Shad Imam

With a look of complete despair, I turned to my teacher and I told him about my anxieties. I told him that I really wanted my Hajj to be accepted but every book I read was telling me to do something different and now it was all garbled in my head. I was afraid that I was going to mess something up and that my Hajj would be null and void, or at the very least, not maximized. I told my teacher that ultimately, I just wanted to know the answer to one question,

“What is the best dua that I should make while I’m here?”

My teacher replied, “The absolute best dua?” And I anxiously said, “Yes.”

He calmly looked at me and said, “The one that comes from your heart.”

Ramadan is not just about giving more time in prayer and dhikr, but about giving more of your wealth and yourselves in order to build a better tomorrow. As Muslims, to enjoy a win for the “haves” is to accept a defeat for the “have nots.” And perhaps instead of talking about the spirit of giving, we should acknowledge more simply that the spirit of Islam is to give.

During Snowmageddon 2016, there was hardly a sign of life – all around us, there was just a lot of cold and a lot of white. In many ways, the world around us reminded me of a beautiful dua of the Prophet ﷺ.

Most people don’t think of themselves as having spiritual disabilities—impairments which may limit one’s quality of After-life. And yet, these particular traits, characteristics and states of mind can not only affect one’s relationship with others in this world, but one’s ultimate relationship with God in the next world.

Disability Awareness Month recently passed and it would behoove us for a moment to think about how Islam and Muslims view individuals with disabilities. There are specific conditions such as blindness, deafness, etc. that can lead to certain disadvantages – but it is up to our society to ensure that those individuals are not “disabled”. As a community, we have to ensure that every man, woman, and child is afforded the appropriate opportunities to excel based on their innate abilities.

There is a famous story that I learned in my childhood of a man who committed a great sin and then came to an Imam to ask him what to do.