Soaring like an angel
Her eyes stare
Like a messenger on a wrong track
Her path swings
Speedily her venom strikes
Beyond her bars
Into the territory that knows her not
Vum! She is with the sky
Her abode of comfort
The children of the ground
Are now in pain and sorrow
Her young are missing
Like a mysterious light
With speed, she disappeared
You're a thief and a destroyer
The fate of the race without prayer
Give us our daily bread she preys
On the blood of the flesh without skin
That we may feed our bodies for more feathers
To the glory of the sky life we further
Food we must eat for survival
For the fittest strangles the large meat
To narrow the wide arrow of men
On us, just behind us
Though we all are doomed
On a day that knows our name
But before then, food is for the stomach, and life is for the living.
1/ So, I had this deeply thought-provoking conversation with a good friend of mine recently. I won't call her a feminist but she is really pro-women, and we got talking about something I’ve been observing.
I asked her, “I notice that some Muslim women seem to regress in their Imaan whenever they co-opt feminism. Why do you think that is? It’s concerning, TBH.”
Her response really struck me.
2/ She said, “You’re not imagining it. I’ve noticed it, too, even in myself.
And it’s a struggle. But let me tell you this: a lot of Muslim men contribute to this regression.”
I asked her to explain, and what she shared opened my eyes in ways I didn’t expect.
1/ To my sisters chasing dreams—whether on social media, in coaching, building a brand, or climbing the corporate ladder—this is from the heart:
If your growth in the world is coming at the cost of your iman, pause and pay attention.
2/ Compromise doesn’t happen overnight. It’s gradual, a step here, a step there.
It starts small:
\- Delayed salah for “just one more post.”
\- A hijab shrinking, earrings showing, or strands of hair slipping out.
\- A “networking” happy hour you attend but don’t drink.
3/ You invest hours and dollars into personal development, but Islamic classes? Too hard to fit in.
You consume books and podcasts about “enlightenment,” yet neglect the profound wisdom of your own faith.
And your connection to the Muslim community? Slowly disappearing.
People often go through a phase of religiosity and piety, which is then followed by a burn out period. For example, for a couple of weeks - you found it incredibly easy to get up at night and pray Qiyam, but now you feel lazy to get out of bed.
Don’t worry, this is natural & very common.
For the Prophet ﷺ said: “Verily, the iman of one of you will wear out within him, just as a shirt becomes worn out, so ask Allah to renew iman in your hearts.”, and someone asked, “O Messenger of Allah, how do we renew our iman?”
and he ﷺ responded: “Increase in saying La ilaha ila Allah.” [musnad ahmad]
———
There is a couple of things you can do to improve this:
• (1) As mentioned, you should repeat “La ilaha ila Allah” whenever you feel this way, and you should do so sincerely from your heart.
I've found that as I've gotten older that most virtues or wise principles are paradoxes. "When you give, don't expect anything return," I think is 100% a wise, virtuous principle, and yet another wise, virtuous principle is "good relationships are restoring, not draining."
If your relationships are draining you, i.e., you're giving more to them than you're getting back, then they aren't good relationships to you. At best, those people are kind of unaware and self-centered. At worst, they are exploiting you.
Some people are too self-centered and need to learn to take others into account. Other people are too agreeable - also known as being a doormat - and need to learn to look out for their own interests and be a little selfish.
‘The goal of having a good ending is not that you die whilst you are in the masjid, or while you are upon a prayer mat, or you die with a Qur’aan in your hands.
Indeed the best of all creation died while he was on his bed.
His friend as-Siddiq Abu Bakr died while on his bed, and he was the best of the Companions.
Khalid bin Waleed died while he was on his bed, and he was given the title the unsheathed sword of Allaah,
who plunged into a hundred battles and did not lose in any of them.
However, a good ending is:
• that you die and are far away from Shirk.
• that you die and are far away from Nifaq (hypocrisy).
How do you need to be spoken to? What do you need to take from people? What are you putting up with, or pretending to like, from duty or obligation? Consult your resentment. It’s a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology.
It’s part of an evil triad: arrogance, deceit, and resentment. Nothing causes more harm than this underworld Trinity. But resentment always means one of two things. Either the resentful person is immature, in which case he or she should shut up, quit whining, and get on with it,
or there is tyranny afoot—in which case the person subjugated has a moral obligation to speak up. Why? Because the consequence of remaining silent is worse. Of course, it’s easier in the moment to stay silent and avoid conflict. But in the long term, that’s deadly.