On a quiet school morning, a mother stands frozen at her front window, watching the street. Her child’s backpack rests by the door. The bus is coming. But so is fear.

Across the country, Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, and Muslim parents are waking up each day with the same question: Is it safe to send my child outside today?

Immigration raids, masked enforcement officers, public arrests, and aggressive policing have turned ordinary routines like school drop-offs, grocery trips, and morning commutes into moments of terror. Parenting in this climate is no longer just about guidance and discipline. It is about survival, protection, and moral courage.

For Muslims and families of color, this moment is not new. It is history repeating itself, and our nervous systems know it.

When History Enters the Living Room: What Families Are Feeling

For Black and Brown communities, regardless of faith, today’s fear is deeply familiar. Masked raids, public arrests, and militarized enforcement mirror older systems of racial terror, slave patrols, the KKK, lynchings, and state-sanctioned violence. The uniforms have changed. The trauma has not.

One father described the moment his child whispered, “Are they going to take you too?” Another parent shared that her elementary-aged daughter began packing her favorite toy in her backpack just in case she never made it home.

Our nervous systems respond before our minds can catch up. Hearts race. Muscles tense. Breathing becomes shallow. This is trauma physiology, the body recognizing danger long before logic arrives.

Children should be in school learning, not hiding in fear from masked men who resemble symbols of racial terror. Yet families are afraid to leave their homes, to go grocery shopping, or to send their children to the bus stop. That constant fear reshapes daily life, fractures trust, destabilizes families, and erodes dignity.

Even if policies change tomorrow, the psychological imprint remains.

When children witness this, their sense of safety, justice, and belonging is fundamentally shaken.

Collective Trauma and the Cost of Dehumanization

“Children should be in school learning, not hiding in fear from masked men who resemble symbols of racial terror.” [PC: Tamirlan Maratov (unsplash)]

These policies expose how systems rooted in colonialism, racism, and surveillance continue to operate by othering and dehumanizing entire communities.

For generations, violence has been normalized towards Muslim and non-Muslim Black and Brown bodies. It has been expected, dismissed, and minimized. But when fear enters white communities, something shifts. Suddenly, the threat becomes real, urgent, and visible.

One parent said, “For the first time, my white neighbors looked afraid, and I realized they were just beginning to feel what we have carried for centuries.”

Healing requires reckoning with how violence is stored in our bodies, normalized in our culture, and selectively grieved.

The Qur’an reminds us that division weakens and unity protects:

“And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided.” [Surah ‘Ali-Imran: 3;103]

When communities fracture, they become easier to control. Collective care and collective strategy are how we survive agendas rooted in dehumanization.

Grief, Fear, and Finding God in the Middle of the Storm

What families are experiencing is collective grief layered with shock, numbness, anger, helplessness, and profound loss of safety.

One mother shared, “Every siren feels personal. Every knock at the door makes my chest tighten.

In Islam, spiritual grounding is not passive. It is psychologically protective and proactive.

When human power becomes abusive and unpredictable, reconnecting to Allah restores emotional stability, dignity, and hope.

We begin by anchoring our families in Allah’s Names that heal fear and rage:

• Al-‘Adl (The Utterly Just): So injustice never feels permanent.

• Al-Ḥakam (The Ultimate Judge): When courts and systems fail.

• Al-Mu’min (The Giver of Safety): When the world feels dangerous.

• Al-Jabbār (The Restorer of the Broken): When hearts are shattered.

• Al-Qahhār (The Overpowering): When oppression feels unstoppable.

• Ar-Raḥmān & Ar-Raḥīm (The Most Merciful): When grief overwhelms.

While we have so many emotions and feelings about what we are witnessing and feeling, the Prophet reminded us of the power these emotions have:

“Beware the supplication of the oppressed, for it is answered.” [Bukhari]

The Qur’an also helps us give meaning to our challenges that we are witnessing by reminding us:

“Do people think once they say, ‘We believe,’ that they will be left without being tested?” [Surah Al”Ankabut: 29;2]

This spiritual grounding transforms fear and despair into moral courage and purpose.

Parenting in Crisis: How Do We Talk to Our Children?

Children are absorbing everything: conversations, headlines, social media clips, whispered worries. Silence does not protect them. Connection does.

One father described sitting on his son’s bed, trying to explain why people were being taken away. His son listened quietly, then asked, “But Allah sees, right?”

That question holds everything.

Trauma-informed parenting means:

• Starting with emotional connection

• Asking what children already know

• Gently correcting misinformation

• Letting children ask their hardest questions

• Naming emotions: fear, anger, sadness, confusion

• Teaching body awareness: “Where do you feel that fear?”

• Practicing grounding through dua, prayer, breathing, movement, and routine

• Offering constant reassurance of love and presence

Emotionally safe children are not shielded from reality. They are anchored in relationship, faith, and belonging.

Community as Medicine: Why Healing Must Be Collective

The Prophet warned:

“Stick to the community, for the wolf eats only the stray sheep.” [Tirmidhi]

In moments of fear, community becomes medicine. In mosques, community centers, and living rooms, families are gathering, sharing food, childcare, prayers, legal resources, and emotional support. Children play while parents exchange updates. Elders remind everyone: We have survived worse.

Community regulates nervous systems, restores dignity, and prevents despair.

The Prophet taught us:

“Whoever among you sees injustice, let them change it with their hand, their voice, or at the very least, their heart.” [Muslim]

Collective action — mutual aid, coalition-building, advocacy, and peaceful organizing — transforms fear into resistance.

From Fear to Moral Courage: A Call to Parents

This moment calls parents to raise children not only in safety but in dignity, justice, and courage.

Standing against injustice becomes an act of worship. Advocacy becomes healing. Solidarity becomes faith in action.

Silence is not neutrality. Silence allows harm to grow.

Our children are watching. They are learning how to respond when the world becomes unjust.

Trauma-informed, spiritually grounded parenting offers children more than survival. It offers purpose. It teaches them that they belong, that they matter, and that they are never alone.

Through faith, community, and courageous action, families of color do more than endure. They resist, heal, and rise.

May they learn that fear can become courage. That grief can become service. And that faith can become resistance.

 

Related:

– [Podcast] Parenting with Purpose | Eman Ahmed

– Audio Article: Raising Resilient Muslim Kids

The post Parenting Through Times Of Fear, Injustice, And Resistance: A Trauma-Informed, Faith-Centered Guide appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Shaista Gohir says every group has right to be protected after critics warn proposed definition risks breaking law

Failing to adopt a definition of anti-Muslim hostility would signal to British Muslims that their safety does not matter, a charity’s head has warned, as critics argue that adopting a definition risks breaking the law.

Shaista Gohir, a cross-bench peer and head of the Muslim Women’s Network, was part of a working group on anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia launched by the government in 2025 to define what would constitute unacceptable treatment, prejudice and discrimination against Muslims.

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You open your eyes and reach for your phone before your feet touch the floor. The screen illuminates: notifications, emails, messages, scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. You watch without choosing to watch. Thirty minutes dissolve before you register time passing.

You pray Fajr in a rush, if you pray at all, because work awaits. The commute is podcasts at double speed. Work is browser tabs breeding across screens. Evening is Netflix, Instagram, YouTube, and so on. You fall asleep to the glow, wake to the buzz, and somewhere in between wonder: Why do I feel so disconnected?

This is the rhythm of modern life, not chosen, but submitted to. We have become spectators of our own days, passive consumers of time itself. Allah warns us against this state:

“And remember your Lord within yourself in humility and fear, without being loud in speech – in the mornings and the evenings. And do not be among the heedless” [Surah Al’A’raf; 7:205]

We move through life unaware, distracted, passive.

But once a year, something interrupts.

The Spectacle and the Loss of Agency

Guy Debord foresaw this in his concept of “The Spectacle.” Simply put, the spectacle he refers to, is when capitalism invades every aspect of our lives to the point we are spectators in our own lives. This extends beyond the typical capital rift of organisations selling us products, and looks at how the infrastructure for modernity has turned life itself into something to watch, to document, to consume. It occupies our time, our thought process, so that we become bystanders just watching, not living. Life becomes images to consume rather than experiences to live. We don’t choose what we focus on anymore. Our attention has been colonized.

As a Muslim, I think about this constantly, because Islam demands presence and consciousness in every single action. To be honest, I find myself guilty of this often. I catch myself praying while my mind is completely elsewhere. Du’as are rushed so I can get back to the work task at hand. On a bigger scale, this affects our ummah because when our awareness is compromised, we become victims to the spectacle.

So, whenever Ramadan is around the corner, there are usually two forces colliding. There’s the part that embraces the beauty of this month, everything slows down, and we become more conscious. Then there’s a part of us that worries about how this will disrupt our workflow, our routine, our eating habits, the habits we’ve built to stay plugged into the spectacle.

Ramadan: An Intentional Disruption

Ramadan forces us onto a different clock entirely. Not the manufactured time of productivity and lunch breaks, but natural, lunar time. The rhythms of day and night dictate when you eat, not corporate schedules or convenience. You break your fast at Maghrib because the sun has set, not because it’s 6 pm on someone’s invented grid. This is time as Allah intended it, not time as capitalism requires it.

One of the most common responses Muslims give when asked (by non-Muslims) what fasting is about is that it’s “to feel what poor people feel”. But that is stripping it down to a simplistic sentiment. Ramadan is a conscious, deliberate effort to abstain from food, yes, but also from the constant consumption that defines modern life. You are awake to what you’re doing. Every moment you feel hunger, you’re reminded: I am choosing this. I am present in this choice. The discomfort is not there to make you “feel what poor people feel,” that tired cliché that misses the point entirely. The Qur’an states the purpose plainly:

“O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may attain taqwa.” [Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:183]

Taqwa – consciousness of Allah ; mindful awareness in every action. The discomfort wakes you up. It pulls you from autopilot and reminds you that you have a body, not just a screen-lit face

The nights become different. Taraweeh stretches long after Isha, demanding stamina and focus when Netflix would be easier. Qiyam al-layl pulls you from sleep in the quiet hours. The Qur’an, often rushed through or skipped entirely in other months, becomes a daily companion. These are additions, intensifications, deliberate choices to do more when everything in modern life tells you to do less, to optimize, to streamline.

You become a physical embodiment of presence. Walking to the mosque, standing in prayer for hours, breaking fast with community, and reading Qur’an with intention. You respond to your body’s needs and the natural world’s rhythms. This is what it means to live consciously, to reclaim agency from the system that wants you passive, distracted, and compliant.

Ramadan doesn’t ask politely if it can interrupt your routine. It demands interruption and, in that demand, lies Allah’s Mercy.

The Mercy of Structure

“Ramadan is already built, functioning to perfection. We just need to show up and commit to it.” [PC: Shahed Mufleh (unsplash)]

One of the things that has always fascinated me about Ramadan is that even Muslims who are not the most devout usually show up. Some mock them as “Ramadan Muslims,” but I see beauty in this. Allah has given us training wheels, a concentrated month to practice, and everyone is entitled to it regardless of their past or how devoted they’ve been. It’s an access point for all, born from the mercy of Allah .

This is both discipline and gift. In secular frameworks, people have to organize social gatherings, plan acts of resistance, and build alternative communities from scratch. It’s exhausting work that often fizzles out. But Ramadan is already built, functioning to perfection. We don’t need to invent the cure to modern isolation and passivity. We just need to show up and commit to it. A month where everyone is connected in a conscious effort to reclaim closeness to Allah and to live actively, not passively.

It’s a cure to modern malaise.

From Passivity to Agency

So how can we make the most of this blessed month to move from passivity to agency? It’s a sequence where each act of reclaiming builds the capacity for the next.

1. Reclaiming Time

It starts with prayer as the structure that organizes everything else. This means praying consciously, not performatively, for at least five minutes before returning to work. Prayer builds rhythm, and it resists the tyranny of notifications and the manufactured urgency of productivity culture. But this only works if you bring full presence to it. Without agency, prayer becomes a hollow ritual.

2. Reclaiming Consumption

Fasting teaches us about desire and control, but not in the way most people think. Abstinence for a set period is only the beginning. Far more valuable is understanding why we abstain and what consumption does to us. The goal extends beyond prohibiting yourself from eating, but rather to reach a point where you don’t even want to consume mindlessly because you see how it cuts you off from yourself.

This is the space Ramadan creates. In that space, the dopamine cycle breaks. You start to notice how much of your day was spent chasing the next hit of stimulation, scrolling, snacking, streaming, anything to avoid stillness. The physical fast only works if it’s paired with a fast from distraction.

When consumption no longer controls you, attention becomes possible.

3. Reclaiming Attention

Treating the Qur’an as deep reading in an age of skimming. I’m less concerned with how many times you complete the Qur’an than with whether you’re actually reading, pondering, going deep. Allah asks us: “Do they not reflect upon the Qur’an?” [Surah An-Nisa; 4:82]. Reflection requires time, attention, presence – everything the spectacle denies us. The same applies to taraweeh. Twenty rak’ahs done on autopilot mean less than four done with deep, sustained focus. The discipline of being fully there for one thing, not half-there for many things.

This kind of attention is impossible when you’re still plugged into the spectacle. But when you’ve reclaimed your time and broken the consumption cycle, attention stops being a struggle. 

4. Reclaiming Community

When Ramadan becomes a social media show; elaborate spreads photographed and posted before anyone eats, or funny reels about relatable Ramadan behavior, we’ve turned the sacred into content. There’s a difference between communal practice and social media solidarity. One builds real relationships while the other maintains audiences.

This Ramadan, I’m using the month to reconnect with people I’ve been too distracted to talk to. Not through a story or a post, but through an actual message, better yet, a call. “Ramadan Mubarak. How are you planning to use this month? What are your resolutions?”

We’re all so connected through our devices. There’s no excuse not to connect as human beings.

Beyond Ramadan: The Training Ground

Ramadan is practice for the other eleven months. That’s the point many of us miss. We treat it as a month of peak devotion, then the gloves come off, and it’s back to business as usual. But the month was never meant to stand alone. It’s a training ground for a life lived consciously.

Small acts of agency compound. You don’t transform your entire life in thirty days. You build capacity, practice choosing, and strengthen the muscle of presence. The habits you build within Ramadan’s structure can sustain you through the chaos waiting outside it.

The test is whether these practices outlive the month. Can you pray Fajr when Ramadan ends? Can you resist the scroll when fasting is no longer required? Can you maintain real community when the ummah disperses back into routine?

Consciousness is a continuous effort, not a one-time Ramadan achievement. This is where many of us fall short, myself included. We mistake intensity for transformation. We think because we felt close to Allah in Ramadan, we’ve arrived. But closeness requires maintenance, and agency requires practice.

Ramadan gives you the tools. What you do with them in Shawwal, in Rajab, in the dead of winter when motivation is gone, that’s where the real work begins.

The Sacred as Resistance

One month later.

You open your eyes. The phone is still on the nightstand, but you don’t reach for it. Not yet. First, Fajr followed by du’a. A moment of stillness before the world makes its demands.

You still have work, and browser tabs still multiply. The dunya hasn’t become simple, but it no longer controls you the way it did. You move through it differently now. Prayer structures your day. You eat consciously, not compulsively. The Qur’an sits open more often than closed. When evening comes, Netflix is a choice, not a reflex. Instagram is something you check, not something you sink into.

You fall asleep without the glow. You wake without reaching for the buzz.

Some days you slip, and some days the spectacle wins. But the capacity is there now. You know what it feels like to live consciously because you practiced it for thirty days. You know what it feels like to have agency because Ramadan gives you the structure to remember.

The rhythm of modern life can be broken. You are no longer just a spectator. You are a participant, deliberate and awake.

That is the gift of Ramadan. Not that it saves you once, but that it shows you how to save yourself, again and again, month after month, for as long as you live.

Allah gives us the tools. The question is whether we’ll keep using them.

 

Related:

– [Podcast] Dropping the Spiritual Baggage: Overcoming Malice Before Ramadan | Ustadh Justin Parrott

– How to Make this Ramadan Epic | Shaykh Muhammad Alshareef

The post Recognizing Allah’s Mercy For What It Is: Reclaiming Agency Through Ramadan appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.