sarah > Recent Status Updates

“Wilfred, for being so nice and quiet, often stayed hungry. So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.”

salam friends! i’m on substack :) i’ll be sharing my reflections on there, here’s my profile link:

https://substack.com/@swgdy?r=6fvo5u&...

Muslim women need to be aware of the characters of the mothers of the believers; daughters of the Prophet ﷺ & the female companions. This book is great in displaying exactly why; it’s enough to feel seen as a woman in the context of the early islamic times.

“The book itself, as printed today, covers less than 500 small pages. It was revealed over 23 years, which means a rough average of less than 25 pages a year, or two pages a month.”

“Perhaps the worst thing about occupied cities is that their children cannot make fun of them. Who could make fun of Jerusalem! Now, letters to our addresses there will not reach us. They took the addresses of our homes and the dust of our drawers.”

“radwa waited seventeen years for me to come back to our house, and when i came back i brought all those seventeen years with me. and there were seventeen years with her too.”

“when you hear on the radio and read in newspapers and magazines and books and speeches the words ‘the occupied territories’ year after year, festival after festival, summit after summit, you think it’s somewhere at the end of the earth. you think there is absolutely no way you can get to it. do you see how close it is? how touchable? how real? i can hold it in my hand, like a handkerchief”

“Passion is like a firmly rooted tree, the eradication of which we should be dedicated. If you do not uproot passion [jn your youth] because of weakness and procrastinate, - knowing very well that the longer the wait, the stronger the tree, - the more firmly planted it will be and the weaker [with age] you become to uproot it.

Whatever you did not do while young, you certainly will not do in old age.”

1. call yourself to account while you are in comfort

2. intention setting prior to an act allows better outcomes (am i doing this for my nafs/ego?; is the devil playing a role in my intention?)

3. when you recognize that your intention may be in the wrong place, pause, realign, continue

4. be introspective in disobedience and grateful for obedience (you are guided to them by Allah’s mercy, not your own ability)

"Had there been within the heavens and earth gods besides God, they both would have been ruined."

In this verse, God tells us what would have happened had there been more than one object of worship in the heavens and the earth: corruption and ruin. If the heavens and the earth, in all their majesty, would have been ruined by taking more than one object of worship, what about the fragile human heart?

“Therefore, the way to protect the heart is to keep it soft, and to strengthen the fortress surrounding it. That fortress is built with the remembrance of God. And the heart is nourished with the oxygen and food of athkar. Every day should consist of a strict adherence to the aforementioned thikr pre-scription: Salah, daily athkar, and Quran.”

Granting [Musa’s] (AS) duaa gave him expansion, which eased his task and carried him through.

Often we wish that our fears and our grief and all our problems could just disappear. But this life is not jannah (paradise). This life is inherently imperfect. […]

There will always be some fear. There will always be some grief. Some loss. Some pain. There will always be storms. But there is a way to navigate.

“Universities are not the best place to teach people about the realities of life or can change their point of view. Universities are sites for careers now, not for knowledge and education.”

“Four things are part of worship: not taking a step without having made one's ablutions, making many prostrations, frequenting mosques and reciting the Qur'ān often.”

“Four things strengthen the mind: giving up talking about things that do not concern one, [using] a siwak [tooth-stick), sitting in the company of pious men and [sitting in the company] of scholars.”

“Sleep is of four kinds: sleeping while leaning on the back of the neck, like the prophets reflecting on the creation of the heavens and the earth; sleeping on one's right side, like scholars and worshippers; sleeping on the left side, like kings, to digest their food; and sleeping on one's front, like the devils.”