Through discussion and community work, I have come to realize that I am not alone in these realizations. So many Muslims, especially females, have long felt underrepresented at these mainstream Islamic gatherings. If one attends these events solely for an ‘iman-boost’ (faith-boost) or to add to already healthy spiritual states, that’s great – but what about those sisters struggling to gain footing in the job market and sitting quietly in the audience while listening to the speaker’s biased views on females in the workplace? What about the silencing of brothers in the audience suffering from depression or low self-esteem by constantly being compared to the manliness of the Sahabah (companions of the Prophet ﷺ, peace be upon him) they are encouraged to emulate? Some might question whether or not it is the responsibility of these events to delve deeper and strive to form connections with the audience through recognizing their struggles – many of which are dependent on race, gender, and context. However, considering that Islamic events serve (somewhat) to the fill the gap between the mosque and the home, and for many Muslims are their only means to direct Islamic learning, I would answer that question with a resounding yes.

I now know that I was certainly not the only one who often left these gatherings feeling worse than before I entered. For me, I left feeling as though I was never Muslim enough, feminine enough, good enough – I simply was not enough. Reading the work of shame-expert Brené Brown has led me to the sad conclusion that the spiritual bypass so many of us experience as a result of attending these events may be in part due to the fact that our Islamic teachings are often delivered in a package of shame. This has less to do with the teachings themselves – which are glorious and uplifting – and more to do with the scare-tactics employed by those doing the teaching.

Perhaps we feel miserable and inadequate at these events because we are shamed for the burdens we carry.

Shame on you for having done drugs and alcohol.

Shame on you for having a boyfriend or toying with the idea.

Shame on you for having a poor relationship with your parents.

Shame on you for occasionally missing your prayers.

Shame on you for ever considering removing your hijab (headscarf).

Shame on you for being sexually assaulted.

These things may not be said overtly, but they are certainly implied. Even when we are reminded to find solace in God’s forgiveness and mercy, this usually is preceded by dollops of shame, shame, and more shame. How do you recognize this shame? Sit with your feelings, and question whether or not what you have heard has actually had a deep impact on your life – or has left you feeling terrible about yourself. Remember, the true teachings of Islam liberate the human mind and soul. If you have found yourself experiencing the opposite, which is undoubtedly some form of oppression, it is high time to question whether it is actually Islam you are learning – or the subjective views of another individual or group. If what you have learned had any true impact on you, know that your behaviour would have changed. You would have become the better person you wished to be. You would have gone from being inspired to becoming a source of inspiration.

For many – I would argue most of us in fact – this just is not happening.

Instead, like a drug fiend looking for a high, we attend event after event searching for that iman-rush. Once the high of the hit has faded, we go back to our terrible habits and troubling states of mind – subconsciously seeking the next event or gathering to fill our spiritual voids.

I am not blaming the events, the event organizers or the speakers. Nor am I blaming you and me. I just think it is high time for all of us to start asking questions like: Do I truly have the intention to change after attending X event or seminar? From whom and from where am I learning my Islam? What perspective or worldview is informing this speaker’s understanding of Islam – and is it truly Islamic? Am I using this Islamic event to genuinely grow, or just to make myself feel better without any practical intention of changing? Is the knowledge I am learning spiritually fulfilling, or is it time that I seek something greater?

These are all very personal questions and the answers will be even more subjective. However, if we are looking to overcome the spiritual impasse we have found ourselves in, it is critical that we begin to take a closer look at ourselves and our surroundings. To answer the above questions will take intentional self-awareness, honesty, courage, increased emotional intelligence, and a striving towards critical thinking. It will also require striving to learn Islam on one’s own; to engage in a healthy amount of self-study to equip oneself with the truth, rather than solely relying on external resources to fulfill one’s personal responsibility for seeking knowledge.

With some soul-searching and healthy questioning, you may find that in actuality, Islamic events have been taking the place of what you truly really need: a personal teacher, a therapist, a friend, a loving family member, a community, acceptance, an Islamic identity – the list goes on.

I believe that one’s Islamic self-concept should extend outside of Islamically conducive environments such as events, lectures, halaqahs, retreats or the mosque, into other realms of one’s life. Only then can we truly examine the practical impact that our learning is having on our lives. Anyone can be a great Muslim when surrounded by other great Muslims at various events and gatherings, but the truth is in who you are when you are with your family, at work, at school and, especially, when you are alone.

As well as calling my brothers and sisters in faith to self-examine, I also call for a reform in our delivery of and approach to Islamic events.

For organizers:

• Know your audience – for example, if you have found a spike in the number of deaths due to drugs in your community, organise less conferences on marital relations and more on drug abuse.
• Focus less on surface issues such as how to segregate the genders, and more on the spiritual condition of your community members.
• Intentionally choose speakers who understand your community’s needs and are equipped with not only sound Islamic knowledge, but an inherent – and practical – wisdom and spirituality.
• Quality > Quantity. Seek to draw spirituality, and not just high attendance numbers.
• Invite speakers from diverse backgrounds, different ethnicities, careers and both genders. Focus too on capitalizing on the talents of intellectuals who already exist in your community as opposed to consistently bringing in speakers from outside.

For speakers:

• Have an understanding of the community in which you are presenting, and seek to relate personally to the audience.
• Gain self-awareness and recognize when your personal bias is leaking into your Islamic teachings. Learn to separate and critically examine the two.
• Encourage questioning and healthy debate in your circles.
• Refrain from shaming and, instead, be compassionate.
• Identify spiritual and religious weaknesses without putting people down – you never know who is listening and what they may be going through.

For the individual:

• Be aware of what you are learning and from whom.
• Always question in order to learn, not to debate.
• Be intentional in engaging with any Islamic event. Ask yourself, “What do I hope to gain from this?”
• Engage in constant and personal self-learning from reliable Islamic resources and individuals.
• Recognize that the solutions to your issues may not be found at an Islamic event and that instead, you may need to consider other resources.
• Pay attention to how you feel at any given Islamic event. If there is a mismatch between how you truly feel and how you should feel, explore that. Your body, mind and spirit are telling you something.
• Attempt to practically apply any lessons that you learn, and explore where any difficulties in doing so may come from.

I pray that this piece encourages us all to increase in self-awareness, personal spirituality, and intentional engagement in the community through Islamic events and gatherings. The solutions above are mere suggestions; only you can identify the blockages that have led to a personal or communal spiritual bypass, and only you can strive to remove them.

And Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted it He) knows best.

Part I

I want you to take a moment and think back to all of the Islamic events, conferences, lectures. halaqahs (circles) or any related gatherings you have ever attended. Try to remember the impact that the speaker had on you, the moments of inspiration that had you promising yourself that today would be the day you would change.

My question is: have you?

When I was younger, I remember feeling a strong excitement whenever the next Islamic event was around the corner. Like so many Muslim youth, I was part of a clique, so to speak, that would not only attend these events, but feverishly advertise them through networking and social media. Truthfully speaking, it sometimes became less about the event itself, and more about being part of a group that got to listen to popular speaker X on popular topic Y.

It felt inclusive…at the time.

Yes, I was learning about the basics of my deen (religion) which helped to create a foundation on which I could build my religious identity. However, at some point, I couldn’t help but realize that I had been met with a wall.

Somewhere along the way, the topics at such Islamic events started to meld together; certain stories, ahadith (sayings and traditions of the Prophet ﷺ) and Qur’anic verses were so often quoted that the impact they had on me were gradually dulled. I couldn’t help but find myself yearning for something deeper and more meaningful. I had also become keenly attuned to (and, later, excruciatingly bored with) the jokes and attention-grabbing tactics that many, if not most, of the speakers employed in order to engage the audience.

I soon realized that I had stumbled upon a spiritual plateau. This realization was marked by the reality that despite the numerous Islamic gatherings I had attended, I had barely changed. Sure, my mental bank of basic Islamic knowledge had grown, but when I was honest with myself, I had to admit that very little of that knowledge had actually translated into practical action on my part.

Upon realizing this, I felt consumed by guilt. Was I a hypocrite? After attending so many Islamic gatherings – to the point where everything sounded the same – why was I still battling with the same demons? Why did I commit the same sins? Why did my books and notes end up lost or collecting dust somewhere?

And then it hit me: I had come across a spiritual blockage which, at some point, had led me to a pause in practical learning and replaced it with a sophisticated and glamorized means of information collecting. I had collected a library of profound ahadith, ayat (verses from the Qur’an) and stories that made me feel good, but would eventually be stored in the back of my mind, rarely to be accessed again.

While at one point these events served as beneficial reminders for me, they now began to fill a spiritual void; one where I was falsely – and temporarily –  left feeling good about attending the event for the sake of doing so, and not necessarily for having left it a better person.

For so long, I couldn’t quite put my finger on the anxiety I felt once I noticed how bored and uninspired many of the events left me feeling. It was only through intense research at the time, and my current training as a psychotherapist, that I came across a way of defining my experience: spiritual bypassing.

In a fantastic piece in Psychology Today, Dr. Ingrid Mathieu says about the issue:

“We’ve gotten progressively more skillful in our methods: turning away from drugs or alcohol to alter our consciousness and turning towards things like self-help books, meditation, yoga, prayer, and special diets. In some ways, we are now spiritually distracting ourselves from our feelings, thinking that we are walking a healthy spiritual path.

“This experience is called spiritual bypass. Spiritual bypass is a defense mechanism. Although the defense looks a lot prettier than other defenses, it serves the same purpose. Spiritual bypass shields us from the truth, it disconnects us from our feelings, and helps us avoid the big picture. It is more about checking out than checking in—and the difference is so subtle that we usually don’t even know we are doing it.”

How many of us have yet to recognize the ways in which we have used spiritual bypassing as a defense against our deeper emotions and issues?

Once I became aware of this concept, I intentionally increased my self-awareness. I made sure that I attended events and circles that were relevant to my spiritual journey and that genuinely interested me. I also began to shed the position of the passive event attendee and instead assumed a role of critical thinking and engagement (something which unfortunately got me into a little trouble sometimes). What I discovered shocked me and helped me lift some of the self-blame and shame that I felt towards my spiritual plateau.

Firstly, I came to question (out of curious truth-seeking, not hostility) the actual organizations or groups hosting such events: What was their mission? What was their history of active community engagement and service? What were their underlying Islamic values and concepts? What progressive strides have they made in my community – or have they at all?

I also began to actually question the speakers from whom I was learning – something that we are usually conditioned not to do, especially as young Muslims. I began to attune myself not only to what the speaker was saying, but to how they said it and how it made me feel. I also began to consider the context from which they came. Shortly, I realized that much of why I couldn’t connect to particular speakers, or why their words would often leave me feeling uneasy, was due to our completely different worldviews and experiences. I began to see why I, as a young, coloured, educated Somali-Canadian female was having trouble connecting with what the speaker (who was often an older South Asian or Arab* male with orthodox Islamic knowledge) was telling me about Islam.

It wasn’t about race or politics; it was about relatedness. My difficulty with establishing congruence between the Islam I was learning in these controlled environments and the Islam that I faced on a day-to-day basis stemmed not from an inherent deficiency in my sensibilities – or that of the speaker – but deeper issues rooted in race, privilege, authority, socio-economic status, gender, upbringing, education, perspective and hierarchy, to name just a few.

In time, I began to see how my true struggles were not being addressed at these events. Yes, it was nice to learn about our wonderful and enriched Islamic history, but what did that mean for me right now? What did it mean after I left the event? I am sure the onus of responsibility to create meaning and connection lies mostly with the individual; however, what about the roles of our speakers, Islamic organizations and workers?

*please note that these ethnic groups were used as an example for the purpose of highlighting cultural differences. Such differences, however, are not limited to individuals from these groups.

When Religious Leaders Fail: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Sexual Harassment.  Marrying a second wife secretly for a temporary amount of time.  Pedophilia. Pornography. Adultery and its kin: developing ‘back-up’ plan relationships while married. Embezzling funds.  Spiritual abuse and false religious justifications for harmful/ immoral behavior. Slander.

Then you see their names on flyers for Islamic events, and hear them speaking about modesty, integrity, courage, family life, being a good husband or wife, a good father or mother, detached from money and wealth, the ethics of speech. They might have adoring crowds who don’t know or just a small team of people they work with who don’t care.

If you’ve ever had a religious teacher or teachers who didn’t just fall, but they *failed* miserably at upholding a basic ethical standard for themselves, you may have experienced emotional burn-out as a result. Please note that religious leaders may fall all the time because they are human and it is human to fall as no one can fully escape the minor sins. This is why I used the term “Fail.” A Fail, as I use it in this series, is when a religious leader falls into a major sin or a socially reprehensible sin that is beneath the level of trust afforded to their position, is confronted, and they stubbornly refuse to make proper amends even when given the chance. This is a fail.

Please also note that I use the term emotional burn-out, and not spiritual burn-out because the spirit is essentially untouchable. Our bodies on the other hand produce emotions, and they do get affected by the stress of disappointment. Sometimes spirit and emotion are used interchangeably in language and it’s important to realize they are certainly not one and the same, as described by Ustadh Abdelrahman Mussa here. This is significant because once you realize the burn-out is emotional, you have a pathway to recovery.

Let’s unpack some of the emotions and delve into the conscious and subconscious thoughts behind such disappointment:

• You may feel your trust was betrayed by their behavior because they did not practice what they preached. They not only did the opposite, but they did so in ways which are lower than you would ever expect in a friend, let alone a teacher and spokesperson for the religion. You may have trusted them, looked up to them, helped them, loved them, and/or obeyed them with devotion. The closer you were, the deeper the pain.
• As a once devoted student, you may now feel nothing when you hear about Islamic lectures, classes, and events featuring other speakers and religious leaders. After all, they could be corrupt as well. Why risk the pain of getting emotionally ‘burned’ again?
• Perhaps you feel the whole “Religious Preachers Industry” is corrupt to begin with. After all, you may have found out that others in the field were aware of this person’s ethical issues and did nothing to protect the public, or defend the rights of those abused. In fact, some continued to work with and promote their work as it was mutually advantageous to do so. Somehow, when religious leaders fail, they seem to be treated as above the law, above justice, and others in the field are part of the cover up using excuses of selective mercy that do not extend to the masses these people have harmed, or have the very real probability of harming, based on their issue reflecting an untreated pattern of such behavior.
• If you were specifically harmed by a religious leader, you may feel unsafe around religious leaders in general, particularly ones with the same physical profile or features as the person who harmed you.
• Deep down you may be questioning God for allowing such corrupt people to represent His faith. You may feel at a subconscious level disappointed in God for allowing them to be the leaders of the Muslim community.
• You may also feel disappointment in yourself for not being ‘smarter’, wiser, for not seeing through the deception. This may also mean you lack trust in your own judgment and don’t trust yourself to trust again.
• You may feel disappointment with the masses for following such people with the same ‘blindness’ that you once did. Some of their fans may even continue to defend the religious leader and blame the people who were harmed for daring to speak up.
• You may feel a general lack of hope for the Muslim community. If corrupt or complicit are the leaders, and blind are the followers, what if anything can be done toward progress?
• You may feel like you have no control over holding the religious leader accountable if you were personally harmed, and you may feel no control in preventing them from harming others.
• You may feel isolated and disconnected because this issue doesn’t seem to bother others around you as much as it bothers you.

This is not a comprehensive list by any stretch of what may be some underlying frustrations. Each of these points can create a myriad of different powerful emotions, so imagine what a few or all of them could create? Rather than feel all the sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, disappointment, helplessness, dislike, pain, loneliness, vulnerability, hopelessness, (insert huge overwhelming emotion here), etc. , you may have simply shut down your feelings altogether, thus creating apathy and numbness. Holding onto to the apathy and numbness for a prolonged period without help can lead to a crisis in one’s faith as there is a tendency to extend the apathy to one’s relationship to Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He) Himself.

This post is simply an introduction to the topic and future posts are meant to deal with each of the aforementioned points in greater detail. If you are someone who has experienced this test and what you’re struggling with emotionally is not addressed in the points above, please add your specific struggle to the comments section and we will try to address it insha’ Allah (God willing). If you have a specific trauma that you would like counseling or therapy for, we can try to connect you to someone qualified insha’ Allah. If you have not gone through this test alhamdulilah (praise be to God), it is hoped that these posts may empower you to help someone who has.

Even though this is simply an introduction, there is one important lesson I would like to leave us with for this week: We can and should disagree with unethical behavior from anyone without disapproving of the qadar (decree) of Allah. Disagreeing with someone’s harmfulness is healthy, needed, and productive. Blaming Allah for having experienced it is not. Once something is in the past, it is part of His decree. Once it is part of His decree, you accept the good and bad of it as being a test from Him, which could not have been other than what occurred. There is no changing the past. The pens have been lifted and the ink has dried on it. You embrace His test without doubting His Perfection, Justice, and Mercy. There is no need to attribute either to Allah (swt) or even to yourself anything negative about this test. Allah does not hate you and you are not a horrible or unworthy person because this test happened to you. These are harmful thoughts that lack any benefit and only push you into the mud, so you can imagine where they came from. The whispers of shaytan (the devil) are to make us despair in Allah (swt), and despair in ourselves. Instead, look to what is beneficial and ask yourself: What do I have control over? What will I be asked about when I am resurrected? My immediate choices. How can I use my immediate choices to better the situation? How can I use my immediate choices to make the best transaction with Allah (swt) through this test, and gain unfathomable reward insha’ Allah? How can I rely on Allah (swt) for strength and guidance and come out personally stronger and wiser? Some answers insha’ Allah will be in the upcoming posts. For now, allow yourself to reflect on your own answers and realize that this is simply the practical application of the famous hadith (narration):

“The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, while there is good in both. Guard over that which benefits you, seek Allah’s Assistance, wa laa ta’jiz [‘don’t lend yourself to things devoid of benefit’, ‘don’t stop hoping’—both acceptable meanings], and if something befalls you, then don’t say ‘If I only would have done such and such,’ rather say, ‘Qaddar Allahu wa maa sha’a  fa’al’ [‘Allah ordained (this) and He does what He wills’], for verily the phrase, ‘If I would have’ makes way for the work of Shaytan.” (Muslim)

No matter how weak you might feel in your faith, the Prophet ﷺ (peace be upon him) affirms there is still good in you and the fact that you believe is evidence of the love Allah (swt) has for you. The recipe to increased strength starts with embracing the decree of Allah, remaining hopeful in Him, and focusing on what is beneficial to you in this life and the next. Know that gratitude in Allah (swt) for the faith He has blessed you with increases it, and is immensely beneficial. You may not realize it yet, but you got this insha’ Allah.

Photo: Pankaj Kaushal

Years ago I came across this quote. I still can’t get over how true it is.

Muslim youth living in all corners of the world face similar struggles in our day-to-day lives. We strive to survive while being surrounded by the societal (and often times, cultural and familial) promotion, acceptance, and idealization of things that contradict the tenants of our faith: pride, lust, greed, extramarital relationships, alcohol/drugs, misogyny – just to name a few.

We are also surrounded by social practices and traditions that can also be pretty un-Islamic: issues such as racism, forced marriages, the withholding of education for females, and tribalism unfortunately exist on grand scales in Muslim societies all over the world.

As Muslim youth, most of us living in the diaspora, we have much to deal with. We struggle to maintain our Muslim identities while at the same time balancing our racial, national, and individual identities as well.

Sometimes it seems that everywhere we look, we are being called to sin. And inevitably, we answer that call.

We fall so many times only to fall again. We try so very hard to create our own, personal spiritual bubbles where Islam is the driving force in our lives, only to have it burst by things like temptation, other Muslims’ biases and discrimination, our own families making it hard for us, stress, our school lives, etc.

And slowly, as our hearts erode, a peculiar type of anxiety eats away at our souls and comes with a little voice in our heads. The voice tells us time and time again that what we are doing is haram (impermissible) or sinful, but we ignore it as we seek to numb the pain—a pain that has surfaced as a result of never being good enough. Never being “Muslim” enough, or “religious” enough, or “Western” enough.

How do we turn our faces from sin when it is everywhere? When it is adulated, respected, and upheld by our very own societies as a noble thing? We become confused – the bad becomes good. We go against our natural instincts. Eventually we become submerged in our own little hells, metaphorical places where internal suffering, sadness, disappointment, and self-loathing manifest. The “internal fire of regret”, as Ibn Al-Qayyim radi allahu `anhu (may God be pleased with him) puts it.

This quote teaches me that through one way or another, we will be purified of our sins. It’s up to us whether or not we seek purification in this life (through repentance) or we wait until the next (through the Fire).

I know. We’ve fallen so many times. We’re hurt, sore, and bruised. We are ashamed of our actions, and may even deem ourselves unworthy of seeking repentance. But something must quell that fire in our hearts. Something must quench our desires to be loved and accepted by the One whose love and acceptance is truly the only one that matters at the end of the day.

Say it – Astaghfirullah (I seek forgiveness from God).

I know; it hurts. But it certainly cannot hurt more than what is to come if we let our sins remain in our hearts, our minds, our spirits.

We are more than the sins that we commit. Don’t let the devil fool you. Don’t let those people who are a negative influence in your lives or those who sin openly and proudly fool you either.

We may fall a thousand times, but as long as we try to get back up, there is always hope.

And Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He) knows best.

Photo: Annelise

By Usman Siddiqui

Many Muslims – myself included — often forget about the spirit of Islam in matters of law and worship. For instance, do we not recite 114 times in the Qur’an, “In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful” – should this not, then, be the spirit with which all our actions and deeds are performed? Is our worship for anything other than to get closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He) – should this not, then, be the focus with which we perform every prayer? Is the essence of fasting not sacrifice for the sake of Allah (swt) – should we not, then, abandon extravagance when it comes to Ramadan?

This preamble brings me to something of which we may be losing sight: the spirit of modesty. Just as it is possible to fulfil the obligation of prayer with a few movements of bowing and a few utterances of Arabic, it is possible to fulfil the obligation of modesty with a few pieces of cloth. But while Islam does define a dress code (though not a “uniform,” as God’s messenger ﷺ (peace be upon him) wore the clothes of his people), there are trends which make me wonder whether people are relegating modesty to tick-boxes of covered body-parts. If this is indeed the case, it may explain why some Muslim men do not see this tremendous virtue as one to reflect upon and develop – this is while the Qur’an in fact addresses men first and foremost with the command of modesty:

“Tell the believing men to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what they do. And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof.” (24:30-31)

It seems that some people get distracted by the additional commands regarding dress directed towards women, distracted enough to forget about one’s own state before God, to forget about bringing this virtue to permeate one’s life. (And if anybody is confused as to why God, the Wise, specified a higher degree of covering for women, then I call upon you to reflect – without prejudice – on concepts of beauty and human nature, but this is a separate discussion for which enough space on bookshelves is already devoted. It is also a travesty that often well-intentioned Muslim speakers, when speaking about this, often divert their focus to the female gender or immediately bring up the hijab, not knowing that the male members of the audience flick a switch and coast until the topic of modesty is over.

In this short reminder, I cannot impart all there is to say on the realities of modesty, shyness, hayaa – this is something which requires reflection on the Qur’an, reflection on the shama’il (character traits) of the Prophet ﷺ, reflection on the righteous (Uthman ibn Affan radi Allahu `anhu (may God be pleased with him) – yes, a man! – is celebrated in particular for his hayaa), and indeed reflection on the society around us. Most importantly, I want to call towards self-reflection regardless of whether you feel you already apply the outward requirement of modesty or not, regardless of whether you are male or female. How can we manifest it in speaking with our elders, with our friends, with our colleagues? In the websites we visit, in what we gaze at, in what we hear, and in what we allow our mind to dwell upon or desire? How can we balance it with looking presentable and dignified? How can we apply it when alone, in our self-esteem, in our intentions, and before God?

May reflection on and purification of our inward and outward states (tazkiya) be the means to attaining success from God on that Day, “The Day when there will not benefit [anyone] wealth or children, But only one who comes to Allah with a sound heart.” (26:88-89)

Ocean of Dunya: Part I | Part II

No one likes to fall. And few people would ever choose to drown. But in struggling through the ocean of this life, sometimes it’s so hard not to let the world in. Sometimes the ocean does enter us. The dunya does seep into our hearts.

And like the water that breaks the boat, when dunya enters, it shatters our heart.  It shatters the boat. Recently, I was reminded of what a broken boat looks like, of what happens when you let everything in. I was reminded because I saw someone, just like me, fall in love too much with this life and seek to be filled by the creation. So the ocean of dunya shattered her boat, as it had shattered mine, and she fell out into the water.  But she stayed down too long, and didn’t know how to come back up or what to hold on to.

So she drowned.

If you allow dunya to own your heart, like the ocean that owns the boat, it will take over. You will sink down to the depths of the sea. You will touch the ocean floor. And you will feel as though you were at your lowest point. Entrapped by your sins and the love of this life, you will feel broken. Surrounded by darkness. That’s the amazing thing about the floor of the ocean. No light reaches it.

But, this dark place is not the end. Remember that the darkness of night precedes the dawn. And as long as your heart still beats, this is not the death of it. You don’t have to die here. Sometimes, the ocean floor is only a stop on the journey. And it is when you are at this lowest point, that you are faced with a choice. You can stay there at the bottom, until you drown. Or you can gather pearls and rise back up—stronger from the swim, and richer from the jewels.

If you seek Him, God can raise you up, and replace the darkness of the ocean, with the light of His sun. He can transform what was once your greatest weakness into your greatest strength, and a means of growth, purification and redemption. Know that transformation sometimes begins with a fall. So never curse the fall. The ground is where humility lives. Take it. Learn it. Breathe it in. And then come back stronger, humbler and more aware of your need for Him. Come back having seen your own nothingness and His greatness. Know that if you have seen that Reality, you have seen much. For the one who is truly deceived is the one who sees his own self—but not Him.  Deprived is the one who has never witnessed his own desperate need for God.  Reliant on his own means, he forgets that the means, his own soul, and everything else in existence are His creation.

Seek God to bring you back up, for when He does, He will rebuild your ship. The heart that you thought was forever damaged will be mended. What was shattered will be whole again. Know that only He can do this. Seek Him.

And when He saves you, beg forgiveness for the fall, feel remorse over it—but not despair.  As Ibn ul Qayyim (ra) has said: “Satan rejoiced when Adam (peace be upon him) came out of Paradise, but he did not know that when a diver sinks into the sea, he collects pearls and then rises again.”

There is a powerful and amazing thing about tawbah (repentance) and turning back to Allah (swt). We are told that it is a polish for the heart. What’s amazing about a polish is that it doesn’t just clean. It makes the object that is polished even shinier than it was before it got dirty. If you come back to God, seek His forgiveness, and refocus your life and heart on Him, you have the potential to be even richer than if you’d never fallen at all. Sometimes falling and coming back up gives you wisdom and humility that you may never otherwise have had. Ibn ul Qayyim (ra) writes:

“One of the Salaf (Pious Predecessors) said: “Indeed a servant commits a sin by which he enters Paradise; and another does a good deed by which he enters the Fire.” It was asked: How is that? So he replied: “The one who committed the sin, constantly thinks about it; which causes him to fear it, regret it, weep over it and feel ashamed in front of his Lord—the Most High—due to it. He stands before Allah, broken-hearted and with his head lowered in humility. So this sin is more beneficial to him than doing many acts of obedience, since it caused him to have humility and humbleness—which leads to the servant’s happiness and success—to the extent that this sin becomes the cause for him entering Paradise. As for the doer of good, then he does not consider this good a favor from his Lord upon him. Rather, he becomes arrogant and amazed with himself, saying: I have achieved such and such, and such and such. So this further increases him in self-adulation, pride and arrogance—such that this becomes the cause for his destruction.”

Allah (swt) reminds us in the Qur’an to never lose hope. He says: “Say, ‘O My servants who have transgressed against their souls [by sinning], despair not of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful,’” (39:53).

And so, this is a call to all those who have become enslaved by the tyranny of the self, imprisoned in the dungeon of the nafs (self) and desires.  It is a call to all those who have entered the ocean of dunya, who have sunk into its depths, and become trapped by its crushing waves. Rise up. Rise up to the air, to the Real world above the prison of the ocean. Rise up to your freedom. Rise up and come back to life. Leave the death of your soul behind you. Your heart can still live and be stronger and purer than it ever was. Does not the polish of tawbah remake the heart even more beautiful than it was? Remove the veil you have sewn with your sins. Remove the veil between you and Life, between you and Freedom, between you and Light—between you and God.  Remove the veil and rise up. Come back to yourself. Come back to where you began. Come back Home. Know that when all the other doors have shut in your face, there is One that is always open. Always. Seek it. Seek Him and He will guide you through the waves of the cruel ocean, into the mercy of the sun.

This world cannot break you—unless you give it permission. And it cannot own you unless you hand it the keys – unless you give it your heart.  And so, if you have handed those keys to dunya for a while—take them back. This isn’t the End. You don’t have to die here. Reclaim your heart and place it with its rightful owner:

God.