You will fail to achieve ultimate happiness, and that failure should make you happy.

I remember driving to college back in the early 2000s, and I was just hoping to already be in the future.

I didn’t want to go through the struggles of going through college, another 4 years or more of tests, papers, etc. 

I just wanted to start working and get married. 

Kids weren’t really in my radar, but just to have a companion to spend time with and do things couples do would just be really nice. 

I just wanted to be established right now!

I wanted to be like those who were older than me, who were already established in their careers, married, and had families.

Alhamdulillah that time has come. Now in my early 40s, I have a good job, a loving wife and kids, and I have achieved what I wanted over 20 years ago. 

The crazy thing is, sometimes when I go to work, or when I’m just thinking about life while driving, I wish I could go back to the times when things were easy. I was living single, and life was just more calm and less hectic. 

Hanging out with friends in college was a blast!

There were less responsibilities, less people relying on me (after Allah of course), and probably less stress (or just different kinds of stress).

There was less lewdness in society, less liberalism, less deviance, and NO social media.

Subhan Allah, I got what I wanted, but now I want to go back to the “good ol’ days.”

This isn’t to say that I am not extremely thankful, but it just shows us what humans are like. 

We will never achieve ultimate happiness in this world.

We will never achieve ultimate satisfaction in this world.

Stress will always be there, but it will manifest itself in different ways.

It’s either school and getting those grades, or it’s family and thinking about how will I find the right spouse for my daughters?

This cycle of life, where we are never really in a state of bliss, is just a reminder that this life was never meant to be blissful.

That is why it is called a delusion in the Qur’an:

 وَمَا ٱلْحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنْيَآ إِلَّا مَتَـٰعُ ٱلْغُرُورِ ٢٠

The life of this world is nothing but delusion.

Surah Hadid (57:20)

You can never be truly happy in this life. Your pursuit for endless happiness will only make you realize how sad you are, because you're chasing a mirage.

Whether you are rich or poor, you will always have something to worry about. 

Your health.

Your kids.

Your family.

Your business.

Your job.

But don’t worry, because you and I were created to be in constant struggle in this life.

I know that sounds crazy, but it is true!

Most definitely, we were created to be in constant struggle:

لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ فِى كَبَدٍ ٤

Indeed, We have created humankind in ˹constant˺ struggle.

Surah Balad (90:4)

This verse always makes me feel at ease and I believe can solve people’s depression because it makes me realize that problems and struggles will always be there.

The perfect life doesn’t exist.

That Instagram life doesn’t exist!

There will always be some things that will make you stressed, so don’t throw all your hopes and dreams on this life. 

On the flipside, remember what Allah says when He describes Jannah:

بَلَىٰ مَنْ أَسْلَمَ وَجْهَهُۥ لِلَّهِ وَهُوَ مُحْسِنٌۭ فَلَهُۥٓ أَجْرُهُۥ عِندَ رَبِّهِۦ وَلَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ ١١٢

But no! Whoever submits themselves to Allah and does good will have their reward with their Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.

Surah Baqara (2:112)

Did you read that last part?

“There will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.”

This is the part of Jannah that we have not had a preview of in this world. We have had a preview of a lot of other traits of Jannah, such as rivers, good food, women, money, children, and other luxuries, but we have never really tasted the lack of fear or grief. 

There’s always something in the back of our heads that keeps us occupied regardless of who we are.

Everyone struggles, everyone goes through hardships.

But we can use these struggles to remind ourselves that the ultimate goal is to get to Jannah, and that will be the place of no fear and no grief.

If you feel like you constantly have problems in your life,

Welcome to the club!

Why Muslim men need to be fit.

I’ve heard many podcasts about this topic, and it’s nice to see one from a Muslim perspective, Allahumma barik. Check out this video, and here’s a serious but funny clip from the show 😅.

Cutting off your parents is now becoming more acceptable.

Anna Russell from The New Yorker, writes about how many people are going “no contact” with their parents. She goes through a detailed story of a girl named Amy, and it is quite chilling how this can be a reflection of the Muslim family breakdown as well: 

One day in the mid-two-thousands, a teen-ager named Amy waited to hear the voice of God. She was sitting in a youth Bible-study group, surrounded by her peers, and losing patience. Everyone else in the group seemed to hear God speak all the time, but Amy had never heard Him, not even a peep. Her hands didn’t shimmer with gold dust after she prayed, as others claimed theirs did, and she was never able to say, with confidence, “The Holy Spirit told me to do it.” She went home that evening, determined to try again the next day. A few years passed and she still heard nothing. She began to wonder if something was wrong with her. “God didn’t talk to me,” she wrote later, in a blog post. “I was afraid that meant either he wasn’t there, or I wasn’t good enough.”

Amy, the eldest of five siblings, was homeschooled by evangelical parents in the suburbs of Alberta, Canada. (She asked that I use only her first name.) She was bright, and happy, and remembers days spent reading “David Copperfield” aloud with her siblings. It was only when she left for college—Ambrose University, a Christian liberal-arts school—that aspects of her childhood began to strike her as peculiar. Amy remembers her parents telling her, when she was six, that her grandparents were going to Hell because they weren’t Christians. She grew up believing in creationism, and was startled to feel persuaded by the evidence for evolution in her college textbooks. She grappled with the “problem of evil”: If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, how can he allow so many terrible things to happen? “I started to diverge from my parents,” she told me recently.

Part of Amy’s original motivation for going to college, which she paid for herself, was to find a husband: she had been taught that men were better spiritual leaders than women, and hoped that a partner could help her hear God. Ambrose was socially conservative. No drinking. No sex outside of marriage. She found a boyfriend, but the relationship didn’t last, and soon she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married at all. She enjoyed her courses, and took such thorough notes that, on one occasion, other students offered to buy them. “Amy came to university like a sponge,” Ken Nickel, Amy’s philosophy professor, told me. “She wanted to understand.” On visits home, she stumbled into conflicts. During a family vacation in 2013, she told her parents and siblings that she didn’t think the Bible implied that it was wrong to be gay. “I think, naïvely, I was just, like, Oh, they’ve just never heard this interpretation,” she said. “And they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, thank you for letting us know!’ ” Instead, as Amy tells it, one of her younger brothers became upset, and quoted Bible verses to make the opposite argument. Her mother sent her a letter expressing concern for her soul. During the drive home after her graduation, it came up that Amy identified as a feminist, and her parents began arguing with her about abortion. She cried in the back seat.

Amy attended law school, and a few years later returned to Ambrose to speak at an event. While visiting, she learned from the university’s president that her parents had sent him a letter expressing displeasure about Amy’s transformation. Their daughter used to be a “Bible quizzer,” they wrote, but now “rarely picks up a Bible except to highlight the verses that she believes say the opposite of their obvious and orthodox meaning.” Her mother said that Amy had a difficult relationship with her brothers, whom she now regarded as “misogynists.” If her parents could start over, they would discourage her from attending the school. “She used to be a calm and steady young woman but now suffers from a sometimes debilitating anxiety in spite of how faithful and unwavering God is in His support and provision,” the letter read. “She has turned her face from Him towards despair.” Amy told me that learning about the letter was “destabilizing.” She wasn’t yet estranged from her family—that would happen a few years later—but she found herself visiting less often.

Family estrangement—the process by which family members become strangers to one another, like intimacy reversed—is still somewhat taboo. But, in some circles, that’s changing. In recent years, advocates for the estranged have begun a concerted effort to normalize it. Getting rid of the stigma, they argue, will allow more people to get out of unhealthy family relationships without shame…

This is a concerning trend that we need to be aware of, especially Muslims. I have seen numerous sisters who were from practicing families and wore the hijab, and now have taken off the hijab and fully embraced the independent female, liberal lifestyle. 

I have also seen brothers who were from Muslim families attend college and become atheists after studying philosophy, with their parents devastated. 

I have seen parents die a little on the inside when their kids have strayed away, and I can see it on their faces. 

It’s really sad.

What we have to realize is that shaytan doesn’t start attacking people after they go away to college, but it starts from birth. We have all heard the famous hadith:

Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “No person is born but that he is pricked by Satan and he cries from the touch of Satan, except for the son of Mary and his mother.” Abu Huraira said, “Recite the verse if you wish: Verily, I seek refuge for her and her offspring from the cursed Satan.” (3:36)

Source: Sahih Bukhari 3431, Sahih Muslim 2366

What happens after birth? You give your child to the daycare to raise, which has been considered criminal by even the liberal scholars like Hamza Yusuf. Then they are raised by their peers in school, then high school, then college, and then you wonder why they are totally different from you and your Islamic values. 

There is anything but Islam in these institutions, especially in college. The idea is to liberalize the people and make them pursue the mirage of self-happiness, and self-pleasure, which ironically leads to more depression.

As parents, we need to educate ourselves about the religion, and we need to also know how to defend the religion. It is not enough to just teach Islam to your families, but they need to know how to counter the constant attacks against it. The least we can do is have the resources on hand when we need to have discussions with our kids.

I have just provided you with an excerpt, but you should definitely read the full story here if the above link doesn’t work.

The Death of Parenting?

Al-Farsi from MuslimSkeptic describing the death of parenting:

From the moment they are born, they are subjected to medical procedures, poked, bled, prodded, injected, and handled by uniformed strangers who usher them into their new life. At the tender age of three or four, they are torn from the loving embrace of their mothers, their lips barely dry from the final taste of their mother’s milk, and they are thrust into the cold hands of an education system.

They are herded onto school buses and taken to uniform, soulless rooms where their minds are molded by kuffar for eight hours a day—the very same spiritually dead people whose lives revolve around waiting to intoxicate themselves beyond cognition at the end of each and every week of their nihilistic, meaningless, purposeless existence.

Once, a son would walk in the footsteps of his father, learning a cherished, generational craft such as carpentry, acquiring not merely a trade but also a moral compass, shaped by the wisdom of seasoned elders.

Today, young minds spend eight hours a day in the company of their equally inexperienced peers, developing flawed moral notions and orientations. Is it any wonder then that our newspapers are replete with stories of young people committing acts of astounding cruelty, actions so monstrous in their nature that they defy the innocence of youth?

The home, once a sanctuary and a living, breathing citadel, has lost its essence, its soul. Within its walls, women once possessed the skills of nursing, midwifery, tailoring, cooking, counseling, and educating. In childbirth, they were surrounded by their kin, experienced in the arts of nurturing and delivery. A child’s first touch was the warm embrace of a loving relative, not the sterile glove of a complete stranger. But now, under the clinical, detached gaze of the obstetrician, childbirth is viewed not as a natural miracle but as a pathology.

From the home, women tended to both playground wounds and battle wounds. They possessed the skills to stitch flesh and cloth in equal measure.

The home, once the center of life’s great functions—birth, education, healing, and nurturing—, has been stripped of its purpose. These sacred duties have been siphoned off to the impersonal machinery of the state, an entity incapable of genuine care and concern.

Homes are no longer institutions. They are Airbnbs. Bodies may dwell within them as a place for eating and sleeping, but hearts dwell there no longer.

A powerful description of what is happening to our youth. My mother drove a school bus for a few years, and she is completely onboard with us homeschooling our children.

Al-Farsi continues to talk about the death of spiritual parenthood, where people would travel and be with a Shaykh for several years:

In the pre-modern world, a man lived with his shaykh, studied under him, and shared a contiguous period of life with him. A shaykh would take on only a handful of students, dedicating all his time, attention, and wisdom to these select few. He fed them, clothed them, and counseled them. From this intimate relationship emerged the great scholars of our tradition. Both a man and his wife would often be guided by the same shaykh (of course, while adhering to the dictates of the Shari’ah), under his spiritual tutelage and care.

Today, the modern madrasah system is but a pale imitation of post-industrial schooling, lacking the intimacy, the tarbiyah (nurturing), the tazkiyah (purification), and the islah (reform) that were once so central to the transmission of knowledge and virtue. The bond between teacher and student has become transactional, devoid of the deep personal connection that gave birth to our greatest scholars.

Although the ability to be with a Shaykh and spend years with him is more difficult, it is sad to see how parenting, which is the most natural student-teacher relationship, has become a shell of its former glory.

What your peers and friends say and do takes precedence over your parents advice, and parents easily give in without a fuss since, “everybody is doing it,” or because, “I just want my kid to be happy.”

Liberal tendencies.

The child is “in charge,” and the parent feels helpless, and they’re both miserable since no one is playing their role.

The end of the family unit is the end of a wholesome society.

How to live your life so your children can be successful.

Surah Kahf has so many hidden gems inside of it, and the one that really stuck with me today was about the righteous father who left behind two orphan boys.

This father who passed away, he did two important things:

1. He was a righteous man.

2. He saved for his family.

We all know that we have to earn for our families, and everyone takes this for granted.

Allah did not emphasize this in the ayah.

What did Allah emphasize?

“And their father had been a righteous man.”

وَأَمَّا ٱلْجِدَارُ فَكَانَ لِغُلَـٰمَيْنِ يَتِيمَيْنِ فِى ٱلْمَدِينَةِ وَكَانَ تَحْتَهُۥ كَنزٌۭ لَّهُمَا وَكَانَ أَبُوهُمَا صَـٰلِحًۭا فَأَرَادَ رَبُّكَ أَن يَبْلُغَآ أَشُدَّهُمَا وَيَسْتَخْرِجَا كَنزَهُمَا رَحْمَةًۭ مِّن رَّبِّكَ ۚ وَمَا فَعَلْتُهُۥ عَنْ أَمْرِى ۚ ذَٰلِكَ تَأْوِيلُ مَا لَمْ تَسْطِع عَّلَيْهِ صَبْرًۭا ٨٢

“And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in the city, and under the wall was a treasure that belonged to them, and their father had been a righteous man. So your Lord willed that these children should come of age and retrieve their treasure, as a mercy from your Lord. I did not do it ˹all˺ on my own. This is the explanation of what you could not bear patiently.”

Surah Kahf (18:82)

Allah SWT is telling us that if we put our trust in Him and follow the path towards Allah, Allah will take care of our affairs.

But at the same time, we have to do the work and try our best to make it happen!

The treasure that was buried was an active step done by the father, and he obviously had to earn it first and plan ahead.

Remember, tawakkul (trust in Allah) requires us to do our part first, and then leave the rest to Allah.

Don’t just invest in your children’s worldly future, but also remember that if you are righteous, then Allah will provide for them even better than what you have planned.

Make Allah your priority, earn for your family, plan for your family, and leave the rest to Allah.

Will your kids resent you?

If you don’t teach your kids about Islam, and make it a part of their life, they might resent you. Of course there should always be respect and good manners towards parents, but sometimes thoughts still creep in and if a parent deprives their child of sound Islamic knowledge, that child will always feel behind once they start practicing Islam. 

Not only that, but it can lead to families bickering and even splitting apart, especially if they are on different wavelengths in terms of following the religion.

If you practice, and you teach your kids to practice, your relationship in sha Allah will be fruitful, blessed, and strong. 

Unfortunately, there are probably a lot of people like this sister here asking this question.

Tips for a successful marriage.

Sr. Na’ima Robert talks about an important discussion that was very beneficial not only for prospective Muslims who want to get married, but also for those who have been married for years. 

A good listen, especially the first 10-15 minutes where she talks about her personal story of marriage, loss, and shukr (thankfulness). 

If there’s one thing I can say about this video, the advice about thankfulness that she was told by a friend was nothing short of genius and total submission to Allah.

Generative AI and “nudify” apps

Matt Burgess, from Wired.com (on arstechnica):

Major technology companies, including Google, Apple, and Discord, have been enabling people to quickly sign up to harmful “undress” websites, which use AI to remove clothes from real photos to make victims appear to be “nude” without their consent. More than a dozen of these deepfake websites have been using login buttons from the tech companies for months.

A WIRED analysis found 16 of the biggest so-called undress and “nudify” websites using the sign-in infrastructure from Google, Apple, Discord, Twitter, Patreon, and Line. This approach allows people to easily create accounts on the deepfake websites—offering them a veneer of credibility—before they pay for credits and generate images.

While bots and websites that create nonconsensual intimate images of women and girls have existed for years, the number has increased with the introduction of generative AI. This kind of “undress” abuse is alarmingly widespread, with teenage boys allegedly creating images of their classmates. Tech companies have been slow to deal with the scale of the issues, critics say, with the websites appearing highly in search results, paid advertisements promoting them on social media, and apps showing up in app stores.

This is another reason why women and girls in general, shouldn’t post their photos online. The fitna is already there even if the photos aren’t sexualized, but this is a whole other level of just destroying a girls reputation. 

Imagine if this became rampant in the Muslim community? It would just be a huge mess, with families’ reputations being tarnished and girls being slandered against left and right. Imagine a high school or middle school boy liking a muslim girl in school, and trying this feature on her. She may not even be one who posts photos online and might not even be involved in social media, but anyone can just take your photo these days and do whatever they want with it. 

This is a continuation of a trend that normalizes sexual violence against women and girls by Big Tech,” says Adam Dodge, a lawyer and founder of EndTAB (Ending Technology-Enabled Abuse). “Sign-in APIs are tools of convenience. We should never be making sexual violence an act of convenience,” he says. “We should be putting up walls around the access to these apps, and instead we're giving people a drawbridge.

Putting up walls around access to the apps might stop a few people, but those who really want to nudify someone will find a way to nudify them. 

Muslim parents should take heed and address these issues with their children, especially if they have cell phones and are on social media. 

The one who remembers Allah versus, “one of the swearers.”

We were stopped at a traffic light, and all of a sudden, we got struck in the rear by another vehicle. 

There was a sudden moment of panic between me and the other brother next to me, and there were 2 different reactions to this accident.

One person said a form of dhikr, either "La Ilaha Il Allah!" or "Allahu Akbar!" (I can't remember which one.)

and the other person said, "Mother f***ker!"

My goal here is not to boast or anything, but I was the one who said a form of dhikr, and the person next to me was the one swearing. If this had happened back when I was a lot younger though, I would also have been, "one of the swearers."

Imagine being known as, "one of the swearers."

What if we had died that day? One of us would have ended with the dhikr of Allah, and the other one would have ended his life with an expletive. 

Subhan Allah!

The question we have to ask ourselves is, what will we say on our death bed?

It is easy to say that I will say the shahadah on my death bed, but what guarantee do you have that you will die a slow death in a hospital bed, where you know the end is near?

How do you know that you won't just go suddenly in an accident, just like so many people have gone?

The irony of this whole situation is that we were actually on our way back home after a funeral burial!

Not only that, but the person who passed away was a close relative of mine, who died unexpectedly in his own home. 

Once again, Subhan Allah!

We have the blessing of always remembering Allah throughout our day, and we don't need to be in the state of wudhu to remember Him. You can say all the dhikr you want, at anytime!

Keep your tongue moist with the dhikr of Allah, and get rid of the filth that you have been saying. 

The sooner you start, the better you will become at remembering Allah.

Think about it, when you restrain your tongue, that action in and of itself is a remembrance of Allah! You're doing it so you don't displease Him and accumulate sins.

Remember, it takes years to condition yourself to say dhikr at moments of sudden hardship and pain.

It will not happen overnight! I am talking from experience. 

Just like the questions in the grave. We all know the answers, but our actions and our level of faith will determine whether or not we can actually answer those questions when we are 6 feet under. 

Saying dhikr at times of difficulty and at times of ease is a Sunnah, and it is an easy one that we can implement in our lives. 

Imagine dying while swearing, acquiring a sin and displeasing Allah at your last moment.

Audhubillah..

Now imagine the opposite, where you die remembering Allah as your last words. You will die doing a Sunnah and remembering Alllah at the same time!

Allahu Akbar!

The choice is yours, and it is up to you to work on yourself so you can have a good ending to your life. 

The more you strive towards Allah, the more you will remember Allah, the more dhikr you will do, and when life hits you with a ton of bricks (or with the front end of a car!), then in sha Allah, you will be conditioned to praise Allah instead of displeasing Allah.

Remember what the Prophet (peace be upon him) said about the consequences of the tongue:

"O Messenger of Allah! Shall we really be accounted for what we talk about?" He replied, "May your mother lose you O Muadh! People will be thrown on their faces into Hell on account of their tongues."

Sunan Ibn Majah, 3973

At the same time, the tongue can lead you to Paradise: 

It was narrated that Mu’aadh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him) said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) say,: “If a person’s last words are Laa ilaaha ill-Allah, Paradise will be guaranteed for him.”

Narrated by Ahmad, 21529

May Allah allow all of us to have a good ending to our lives, Ameen.

With the power of A.I. how can you verify your loved ones are alive?

Sarah Jeong from The Verge:

The persistent cry of “Fake News!” from Trumpist quarters presaged the beginning of this era of unmitigated bullshit, in which the impact of the truth will be deadened by the firehose of lies. The next Abu Ghraib will be buried under a sea of AI-generated war crime snuff. The next George Floyd will go unnoticed and unvindicated….

We briefly lived in an era in which the photograph was a shortcut to reality, to knowing things, to having a smoking gun. It was an extraordinarily useful tool for navigating the world around us. We are now leaping headfirst into a future in which reality is simply less knowable. The lost Library of Alexandria could have fit onto the microSD card in my Nintendo Switch, and yet the cutting edge of technology is a handheld telephone that spews lies as a fun little bonus feature. 

Having AI to alter photos is great for when you take a family photo so you can remove some inappropriately dressed people in the background.

Like all new technologies though, the most obvious danger that Sarah alludes to is using AI to start new wars, cause mass distrust from people, and just the overall mass speculation of society about anything.

Who can you trust, when any image can be created and altered to your narrative?

Here are some sample photos from the article, in order to avoid looking at some of the impermissible ones:

Could AI be the next thing that brings back old-school lifestyles, where people will cherish having the in-person experience, versus assuming a video or a person they are talking to is a real individual?

Will we reach a point where actually traveling to meet your loved ones will be the only way we can verify their existence?

With how false chatGPT can be in giving you answers about Islam, will you trust any AI source with your religion?

There are just so many questions that need to be answered, but no one can deny that living the experience will be something people will cherish more than anything.

Having a mufti that you study under will be more valuable than a remote experience.

Visiting family will be a reassurance that yes, they do still exist, and they are alive!

The wonders of technology will make us once again “regress” to old ways of in-person experiences, and perhaps to a certain degree, that may be a good thing.

The path to that point however, might not be so easy.

Less than 1 percent of what you say can change people’s lives forever…

Last weekend, I was driving and watching a YouTube video, and I got a notification from my substack app. I don’t remember exactly what the notification was, but all I remember was that the notification banner mentioned something about...istighfar.

I realized at that point that while I am alone in the car, with no one to talk to, now would be a good time to talk to Allah and ask for forgiveness. Surely you can never ask for too much forgiveness, since we are perpetual sinners!

It also reminded me of the blessings of istighfar, one of them being that it will increase your wealth. That is exactly what the people of Nuh (AS) were told, that forgiveness will give you abundance:

I said to them: “Ask forgiveness from your Lord; surely He is Most Forgiving. He will shower you with abundant rain, and will provide you with wealth and children, and will bestow upon you gardens and rivers.”

Surah Nuh (71:10-12)

Subhan Allah, look at what forgiveness can bring your way!

All these thoughts were going through my head, all from just a quick banner notification that I dismissed so quickly so I could continue to watch YouTube.

Even though I dismissed the notification as fast as I could, I saw the notification long enough that it made me pause the video, take a few minutes to be as genuine as I can about my sins and ask Allah for forgiveness, and then continue with my day.

I am not even sure who wrote the substack post because I can’t even find it 🙃, but it just shows us that as long as we have a sincere intention to please Allah and to bring people closer to Allah, we can get rewarded for those small actions.

This person who wrote this post got good deeds from JUST the notification sent to my phone, without me even reading the article in detail, and allowed me to write my own post about istighfar and its benefits!

Most of what we say online, or even to our families, may be dismissed and not even seen by most people, but there might just be that 0.5% of what you say that touches someone a certain way, and that causes them to make a small change in their life or just reflect and connect with Allah for a few minutes.

Those are the moments that will matter at the end of the day, because if we have helped someone come closer to Allah even for just a few moments, Allah will take note of that.

If Allah has liked what you have done, it doesn't matter what kind of engagement your post gets, because the one who can change your life has already liked what you have done!

The like of all likes!

You’re not wasting time if you’re doing stuff with your kids.

Yesterday, I had a plan.

I was going to workout after work, no matter what.

I just had to.

It has been a few days and I knew I needed the workout.

Did I want to do it? Of course not.

But it has to be done.

After Asr prayer, it’s time to hit the “home gym.”

I got back home later than usual from work, and the next thing I know, my driveway has turned into a giant bike repair shop.

My 7 year old’s training wheels weren’t working properly, so I had to fix them.

My 12 year old’s bike handles were loose and swinging up and down which should not be happening, but we were able to tighten them up with a simple Allen wrench.

My 10 year old didn’t have any serious issues with his bike. Yeah, his rear brakes are completely shot, but his front brakes worked well enough to compensate. It’s not like he’s running the Tour de France anyway.

Anyway, he wanted to put on new brakes for his rear wheel, and he got me involved in this project. I thought this would be a good father and son time, fixing things together, and it was.

Did it take exceptionally longer than expected?

Of course it did.

There were moments where I just wanted to stop and tell him to just forget about it right now, but I wanted to show my son that quitting isn’t an option, especially when it is something that is achievable. We kept on pushing and running into roadblocks trying to find the right balance between the brake spacers and the length of the brake wire, but after what seemed like a few hours, we finally figured it out.

There were moments where my son had to hold onto the brakes at a certain angle while I tightened the bolts, but his grip was not strong enough to keep the brakes in place and we would have to keep making adjustments. I could see the expression on his face, that expression of wanting to accomplish the goal, but also not wanting to disappoint his father who has told him several times to hold the brakes in place.

Seeing that expression on his face just made me calm down a few notches, and gave him more encouragement to keep pushing and having him feel that sense of accomplishment after we finally solved the problem.

It was great teamwork from the both of us to finally get the brakes on correctly, and he had a test drive to confirm it was a success.

We both had a nice bonding moment, just working together and fixing the bike.

Was it a waste of time? Of course not, because I was hanging out with my son, and I was able to help my daughters have a good time riding their bikes in this nice fall weather.

After all was said and done, it was Maghrib time, and I just didn’t feel like working out. I was exhausted from my 9-5 (or 8-4 in my case), and I just hustled out 40 pushups so I can say that I at least did some physical activity.

Sometimes things don’t go the way you want them, but you can always turn a chore into a learning and bonding session with your kids.

Lessons learned:

1. Don’t give up when it comes to things that are actually achievable. Struggling is a part of life, and will eventually lead to success.

2. Don’t always assume a new project will be over quickly. Always budget extra time.

3. Be patient with your children. They look up to you and want to please you, so don’t let your anger ruin those special moments and turn them into regretful memories.

4. If you can’t do a full workout, do something quick and fast to get some physical activity in for the day.

Reaching the delegation point in your family life.

You need to prepare for your kids Islamic lesson, but you also need to buy groceries.

What do you do??

You do both, at the same time.

Use the power of delegation, especially for eager kids who want to do the shopping for you.

I was able to prepare our family lecture, while the kids made the shopping list (which I had to approve of course), and the 7 and 10 yr old went together through the store on their own and got the items on the list. My son gave me a report of what he was not able to get because of height limitations on his part 😁.

It was also an act of discipline for me because I knew I had to finish prepping my lesson before they got back to me.

It was a moment of hyperfocus for me and for them.

And a reminder to not belittle what our kids can do, especially if they are eager to learn and do it on their own.

Remember, when you start teaching your kids, it will be tough and they will make many mistakes,

But this is exactly how the early Muslims learned about Islam.

The Prophet ﷺ taught the sahaba, and he had to be patient and endure the mistakes of his people. 

Follow his example, follow his sunnah, and be the best teacher to your kids. 

Will you have this regret when you are gone?

We have all seemingly missed out on so much.

We didn’t give any importance to cryptocurrency and especially bitcoin, and we were not able to capitalize on it as much as we would have liked, when it was only literally pennies for bitcoin.

How about the housing market? Maybe we were tempted to buy a house with a riba based loan, but we said NO, and now that opportunity to save in cash for a house keeps dwindling away since the prices are out of control. We “missed out” on that opportunity.

We could have bought a car for much cheaper before the pandemic, but now car prices are just ridiculous. We missed out on that opportunity.

There are just so many opportunities that we have seemingly missed out on, but we have to remember one thing:

When we are in our graves, the only opportunity that we will care about at that time is:

Did we miss out on our Islam?

Did we miss out on our religion?

Did we miss out on our real purpose in life?

We as Muslims already have the best thing that no dollar, no house, no bitcoin, no exotic car can buy.

We have la ilaha il Allah.

We have Allah on our side!

We have the truth!

We have guidance to Paradise!

There will be so many people who would have wished they had Islam, crying to the point where they would be willing to sacrifice everyone they know and all the people in the world in order to save themselves.

“To save himself from the torment of that Day, the culprit shall wish to give his children, his wife, his brother, his kinsfolk who gave him shelter, and all the people of the earth, just to save themselves.”

(Surah Ma’arij 70:11-14)

They will be crying with so much regret that they didn’t invest in their REAL life!

They will cry, “I wish I had sent forth ˹something good˺ for my ˹true˺ life.”

(Surah Fajr: 89:24)

Whenever you feel like you’ve missed out on something, or an opportunity has passed you buy, then always remember that you still have the best gift of all.

Islam!

The earlier you start, the better.

The earlier you start something, the quicker you will get better at it.

This is especially true with homeschooling.

When you have just one child, it is very easy to homeschool them, and you can accelerate their learning since the teacher to student ratio is 1:1.

Or even 2:1 if both parents get involved!

Just like you adjusted your time and priorities when you got married, and again after having your first child, you can adjust once again by homeschooling them.

When child #2 comes along, you can adjust again, and prioritize your time differently.

It is a gradual process and you will notice how much you can actually accomplish.

You will even look back at when you only had one child, and how “busy” you thought you were with just one brain to feed 😅.

If you already have 3 kids that are in public schools, and now decide to start homeschooling them, it can still be done, no doubt about it, but the challenges and initial shock will be much more difficult.

This is what keeps people from even getting started, until it gets far too long in the tooth and the opportunity has passed you by.

How boys and girls think differently about money.

The other day, my daughter comes up to me, very nonchalantly, and just tells me,

“Papa, I think I lost my money.”

There was no emotion or panic in her tone whatsoever. I was more in shock of how calm she was because I knew she had a decent chunk of change for a 12 year old (about $500 from gifts and Eid money).

So naturally I asked her, “how much money? Do you mean your purse?” Her purse usually has like $20-$40.

I was like there was no way she lost ALL her money.

She replies again in her casual voice, “No. I lost all my money.”

So now I’m a bit concerned and freaking out a bit inside, and we go on a mission to backtrack her steps and search her room, and eventually she finds it fairly quickly.

Once she finds it, it’s just a, “Oh there it is.” and there’s just the tiniest sign of relief on her face.

After this ordeal, I was just taken aback by her attitude and how losing the money didn’t make her freak out. When I thought about it more, it didn't really surprise me.

We have been homeschooling them since the beginning, and we have been teaching them proper Islamic principles, including how a household is run, who is in charge of what, and who brings home the “dough,” and who cooks the dough.

It’s a system that Alhumdulilah works amazingly well, and brings benefit to everyone.

My wife doesn’t have to worry about money, and naturally, my daughter has picked that up from her. Having a lot of money isn’t a priority for my daughter, and being thrifty with money is one of her qualities.

Frankly, it should be a quality for all of us.

Her carelessness with money isn’t spending too much, but just misplacing it in her room 😂.

My son, on the other hand, is the opposite. He is much more meticulous with money, always trying to find ways to earn money, mainly because he tends to spend more money. If he had lost his wad of cash, he would have turned the whole house upside down trying to find it. He would definitely have been in a more panicked state. 

The way my son and daughter react emotionally to money is part of their fitra that is inside all of us as Muslims, and something that our house has reinforced:

Men are the providers of the household and have to worry about money and providing, while women are the maintainers of the household and have to worry about caretaking and maintaining. They are different roles for men and women, but in the eyes of Allah, they are noble and equitable positions that can take you to Jannah. 

Someone who stays home isn’t a worse person because they take care of the home vs the one who has to go out and work.

If your kids grow up without the influence of social media, and without the influence of anti-Islamic lifestyles that they see all day and are fed through the school systems, they are more likely to grow up on the fitra and you will have to spend less time trying to detox their minds.

You will see the fitra flourish in the actions of your kids, from the obvious to the more subtle, like finances.

Good news for New Yorker bound international flyers.

Gaby Del Valle from The Verge:

"A federal judge in New York ruled that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can’t search travelers’ phones without a warrant. The ruling theoretically applies to land borders, seaports, and airports — but in practice, it only applies to New York’s Eastern District.

That’s not nothing, though, since the district includes John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, the sixth-busiest airport in the country. Nationwide, CBP has conducted more than 230,000 searches of electronic devices between the 2018 and 2023 fiscal years at land borders, seaports, and airports, according to its publicly available enforcement statistics."

The Headline is a bit misleading, but for now this only applies to New York's Eastern District, which includes JFK and I would assume LaGuardia. Of course if you're Muslim, this is good knowledge to know, unfortunately.

Doing the bare bones consistently, can lead to Jannah?

The Prophet ﷺ said:

وَمَنْ سَلَكَ طَرِيقًا يَلْتَمِسُ فِيهِ عِلْمًا سَهَّلَ اللَّهُ لَهُ بِهِ طَرِيقًا إِلَى الْجَنَّةِ

Whoever travels a path in search of knowledge, Allah will make easy for him a path to Paradise.

This translation doesn’t do justice to the word that is used for “seeking,” which is “iltimas.”

I’m no Arabic scholar, but I was watching a Righteous and Rich episode, and Br. Imran explained the word “iltimas.” It is commonly translated as “seeking,” but it actually means someone who does less than that.

How much less? It is one of the lowest levels of seeking knowledge, where someone might spend once a week, or even once every two weeks, trying to seek just a little tiny bit of knowledge.

No rigorous studying, but very passive knowledge. 

Even for THIS person, the one who isn’t trying hard at all to seek knowledge, but if he is consistent, Allah will make a path to Paradise easy for him. 

Allah hu Akbar!

After hearing this, there really isn’t any excuse for us not to seek knowledge. Even if it means reading a post on social media (that is authentic), or watching a few short videos (dare I say reels or shorts!), this could be your ticket to Jannah.

Consistency is key though!

Of course we should always strive higher than the bare minimum, and the benefit you will get from seeking knowledge will literally change your life. 

Not only your life, but the lives of those you are responsible for.

Your children, and your spouse.

Imagine spending just 5 minutes a day teaching your children about something you learned. It doesn’t even have to be directly related to Islamic knowledge, but maybe something happened in your day, and you can relate it to your kids by showing them how such and such a situation was a blessing, how that incident was a trial, how this situation reminded me of the Prophet ﷺ during this phase, etc. 

These 5 minutes will add up over time, and they will organically lengthen the conversations you have with your children. They will ask you questions, and the conversation will keep going while you bond with them. 

The knowledge discussions will be something they will actually look forward to, and before you know it, these discussions will become longer without seeming like a drag. 

And best of yet by Allah’s will, your path to Paradise will be easy!

Check out the video clip here.

A Sunnah we can all do and need.

One of the easiest Sunnahs that we can all do today is also one of the Sunnahs that we all need today, arguably more than ever:

‎Smiling in the face of your brother.

‎At-Tirmidhi (1956) narrated that Abu Dharr said: The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said:

‎“Your smiling at your brother is an act of charity.”

‎With all the carnage that is happening out there,

‎With all the hardships people are enduring,

‎With all the trials that we are facing,

‎With all the degeneracy that we see is happening,

‎Let us uplift one another with a smile.

‎It will make you feel better, and it will make your brother feel better.

‎Not that we need anymore validation as Muslims because the Prophet ﷺ is validation, but smiling is also scientifically proven to make you feel better.

Authoritarian vs Authoritative Parenting

I discussed Permissive parenting in a previous post, but now I want to talk about Authoritarian Parenting. This is probably something many Muslims are familiar with, since it has the qualities that we grew up with, and by consequence, we have now inherited those same tactics for our own kids. 

So what is Authoritarian Parenting? Here is what Abigail Shrier says in her book:

“The "authoritarian parent" values a child's obedience as a virtue, holds the child's behavior to an absolute standard, works to keep the child in his place, restricts his autonomy, and does not ever encourage a give-and-take discussion about her rules.

Does this sound familiar? Absolute obedience to the “establishment,” meaning your parents, no matter what. The obedience itself is virtuous. There is no room for discussion at all. This kind of parenting doesn’t just last when the child is young, but it goes on all the way to adulthood. 

“You need to be a Doctor, or else you won’t get a good job.”

“You can’t get married until your other siblings get married first.”

The amount of control can be surprising, and the worst part is when this absolute obedience to parents leads to the disobedience of Allah. 

Allah was never in the picture, and you, the parent, were the authority to be pleased. 

There is no room for creativity or alternative suggestions to satisfy both parties. 

This will psychologically damage your kids, and they themselves will not be effective leaders. 

Remember, “authoritative parenting,” is the best balance of control and love. Follow the Islamic model and the example of the Prophet ﷺ and you will find that middle ground of authority, love, and guidance for your children.