessity.

Palestine functions as a moral X-ray of the contemporary world order. It reveals how easily states abandon principle when convenience beckons. It exposes the vocabulary through which mass murder is sanitized — “security,” “self-defense,” “rules-based order” —  how those same vocabularies migrate seamlessly into domestic repression.

Zionism, as practiced by the Israeli state, is not an aberration. It is a concentrated expression of a global logic that treats some lives as disposable and others as strategically valuable. The same logic that justifies the annihilation of Gaza authorizes the pacification of dissent in Pakistan.

When Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan speaks against apartheid-genocidal Israel, he is not performing internationalism. He is diagnosing a system. That diagnosis unnerves Pakistan’s rulers because it collapses the distance they rely on. It reveals that the victims of empire recognize one another — even when their oppressors coordinate discreetly.

The Regime’s Dilemma

Pakistan’s rulers depend on fragmentation — between causes, movements, and moral vocabularies. They prefer activists who choose single issues and avoid dangerous connections. They are deeply threatened by figures who connect dots.

Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan does exactly that. He refuses to choose between Palestine and Pakistan, between anti-Zionism and anti-dictatorship, between faith-based ethics and universal human dignity. He insists these struggles are not adjacent but inseparable.

That insistence is his protection and his peril.

For now, he remains outside prison. History suggests this is rarely permanent.

The Final Accounting

A reckoning will come. Prisons will open. Files will be read. Silence will be reclassified as collaboration.

When that day arrives, many will rediscover their principles retroactively. Some will plead ignorance. Others will invoke “complexity.” A few will insist they were merely pragmatic.

Very few will be able to say they spoke plainly when plain speech carried a cost.

Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan will be among them.

So will the thousands whose names will never appear in essays like this.

Dictatorships do not fall because they are exposed. They fall because they are exhausted by the relentless refusal of ordinary people to surrender their moral vocabulary.

That refusal is Pakistan’s most valuable resource.

And it remains — despite everything — uncaptured.

 

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

 

Related:

– Allies In War, Enemies In Peace: The Unraveling Of Pakistan–Taliban Relations

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

The post Op-Ed: From Pakistan To Gaza – Why Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan Terrifies Power And Zionism appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

We talk to Justin Podur about imperialism and collaborators and US “victories.”. Palestine’s resistance salutes Venezuela. Ali Abunimah wins a court victory in Switzerland and more.

The Israeli military has begun the first stretch of a $1.7 billion project to build a wall running from the occupied Golan Heights to Eilat, slicing through the occupied West Bank.

Pro-Israel extremists perpetrated violence, intimidation and harassment targeting Palestinian, Arab, Muslim activists, state finds.

The sandwich generation, or ‘sandwich carers’, refers to adult individuals who provide unpaid care to ageing parents or older relatives while simultaneously raising their dependent children. In the UK, around 2% of the population1 provides “sandwich care,” balancing responsibilities for both children under 16 and older adults in need of support. Whereas in the US, the percentage is much higher, with 23% of adults “sandwiched between their children and an ageing parent.”2

This study proved that – unsurprisingly – sandwich generation carers are at a greater risk of mental health struggles and need support. 

Equity In Eldercare

In my youthful naivete, I strongly believed that when it came to looking after one’s ageing parents, it had to be distributed equally according to the number of children. By my logic, if an elderly couple had four children, then all four of them had to take turns to look after their parents. Only children have the responsibility of caring for both ageing parents with no siblings to lean on, except for a loving and supportive spouse, if they have one.

Many decades later, I have come to realize that no matter how many children there are in a family, except in rare circumstances, the bulk of eldercare usually falls on one adult child and his/her spouse and children. One of my friends, a Malaysian cardiologist who encounters many ageing elders, echoes seeing the same thing in her clinical practice across both Muslim and non-Muslim families.

The rise of individualism in today’s world is probably a driving force in elder neglect. When families lived closer together, the norm was for all children to help in the care of their elders. With the rise in economic migration and diaspora Muslim communities, the elders who did not move with their children are often left behind in their old age. 

Cultural Expectations vs Islamic Obligations

There seem to be many cultural “myths” when it comes to caring for elders. In Malaysia, where I live, the responsibility for eldercare often lies with adult daughters, even if families have sons. This may be due to the strongly matriarchal society and women often being the main income earners. In other parts of the world, the emphasis is on adult sons looking after their parents, even if they also have daughters. Desis have an expectation of the eldest son caring for his parents, when the actual work gets shifted onto his wife. 

The reality is this: Islamically, eldercare responsibility lies on all adult children, regardless of gender. Caring for one’s parents is a fardul ‘ain (individual responsibility), and not a fardul kifayah (communal responsibility). One child caring for an ageing parent does not lift the responsibility from other children.

An Unfortunate Bias

“The reality is this: Islamically, eldercare responsibility lies on all adult children, regardless of gender.” [PC: Raymond Yeung (unsplash)]

Often, the hidden subtext of the adult son looking after his parents is this: while he goes to work and earns an income to support his family, it’s actually his wife who is expected to look after his parents. She’s the one already looking after their children, after all, so the cultural expectation is for her to extend her caregiving duties to her in-laws. Why not? She’s already at home, anyway, right? 

Caring for her in-laws is not her Islamic obligation – her obligation is to care for her husband, children, and her parents! Undoubtedly, she will be rewarded for caring for her in-laws, but once again, that is not her obligation. A daughter-in-law caring for her husband’s parents is a recommended act which is not lost on Allah . 

However, it’s important to realize a burnt-out daughter-in-law will be less likely to fulfil her actual obligations: her husband and children. May Allah guide and have mercy on all of our families, and help us all do better.

No Easy Answers, But Everything Is From Allah

When it comes to equitable eldercare, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for families who are spread throughout the globe. Even with all adult children in the same city, eldercare is probably not distributed equitably either. Someone will have to sacrifice something for an unknown period of time.

In the best case scenario, all adult siblings step up in their best ways possible, put their differences aside, and work as a team to care for their ageing parents. Sadly, this is not always the case. When eldercare is left to only one adult child and his/her household, it can be so frustrating to ask for help, only to have minimal response from other siblings. 

What helps is always turning to Allah and making choices that align with His Pleasure. If you are bearing the load of eldercare, please know that this is a sign of Allah’s Love and honouring of you, through service to your elderly parents. Their dua’s for you will bring about tremendous goodness to you – even if it may not be immediately apparent.

Tips For Making Eldercare Easier

If you are the main carer for both elders and young children, here are some tips that may help:

1) Build a strong support network: Nobody can look after elders or children on their own without burning out, let alone when looking after both age groups! Please don’t wait until you are on the brink of a mental breakdown, but rather proactively have a conversation with family and/or loved ones, and discuss how everyone can help support you in caring for the elders under your care.

2) Build in breaks: Try your best to build in regular daily, weekly, monthly and yearly ‘pressure release valves’ – for lack of a better term. When family comes to visit and spends quality time with your ageing elder, use that opportunity to rest and recharge.

3) Elder vacations: Before elders struggle with more severe health issues, arrange for them to go for a holiday in another adult child’s household. Even if they might be reluctant to leave their comfort zone, this break will give a much-needed respite for the main household of carers.

4) Acceptance: Sadly, as health issues often worsen in old age, there will come a time when ageing parents will no longer be able to travel. This is the time for them to be visited and cared for, especially by adult children who live far away or are absent for other reasons.

Imam Ahmad narrated that Usamah bin Sharik (may Allah be pleased with him) said, “I was with the Prophet Muhammad (Alla when the Bedouins came to him and said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, should we seek medicine?’ He said, ‘Yes, O slaves of Allah, seek medicine, for Allah has not created a disease except that He has created its cure, except for one illness.’ They said, ‘And what is that?’ He said, ‘old age.’” [Ahmad, Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud]

Conclusion

Marriage is a lifelong commitment that not only includes the care and raising of children, but also the care and burying of elders. When families were closer together and Islamic values were more prevalent, discussions around eldercare weren’t even necessary among siblings. Elders were cherished and cared for by their adult children and grandchildren until the end of their long and blessed lives.

Now, there needs to be a revival of more intentional conversations around eldercare, especially with the rise of individualism and the cultural bias that expects only eldest/youngest sons to do the heavy lifting. Every single adult child has a role to play, even if it’s inconvenient. The door of service to our elders is a golden opportunity that only lasts for as long as they are with us in this dunya. Once they pass away, that door closes, never to be opened again.

 

Related:

– Avoid Financial Elder Abuse Through Islamic Principles

– Restoring Balance In An Individualized Society: The Islamic Perspective on Parent-Child Relationships

1    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S00333506240049792    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/08/more-than-half-of-americans-in-their-40s-are-sandwiched-between-an-aging-parent-and-their-own-children/

The post The Sandwich Carers: Navigating The Islamic Obligation Of Eldercare appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

No information offered about Awad Nofal, a father of seven with a heart condition who was captured by Israeli forces in January 2024.

Israel refuses to disclose the number of people it has abducted, bodies it still holds or has bundled into mass graves.

Abuses by Israel-linked Fedpol director Nicoletta della Valle led to my illegal arrest so I couldn’t talk about Gaza.

The New York Times downplays anti-Palestinian racism and a genocidal chant at a New York City demonstration.