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.

Hajj season has rolled around, and it’s always a bit more of a challenge to get our kids excited for Hajj and Eid al-Adha the way we do for Ramadan and Eid… so what better way to get them started than with pulling out a collection of Hajj and Eid al-Adha related books?

Toddler

My First Book About Hajj by Sara Khan

This installment of the “My First…” board book series doesn’t disappoint! With colorful, gently washed illustrations and easy to understand language, this book will remain a staple as toddlers grow up and are able to understand more complex ideas. This is one of the best books to introduce what Hajj is, and all its associated steps, to tiny Muslims.

Excited for Eid by Marzieh Abbas

This gem from Marzieh Abbas and Anoosha Syed will be a favourite for little ones! This Eid book is all about the fun things that make Eid special. There was also a full spread about visiting the graveyard, which while a common practice in many parts of the Muslim world, isn’t an explicit Sunnah itself. This durable board book will be a repeat read every Eid!

 

Picture Books

“Eid” by Maria Migo 

Sweet and simple, this picture book shares the excitement of Eid! This book uses words sparingly but alongside the almost-watercolor illustrations, makes it an easy read for even very young children. The book can apply to either of the two Eids, as there is nothing to specify Eid al-Ad’ha or Eid al-Fitr; and there is a reference to how Eid can take place in any season. It’s especially handy for read alouds with little kids who have a short attention span!

A Cat Like Me! by Emma Halim

“A Cat Like Me!” is a cute visual, rhyming guide to Hajj – with the help of Bissa, the Clock Tower cat. For kids (and adults) who always get a little confused by the order of the rites of Hajj, this colourful picture book takes us along each stage of Hajj. The illustrations avoid full face imagery, while remaining vibrant (and cute!). I occasionally found the rhyme a little stretched, and sometimes the text was a bit much, but overall it’s a great addition to a Hajj book collection for kids!

I Went For Hajj by Na’ima Robert

A cute Hajj-themed homage to “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” The rhymes and illustrations in this book will capture young ones’ attention and familiarize them with the steps and stages of Hajj. The rhythms of the lyrics will delight both older and younger readers, and will definitely make for a beloved storytime every Hajj season.

Going to Mecca by Na’ima Robert

“Come with the pilgrims as they set out on a journey, a journey of patience to the city of Mecca.” We are led on the journey of a lifetime to the city of Mecca – the pilgrimage known to Muslims as the Hajj. Though their bodies are tired and aching, their spirits are uplifted, knowing that with thousands of others they have performed the sacred pilgrimage. This is a window on to a sacred journey for Muslims the world over – beautifully described and illustrated for younger children.

The Green Dinosaur Umbrella by Amina Banawan

In this beautifully illustrated, whimsical story, a green dinosaur umbrella travels to Makkah and exchanges hands, helping pilgrims along their journey of Hajj. Where will the green dinosaur umbrella end up next?

The Call to Hajj by Salwa Isaacs-Johaadien

“The Call to Hajj” is a rhyming picture book that transports young readers to the time of Prophet Ibrahim (alayhissalaam), and tracing all the ways that Muslims have traveled for Hajj over time. By foot and by horseback, by sea and by land… the illustrations on each page are incredibly rich and beautiful, and had me flipping the pages repeatedly to enjoy them over and over again.

Owl + Cat Go To Hajj by Emma Apple

This fun day-by-day guide gives little hajji’s, future pilgrims, and curious learners, a head start, answering all their questions by taking them step-by-step on this once in a lifetime journey to Mecca. More than just a picture book, this book also serves as a valuable educational tool for young Muslims who are just starting to learn more about the details of Hajj.

Yan’s Hajj: The Journey of a Lifetime by Fawzia Gilani

This book has become a classic! In a nod to the famous story of Abdullah ibn Mubarak and the cobbler of Damascus, this story follows the journey of Yan, a big-hearted young man determined to perform Hajj, the pilgrimage to Makkah. But first, he must work hard on his farm and fill up his money bag for the journey. Despite the trials he faces on each unsuccessful trip to the Kaaba, Yan’s helpful nature, compassion, and generosity enable him to succeed in the end.

Eid al-Adha Stories

The Gift of Eid by Shifa Saltagi Safadi

Good books require talent and craft, but also, perhaps most importantly, heart. This stunning book, “The Gift of Eid” is one of those books with all 3 ingredients. This retelling of the famous short story “The Gift of the Magi” is so much more than that: it is an authentically Syrian Muslim story of love, family, and Eid.

Yasmine and her mother just have each other, after her father passed away, and while it’s a struggle to remain afloat, nothing can take away the desire to give each other gifts for Eid. With gorgeous illustrations of the Grand Masjid of Damascus and Souq Al-Hamidiyeh, this story is a visual delight as well as an emotional one.

Sami’s Special Surprise by M. O. Yuksel

It’s Eid al-Adha, and Sami wants to celebrate. But this year is different after his grandfather’s passing. A touching picture book about kindness towards others. Sami worries that the Eid al-Adha carnival won’t be as fun without Dede (his grandfather), who died recently. Sami’s grandmother sends him one of Dede’s ties, and Sami vows to never take it off. After going to the mosque for Eid prayer, Sami’s family stop at the shelter where Baba and Anne volunteer. Can an unexpected encounter and a special gift help Sami change his mind about celebrating?

Ibrahim’s Perfect Eid by Farhana Islam

Ibraheem loves Eid because Eid means presents! What’s not to love? But when Eid arrives, and the day brings trips to the mosque, fantastic food, family, games and fun but NO PRESENTS Ibraheem begins to worry! Has something gone terribly wrong?

The Colours of My Eid by Suzanne Muir

The Colours of My Eid opens a window to the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and the Hajj pilgrimage from a child’s perspective. Eid is a colourful holiday and every colour encountered evokes beautiful memories of the Hajj trip from the year before.

Ali and the Eid Goat by Farheen Khan [early chapter book]

Ali really, REALLY wants a pet. When his parents tell him they will be visiting their family in Pakistan AND he can pick out their Eid goat, Ali is over the moon. Join him as he falls in love with Pakistan, meets his cousins, and learns to speak Goat. How much trouble can a nine-year-old really get into in a whole other country?

The post From the MuslimMatters Bookshelf: Hajj and Eid Reads 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 first episode, Shaykh Yahya reminds us why du’a is so important to Muslims, especially in the days of Hajj.

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

 

Anas bin Malik reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “If the son of Adam had a valley full of gold, he would want to have two valleys. Nothing fills his mouth but the dust of the grave, yet Allah will relent to whoever repents to Him.”

– Sahih al-Bukhari 6439, Sahih Muslim 1048

Pride

“Are you okay?” Deek asked.

Rania, still sitting on the cement of the driveway with legs splayed, waved a weak hand. “It’s a shock.”

“Okay. Well.” Deek stood. “I’m going.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“I’m leaving. Not leaving you necessarily. It’s not the money. You shouted at me in front of your co-workers. And just now, you called me an anchor around your neck. In front of our daughter. I’m not here to be treated like that. You can think what you like, that I’m a deadbeat, ugly, or whatever, I don’t care, but I have my pride. Plus, now you’ve got this guy at work.” He held up a hand, forestalling her objections. “I believe that you’re not cheating with him. But you are giving him the attention and respect you used to give me. That’s just as bad.”

“I never said you were ugly. Never.”

Deek let out a bitter laugh. She’d let the “deadbeat” remark slide.

There was another reason he didn’t want to admit. He was so ashamed about making a mess on himself and in the car that he just wanted to get away and hide. Even though no one knew, he knew, and it was mortifying.

Rania looked away. The muscles in her neck tensed. “I want half the money.”

“You can have it.” Though in reality, he had no intention of telling her just how much he had made. “And I will pay the university fees for the girls, wherever they wish to attend. And all the bills.” He went around her and opened the driver’s door.

“Wait!” She stood and followed him and tried to take one of his hands, but he pulled away.

“I haven’t been nice,” she pleaded. “I admit it. But that’s a tiny window in a twenty-year marriage. We have passed through storms and thunder. Don’t throw that away. And I never thought that you were ugly. You have always been handsome to me.”

“You’re saying this because I made money.”

“No! I’m saying it because I love you.”

“You humiliated me.”

“Deek!” Rania raised her hands as if in dua’. “I’m sorry! I was frustrated and worried about our financial situation. This pride of yours is a shaytan inside you. Everything’s always about your honor. What about love?”

Drown Myself

Deek tried to open the car door to get in, but Rania was standing too close.

“At least tell me where you’ll be.”

“Maybe I’ll go drown myself in the river.” As soon as these words escaped his mouth, he regretted it. He’d said it only to hurt and scare her. It was a rotten thing to do.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “That was stupid, I didn’t mean it. I do love you and the girls.”

“No, you don’t, because love and forgiveness are a married couple, they walk hand in hand. True love cannot exist without forgiveness.”

There were tears on her cheeks. Deek was embarrassed. He had not seen Rania cry in a long time. It hurt him to see her in pain.

“I can’t trust this sudden remorse and talk about love. It’s just because I made money. You rolled up here a half hour ago, putting me down and talking to me like a rotten child. It’s not me you suddenly respect. It’s the money.” He spat this last word like a curse, then waved his hand in dismissal. “I need to think.”

Also, he wanted to get away before Rania smelled the car and deduced the truth. She knew him well, and knew that he sometimes had trouble with his bowels. He felt desperate to get away. Cutting off the conversation, he managed to squeeze into the car and close the door. He started the car and backed out. The last thing he saw before driving away was Rania standing in the driveway, hands at her sides, looking defeated.

Nowhere To Go

“Lubna had her husband, five kids, two cats, and a turtle.”

He was hardly two blocks down the street before he realized that he had nowhere to go. His only relative in this city was his younger sister, Lubna. She had her husband, five kids, two cats, and a turtle in a small house, and wouldn’t appreciate Deek sleeping on the sofa. Anyway, he and she had never gotten along, and it had only gotten worse since Deek started working on the cryptos. Lubna had spoken to him with contempt, saying that he was destroying his life and dragging his family to the poorhouse.

He had no cash for a hotel. He didn’t want to spend any of the money he’d deposited in the joint account. That was for Rania. He took out his phone and checked his own personal bank account. Two hundred and twelve dollars. He could sell some crypto and initiate a transfer, but the money wouldn’t show up in his account until late tomorrow or the morning after.

He considered calling Zaid Karim, but Zaid wasn’t exactly a friend. More like an indirect relative that Deek admired and respected. Besides, the man had a wife and two daughters. They wouldn’t appreciate having Deek camped out in their living room.

That left Marco, his only real friend. Deek had sometimes wondered if the only reason he and Marco were friends was because Marco was even more hapless than himself, which allowed Deek to feel like a Zen master dispensing wise but mystifying advice. Marco, remember: man who butters bread on both sides will always have slippery hands.

They’d seen each other a lot less in the last five years, as Deek had been immersed in the crypto world, barely paying attention to his own family, let alone his friends.

A Hollow Statue

He bought a spray bottle of all-purpose cleaner and wiped down the car seat. Then he threw the dirty t-shirt and towel in the trash. At a liquor store he picked up a bag of wavy chips and a large diet soda, then sat in the car with the windows down, snacking. Halfway through the bag of chips, he realized that he wasn’t enjoying them, and stuffed the bag under the seat.

He didn’t know where to go or what to do. He wondered if Rania had recovered from the shock. She would be picking up Amira from school about now. Amira had a deadpan sense of humor, and Deek liked to joke with her. She would often reply with nothing more than, “Uh-huh,” but sometimes Deek could see the trace of a smile on her face. It was strange to think that he probably would not see her for a while.

Clouds were sweeping in from the west, bringing with them the smell of ozone. A seagull landed atop a nearby car. It would rain tonight. Deek sat in his car in a mini-mall parking lot, feeling like a hollow ceramic garden statue, inanimate, without purpose or will. He would sit here, and night would come, and the car would be rained on. All around him, people would talk, laugh, eat together, and love each other, but Deek would sit in this beautiful car and do nothing. He might be the richest man in Fresno, yet his inner life was as chaotic as the coming storm, while his outer reality was an empty parking lot.

At some point he fell asleep, and awoke when fat drops of cold water began to fall on the windshield. He looked up to see that the sun had set. The rain thickened, then became an assault, beating on the windshield as if wanting to break in and drown Deek, to punish him for his temerity in thinking that he could be rich and happy at the same time.

At least he had the car. It was small but exquisitely crafted and powerful. It could go over two hundred miles per hour, the boy had said. If only Deek had somewhere to go.

Marco

His phone rang. It was Marco. Surprised and happy, Deek answered with, “As-salamu alaykum my man Marco! I was just thinking about you.”

“Because you need a place to crash?” Marco had a voice as soft and calm as duck feathers, and a watered-down New York accent. He’d actually grown up in California, but his parents had both been Puerto Ricans from New York, and somehow he’d inherited the lilt. He was in his 40s but looked twenty-five, with lustrous black hair and classically Spanish features.

Marco had been an on-again, off-again university science student for two decades. He was an expert in physics, chemistry, and biology, but had never finished a degree. He played a mean soccer game, blew the trumpet, and played chess like a Russian. Yet his life seemed to be a series of collapsing opportunities, like a downhill skier crashing into the slalom markers at every turn, with an avalanche close behind him.

“How did you know that?”

“Your wife called. Worried about you.”

“Oh.” It made him feel good to know that Rania was concerned, partly because it meant she cared about him, and partly because he wanted her to feel bad.

Marco raised his voice: “I can barely hear you.”

“I’m in my car, and it’s raining.”

“So you really are homeless. Listen bro, you’re welcome to my sofa. Might catch problems, but I’ll deal with it.”

“Problems, why?”

“I’m in an SRO paid by the city. No overnight visitors. If they find out, they could evict me. Who cares, you’re my best friend. Come over, I’ll make quesadillas on the iron.”

Marco was in a single room occupancy hotel? Those places were death traps. Most of them had no kitchens in the rooms, so residents used hot plates or propane stoves, or apparently in Marcos’s case, an iron, and sometimes burned the place down. They were flea-ridden, rat-infested, and crumbling. Or at least that was the word. Deek had never actually been inside one.

The Moon Walk

“What happened to your studio?” Deek asked.

“Lost my job. Had to give it up.”

“I didn’t know.” Not that he was surprised. Marco had worked a huge variety of menial jobs, including fry cook, fruit picker, gardener, salesman, the occasional retail job, a stint in an orange packing plant, and rideshare driver.

Deek felt guilty now for not reaching out to his friend over the last few years. He’d been so deeply into the cryptos, he’d forgotten everything else.

“Yeah,” Marco said. “I was clerking at a psychology office. I’d type the psychiatrist’s notes, so I knew everything about the patients. There was this young man with a porn addiction. I stopped him one day and told him to punch a wall instead. He followed my advice. Broke his hands, which limited his porn activities, if you get me. But my boss didn’t appreciate it.”

Deek laughed. “So what are you doing for money?”

“I won the California State chess championship.”

“Wow! How much does that pay?”

“Three thousand.”

“That’s a decent amount.”

“I guess. So you coming over?”

“No… I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble. I’ll just… I don’t know.”

“Dude… Is it bad? You guys having a big fight?”

Deek shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Why don’t you go to that cheap motel you stayed at last time?”

“What cheap motel?”

“Dude. You remember the names of a hundred cryptos, but you’d forget your heart if it wasn’t installed in your chest. Five years back, you guys had a blowout. You found that little motel on 99 and Ashlan. Cheap but clean. The Moon something…”

“Oh, right!” Deek slapped the car’s dashboard. “The Moon Walk Motel. I forgot all about that. I remember I took it as a sign that I’d succeed with the cryptos.”

It was a good suggestion. The Moon Walk only charged $50 per night. He only needed to stay there until the money transfer cleared. He thanked Marco, ended the call, and started toward the Moon Walk.

Marco was a multi-talented man with a 24-karat heart of gold, living in a society that valued these qualities less than the ability to generate revenue by any means necessary. If he fell any further, he’d be homeless. Yet Deek knew that his rudderless friend would have taken him in, fed him, and never asked him to leave, even at risk to himself. Marco was a friend in fair weather and foul. Deek would not forget it.

The Moon Walk Motel

The sky was the color of charcoal when Deek eased his Porsche off Highway 99 north of Fresno, and into the Moon Walk Motel’s gravel lot. The low, single-story block building sat squat against a backdrop of parched farmland. The pale green haven was a relic of the 1970s. Its neon sign, once proud, flickered heartedly as the word “MOON” sputtered in dusty white, while “WALK” lay dark and inert.

Though the building was weathered, the office windows were spotless, and a pair of wicker chairs hinted at modest hospitality. Along the foundation, the owners had coaxed life from the scrubland: a tidy patch of lavender and rosemary, a hardy rose bush, even a small citrus tree that dangled half-ripe fruit like memories of golden times.

Of the 20 rooms, only four or five appeared occupied. Deek checked into room 9 and found it to be as he remembered: small but clean, smelling of laundered sheets, fresh towels, and soap. He set his suitcases beside the tiny closet and collapsed into the bed, which sagged and creaked beneath his weight.

Here, in this unremarkable hideout, he could relax, collect his thoughts, and plan next steps. No one would ever find him here.

Speak of the Afreet

Bandar Tzan’ani, the Yemeni liquor and smoke king of Fresno, sat brooding at the large antique demilune desk in his home office, located in a mansion within a large family compound in west Fresno. He filled his pipe and lit it, then drew the sweet smoke into his lungs and eased it out, closing his eyes in pleasure. His business operations were coming under heavy pressure from the city council. The network of stores that Tzan’ani and his sons and brothers operated were, according to the city, magnets for drug use and crime. To make matters worse, three of his shops – all run by his youngest son, Shujaa – were losing money, which didn’t make sense.

He wondered if coming to this country had been a mistake. In Yemen, people feared American, Saudi, and Israeli bombs, as well as famine. Here, people feared life itself. Any stranger was a potential predator, and the internet poisoned children’s minds. In Yemen, he had walked the streets freely. Here he lived in a gated compound behind a high wall, and did not feel safe. He’d traded a life of poverty, in which he was surrounded by family and friends and a culture he loved and understood, for great wealth and a life of stress and alienation.

At the sound of a knock on the door, Bandar called in Arabic, “Come.” Shujaa walked in. Speak of the afreet, and he appears. His son wore boots, stonewashed jeans, a black t-shirt that hugged his torso, and a knee-length denim trench coat. His hair was styled into a huge pile of curls atop his head, while shaved on the sides. The boy was either a homosexual, or imagined himself a celebrity. Hopefully the latter.

“Sit,” Bandar snapped.

Shujaa dropped sullenly into one of the chairs facing the desk.

“I noticed that your car is not in the compound.”

“Ah, hadhi,” the boy replied, speaking in Arabic like his father. He sunk a hand into his curls, scratching his head. “I loaned it to my friend Saleh to collect his mother from the airport.”

“No, you didn’t.” In fact, Bandar already knew what had happened, as one of his son’s friends had told him. He saw the boy’s eyes dart one way and another before a look of resignation came over him.

An Admission

“I sold it,” the boy admitted.

“For how much?”

“Two and a half Bitcoins.”

Bandar set his pipe down. He was so angry he could have choked the boy. “You sold your car for fake money?”

“It’s real money,” Shujaa said hurriedly. “Or as good as. But…” He snapped his fingers as if he’d just had a brilliant idea, then leaned forward and struck the desk with the side of a fist. “The man tricked me! He said he would give me another two and a half Bitcoins after I signed the pink slip. That would have been two hundred and fifty thousand. But he grabbed the keys and drove away.”

Bandar sucked in a lungful of smoke, held it then belched it out like a fire breathing dragon. A murderous rage was growing inside him. His son might not be telling him the whole truth, but Bandar did believe that someone had taken advantage of the idiot boy. No one stole from his family and got away with it.

“I will ask you once, and do not lie. What are you doing with your money?”

Shujaa’s mouth worked soundlessly. His hands sank into his curls as if he wanted to pull his own head apart. Then he slumped in the chair and said, “I gamble.”

“That is haram!”

The boy laughed bitterly. “Everything we do is haram. I never wanted to be in this business.”

The father closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “The fashion design thing again.”

“It’s what I love.”

GPS Tracker

Bandar sighed. “Listen to me carefully. Cut your hair and put on normal clothes. I have had enough. If you cannot behave, I will send you back to Yemen.” He waved a weary hand. “Get out.”

With the idiot gone, Bandar logged into the website of a subscription GPS tracking service called Safe Spot. He had installed an aftermarket GPS device in the Porsche, as he did with all his vehicles. A map came up showing the car’s exact location. Bandar typed the address into the browser. It was a motel called the Moon Walk.

He called Manny, his foreman at the warehouse. The man had been a violent criminal in the past, and Bandar occasionally relied on him for the rougher kinds of jobs. He gave Manny the address and told him to take a few guys with him. “The guy stole my son’s Porsche,” Bandar explained. “I want you to turn him into a bloody mess. And bring the car back.”

***

[Part 6 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:

A Wish And A Cosmic Bird: A Play

What Is True, And What Matters: A Short Story

 

The post Moonshot [Part 5] – The Moon Walk Motel appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

In one of the most touching and instructive moments from the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, we are reminded not only of the humanity of the Companions , but also of the vast mercy of Allah ﷻ and the redemptive power of good deeds—especially salah.

ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd narrates: A man came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, “O Messenger of Allah, I engaged with a woman at the farthest end of Madinah, and I did with her everything short of intercourse. Here I am—judge me as you see fit.” ʿUmar said, “Allah concealed it for you; you should have concealed it yourself.” The Prophet ﷺ did not say anything to him. The man then got up and left. The Prophet ﷺ sent a man after him to call him back. When he returned, the Prophet ﷺ recited to him the verse: “Establish prayer at the two ends of the day and in some parts of the night. Indeed, good deeds erase bad deeds. That is a reminder for those who remember.” (Sūrah Hūd, 11:114) A man from the crowd asked, “O Prophet of Allah, is this specifically for him?” The Prophet ﷺ replied, “No, it is for all people generally.” [Muslim]

This beautiful narration is filled with powerful lessons: for the sinner, the seeker, the leader, and every believer striving to maintain their relationship with Allah ﷻ.

The Humanity of the Companions

The Prophet ﷺ described his generation as the best of all generations: “The best of generations is my generation, then the one that follows, then the one that follows…” [Bukhārī] This narration reminds us that even the best of people make mistakes. The Companions of the Prophet ﷺ, despite their elevated rank and status, were human beings just like us. They struggled with their desires, made poor choices, and sometimes fell into sin. What made them extraordinary wasn’t that they were sinless—it was that they were God-conscious and sincere. When they slipped, they didn’t justify or normalize the wrong. They felt the weight of it on their conscience, and they turned to Allah ﷻ with sincere remorse.

The man in this ḥadīth had come dangerously close to committing a major sin—one which Allah explicitly forbade:

“Do not even come near to zinā. It is truly a shameful deed and an evil way.” [Surah Al-‘Isra; 17:32]

And yet, in a moment of moral clarity, his heart overwhelmed by guilt, he came to the Prophet ﷺ, seeking accountability and redemption. “Here I am—judge me as you see fit,” he said. This was not arrogance or recklessness. It was humility and an intense desire to be cleansed.

The Wisdom of ʿUmar and the Mercy of the Prophet ﷺ

ʿUmar offered the man a valuable piece of advice: “Allah concealed it for you; you should have concealed it yourself.” In Islam, we are not encouraged to publicly expose our personal sins. When Allah ﷻ has veiled our mistakes, we honor that by turning to Him privately in repentance. Public confession is not a requirement of tawbah. The act of exposing oneself—unless harm to others is involved—can do more damage than good.

The Prophet ﷺ, in his characteristic gentleness and wisdom, didn’t rebuke the man or make an example out of him. He didn’t shame him in front of the community. In fact, he initially remained silent. His silence wasn’t rejection—it was reflection and wisdom. Perhaps he was waiting for divine instruction, or perhaps he was giving the man space to process his own remorse. But the Prophet ﷺ didn’t leave him in that silence. When the man left, the Prophet ﷺ sent someone to call him back, and then gave him hope in the most beautiful way: by reciting to him the verse from Sūrah Hūd:

“Establish prayer at the two ends of the day and in some parts of the night. Indeed, good deeds erase bad deeds. That is a reminder for those who remember.” [11:114]

Prayer: A Spiritual Cleanser

The verse reminds us of one of the most powerful and hopeful realities in Islam: our good deeds have the power to erase our sins—especially the five daily prayers. The Prophet ﷺ explained this beautifully in another ḥadīth:

“The five daily prayers, and from one Friday prayer to the next, and from one Ramadan to the next, are expiations for whatever occurs between them, so long as major sins are avoided.” [PC: Kheldoun Imad (unsplash)]

“The five daily prayers, and from one Friday prayer to the next, and from one Ramadan to the next, are expiations for whatever occurs between them, so long as major sins are avoided.” [Muslim]

He ﷺ once asked his Companions: “If there were a river at the door of one of you in which he bathed five times a day, would there remain any dirt on him?” They said, “There would not remain any dirt on him.” He replied, “That is the example of the five daily prayers. Through them, Allah wipes away sins.” [Bukhārī & Muslim]

Abū Dharr narrated that during the winter, the Prophet ﷺ held two branches of a tree, and the leaves began to fall. He said: “O Abū Dharr! When a Muslim performs ṣalāh sincerely seeking the Face of Allah, his sins fall from him just as these leaves fall from the tree.” [Ahmad]

Prayer is not just a ritual obligation—it is a form of divine purification. Every time we stand before our Lord in salah, we are offered a chance to start anew, to wipe the slate clean, and to return to Allah with a lighter soul and a purified heart.

A Universal Message of Hope

After the Prophet ﷺ recited the verse to the Companion, someone asked, “Is this (verse) specifically for him?” The Prophet ﷺ responded, “No, it is for all people generally.” That one line opens the doors of hope to every believer until the end of time. This message wasn’t just for the man who nearly fell into zinā—it is for anyone who has faltered, stumbled, or fallen into sin. It is for all of us.

We all carry moments we regret—words we shouldn’t have said, actions we shouldn’t have taken, desires we wish we had resisted. But through sincere repentance and consistent acts of worship—especially prayer—we can find our way back to Allah ﷻ.

Final Reflections

This story is more than just a lesson in tawbah. It’s a blueprint for how we should approach sin, how we should deal with others who err, and how we should see our daily prayers—not as a burden, but as a divine mercy. Let us strive to pray with khushūʿ (presence and humility), with meaning and understanding. Let us pray on time, with sincerity, and with hearts that long for Allah’s Pleasure. And let us never forget that in this world of flaws and failure, Allah’s Door remains wide open—so long as we’re willing to knock. “Indeed, good deeds erase bad deeds. That is a reminder for those who remember.” 

To the young hearts reading this—whether you’re in high school, navigating college life, or finding your way in the world as a young adult—this story is especially for you. The man who came to the Prophet ﷺ was overwhelmed by his mistake, but he didn’t let it paralyze him. He took ownership of his slip, felt regret, and turned toward the Prophet ﷺ seeking a way back to Allah ﷻ. And the Prophet ﷺ responded not with harshness, but with hope—with the Quran itself.

In today’s world, temptations are everywhere—online, on campus, in your pocket, and even in your private thoughts. It’s easy to feel ashamed or unworthy when you slip. But here’s what this ḥadīth teaches you:

1. Even the best of people, the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ, made mistakes. Don’t let Shayṭān convince you that one mistake means you’re a hypocrite or beyond hope.
2. A sin doesn’t define you, but your response to it does. Let every fall push you to rise higher. Don’t justify the wrong—repent and reorient your heart.
3. Don’t delay. Even if you’re struggling with guilt or shame, open the door to forgiveness right away. Make wudhu, pray two rakʿahs, and ask Allah ﷻ sincerely for forgiveness.
4. You may feel like, “I’m sinning, so what’s the point of praying?” But that is the trap. Ṣalāh is the very thing that will bring you back. Even if you feel broken or impure—pray. Even if you just sinned—pray. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Good deeds erase bad deeds.”
5. Keep your mistakes between you and Allah . Don’t “vent” online about your wrongdoings. Confession is not a virtue in Islam—repentance is.

 

Related:

– Standing At The Divine Window: A Glimpse Of Eternity In The Serenity Of Salah

– Podcast: Prayer is a Work in Progress | Shaykh Abdullah Ayaaz Mullanee

The post Salah – A Spiritual Cleanser appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Introduction: Historical Roots and Ideological Aspirations

I was raised by a revolution that broke through the routine of ordinary life – a movement whose passion served as a steady guide, giving me faith, purpose, and conviction. It defined who I would become, or at least who I would strive to become. Its lessons were etched into the very marrow of my being, leaving indelible footprints across the landscape of my soul.

Islamism emerged as a twentieth-century response to a series of crises: the colonisation of Muslim nations, the military and scientific advances of the West, and the fall of the Caliphate. Its proponents sought to reintegrate Islamic values into public life and state structures, positing Islam as a complete worldview, a framework for governance, economics, and society.

Rooted in the intellectual traditions of figures like Hasan al-Banna (Egypt) and Abul A‘la Maududi (India), Islamism rejected both imperial domination and authoritarianism, offering a moral and political project for the people to reclaim agency through Islam. Islamists envisioned a return to authentic Islamic governance as the path to justice and renewal.

This vision was animated by a desire to transcend imposed national boundaries and reconstitute a sense of collective Islamic belonging. Within this ideological architecture, Palestine assumed a central place as a moral and spiritual imperative. The sanctity of al-Aqsa Mosque made its defence a religious obligation. The occupation of Palestinian land and the establishment of Israel symbolised not just territorial loss, but the violation of an entrusted responsibility.

The occupation resonated across Muslim societies as a continuation of the colonial era. Muslim nations had been recently colonised, and the mechanisms of control in Palestine, military rule, displacement, and settler encroachment, all mirrored the structures of colonial subjugation they had endured. The Palestinian struggle thus became a crystallisation of shared historical trauma. For Islamist movements, it offered both a moral lens and a strategic focal point: a test of authenticity, resilience, and the viability of their political vision.

It is in this context and amid the current devastation in Gaza that the limitations of this narrative are being exposed. If Palestine once symbolised the grounds for Islamic revival, it now reveals the consequences of ideological disconnect, demanding urgent critical reflection.

This article examines the logic of Islamist narratives, their assumptions, political utility, and limitations. These narratives are recurring across the political spectrum, including by non-Islamist figures. 

1. Reliance on Prophetic Parallels 

Islamist rhetoric frequently invokes Prophetic stories as a political blueprint. Stories such as the Battle of Badr, where a small, outnumbered Muslim force triumphed against a vastly superior enemy, or the campaigns of Salah al-Din, are cited as proof that moral conviction and perseverance alone will secure victory. These references are powerful symbols of Divine justice and historical vindication, and they continue to shape public expectations across the Arab world and beyond.

Yet, when such narratives are elevated from spiritual inspiration to political strategy, they become deeply problematic. The Prophet’s life and early Muslim victories are often framed not as historically contingent episodes, but as timeless templates for action. This neglects the radically different conditions of our time: the presence of nation-states, the role of imperial powers, the complexity of multilateral diplomacy, and the decisive weight of military, economic, and institutional power. The issue is not the possibility of miracles, but the expectation of them as part of a political calculus. Strategy, by definition, must operate within the realm of human agency, negotiation, and material conditions. To rely on the occurrence of the extraordinary is to bypass the necessary work of institution-building and long-term planning.

The effect is twofold. First, it creates unrealistic expectations. By invoking Muslim victories in Badr or Khandaq as inevitable historical patterns, these commentators imply that perseverance alone, no matter the reality, will produce similar outcomes. Yet these battles are often referenced at a basic level, overlooking the sophisticated defensive measures, political calculations, and strategic foresight they entailed. Second, this framing romanticises struggle while sidelining the harder, slower work of statecraft, such as institution building, knowledge accumulation, political representation, and the management of investment and funds to create leverage. History becomes a sanctified script, and politics a stage for re-enactment, rather than a domain for negotiation, recalibration, and compromise.

This mythologisation also opens the door to manipulation. Lessons derived from the life of the Prophet , like all moral derivations from scripture, are subject to interpretation. Political analysts often treat their reading as authoritative, deploying it to justify political decisions. Nearly any political stance can be cloaked in religious legitimacy, so long as it is linked to a comparable event. 

The Muslim vote on the re-lection of Trump [PC: The Now Time (unsplash)]

For example, the most recent U.S. presidential election. Faced with the Democratic Party’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza, many Muslim commentators and public figures, drawing from an Islamist moral lexicon, framed voting against the Democrats as an ethical imperative. Casting a vote for a third party or even for Donald Trump was presented by some as a rejection of moral hypocrisy, a stand against genocide, or even an act of faith. The narrative was not framed in terms of political leverage, institutional risk, or strategic calculation, but as a question of virtue.

This framing ignored the known consequences of a Trump presidency, not just for Gaza, but for Palestine activism within the United States. His administration openly targeted civil society organisations, deported student activists, criminalised protest, and dismantled the very channels through which advocacy had previously operated. These intentions were stated publicly well before the election. The argument that punishing the Democrats would “teach a lesson” doesn’t withstand scrutiny: pro-Israel lobbying spans both parties, and the Republican Party is not less Zionist but more openly aggressive in its commitments.

None of this is to dismiss the legitimate anger many Muslims felt toward the Biden administration. Nor is it to suggest that all Muslim voters were driven by the same logic. But the dominant framing in this discourse relied on historical analogy rather than strategic appraisal. The decision itself may have been defensible, but the process by which it was reached was not: there was no serious planning for what would follow a Trump victory, no roadmap for navigating the intensified repression his presidency would likely bring. The result was a politics more invested in righteousness than results.

2. Conflation of Moral Victories with Political Success

Closely tied to the problem of analogy is a second pattern: the tendency to equate moral steadfastness with political achievement. This dynamic emerges most clearly in the aftermath of failure, whether in the face of electoral defeat, repression, or military loss, when Islamist actors reinterpret setbacks as demonstrations of moral legitimacy. The persistence of the movement, or the loyalty of its base, is offered as proof of success, regardless of tangible outcomes.

This orientation transforms virtue into a political currency. It displaces issues of political competence with assertions of sincerity and sacrifice. This can often function as a substitute for policy. Movements are not judged by what they deliver, but by what they endure.

The experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt exemplifies this. Despite widespread mobilisation and its brief ascension to power after the Arab Spring, the Brotherhood failed to consolidate power or articulate a coherent programme for inclusive governance. Its leadership struggled to navigate the post-revolutionary moment. Their removal from power in 2013 was interpreted by many supporters not as a political failure but as a moral vindication, a sacrifice that confirmed the treachery of deep-state forces and foreign powers. 

What followed was not introspection but reaffirmation. Rather than treat the loss of power as a moment for institutional reckoning or strategic recalibration, it was upheld as evidence of the righteousness of their cause. Internal critics such as Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and members of the Wasat Party called for rethinking the Brotherhood’s majoritarianism and its overreliance on moral symbolism. However, they were marginalised, and the dominant current focused on reinforcing a self-image rooted in moral purity and persecution rather than political pragmatism. 

This retreat into a virtue-centric narrative foreclosed the possibility of learning from failure. A more productive response might have involved revaluating their majoritarian approach, forging coalitions across ideological lines, conceding on moral stances, and developing institutions capable of mediating power. Yet such paths required diluting ideological certainty and engaging in a politics of compromise. These were steps many in the leadership were unwilling to take. Consequently, the Brotherhood’s core assumptions, internal structures, and tactical approaches have remained largely unaltered. Despite exile, repression, and regional isolation, the movement has clung to its foundational principles, showing little inclination to interrogate the choices that led to its collapse.

3. Romanticised Rhetoric of the Ummah and the Politics of Disappointment

One of the most persistent features of modern Islamist discourse is the invocation of an idealised ummah, a unified global Muslim community bound by shared faith. Yet this imagined unity bears little resemblance to the historical experience of Muslims. The vision of a coherent ummah, as advanced by contemporary Islamists, is not only aspirational, it is also historically inaccurate.

While early Islamic empires such as the Umayyad (661–750) and Abbasid (750–1258) dynasties did foster a sense of shared religious civilisation, this unity was fragile and authority was constantly contested. It was fractured by dynastic rivalries, ethnic hierarchies, and regional interests. For instance, the Abbasid revolution itself was a response to perceived Arab dominance under the Umayyads and drew heavily on non-Arab Persian support. Under Abbasid rule, the Turkish military class eventually overshadowed both Arab aristocrats and Persian administrators, leading to recurring instability at the heart of the empire.

The empire’s fragmentation accelerated with the emergence of regional dynasties: the Fatimids established a rival caliphate in North Africa (909–1171). Similarly, the Umayyads of al-Andalus declared their own caliphate in Cordoba (929). Loyalties were shaped as much by lineage and geography as by doctrine. 

The Ottoman Empire, which governed much of the Arab world from the sixteenth century onward, further complicates the narrative. It was a Turkish-speaking, bureaucratic system based in Istanbul. While Islam provided a shared religious frame, Arabs were governed as provincial subjects. Arab society itself remained deeply localised, structured around tribal, sectarian, and regional affiliations. The Ottomans were also not the sole imperial authority. The Safavid Empire in Persia (1501–1736) and the Mughal Empire in India (1526–1857), which ruled over a vast and culturally diverse population, rivalled the Ottomans in scope and influence. These empires maintained distinct administrative systems, religious traditions, and geopolitical ambitions. The notion of a unified Islamic political identity did not guide governance. It has emerged more forcefully in retrospect, shaped by postcolonial frustration and the aspirations of modern ideological projects.

Despite this complex history, Islamist movements have continued to frame their cause as part of a universal moral and political struggle. This framing often draws on ideological currents well outside the Islamic tradition, namely Enlightenment humanism, with its emphasis on rights and moral universality, as well as from anti-imperialist Marxist traditions that envisioned global revolutionary unity. The integration of these frameworks into Islamist discourse has been rhetorically powerful but strategically unstable. The vision of a global ummah functions less as a policy direction and more as a symbolic register of grievance, solidarity, and aspiration.

This symbolic register often falters in practice. As Gaza faces extermination today, calls for ummah-wide mobilisation fail. In such moments, the ummah becomes a site of disappointment, its imagined unity serving only to magnify the disunity of reality.

Toward a Pragmatic Turn?

“A critical element of this reorientation involves narrative change.” [PC: Vladyslav Kuznietsov (unsplash)]

The language of prophetic analogy, glorification of moral victories, and invocations of a transnational Ummah, while popular, has insulated its Arab and Muslim audiences from the hard truths of power and the reality of political change. Nowhere is this more visible than in Gaza, where the cost of failing rhetoric is measured in lives lost. The way forward demands strategic reorientation. The metrics of success must shift from symbolic defiance to structural transformation.

The primary audience for these solutions are Muslim political actors. These include organised groups, individual religious and political leaders, intellectuals, activists, artists, and creatives both in the Muslim world and in Western diaspora. These actors are strategically positioned to drive cultural and political change.

Narrative Change 

A critical element of this reorientation involves narrative change. Islamic unity must be reframed, not as something to be abandoned, but as a concept reimagined beyond the outdated Marxist-influenced model advocating for a single unified state or struggle. Instead, Islamic unity should be grounded in shared religious beliefs, cultural identities, and most importantly, mutual geopolitical interests. Moreover, incorporating inclusive frameworks alongside Islamic principles can enrich political discourse and broaden its appeal. Clearly distinguishing moral imperatives from strategic and tactical decisions, without compromising ethical foundations, is vital for a coherent and impactful narrative.

Another crucial narrative shift involves diversifying political tactics by analysing and strategically targeting the structures underpinning state policies that undermine Muslim interests. Take the example of Gaza again: state policies in the neoliberal world order are heavily influenced by private corporate interests, notably arms manufacturers and defence companies, which significantly drive international support for Israel. Muslim political strategies should directly challenge these economic interests at multiple levels. Grassroots activism should target factories and disrupt supply chains through direct action. Simultaneously, robust lobbying efforts should be mobilised at the state level to counterbalance the political influence of arms manufacturers. Recognising and actively opposing these economic and corporate drivers of policy must become an essential narrative and strategic shift within Muslim political discourse.

Lastly, realism must anchor this evolving political narrative. Goals should be firmly grounded in the existing political realities and practical possibilities within current frameworks. Some objectives may appear less aspirational or morally satisfying, but political discourse must move beyond articulating what merely feels good or morally righteous. For instance, the liberation of Palestine as an overarching political objective, while morally compelling, is not realistically attainable in the short term. Many acknowledge that liberation is not within reach without a shift in the global balance of power. Therefore, the immediate stated goals must prioritise building robust political infrastructure and institutional capacities. Articulating such incremental objectives is often challenging because it lacks the emotional resonance and moral clarity of broader liberation rhetoric.

Capacity Building

The narrative shift will only matter if accompanied by successful capacity building. Tactics such as forming strategic voting blocs, expanding media influence, establishing policy-focused think tanks, and investing in academia and scholarship are important action points. Continuous skill and career development for emerging leaders will strengthen overall capabilities. Further, creating leverage within state systems should be cultivated by supporting political organisations capable of influencing policy decisions, particularly in geopolitically influential regions, such as the US and the UK. Concrete investments in political and civic infrastructure will translate grassroots activism and protests into tangible policy outcomes. For example, UKIP’s ability to influence UK foreign policy by targeting key voter concerns demonstrates the significant impact achievable through strategic political organisation and targeted electoral pressure. Lastly, sustained support for independent academic institutions and knowledge production initiatives will support the development of creative solutions.

The Muslim community is known for its generosity, but the direction of community investment needs review. While sending aid addresses immediate humanitarian needs, it does not create lasting political solutions. Moreover, these needs could be more effectively met by wealthy Muslim-majority states, such as the Gulf countries. Internally, community investments often focus on mosque building and development; although this is undoubtedly important, capacity building in political and civic infrastructure should be considered of equal if not higher importance to achieve long-term strategic goals.

Conclusion

Reflecting on the limitations and consequences of Islamist rhetoric, particularly amid the ongoing genocide and devastation in Gaza, it is clear that spiritual and religious discourse offers comfort and a sense of moral clarity to many. However, reliance on spiritual rhetoric as the sole or primary strategy for political engagement risks perpetuating illusions and unrealistic expectations. It inadvertently sidelines pragmatic considerations of institutional strength, strategic alliances, and material realities.

The critical challenge, therefore, is not in deepening religious conviction but rather in translating these beliefs into effective political strategies that build resilient institutions. The proposed solutions presented here are not exhaustive, definitive, or necessarily correct; they are simply suggestions intended to guide the conversation towards more realistic strategies. Islamist narratives often rely heavily on the comforts of idealised visions without providing sufficient practical guidance. The imperative is not to discard ethical commitments but to marry them with an astute understanding of political leverage, economic influences, and institutional capacities. The viability of any politically engaged Islamic discourse hinges on this transformation: from symbolic defiance to substantive, structural engagement. It is the myths that must be shed, not the ethics.

 

Related:

– Politics In Islam: On Muslims Partaking In Political Engagement In Non-Muslim Countries

– Rising To The Moment: What Muslim American Activists Of Today Can Learn From Successful Community Movements During The Bosnian Genocide

 

The post Beyond Badr: Transforming Muslim Political Vision 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

 

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. … Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”
– Martin Luther King Jr., from “Strength to Love,” 1963

“Have you considered: if your water were to become sunken [into the earth], then who could bring you flowing water?” – Quran, Surat Al-Mulk

Porsche 911

The masjid parking lot was almost empty, but at the west end, four young brothers in their twenties were shooting hoops around the freestanding basket on the edge of the lot. Their cars were parked nearby, and Deek paused to admire a gorgeous black Porsche 911. It was a classic model, with raised headlight housings, tinted windows, chrome rims, a large rear spoiler, and dual exhaust pipes. It was a work of art.

Why should he continue calling Ubers like a tourist? And he certainly wasn’t about to walk home or take the bus. Plus, he had to go to the bathroom, and he knew himself; if he ignored it much longer it would become urgent. This had happened more often as he grew older and gained weight. He’d had some close calls, where he wasn’t sure he’d make it to a bathroom in time. And there’d been one time when he didn’t make it in time. It was a shameful experience that he didn’t care to remember.

He looked back at the masjid, thinking he could use the facilities there, but it looked like everyone was gone. Zuhair’s car was just leaving the lot. The building was probably locked.

He waved to the basketball players. “Hey! Whose Porsche is this?”

They sauntered over. A short, dark-skinned youth with a massive mop of curls – probably Yemeni, Deek thought – spoke up.

“Is mine. I’m Shujaa. Thass my car. Why?” His voice was squeaky, as if he was still going through puberty, and he had a strong Arabic accent.

“How old are you?”

“Eh? What’s with the questions, uncle?”

“I want to buy the car.”

Negotiation

The boy laughed, and his friends followed suit. “You know what that is there? Thass a classic 1990 Carrera 911. Dual carburetors, Turbo wide body kit, four-wheel disc brakes, dual exhaust, Sunpro Super tachometer, three-spoke steering, hood pins, toggle switches, roll bar, Turbo-branded wheels… I built this baby myself. It could goes over two hundred miles an hour.”

As the boy described the car, Deek noted that his accent virtually disappeared, and his voice even deepened, as if his voice box was an extension of the car’s powerful motor.

“How much do you want for it?”

“Are you is serious?”

“Serious as a car crash. But how old are you? I need to know you’re a legal adult so you can make a deal.”

“I’m twenny, okay? Don’t worry about it. I’m a businessman. I own five smoke shops in this town. I sell you this car for two hundred fifty g’s.”

“Do you have a crypto wallet?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Be reasonable. I’ll give you two Bitcoins.”

“Two and a half.”

“Deal.” It was probably more than the car was worth, but Deek didn’t care. It was only money.

The boy, Shujaa, was excited but suspicious, afraid that Deek would cheat him. Eventually, they settled on an impromptu escrow arrangement by which Deek would set up the transfer, with everything done but hitting SEND. He would hand the phone to one of Shujaa’s friends. Shujaa would sign the pink slip over to Deek, then the friend would hit the SEND button.

This Was Power

Five minutes later, it was done. The boy pulled his belongings out of the trunk, piled them in the parking lot, and then handed Deek the key.

Deek climbed into the car and sat, luxuriating. The interior was amazing. Wide leather seats that were cool to the touch, spotless and in mint condition. Black dashboard with old-fashioned circular gauges. The car was well cared for. It smelled of leather, furniture polish, and also faintly of za’tar. He started the car and listened to its confident, tiger-like purr.

“Wait!” Shujaa said. “I feel like I shouldna done this. My Baba bought this car for me.”

Deek winked at him. “You’ll be okay. Hold onto the Bitcoin, it will make you rich.” He floored the accelerator and peeled out of the parking lot, narrowly missing the boys, who jumped out of the way. He tipped his head back and laughed as he hit the open road. He hadn’t succeeded in getting that jerk Ajeeb fired, but it was okay. Screw him. Zuhair was right, his offer had been petty. He was rich now. Time to put those silly grudges behind him. Time to put a lot of things behind him.

This was power now, finally. This was what money was for. You saw a car you wanted, you bought it on the spot, boom! Didn’t matter how much it cost. He’d forgotten about the sensation he’d had of tentacles rising from a dark sea inside him, trying to pull him down into selfishness and miserliness.

Instead, pushing the gas pedal down, feeling the car leap beneath him like a racehorse, he imagined himself a superhero with electricity running in his veins. Was this what it was like to be rich? The world lay at his feet, ripe and ready. He was a conqueror at the frontier of a new continent, and the only limit was his imagination.

An Urgent Need

As he sped through the streets on the way home, the feeling of needing to go to the bathroom became intensely urgent. He jiggled his knees and pressed his feet into the car floor. At a stoplight on Blackstone, he shouted at the light to turn green. He was only two miles from home, but he wasn’t going to make it. He turned the radio on, then, as loud rap music came blasting out, turned it off.

Without warning, he jerked the wheel and peeled into the tiny parking lot of the 7-11 at Blackstone and Bullard. Cars honked at him, and someone shouted. He walked quickly but stiff-legged into the store.

The bored young Indian man behind the counter was eating a pizza slice with one hand and holding his phone with the other as he jabbered away in his native language.

“Bathroom?” Deek asked.

The clerk shook his head. “Out of order.”

Deek didn’t believe that for a second. It was something they said to keep the riffraff out of their own private bathroom. He took out his wallet and put a five-dollar bill on the counter.

“Bathroom,” he said again.

The clerk scowled and shouted, waving Deek away with the pizza slice. “Out of order, out of order!”

Deek cursed, snatched the five-dollar bill, and lurched outside. The store’s dumpster was hidden inside a fenced enclosure. Deek thought maybe he could slip in there, squat, and do his business. But the enclosure was barely larger than the smelly and stained dumpster, and with his protruding belly, he couldn’t get in. He hurried back to the car, wiping his hands on his pants, and burned rubber tearing out of the parking lot, nearly hitting a fat lady smoking a vape and swigging a bottle of beer.

He was halfway home when he crapped his pants. The car filled with a terrible stink. Deek rolled down the windows and continued home with a wooden expression, his teeth clenched in shame. He prayed that no one was home, so he’d be spared the mortification of Rania or his daughters seeing him like this.

If Your Water Were to Become Sunken

This wasn’t fair. He was a multimillionaire, almost a 10% billionaire, yet he was not spared from the brutal exigencies of his aging and unhealthy body. What good was money when a simple bodily function could plunge him into a state of abject humiliation? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be!

A memory came to him of a day in his boyhood. His family had recently arrived from Iraq as refugees, and were quite poor. They were sitting at the bus stop on a hot summer day, shading their eyes against the glare, waiting for a bus to take them to the grocery store. An expensive sports car passed by and Deek pointed to it excitedly, saying in Arabic, “Look Baba, look how beautiful. This country has everything.”

In reply, his father had recited the last ayah of Surat Al-Mulk: “Have you considered: if your water were to become sunken [into the earth], then who could bring you flowing water?”

“All of this is an illusion,” his father said. “What power or wealth will they have if Allah takes away their sunlight, water, or air? Remember, Deek, we did not come here for fancy cars. We came for our freedom to worship Allah and practice our deen, and to work hard and provide for our family.”

Deek wondered now if this shame was a reminder from Allah that He, Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, could take away everything that mattered in an instant.

Shame

Rania would probably still be at work, and Amira, who was in 11th grade, would be at school. But Sanaya, whose college class schedule was irregular, might well be home. She didn’t have a car, so she either took the bus or rode her bicycle to school and work.

He let himself into the house and waddled quickly toward the bathroom in the master bedroom.

“Hi Baba!” Sanaya called from the kitchen. “Eww, what is that smell?”

Deek’s face grew hot with shame. He continued toward the bathroom. “It’s the car I bought,” he called over his shoulder. “The old owner had body odor. I’ll get it cleaned.”

“You bought a car? How? And why would you buy a smelly one?”

Deek shut the bathroom door and spent the next half hour cleaning himself and washing his clothing. He opened the bathroom window, sprayed the room with lemon air freshener, and lit one of Rania’s vanilla-scented candles. The bathroom would smell like a bakery, or so he hoped.

As he cleaned up, he found himself reciting the poem Dr. Zuhair had recited:

Forgiveness is among the traits of the noble,
And pardon is the mark of the great.
The truly gallant is he who forgives
Even when he has the power to retaliate.

It was a lovely little stanza, especially in Arabic. But who was Deek supposed to forgive? Rania, for being short-tempered with him? Fine, he forgave her, whatever. But Ajeeb? No way. The man had mocked him in public. It was an offense against his pride and honor. Deek would rather push the man’s head into a toilet and drown him than forgive him.

Zuhair was an interesting dude, widely admired in the community. Deek, who had not dealt with the man much, had always assumed it was because Zuhair had money. But now he realized it was more than that. Zuhair radiated a quiet, confident charisma. He’d stood there casually plucking and eating an orange as he turned down a million and a half dollar donation. On top of that, he was intelligent, and even though he was in his sixties, was built like a wrestler. Some people had it all, it seemed. The lucky ones. The chosen ones.

The Greatest Blessing

Deek was not one of those. He’d always struggled to earn money, lose weight, make friends, and be respected in the community. Nothing had ever come easily. The greatest blessing he had was his family. Rania, Sanaya, Amira. These were his treasures. How Rania had put up with him and loved him all these years, he did not know.

And now there was this. Money. Vast riches. It was incredible. He felt vindicated, as if Allah had anointed his forehead with olive oil and made him a king. As if he’d been walking in darkness for decades and Allah had suddenly plucked him out and brought him into shimmering light. And the best part was that it had happened through his own hard work and persistence. Years of studying, experimenting, losing money and trying again, working late into the night, never giving up.

When he emerged, cleaned and changed, Sanaya was nowhere in the house. He went outside and found her admiring the Porsche.

“It actually doesn’t smell all that bad,” Sanaya said. “Just needs a good detailing, inside and out. It’s a beautiful car. But I don’t get how you paid for it. Aren’t we, like, practically broke?”

Sanaya was a tall girl, taller than either of her parents, with mahogany skin, a prominent nose, and long black hair that she kept beneath a hijab when outside, like now. She wore thick glasses – a personal preference, as she didn’t like the feel of contact lenses. She always smelled of coffee, and Deek suspected that a disproportionate amount of her study time was spent at the university coffee shop. But she was an excellent student and should have attended a state university or UC, except that the family could not afford it, so she went to community college. She never even complained about it.

That was all over now. Sanaya could attend any university of her choosing, even an Ivy League school. And she didn’t have to work that night job at the convenience store anymore. Deek was suddenly choked with emotion, thinking about what a sweet girl his daughter was, and how patient she had always been. Amira too. They were both angels.

Work Husband

“Alhamdulillah,” he began to say, “I made some -”

“Mom’s home!’

Rania’s chocolate brown mini-SUV pulled into the driveway and parked behind the Porsche. She liked to park in the garage, and the Porsche was blocking the way. She wouldn’t be happy about that. But Deek had been in too much of a hurry when he’d arrived home to care about such things.

Rania emerged from the SUV with a cautious smile. There were circles beneath her eyes, and her shoulders sagged. Deek felt a pang of concern for her, and for an instant thought of going to her and embracing her. But her tone was tight and cold when she said, “What’s this? Do we have visitors?”

“Baba bought a car!”

“He did what?” Her smile was stiff now, as if she were wearing a mask.

“We really need to sit down and talk,” Deek said.

“That’s why I came home early. We need to talk about boundaries. Coming to my work like that was unacceptable. But is it true you bought this car?”

“Yes.”

Rania’s eyes went to the car, then to Deek. “I don’t even know what to say. It was one thing when you were nothing but a burden. A drain on our finances. But now you’re actively trying to sabotage this family. Your daughter -” Rania flung out a hand toward Sanaya – “goes to community college because that’s all we can afford! And here you are, an anchor around my neck -”

“Mom!’ Sanaya exclaimed.

“Are you having an affair?” These words came to Deek’s lips unbidden. He would never have suspected such a thing, but Rania had been so unkind and impatient with him lately, and the idea just popped into his head.

“I… What? No, of course not.”

Deek’s breath caught. “You don’t seem certain.”

“No, no, no. I mean, there’s a man at work, a doctor. He’s a friend, we talk. We eat lunch together. The other nurses call him my work husband.” Rania laughed nervously. “So silly.”

“I don’t want to hear this!” Sanaya covered her ears with her hands and walked quickly into the house.

“I guess I don’t either,” Deek said wearily. “I will remove the anchor from around your neck.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Overreacting

Deek walked into the garage, found two empty suitcases, took them into the master bedroom, locked the door, and began to pack. He didn’t pack carefully, but tossed items into one suitcase haphazardly. A handful of underwear, a pair of pants, and his pathetic little rock collection that he kept in a shoebox. Vanilla-scented smoke drifted from the bathroom, from the still-burning candle.

Rania began to knock, saying, “You’re overreacting. Let me in and let’s talk.”

Into the other suitcase he placed his computers, packing only the towers, keyboards and mice, and not bothering with the monitors. The whole job took only fifteen minutes.

When he opened the door, suitcases in hand, Rania said, “What the hell are you doing? I thought you wanted to talk?”

Deek thought he should be angry. If he was leaving his wife, didn’t it make sense to be angry? But he was only tired.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for two days,” he said. “You smacked me in the chest and put your hand on my mouth to shut me up, then you shouted at me in front of your co-workers. And now you say that I’m an anchor around your neck. You’ve changed. You were never like this with me before. It’s how I guessed about your work lover, or whatever you call him. I suppose that’s why you didn’t want me showing up at your work.”

He began to walk toward the front door, pulling the rolling suitcases behind him.

“I changed because you changed!” Rania yelled. “You used to work, you used to be a responsible man who paid the bills and cared for his family. Now you’ve become a sloth that sits in front of a computer all day, losing money. I want my husband back, the man I married.”

Deek opened the front door. “Seems like you’re on your way to finding someone else.”

“That’s nothing. He’s a married man. He flirts with me, it makes me feel good. That’s all!”

Rania followed him out into the driveway. “If you leave,” she said in a threatening tone, “the house is mine. Forget about getting anything at all.”

Deek looked at her sadly. “You jumped to that awfully quickly. That’s fine, you can have the house and everything else.” He could only fit one of the suitcases in the Porsche’s little trunk.

What About This Car?

“And what about this car?” Rania kicked one of the tires. “What insanity is this?” She was getting angrier by the moment, and Deek feared she might get a fireplace poker and start smashing the car’s windows.

He sighed heavily. “I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve had some good trades. I made money.”

“Then where is it? You spent it on a car when we have all these bills?”

“Check your bank account.” He went around to the passenger’s side and put the other suitcase in the seat. He realized at that moment that the car still smelled bad. He opened the suitcase, and the clothing he’d stuffed into it spilled out. He snatched up a t-shirt and leaned over to wipe the driver’s side seat, hoping Rania could not smell it. Then he put a towel on the seat. He closed the door and turned to find Rania standing right in front of him, holding up her phone.

“One hundred three thousand, five hundred ninety-two dollars? What on earth? There’s over a hundred thousand dollars in the account. Where did this come from?”

Deek shook his head. “You really don’t listen at all, do you?”

She stared. “Oh. The crypto? Your good trade that you were talking about?”

“Yes.”

“And you bought the car with that?”

“Yes.”

“How much did the car cost?”

“Two and a half Bitcoin.” Seeing her blank look, he translated. “About a hundred and twenty-five thousand.”

Rania clutched her throat as if she were choking. “A hundred and twenty-five thousand? Are you utterly mad? Don’t you think you should have discussed it with me first?”

“I tried, remember?”

Millions

“How much did you make on your trade?”

“It wasn’t one trade. It was a series of good trades over the last two days.”

“How much?”

Deek regarded her. Part of him counseled silence. What had Zuhair said? It’s clever to be discreet with your assets. If he and Rania were splitting up, it was not in his interest to tell her how much he’d earned. On the other hand, he wanted his vindication. He hungered for it. He wanted to see the look in her eyes when she realized just how badly she’d misjudged him. In the end, he only said, “Millions.”

Rania took a step back. “Millions?” She looked aghast. “For real?”

Deek nodded. Rania suddenly swayed on her feet. Deek leaped forward and grabbed her, then eased her down to the ground. She sat on the driveway with legs splayed and her face in her hands, breathing heavily as Deek kneeled beside her.

***

[Part 5 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:

Death in a Valley Town, Part 1 – Moving Day

The Deal : Part #1 The Run

 

The post Moonshot: A Short Story [Part 4] – If Your Water Were To Become Sunken appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

The sound of his laughter still echoes in my heart, even now. Hanafi, my husband of 14 years, had a way of filling a room with warmth and light. His humour was subtle but sharp, a quiet wit that always found its mark. He would smile in that knowing way of his, delivering lines that would catch us off guard and leave us laughing long after. He was our joy, our anchor, the man who made our house a home.

It happened swiftly. Too swiftly for me to fully comprehend. One moment, we were celebrating the arrival of our second daughter, a miracle we had waited 11 long years for. The next moment, I was standing in a living room filled with a silence so heavy it was almost deafening. I had a newborn cradled in my arms, her soft coos oblivious to the storm that had descended on us, and an 11-year-old daughter whose laughter had been replaced by tears.

My eldest, Hanafi’s shadow, had always been close to her father. She adored him in the way only a daughter could. She had hung onto his every word and shared his love for subtle jokes. When I told her what had happened, her wail pierced the stillness of the house. She clung to me, her tears soaking my shoulder, her voice trembling as she asked, “Why, Mommy? Why did Allah take him away?”

How could I answer her when I was struggling with the same question? How could I console her shattered heart when mine was breaking into a thousand pieces? I held her tightly and whispered the only words that brought me comfort: “Allah will not abandon us, sweetheart.”

The Day Everything Changed

The day my husband returned to Allah began like any other. I spent the morning preparing for and conducting a mid-semester test for my students, completely unaware of the test that awaited me later that night. Hanafi and I had chatted briefly about our plans to travel back to our hometown for the long weekend. We were excited, as always, to spend time with family. The day unfolded as it always did, an orderly routine, with no sign of the storm about to come.

That night, the phone rang just before midnight, shattering the silence of the house. I picked up the phone and, on the other end, I could hear wailing and screaming in the background. The person on the other line was clearly struggling to speak, and it took several moments before they finally delivered the words that would change everything: “Hanafi collapsed on the badminton court. It was a heart attack… he didn’t make it.”

The news hit me with a force I couldn’t comprehend. My knees buckled, and I gasped for air as my mind struggled to process what I had just heard. It felt as though the ground beneath me had disappeared, but somehow, my heart kept beating, even as my world shattered around me.

Breaking the news to my eldest daughter was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I walked into her room, my hands trembling, and gently shook her awake. She blinked at me, her face still heavy with sleep, and asked, “What’s wrong, Mommy?”

I struggled to find the words, but there was no way to soften the blow. When I finally told her, she froze and stared at me in disbelief. Then the tears came, deep, wrenching sobs that filled the room. She clung to me, crying. Her anguish mirrored my own, and all I could do was hold her tightly and cry with her.

As I stood between my two daughters, one shattered by grief and the other blissfully unaware of the loss that had forever changed her world, I realized this was indeed a great test: a test of faith and trust in Allah’s Plan, even when everything felt unbearably heavy.

The Legacy of Hajar

Hajar [alayhis] held onto tawakkul in her darkest hour. [PC: Emma Van Sant (unsplash)]

“Allah will not abandon us” – these words aren’t mine. They come from the story of Sayyidatina Hajar , a woman whose faith continues to inspire countless believers. Imagine her, standing in the barren desert of Mecca with no food and water for sustenance, and no shade to protect them from the relentless sun. Her husband, Prophet Ibrahim had left her there with their infant son, Ismail , under Allah’s Command. She did not waver. Instead, she asked one simple question: “Has Allah ordered you to do so?” When he replied yes, her faith shone through her words: “Then He will not abandon us.”

I hold on to Hajar’s story of trust and resilience. If she could summon strength in such dire circumstances, then, إن شاء الله “If Allah wills”, I could find it too. Her story is not just a historical tidbit. It is a timeless reminder that Allah never abandons His servants.

The Final Goodbye

At the forensic unit, many of our family members had already gathered to bid him farewell. Friends and relatives remarked on my calm demeanor, surprised that I wasn’t hysterical or wailing, as they might have expected when faced with such devastating news. Outwardly, I appeared composed, but inside, my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces. Every step I took toward him felt heavier than the last.

When I saw him, lying there so peacefully, he looked as if he were merely asleep. I had the honour of washing his body, a task both painful and sacred. It was a final act of love, the last time I would hold him. My hands trembled as I completed the ritual, my tears falling silently. At that moment, I made dua’, asking Allah to have mercy on him and to reunite us in Jannah one day.

It was then that I truly understood the meaning of inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un—to Allah we belong and to Him we shall return. As much as my heart ached, I knew this was part of Allah’s Plan, and I clung to the hope of meeting him again in the hereafter.

The Light of His Humour

Even in the darkest times, memories of my husband’s wit always bring us so much joy.

Once, the vet sent a message to Hanafi’s phone, which was registered with the clinic, so they contacted him whenever we sent a cat for treatment. My sister had recently sent her cat, Ani, to the vet, and the message simply stated it was time to pick Ani up.

Hanafi, ever the joker, announced that we needed to pick up Ani from the clinic, knowing full well that we also had an aunt named Ani who lived hours away. The confusion was immediate. Why would our aunt be at the clinic? And how had she ended up there? Hanafi let us stew in our bewilderment, quietly enjoying the chaos, until it finally dawned on us— the Ani he was referring to wasn’t our aunt but was the cat instead. The realization left us in fits of laughter at the absurdity of the situation and at Hanafi’s quiet delight in watching us unravel the mystery.

He also loved to tease. He knew my eldest daughter couldn’t stand seeing us display affection with one another. So, with his usual cheekiness, he’d purposely tease her by using pickup lines on me. “I need the tea sweet like you,” he’d say to me, with a mischievous smile, knowing it would earn him a dramatic eye-roll or an exaggerated groan.

Even now, in the midst of my grief, memories like these continue to bring a smile to my face, reminding me of the light he brought to our lives.

Faith as a Refuge

In the quiet moments, after the visitors had left and the house fell silent, I turned to Allah . Tears streamed down my face as I raised my hands in dua’, “Oh Allah, guide me through this. I cannot do this alone.”

It was in those moments of vulnerability that I felt the most strength. I thought of the Quranic verse:

“And with Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them except Him. And He knows what is on the land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls but that He knows it. And no grain is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry [thing] but that it is [written] in a clear record.” [Surah Al-An’am; 6:59]

If Allah knew the falling of a single leaf, surely, He knew the state of my shattered heart. Surely, He had a plan.

The Path Forward

“The days are long, and the challenges are many, but they are interwoven with moments of joy.” [PC: Dila Ningrum (unsplash)]

Single parenthood was a path I had never envisioned for myself, yet here I am. The days are long, and the challenges are many, but they are interwoven with moments of joy; my daughters’ laughter, their milestones, and the deep love we hold for each other.

My eldest, despite her grief, has shown a resilience that astounds me. We talk about her father often, sharing his jokes and remembering his wisdom. It’s our way of keeping his beautiful memory alive in our home. My youngest, too young to understand the loss, is now almost three years old. She is growing up healthy, cheerful, and looking more and more like him each day.

Each day begins with a dua’ for strength and ends with gratitude. Gratitude not only for what I still have, but also for what I have finally come to understand. I have learned that tawakkul, reliance on Allah , is what steadies the heart. I have also realised that vulnerability is not a sign of weakness. It is a path toward resilience and unimaginable strength. 

A Traveler’s Perspective

Life is a journey, a temporary stop on our way to the Eternal. The loss of Hanafi has made this reality clearer than ever. I am a traveler, as are we all. And while the pain of separation remains, knowing that he is now under the care of our Merciful Rabb brings me calm, and the hope of reunion in Jannah continues to sustain me.

Hajar’s story ends with the miraculous spring of Zamzam, a manifestation of Allah’s Promise and Mercy. My story is still unfolding, but I know one thing for certain: My Rabb will never abandon us.

If you are reading this and carrying your own burden of loss, know that you are not alone. Your pain is seen, your tears are counted, and your struggle is known by the One who created you. Trust in Him, even when the path is unclear.

As the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said upon the loss of his son, Ibrahim :

“The eyes shed tears, and the heart grieves, but we will not say except that which pleases Allah. Indeed, we are grieved by your departure, O Ibrahim.” [Sahih al-Bukhari 1303]

May Allah grant us the strength to endure, the faith to persevere, and the hope to continue our journey toward Him.

 

اللهم أجرني في مصيبتي، واخلف لي خيراً منها

“O Allah, reward me in my affliction and replace it with something better.”

 

Related:

– My Dearest Fetus: Enduring Unimaginable Loss

– Sharing Grief: A 10-Point Primer On Condolence

 

The post My Rabb Will Never Abandon Us: A Personal Journey Through Love, Loss, And Tawakkul appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

“We know what happens when our youth enter these universities…” The speaker pauses, his tone shifting to one of grave concern. “There are… influences.” His meaningful glance sweeps across the room of parents. “Even in Muslim Student organizations, we must be vigilant about certain… activities.” 

He leaves the specifics unspoken, allowing parental imaginations to fill the gaps with their worst fears. In the back of the room, young Muslims exchange knowing glances. Once again, their campus efforts (the dawn fajr prayers coordinated during exam weeks, the comprehensive mentorship systems developed for incoming Muslim freshmen, the tireless negotiations that secured permanent prayer spaces and halal dining options) are reduced to vague insinuations of moral compromise. The concerned nods from parents -who have never even visited these spaces- speak volumes about the power of suggestion.

The Subtle Betrayal

There exists a betrayal more subtle than outright rejection of faith. It operates within our own communities, powered by those who claim to protect Islam while undermining its future. It is the systematic dismantling of Muslim youth organizations under the banner of “moral vigilance.” While external forces challenge our faith, we fracture from within, transforming principles into weapons against progress. Have we forgotten the divine warning?

“O you who have believed, avoid much [negative] assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin. And do not spy or backbite each other. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his brother when dead? You would detest it. And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is Accepting of repentance and Merciful.” [Surah Al-Hujurat; 49:12]

This betrayal is particularly devastating because it comes from those positioned as guardians of our tradition.

When young Muslims are already navigating hostile environments where their identity is questioned, their faith is misrepresented, and their very presence is sometimes unwelcome, they deserve safe harbors within their own community. Instead, they often face a second front of criticism from those who should be their strongest advocates.

Many critics speak as though our educational institutions and youth organizations represent existential threats to Islamic identity, despite evidence to the contrary. The reality? The overwhelming majority of Muslim students maintain their prayers, fast during Ramadan, avoid prohibited substances, and strive to live honorably despite immense pressures.

Terms like “haram” and “bidah” are deployed with devastating casualness, transforming spiritual concepts meant for careful scholarly application into blunt instruments for social control. This linguistic violence does not strengthen faith; it fractures it, creating unnecessary divisions where unity is desperately needed.

Celebrating Our Youth’s Achievements

What critics consistently overlook, whether through oversight or intention, is the extraordinary achievement these young Muslims represent. Beyond the noise of criticism stands remarkable evidence: vibrant MSA communities, transforming inhospitable campuses into sanctuaries of Islamic identity, Young Muslims nurturing high schoolers at their most formative age. These are not mere social gatherings but sophisticated institutions where Quran study deepens, dawah reaches seeking hearts, halal dining expands, and belonging flourishes in environments that often question their very presence.

“These organizations provide essential lifelines that transform campus life for Muslim students.” [PC: Kiko Camaclang (unsplash)]

These organizations provide essential lifelines that transform campus life for Muslim students. Many establish vibrant spiritual rhythms by organizing regular congregational prayers, with some even coordinating fajr prayers at dawn, creating sacred spaces where students can gather amid hectic academic schedules. In some MSAs, you’ll find daily Quran halaqahs for recitation, while others host weekly dhikr sessions that nourish spiritual hearts, or organize Quran memorization groups where students support each other in preserving divine words. These aren’t merely social groups but often serve as spiritual sanctuaries where faith practices that might otherwise be abandoned in college find enthusiastic revival.

During Ramadan, these organizations frequently become essential support networks, with some planning community iftars strategically scheduled around midterms to ensure no student breaks fast alone during stressful academic periods. What mainstream narratives miss is how certain student groups, despite crushing academic pressures, coordinate full eight-rakat taraweeh prayers, organize transportation for late-night qiyam prayers at local masjids, and maintain spiritual discipline while embodying the prophetic emphasis on community building, the very foundation upon which Islamic tradition thrives.

Beyond spiritual practices, many establish dedicated prayer rooms through persistent advocacy with university administrations, often after years of negotiations. Some organize interfaith dialogues that challenge Islamophobia, execute sophisticated charity and volunteering initiatives that benefit wider communities, and create comprehensive support systems for incoming Muslim freshmen navigating campus life. Some have established weekly “chai and chats” that build brotherhood and sisterhood, sustaining students through the isolation that often accompanies minority faith status.

Across campuses, these groups negotiate for halal food options in dining halls, establish collective funding systems for brothers and sisters experiencing financial strain, and create resources that benefit Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

The leadership pipelines, governance structures, and resource management in some of these organizations exceed the effectiveness of established Islamic centers operating with decades of donations and professional staff. These aren’t amateur efforts, but sophisticated institutions built by students who apply Islamic principles to create models of community that many masajid could learn from.

These Muslim organizations nurture spaces where Islamic identity is worn without apology. Hallways resound with confident “As-salamu alaykum” greetings, spoken not in hushed tones but with dignified assurance. Young men fulfill responsibilities requiring physical presence, Sisters lead with intellectual rigor and administrative precision while maintaining unwavering commitment to their values.

Beyond protecting identity, MSAs transform souls. Cultural Muslims, raised with little more than Eid celebrations and occasional prayers, discover in these spaces what their homes never provided: Islam as a living reality rather than inherited custom. Their peers demonstrate faith not as a burden, but liberation. For truth-seekers adrift in a sea of relativism, these organizations become islands of clarity where authentic Muslim youth, intellectually engaged yet spiritually grounded, embody an Islam that speaks directly to modern hearts.

This living dawah converts more souls than a lifetime of formal lectures ever could; More astonishing still is Allah’s transformation of these newcomers into Islam’s most passionate advocates. Those who embrace shahada in these environments frequently become, within just months, the very speakers whose fresh perspectives move lifelong Muslims to tears, and some become activists whose principled civic engagement commands respect across campus. Having known both spiritual emptiness and fulfillment, these new Muslims bring unmatched conviction to their work. While critics obsess over minor infractions, Allah guides souls to eternal salvation through these imperfect but sincere communities. The critics’ fleeting words will vanish; the reward of those who guided others to goodness will remain forever, as our Prophet ﷺ promised: “Whoever guides someone to goodness will have a reward similar to the one who does it.”

What critics consistently misunderstand, is the remarkable balance achieved in these spaces, where tradition finds harmony with contemporary realities without compromise. These students aren’t diluting their faith but revitalizing it through practical application, proving that Islamic principles thrive when embodied with sincerity rather than performative rigidity.

Civic Courage

Perhaps most remarkable has been their civic engagement during watershed American moments. While others posted on social media or complained in private, these young Muslims mobilized thousands, educated communities, and shaped national conversations. From standing against the genocide of Palestinians to other humanitarian crises, they’ve demonstrated that Islamic values demand collective action.

MSA-led civic engagement [PC: HasanMajed (unsplash)]

These young Muslims understand that the Islamic tradition has always been one of engagement, not isolation. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ did not retreat from society but transformed it through active participation. Despite facing potential academic penalties and career repercussions, these students risked their futures by organizing campus sit-ins, educating peers about humanitarian crises, and boldly challenging institutional silence. They embody the Quranic principle:

“And cooperate in righteousness and piety, but do not cooperate in sin and aggression.” [Surah Al-Ma’idah; 5:2]

The Hypocrisy of Selective Standards

The hypocrisy is striking. The same speakers who condemn young Muslims for gathering in cafes after taraweeh move comfortably through mixed gatherings at conferences and fundraising events. They enforce rigid standards specifically where young people gather, while granting themselves contextual flexibility. Our Prophet ﷺ warned: “It is enough evil for a person to belittle his Muslim brother.” The Quran cautions:

“O you who have believed, why do you say what you do not do?

Great is hatred in the sight of Allah that you say what you do not do.” [Surah As-Saff; 61:2-3]

This rush to judgment stands in stark contrast to our scholarly tradition. The great Imam Malik ibn Anas demonstrated true wisdom through intellectual humility. When asked why he would answer some questions with ‘I don’t know’ despite his vast knowledge, he replied: “Nothing destroys knowledge more than when a scholar is too ashamed to say ‘I don’t know.'” Yet today, self-appointed guardians appear to know everything about everyone’s failures, proclaiming judgments where even the greatest scholars would hesitate.

Constructive Criticism vs. Destructive Condemnation

These organizations deserve scrutiny -all Islamic institutions do-, but criticism must come with dignity and wisdom. When concerns arise, let them be delivered with the adab of our tradition: privately where possible, with specific remedies rather than vague condemnation, and wrapped in recognition of the broader good being accomplished. The Prophet ﷺ corrected without humiliating, guided without destroying, and nurtured growth rather than cultivating shame.

True guardianship means standing beside these young Muslims as they navigate complex realities, offering wisdom when asked and support throughout. This approach honors both the critic and the criticized. As Imam al-Shafi’i wisely noted: “I have never debated anyone without praying that Allah would cause the truth to flow from his heart to mine, and from my heart to his.” This spirit of mutual respect preserves the dignity of our youth while allowing their organizations space for growth.

A Message to Parents

Parents, consider carefully. The vast majority of Muslim youth maintain their faith through college years and beyond. They pray. They fast. They avoid prohibited substances. They strive for halal relationships.

Your greater concern should be their mental well-being in environments often hostile to their identity. Fear the consequences of isolation far more than the phantom threat of moral corruption. By fueling suspicion against these organizations, you may sever them from the very support system they desperately need. Remember Allah’s Command:

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

A Call for Prophetic Wisdom

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, upon seeing a man being pursued for a sin, silenced those chasing him, saying: “You have not helped him with regards to Allah, nor have you helped him against his own self.” Where is this prophetic wisdom today?

What these youth represent is not merely the future of our community; they are its present. They are not Muslim leaders in training; they are Muslim leaders now, addressing challenges their elders often cannot see or understand.

Conclusion

Let those who rush to condemn our young people remember the words of Imam Ali: “Do not look at who speaks, but look at what is said.” The achievements of Muslim student organizations speak volumes, creating leaders, maintaining Islamic identity in challenging environments, and building sustainable structures for faith to flourish.

To those building these communities despite criticism: Your work stands as testimony. Every student who finds their way to Allah through your efforts is the true measure of success. “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” [Surah Ar-Ra’d; 13:11]

The sustainable future of Islam in Western contexts depends not on perfect adherence to every detail, but on building robust communities where faith can grow. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Make things easy and do not make them difficult, give glad tidings and do not repel people.”

Perhaps it is time we followed his example in how we treat those building the future of our faith.

 

Related:

– From The Chaplain’s Desk: Valuing And Nurturing Faith On Campus

– Quranic Verses For Steadfastness For The Valiant Protesters On Campus

 

 

The post Guardians Of Faith, Not Gatekeepers: Honoring The Work Of Muslim Student Organizations 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

 

“If you want to find out what a man is… give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity.” – Robert G. Ingersoll

“Anything I do to elevate myself in the eyes of others is hollow.” – Wael Abdelgawad

Tentacles Slithering Up

As he walked out of the hospital, the Jumu’ah prayer alarm sounded on his phone. Man, he’d forgotten it was Friday. The crypto world operated every moment of every day and night, so one day was no different from another. He’d often missed Jumu’ah when trading crypto, but he wanted to attend today. He felt like he’d been a prisoner in a tiny cell for five years, and had just been liberated. Plus, he owed it to Allah, to thank Him for this long-awaited success.

It was too late to go to Masjid Madeenah, where he usually attended. Instead, he caught an Uber to Masjid Umar, the mostly Arab masjid in north Clovis. He wasn’t fond of Masjid Umar. The community was insular and wealthy, and although Deek himself was Arab, he never felt like he fit there.

In the Uber, he checked his crypto wallet. Solana was up 15%, and New York Killa was up 29%. His net worth was now $80 million. If he’d kept the bulk of the New York Killa, rather than selling, he would have much more. But what did it matter? He would never be able to spend $80 million anyway.

On impulse, he cashed out some of the Solana and initiated another transfer to the joint bank account, sending $80,000 this time. His only regret was that these funds had not yet arrived in the account. He would have liked to go shopping before prayer, so he could show up wearing something snazzy. An Armani suit maybe, and Italian leather shoes. And perhaps some jewelry and a new haircut. As it was, he was wearing his same old jeans and Hawaiian shirt that he wore every day.

Deek was aware that all these thoughts – divorcing Rania, keeping the money secret, showing off for the people – were like tentacles slithering up out of a dark sea that swelled inside him. He was not a fool. He knew how Shaytan could whisper in a man’s ear. When he was a boy in Iraq, he’d learned the Quran at his father’s feet, as well as studying Hanafi fiqh with the local shaykh. He had a good understanding of Islam and had not forgotten it.

The Crusher

His family came to the USA when he was nine years old. He did well in school, but after high school, he rebelled and went to art college, and became a fine art painter, much to his father’s chagrin. He was talented, and put on a few gallery shows. But when he married Rania he gave that up and took a more respectable job teaching elementary school. Until, sick of laboring in the lower middle-class echelon, tired of being poor, he quit that in turn to risk everything on the crypto revolution.

His parents were both gone now, which was a blessing in a way, as they had not been around to see what a failure he had become.

He still remembered much of the Quran he’d learned as a youth. Obviously he still knew Juz ‘Amma, and could recite Surat Al-Humuzah:

Woe to every backbiter, slanderer,
who amasses wealth and counts it ˹repeatedly˺,
thinking that their wealth will make them immortal!

Not at all! Such a person will certainly be tossed into the Crusher.
And what will make you realize what the Crusher is?
˹It is˺ Allah’s kindled Fire,
which rages over the hearts.

It will be sealed over them,
˹tightly secured˺ with long braces.

The surah painted a stark portrait of an evil man hunched over his money, counting it obsessively. Someone who, perhaps, had accumulated wealth through the cheap labor and suffering of others, or a leader who stole the resources of his own people. Such people crushed the spirits of others in order to enrich themselves, and so Allah would crush them in turn.

That was justice. Deek did not consider himself such a person. He’d earned his money lawfully and through his own study, dedication, and sleepless nights. He hadn’t robbed anyone.

Yet still he was frightened. He had to find a way to avoid being eaten alive by this wealth.

The Blockade of Bani Hashim

Masjid Umar was encircled by tall palm trees, and as the Uber pulled up Deek saw that three of them had been torched. They still stood, but they’d been badly burnt. The whole area stank of charcoal and ash. He wondered what had happened, but there was no time to speculate, as he was late. He hurried into the masjid.

The prayer area was small and crowded. There was no room to sit, so Deek stood at the back. The Imam told the story of the mushrikeen’s boycott and blockade of Bani Hashim during the Makkan period, and the extreme hardship and even starvation it had caused. The Imam spoke about how this boycott ended. Namely, five of the disbelievers, who in spite of their rejection of Islam were fair men, agreed to speak against this injustice.

At the same time, the Prophet had a dream in which he saw that the agreement the mushrikeen had signed to impose the boycott had been destroyed. The document had been stored in the Ka’bah, and the Prophet saw that all of the paper had been eaten by ants, except for the words Bismillah.

It was a fascinating story, and was yet another example of how Allah never abandoned the believers. Though the Prophet and his family and followers had gone through a period of extreme hardship, Allah the Most High engineered events that brought them out of hardship, though not immediately, as the most terrible blows of all still awaited the Prophet . His wife, Khadijah, and his protector, Abu Talib, both died. With Makkah having become unsafe for him, he walked to Ta’if to preach to the leaders there, but they rejected him and ordered him stoned.

It was only after all of this that the people of Madinah began to embrace Islam, and the hijrah began – finally ending the oppression of the Makkan period.

To Be Sincere

Deek felt that it was destiny that he had come to this particular masjid today, as he needed to hear this message. Problems end, he thought, but not immediately. Sometimes you go from the frying pan to the fire, and only then, if you are patient, do you escape to the garden and the cool river running through it.

I must do better, he thought. I must not let the wolf eat me alive. I mustn’t lose myself. I have to do good with this money. I have to be sincere.

These thoughts were like an intellectual exercise, however, or like trying to solve a problem of color or texture with a painting. Wasn’t it all subjective? He had no idea what it meant to be sincere with money, since he’d never had money. All he could think of was that he should donate. Donate to the poor, orphans, the masjid, and so on.

The opportunity presented itself sooner than expected. The salat ended, and people began to file out of the masjid. Deek found a chair to sit in to put his shoes on. He’d gained a lot of weight during the crypto years, and it was difficult to bend over enough to put on socks and shoes. When he was finally ready to go, most of the crowd had dissipated.

A Detested Countryman

Outside, a group of five middle-aged brothers stood beside the burnt trees, gesturing and talking animatedly. Two of them he recognized immediately. One was Dr. Zuhair, a classically handsome Egyptian engineer with a thick mustache, who looked like he could play Gamal AbdelNasser in a movie. Zuhair sat on the boards of many local Islamic organizations and was said to be very wealthy.

The other man he recognized was Dr. Ajeeb, the former principal of the Islamic school Deek’s children had attended for many years. The tall, thin Iraqi wore a loose black suit with a white shirt and red tie, which made him look like a flagpole from which the Iraqi flag hung limply. His face was thin and brown, while his teeth were cigarette-stained.

Deek remembered now. Ajeeb had been fired from the principal job a few years ago and was now the program director for this masjid. He was not a medical doctor, but rather had a PhD in Islamic Sciences from the Islamic University of Najaf in Iraq.

In spite of being countrymen, Deek and Ajeeb had never gotten along. Back when his kids had attended the school, Deek had complained many times that the Islam, Quran, and Arabic programs were hidebound by Middle Eastern tradition. Everything was rote memorization, and the teachers were recent immigrants who could barely speak English. Some still thought they could discipline students by shouting or hitting their hands with rulers. It was disgusting.

Furthermore, the only organized sport at the school was soccer, rather than the baseball, basketball, or American football that were more popular in this country. It was as if they had used a thousand cranes to lift a school out of the Middle East and drop it into the USA. Deek would have pulled his children out, except the thought of sending them to public school terrified him. He himself had attended an American public school, and he knew what a moral cesspool it was.

Deek had actually gone to the board and complained about Ajeeb, but they hadn’t been interested. Deek was poor and could barely pay the monthly school fees. He certainly was not a financial supporter or donor. His opinion carried little weight.

He’d been happy when Ajeeb was fired, but disappointed that one of the local masjids hired him.

An Offer To Help

Deek walked up to Ajeeb and put a hand on his shoulder. “Doctor,” he said. “What happened here?”

Ajeeb turned and smiled thinly. “Brother Deek. Someone tried to burn the masjid.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know.”

“Doesn’t look like they tried very hard. These trees aren’t even close to the building. Someone wanted to make a statement, maybe. Or kids.”

Ajeeb made a tut-tut sound with his tongue. “This is very serious, brother. It’s not for joking.”

“Why,” demanded a portly Egyptian with curly hair and thick glasses, “aren’t there security cameras?”

“We have been meaning to do it,” Ajeeb replied. “We didn’t have the funds.”

“I could help with that,” Deek offered. “I’ll cover the whole thing, cameras and installation.” It felt incredibly strange to say these words. A voice inside him, representing a persona still stuck in the past – and in his case, the past meant yesterday – protested, What are you doing? You can’t afford that! Rania will kill you. Having money was a strange sensation, like being alone in a room for forty years, then suddenly finding a beautiful woman sitting on the bed with you. It would take him a while to believe it was true.

Ajeeb turned only partway to face him and held up a hand. “This will take more than your $100 donation, ya Deek. But thank you.”

The portly brother snickered. A few other men in the group smiled. Only Dr. Zubair did not share their amusement. He frowned disapprovingly at Ajeeb, but said nothing.

An Incident From The Past

Deek felt himself go cold with rage. Ajeeb’s mocking comment was a reference to an annual school fundraiser several years ago. It was a banquet, with almost 500 local Muslims in attendance. Ajeeb had the microphone and was asking for $5,000 donations, having worked his way down from $25,000. Teenage boys and girls walked the floor with pledge cards, ready to take pledges. Deek, who was there with Rania and the girls, waved a girl over to his table. Most donors filled out the pledge cards with promises of large donations. Deek couldn’t do that, but he always tried to give something, so he handed the girl a hundred dollars in cash.

Apparently the girl was confused, not knowing what to do with the cash. Dr. Ajeeb said, “I’m looking for one more $5,000 donation. Ask yourselves what you can spend for the future of your children and this community.” At that exact moment, the girl, still standing beside Deek, raised her hand and called out, “One hundred dollars?” A few people laughed, while Ajeeb waved an irritated hand toward a table beside the dais, where three college students were collecting the pledge cards.

It was humiliating. Later, as he drove the family home, Rania rubbed his shoulder and assured him that the girl had not intended to embarrass him. But as she said it, she smiled. Deek never forgot that smile. He could forgive people their trespasses against him, though not easily. But he was not the type to forget.

A Dark Fantasy

Deek stood beside the burnt trees, beside these men, but not among them. The men stood in a circle and did not move to admit him. The nonverbal message was clear: You are not our equal. Let the important people talk. A vision came to Deek’s mind. Ajeeb would be walking at night, perhaps out for an evening stroll after dinner. Deek would steal up behind him and sedate him with a chloroform-soaked cloth. He would drag Ajeeb into a van, drive him down to the San Joaquin River, and drown him. The river would carry his body away, and it would never be traced back to Deek.

It was only a dark fantasy. He’d had such thoughts many times, about various people, but would never do it. But what could he do in the real world to spoil things for Ajeeb and make his life harder? He was a man of resources now. Money talked, and BS walked.

The Dashing Dr. Zuhair

He approached Dr. Zuhair and took his arm. The man’s muscles were firm beneath Deek’s hand. MashaAllah, Zuhair was probably sixty-five years old, yet Deek could picture him in a camo vest and carrying an AK-47, pursuing bandits in the Sinai. Deek led the handsome man away from the group and toward the back wall of the parking lot, which butted up against a residential neighborhood on the other side. Orange and lemon trees stretched their branches over the wall.

Deek said, “Doctor, are you on the board of this masjid?”

“Yes,” Zuhair replied cheerily. “I’m the board president. Why?”

“I’m serious about paying for the cameras. Actually, I want to make a large donation to the masjid.”

“Pardon my frankness,” Zuhair said, “but how can you afford that? Don’t take me wrong, I respect everyone regardless of financial status, but you are not known to be wealthy.”

Deek pursed his lips, considering. If he wanted to be taken seriously, he would have to give something up.

“Are you familiar with cryptocurrency?”

“I own a little Bitcoin. I am far from an expert.”

“Well, I am an expert. And I have done very well with it, alhamdulillah.”

“Okay… How much would you like to donate?”

Deek licked his lips nervously. “One million dollars.” Even to his own ears it sounded like a jest, so he was not surprised when Zuhair laughed, punched Deek’s shoulder, and said, “Okay, you got me brother. That was a good joke.” Zuhair reached up to one of the overhanging branches, snagged an orange, and began to peel it.

Providing Proof

“How is your family these days?” Zuhair asked as he popped an orange wedge into his mouth. “You have two daughters, yes? They attended school with my daughter when they were young.”

“They’re good, alhamdulillah.”

A pigeon landed in the parking lot and strutted by, cooing.

“I’ll show you something,” Deek said. “Give me a minute. But I need your word that this stays between me and you.”

“Okay, no problem,” Zuhair said, eating more of the orange. “I give you my word. This orange is amazing, mashaAllah. You should have one.”

“Aren’t those the neighbor’s trees?”

“Yes, but the branches are on our side. They can’t pick them over here.”

Deek took out his phone and held it at an angle where Zuhair could not see the screen. Opening the Phantom app, he saw that Solana was holding steady, but Killa was up a bit more. His balance was 81 million and change. He quickly created a new wallet and transferred $3 million in Solana to it. There was no point in letting Zuhair see the full extent of his wealth. That was not for anyone to know – not the government, nor even his wife.

The whole process took only a minute. Then he turned the phone to show Zuhair the screen.

Zuhair gave a long, low whistle. “You made three million dollars in crypto. That is very impressive, brother. You should teach me how to do that!” A sly look crept across his face. “Tell the truth. Is this a prank? Am I on a hidden camera show?”

“It’s real. And I want to donate one million dollars.”

Two Conditions

“Allahu Akbar!” Zuhair tried to clap his hands but ended up clapping the orange. “This is wonderful. You are giving one-third of your wealth. That is so generous.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Allah barik feek, may Allah bless you. There are many things we can do with this money. We have been wanting to build a proper basketball court for the youth, and an outside wudu’ area for when the main building is locked, and -”

“I have conditions, though.”

Zuhair lifted an eyebrow. “Most people do not impose conditions. They donate fee sabeel-illah.”

“Most people don’t donate a million dollars.”

“True.”

“I want a seat on the board, and I want Ajeeb fired.”

Zuhair shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. “The position on the board is not impossible for a donation of this magnitude, but as far as Doctor Ajeeb, this request is beneath you. It is inappropriate. Even if I already wanted to fire him, I would not do it for money.”

“I’m giving you a million dollars.”

“You could give a hundred million, I would still say no. It’s a matter of integrity. We simply don’t do things that way. Please. Just donate the money with a pure heart, with no conditions. It will bring you great rewards from Allah.”

Deek glared. He was pretty sure that if he gave a hundred million, Ajeeb would be out on his skinny behind in a hot minute. Everyone had a price. It sounded like Zuhair already wanted to fire the man anyway. So what was this talk of integrity? As if Deek was trying to corrupt him somehow.

The Traits of the Noble

“What if I make it a million and a half?”

“Wonderful, ma-sha-Allah.” He pocketed the orange peels and reached up to pick another. “SubhanAllah. These oranges are so juicy.”

“But,” Deek said pointedly, “with the same conditions.”

“Then no.”

Deek’s voice rose. “What if I buy the whole masjid then? I could do whatever I want after that.”

Zuhair laughed softly. “You’d need a lot more than three million for that.”

“I have a lot more than three million.” As soon as he said this, he chastised himself for letting his ego get the better of him.

“Ah.” Zuhair wagged a finger at Deek. “It’s clever to be discreet with your assets. But still no. The masjid belongs to a non-profit organization. You cannot buy a non-profit org, there’s no provision for it under the law. It’s an interesting intellectual problem, though. You could try to buy the organization’s assets if they were willing to sell. As I said, you could perhaps negotiate for a seat on the board if you donated enough. Or you could always start your own masjid.”

“That’s not the point. Ajeeb is not a good person. He’s not good for the community.”

Zuhair sighed as if Deek were a recalcitrant pupil, then ate another orange wedge. “There is a poem,” he said between bites, “by Mufti ʿAbd al-Latif bin ʿAli Fathallah. He was a Lebanese poet from the eighteenth century. He wrote:

العَفوُ مِن شِيَمِ الكِرامْ

وَالصّفْحُ مِن شَأْنِ العِظامْ

وَأَخُو الشَّهامَةِ مَن عَفا

عَن قُدْرَةٍ عَلَى الانْتِقامْ

“That means -”

“I understand it,” Deek broke in. He recited:

“Forgiveness is among the traits of the noble,
And pardon is the mark of the great.
The truly gallant is he who forgives
Even when he has the power to retaliate.”

Zuhair nodded, impressed. “Very good.” He reached up and plucked another orange from the tree, and held it out to Deek.

Forgiveness did not come easily to Deek. His homeland was a nation of ancient feuds and brutal dictators. Even though he’d come to America quite young, the scorching blood of his people blew through his veins like the desert winds. Or maybe that was a cop-out. Maybe he was fully capable of being a better man. But did he want to? He wasn’t sure. Money was what he had always craved, and he had it now.

Without a word, and without taking the proffered fruit, Deek turned and walked away. He’d tried to do the right thing. He’d tried to give away a million and a half dollars, and they didn’t want it. How was he supposed to use his money for good when the people on the other end wouldn’t cooperate? He was done with that. It was time to think of himself and his own needs. Everyone else could get out of the way, or get run over.

***

[Part 4 will be published next week inshaAllah]

 

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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

Pieces of a Dream | Part 1: The Cabbie and the Muslim Woman

 

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