General
Roe V Wade Statement
In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Beneficent
We are holding space for one another during this difficult time. The recent Supreme Court 6-3 decision to overturn Roe and Casey and uphold Mississippi’s 15 week ban on abortion deals a devastating blow to the most impacted communities in our country, namely Black, indigenous, and people of color-including Muslims who are able to get pregnant. Previous supposed liberties laid out by Roe v. Wade only truly empowered those who are most privileged. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe will continue to create serious ramifications in states where majorities of legislatures are hostile to abortion rights and access, and karamah (dignity) and bodily autonomy (personal boundaries and choice) in general— including in regards to queer and trans people.
We will always assert that Muslims have the freedom to exercise bodily autonomy and make decisions over our own bodies. Reproductive justice is inherently Islamic and reflected in divinely-granted
- khilafah (individual moral agency as part of our submission to God),
- hurma (sacred boundaries of each body upheld through each person’ bodily autonomy) and
- ridha (choice and consent).
These tenets are at the core of how our faith tradition guides our communities through compassion and mercy.
In this moment when so many of us are feeling afraid, angry, disheartened, and overwhelmed, we at HEART, Queer Crescent, Muslim Women’s Organization, For the Binat, American Muslim Bar Association, Muslims for Just Futures, Shia Racial Justice Coalition, SisterSong, and National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, uplift the following:
We are in solidarity with the most impacted people and will continue to help our communities access safe abortion care.
For anyone who is in need of or considering an abortion and is unsure whether you are able to safely and/or legally access reproductive care in your local area, please know that we value you, we care for you, and we believe firmly in your personal responsibility and God-given freedom to make decisions over your own safety, health, and life.
We encourage you to visit https://bit.ly/SVandRJinfo as a starting point as you navigate this process with trusted loved ones, medical professionals, and/or religious or spiritual guides.
- If you have questions about self-managed abortion and the law, If/When/How’s Repro Legal Helpline is a free, confidential source for legal advice and information. Visit ReproLegalHelpline.org or call (844) 868-2812.
- See Practical Support Organizations’ information here.
Abortion criminalization is yet another extension of the various ways Muslim bodies are criminalized.
Throughout US and global history, the same Muslim and BIPOC bodies have been persecuted—with our bodily autonomy persistently threatened and violated. Some of the communities that have experienced the brunt of this violation of our basic human rights and dignity are Black people, indigenous people, Latinx people, disabled people, queer people, and people with low socioeconomic status as a result of economic and political disenfranchisement.
This is reflected through oppressive and inhumane surveillance, policing, criminalization, incarceration, and other inherently misogynistic, racist, queerphobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic systems. These oppressions perpetuate the shameful legacies of rape, colonization, slavery, genocide, forced sterilization, and other forms of medical violence.
Given this racial and economic-as well as gender-based injustice, we, as Muslims and moral agents of God, must act to defend and uplift the rights of those among us who are most oppressed. We are entrusted by our Creator with doing so with our hands, our tongues, and our hearts, following the example of our Prophet (peace be upon him) and our ancestors.
While no Muslim organization can speak for all Muslims, it is clear that a majority of Muslims in the US support access to abortion care in all or most cases. ***
Indeed, Muslims value and advocate for reproductive justice, including and beyond sexual and reproductive health care, such as abortion, which, like other personal health issues, is a complex decision that looks different from person to person.
People who are not directly impacted but want to help: please take action however you can. Go to https://bit.ly/SVandRJinfo to see the various abortion funds and other local, regional, and national organizations that you could support through monetary donations, volunteering your time and skills, and meeting other needs.
Things all Muslims can do, together with friends and allies:
- Amplify and share our organizations’ resources widely and-if you feel safe to do so- publicly, such as on your social media. Reach out to us with additional questions or if you’re interested in hosting a discussion or workshop on this topic.
- Advocate at the individual and community levels alongside people who are most impacted. For example,
- If you feel safe to do so, make yourself available to be reached out to to support someone you know who requires an abortion or other reproductive health care. Some ways you might be asked to help include donating, driving or accompanying, and assisting with safety planning.
- If you live in a state where abortion is still legal, identify and support community-led measures to serve people in need from other states. Wherever you live in the US or world, raise your and your allies’ voices to power-holders like elected and other government representatives, news media, and businesses and companies.
- Vote, and-including if you do not have the right to vote, yourself – share information about different candidates and measures in your city, county, state, and Congress with others. (HEART’s voter guide and candidate score sheet will go live this fall ahead of the midterm elections).
- Join the Sex Talk reader community—which will offer virtual and in-person spaces to connect and apply our reflections on the book to the change we want to see around sexual and reproductive health justice from the individual to systems levels.
We continue to demand justice for all our communities—namely those most impacted— and remain steadfast in our insistence that we are all created equal and with the same basic dignity and rights.
We demand an end to the assault on our bodily autonomy, and continue to call for reproductive justice. This includes:
- Defunding law enforcement and national security apparatuses that disproportionately criminalize BIPOC, queer, and/or Muslim people; and investing in communities of care, where those who are most impacted lead transformative, not punitive solutions.
- Safe, affordable, comprehensive, and culturally sensitive health and human services, including access to health education, contraception, housing, employment, and other needs.
- Compassionate communities where the dignity and rights of all people are upheld and all are free from interpersonal to systemic harm based on gender, race, class, religion, or ability—including religious freedom from white supremacist, queerphobic Christian hegemony—
This dunya (world) is fraught with injustices. Even as those injustices increasingly inflict deep harms on our communities, testing our patience, we know that God is Al Adl (the Most Just) and we all will see the promised pureness and beauty of that Justice in the akhirah (Hereafter). Until then, most impacted people have always taken care of our communities and pursued our vision of reproductive justice—and will always continue to do so.
We must hold fast to the remembrance of our Waliyy (Protector), from whom we have come and to Whom is our return. There is no strength nor power without God, and God is always and forever Greater.
In solidarity,
HEART, Queer Crescent, Muslim Women’s Organization, For the Binat, American Muslim Bar Association, Muslims for Just Futures, Shia Racial Justice Coalition, SisterSong, and National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
Additional Supporters: Amplify Georgia Collaborative, Repro Legal Defense Fund, Muslim Women For, Queer Shia Collective, Reproductive Justice Resilience Project
* “The Majority of American Muslims Believe Abortion Should be Legal in All or Most Cases,” Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, https://www.ispu.org/2022-abortion-data/
*“Views about abortion among Muslims,” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/muslim/views-about-abortion/
*“The State of Abortion and Contraception Attitudes in All 50 States,” Public Religion Research Institute, https://www.prri.org/research/legal-in-most-cases-the-impact-of-the-abortion-debate-in-2019-america/
Reimagining Resilience
by Kiran Waqar
As we begin 2022, we reflect on the accomplishments, losses, and lessons of 2021. And as 2022 begins to look a little more like 2020-2, we remember our decision to name 2021 “The Year of Resilience.” As our team reflected on how resilient our communities’ are and have been, we also held the heaviness of the reality that resilience is often an expectation of marginalized communities to “put up and shut up” and an excuse for decision-makers to not make real change. And of course, we know too intimately that so many of us do not survive these systems: we have lost loved ones and community members to gender-based violence, to the negligence of our government in the face of a global pandemic, to an inhumane carceral state, to state-sanctioned violence, and more. We know that resilience as a weapon isn’t equally applied; Black women and genderqueer folks, in particular, are told to be resilient while also having their pain regularly dismissed and erased. We acknowledge the work of our contemporary leaders – audre lorde, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and many more – who have paved the way for rethinking resilience. We also acknowledge our own positionality as a nonprofit. Though we actively work to disrupt the non-profit industrial complex, we have the ability to flatten and commercialize resilience.
Our communities are strong, we are grieving, and we are tired of having to be resilient in the face of oppression, and year after year, we’re organizing and demanding change. As a team, we sit with this discomfort; of knowing that our resilience is intimate, communal, and immensely powerful AND that it has been co-opted to justify our oppression.
But what if our resilience wasn’t reactionary, but intentional and grounded? What if our resilience was from a place of love, not pain? How can we reimagine resilience to be a cornerstone of liberated and just communities, as the legacy of our ancestors and faith tradition? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like?
Communities that are marginalized are often told to be more resilient, as if we are not already resilient by just existing in this oppressive society. We are not resilient because we succeed in a capitalistic, racist, heteropatriarchal system; we are resilient for our softness, joy, and love in spite of these systems. In a world that tells us over and over again that success is being the biggest, the best, the most productive, we are resilient for softening our hearts. Loving is our jihad.
For that reason, we are leaning into resilience. In fact, we are embracing it, nurturing it, and are cautiously curious about it. We want to grow in that curiosity with all of you. As we enter 2022, we will be posting and uplifting works that remind us of resilience. Read the pieces, engage with our social media and website, and submit your own work. What if we could re-remember resilience for ourselves?
Waiting For “Justice” That Will Never Come
by Aisha Rahman, JD
Yesterday, I had a trial in a divorce case that was filed against my client in 2018. My client, who had endured every form of abuse imaginable, had waited three years for justice from a court of law – she knew she would never get it from her abuser. In this new COVID world, we had a hearing via zoom. After an hour of logistics, the trial finally began. The abuser’s interpreter only had one device. His phone. Between interpreting for the abuser and hearing the court, one device just wasn’t sufficient. The interpreter function on the zoom portal, that the county had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for, wasn’t working. Half way through the abuser’s testimony the judge suddenly called a mistrial. He couldn’t hear the interpreter. To add insult to injury, the judge ordered that because the case had been set a few times, and had not been able to be pulled off virtually, that he would not put it on a calendar until the courthouse re-opened fully in person. His estimate of when that would be? 2023. 2023! A full five years after the case had begun.
Let’s rewind a minute. Let’s talk about the process. My client married her husband as a student. She was swept off her feet by a charismatic man who offered her the world. Her love was so deep that when he told her to drop out of school because he didn’t like the way other men looked at her, she obliged. She dropped out of school even though she was in the U.S. on a student visa. For the next several months they courted and ultimately decided to get married. In the Islamic marriage, he promised her a gift of $50,000. He never gave her the money. As an aside, the ceremony was in English. He consented in English. He works as a salesman and speaks to his customers in English. He now goes to school where he speaks English. It is his civil right, of course, to have an interpreter at trial. Incidentally, my client’s right to a timely trial, is not as important.
After they married, they bought a house. Because she was out of status, she didn’t have a bank account. She didn’t have a work permit. She sold her gold jewelry and gave her husband cash for the down payment. The lender told them that it needed to come via a bank account so that there was a paper trail. It is unclear to me why a bank would refuse cash. So, the abuser gave the cash to his siblings who wire transferred it to him from their account. They even wrote him a promissory note!
For the year that she was in the house, my client contributed to the home. She helped with renovations. She made the house a home. Does that matter in the law? Actually, no. The house was marital property. After the parties got legally married, they added her name to the deed of the house. She is a co-owner of the house whether she put any money into or it not. His argument at court? She shouldn’t get a share of the home. She was not in the home for a cumulative of more than 3 months, he said. She had since been out of the house for two years.
Why had she been in and out of the house? The truth is that she had been in the house for much longer than three months. After a particularly gruesome episode of abuse, during which he burned the skin off her belly, my client fled to her family home. Her abuser came to her a week later and begged on his hands and knees for her to return. She did. The next time she left the house, he had told her he was having his friends over to gang rape her. She ran to the bathroom and locked the door. He had his friends waiting for her, breaking down the door, when her sister showed up to rescue her. She would have called the police even though she was undocumented. That’s how dire the situation was. She only had time for one call before he broke her phone. His abuse is why she left. She fled. And he wanted to use her time away from the home against her? She never knew she could ask for exclusive use and possession of her home. When she learned she could, the court told her it was too late. At trial, the abuser called this “separation.”
My client spent the next twelve months in shelter. The shelter had a policy – the maximum stay was 6 months. They figured out a way to keep her – maybe at the expense of another survivor needing a home. (By the way, fund shelters). Then, miraculously, she found a room in another person’s home. She found two agencies to help her with rent. Two months before trial, she got her work permit. One month before trial, she got a job. Her abuser at trial told the court that she lived in a swanky neighborhood. He had no idea she had rent assistance – he is not entitled to that information. To him, she was self -sufficient. She had a job. She had no need for money or support.
In litigation, there is something called a calendar call. Calendar calls are days when the judge calls up the lawyers and asks them how long the trial will last. After the calendar call, the court sets you on a trial calendar that month. My client had three calendar calls in her case. Three times that the case could have been set and wasn’t. For whatever reason. Two weeks ago, the court finally had given us a trial date and we prepared. My client relived her all of the abuse she experienced. She prepared to be badgered by her abuser’s attorney. She prepared to see his face. To hear his voice. To let his lies wash over her. The wounds from her trauma were so deep that she took days off of work. Days she couldn’t afford to take. We showed up for trial ready to go. The interpreters didn’t come. They had been requested over and over again. The court reset the case for two weeks later. That was yesterday. She had prepared all over again. She had taken more days off of work. The trial started. She endured his lies. Then, suddenly, a mistrial.
Now, she has to either settle for nothing, forfeiting all of her rights just to be divorced from this monster, or wait another two years for “justice.” Tell me, is this justice?
After court ended abruptly, she called me. She cried. She told me I couldn’t possibly understand. She was right. I couldn’t feel her pain. I couldn’t feel her frustration. Does the judge have no mercy, she asked me? Does the judge not understand the physical pain I still feel when I see him? Does he not understand what will happen to me if I wait two more years to have my day in court? Does he understand that even if I can get a few thousand dollars out of this I’ll be able to pay a doctor to heal my three year old wounds? Wounds I never addressed because I have no insurance? Should I give up and just be free of him so I can move on?
Her words are haunting me. I have no solutions. I have no faith in this system that I uphold everyday as a trial attorney. Still, we fight.
Being victim-centered when a revered leader dies
The recent death of a revered scholar that has also harmed people has brought up many emotions. Earlier this week, we posted about how those who do good can also do harm. Today, we wrap up this week by diving deeper into the range of complex emotions that have been shared, and uplift some of the voices that are not as dominant.
1) Those who do good can also do harm. One person’s experience of someone may be full of deep connection, learning, and growth, while another person’s experience may be full of pain, isolation, and oppression. Neither experience is invalid, and both can be given the proper attention they deserve. Centering the voices of those who have been harmed – even if they are few compared to those who have benefited – is critical to building safe and inclusive communities and preventing future harm.
2) The impact of spiritual abuse and violence can last well after the abuser’s tenure. That harm should be addressed openly with honest conversations during their lifetime, and, if necessary, also after they die.* The impacts of harm – particularly spiritual abuse and gender-based violence – can last a lifetime, well beyond the tenure of an abuser’s leadership or their life. The person who has harmed will almost always be able to move on, while those who have experienced their harm may never be the same and will carry that trauma with them for a lifetime.
3) Ignoring the harm that happens because of spiritual abuse is disrespectful to survivors. Not addressing it, minimizing it, or reducing it to mistakes or ‘human flaws’ is deeply disrespectful to the painful experiences that those who have been harmed by the community leader. It erases their experience and lived realities and can impact their healing journey. For those who are community leaders, it rewrites history in a way that can cause lasting harm.
4) Spiritual abuse by a person in leadership results in multiple layers of harm. When a leader uses their religious authority to gain control over others, there is a betrayal at the individual, community, and institutional levels (if there is an institution involved). Specifically, those that are harmed include the individual(s) that directly experienced the harm, as well as those who take spiritual guidance from the leader and now are left to grapple with their teacher’s actions. This can cause great crises of faith, and many to feel like they lost their sense of community and question their faith altogether.
5) Accountability must happen publicly for those in leadership. Every believer has an opportunity to privately repent, repair, and ask for forgiveness from their Lord, and from those they have harmed. When the person who has harmed is in a position of public leadership and religious authority, this accountability process must happen publicly as well: the naming of their abuses and how they will repair the harm can be critical to modeling accountability as well as providing closure for those who have been harmed.
6) We all contribute to harm. We all can participate the re-traumatization and triggering of those who have been harmed. This includes: other religious scholars or community leaders glorifying the person who has harmed when they die and not acknowledging the pain they may have caused. It can also look like silencing others who choose to speak up about the complexity of their feelings by shaming them or telling them not to speak ill of the dead.
7) Justice is in this world and the Next. True justice lies with God and we are still obligated to build just communities in this world. How we respond to and address harm, support survivors, and build communities of care that center the most marginalized is working to fulfill that obligation and every one of us has a role in this work. Spiritual abuse doesn’t happen in a vacuum – there are often people and systems in place that enable the harm to continue. Repairing harm with survivors can and should happen even after the tenure or passing of the person that harmed them.
We can create communities that are victim-centered and acknowledge the complexity of human beings, and hold their contributions to this world alongside the harm that they’ve done. We don’t have to reinforce the binary of heroes and monsters, because most of the time life is not one way or another; it is messy and complex. Multiple conflicting truths do exist: those who can be the source of a lot of good can also be the source of a lot of pain. That pain can often be difficult to grapple with, or reconcile, and it is indeed easier to pretend it never happened, especially upon someone’s death. And yet, we cannot continue to build communities that come at the expense of those who have been most marginalized – otherwise we are only replicating those systems of harm.
Survivors – this week, and always – we see you. We feel you. We hear you. We are you.
*we are grateful for Dr. Donna Auston for uplifting this important reflection.
Ramadan Reflections: Resilience & Body
by Seher Siddiqee, HEART Chaplain
The question that I have been pondering for this reflection is how do I connect my body to the ritual expressions of my practice? This came about as I was preparing for the month of Ramadan and trying to figure out what goals I wanted and what I was hoping to gain in this month. I’d like to begin with a poem called “The Small Claim of Bones by Cindy Williams Gutierrez.
what my body knows
is not a lie it’s not
a lie i tell you it is not
it’s nothing short of truth
and nothing larger
my past lodges
in my marrow and if
i wanted a transplant
there’d be no match
others’ sorrows dwarf
my petty traumas still
these bones are mine
when they creak
when they moan
when they whine
there’s only one thing
i can claim these bones
are mine i tell you
they are mine and kind
to abandon no thing
that makes this pulse
no one but me
A few weeks before Ramadan, I was talking to a friend who asked me what my goals would be for Ramadan. I hadn’t thought much about them as I still thought I had ample of time to think about them. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from Ramadan this year. The past few years, Ramadan has come at some challenging times and the month was something I felt like a collection of motions that I was not particularly engaged with. This year, I wanted it to be different. As I thought about what I hoped for this Ramadan could be, I thought about my body and the physicality of this month, the preparation and care that goes into getting ready to fast and sustaining that practice for a month. This got me thinking about the bodily connection -or lack thereof- of various rituals that have been central to my spiritual practice but for the most part have remained in my head. So this year I chose to take this month to reflect on the ways in which I connect my physical body to different spiritual practices, the first two that came to mind were prayer and fasting.
I am someone who tends to put others and their needs before my own and sometimes this can be to the detriment of my own health and wellbeing. I push myself past healthy limits and it is often not until after my breaking point that I take time to rest and stop. I have noticed this more during the past pandemic year and am actively trying to change the thought process and behaviors around this. When I think of Ramadan, I often think about the late nights visiting with people, going to the masjid, trying to do tons of extra worship. All of these can be wonderful goals and ways to interact with my faith. But I noticed in the past few years that I would start the month with a laundry list of goals and activities that I needed to accomplish but would quickly burn out. I was not able to sustain these goals on top of work and other commitments I had. This year I wanted Ramadan to be different. Rather than trying to do lots and lots of extra acts, I wanted to focus on strengthening and deepening the practices that I do have with the intention that I wanted to sustain them past the month of Ramadan.
As I sat down to create my intentions for the month, I thought about what it takes to physically prepare my body to fast every day for a month.
- I make a list of foods that i can eat at suhoor that will be filling and nourishing as well as finding my big water bottle to fill up and drink every morning.
- I know the kinds of foods that I want to break my fast with at iftar that will not upset my stomach after a day of fasting. And I know the balance of food and water I need at suhoor and iftar so I am nourishing my body
- I get the biggest water bottle and fill it up to drink as much water as possible during the night
- I need to go to bed at a certain time to make sure I can get a good amount of sleep before suhoor knowing it is harder for me to sleep after
- About 2 weeks before Ramadan, I slowly stop drinking coffee because I need to ready my body for the lack of caffeine withdrawal and know if is suddenly stop, I will get massive headaches
- I note the times of the day that I have more energy so that I can use that time to do certain tasks and note the times I have less energy and may need to take some rest.
Why do I do all of these things? Because I want to ensure that I am setting myself and my body up to be as successful as possible. Just as I would take time to prepare for a presentation or a test, I put the time into getting my body ready because my body has rights over me. Not only is taking care of my body a good idea, it is more deeply and spiritually rooted in the idea that just as people have rights over us to be good to them and to take care of them, our bodies have rights over us. In this hadith, the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessings Upon him) reminds his companion by saying: “Observe the fast sometimes and also leave them (the fast) at other times; stand up for the prayer at night and also sleep at night. Your body has a right over you, your eyes have a right over you and your wife has a right over you.”
This is a reminder that we should ground ourselves in moderation. Yes, we can strive for better and more at times, but we should ensure that we are not doing it at the cost of others or ourselves. We have been given the trust by God to take care of the gift of our bodies. When I think about the need to care for my body in therms of the rights that it has over me, it deepens the connection I have to my body and its needs because it is rooted in relationality- my body does so much for me and just as I want to care for others who take care of me, I can reciprocate that care to my body. Rather than having to do something I have to do, it becomes something that I want to do and feels more purposeful and meaningful.
I know for myself, part of the challenge to see taking care of myself and body is that we live in a society that prioritizes production and doing. There is a constant need for doing, and oftentimes for others. To take care of oneself becomes a selfish act. What this hadith reminds me of is that it is quite the opposite. Taking the time to focus and center ourselves in our bodies is a Divine invitation to connect with our roots, our core, our Creator.
In addition to spending some time reflecting on how I would fast, I also started to spend a few minutes before as many prayers as it was possible to calm my mind and center my breath. I wanted to move away from feeling like my prayers were a to do list item that needed to quickly be checked off before moving onto the next thing. So I started with sitting and taking 5 deep breaths. When I had the time and the capacity, I sat a bit longer. What I quickly noticed, when I did this, I was able to concentrate on my prayers more. I thought more about how I was moving my body and what I was saying during the prayer. In one of my prayers, I found myself lingering in sujood as I very slowly said “subhana rabbi al ala”- “Glorious is my Lord the Most High” and thinking about how I am connected to God the Most High when I am physically at my lowest and most vulnerable. I noticed my heartbeat slow down and feel a sense of calm, one that i had not felt in a while. The times that I did not take the time to breathe, I more easily lost focus and felt rushed in the prayer.
I share these stories and thoughts with you as an invitation to think about how you connect your body to your spiritual practices. Our bodies do so much for us, some things we are aware of, and others are automatic or subconscious. Especially living in a society that prioritizes a detachment from our bodies in selves in order to do more and be more, re-grounding ourselves in the very being that allows us to be and function in this world, can be a radical act of love and worship. This will look different for all of us and each of us may find unique and special ways in which we can deepen our connection to God through our spiritual expressions.
In the Loving
in the letting go,
let there be this
to hold onto
at the last:
the enduring of love,
the persisting of hope,
the remembering of joy,
the offering of gratitude,
the receiving of grace,
the blessing of peace.
–Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons
Ramadan Reflections: Resiliency and Community
by Navila Rashid
“When it is difficult to grasp how to “power through” or to be identified as resilient, who are you calling to for strength, to put one foot in front of the other?”
CW/TW: Assault, Survivorship
I remember spending a whole night tossing and turning in my bed, drowning in my own sweat. I was enveloped by fear and frustration, trying to rid my mind of a memory, an assault. That’s how it works sometimes; years later, randomly in the middle of the night, the body sometimes just remembers and re-lives the pain. I probably spent hours sobbing and wanting to scream into the abyss from anger. Anger that I couldn’t find a way out of the grasps of my trauma. I felt as though I was working so hard to be resilient, feel resilient, to become one with resiliency, and it all went down the drain with just one nightmare. What feels like days and sometimes years, ended up being a few hours.
But on this particular morning, I experienced an almost out of body experience. Something a little bit different. I remember that after I was finally able to wake up, I woke up to the smells of fresh banana leaves, flowing lake water, and fragrances of the soil of my birth country. I couldn’t explain it, but it felt like a rebirth. That morning I was both angry and excited. I was angry that I continued to feel the pain of survivorship, but I was strangely excited to think that healing could mean connecting to my ancestral country. A country I hadn’t been to in over 20 years.
This is probably my first interaction with how I was pulled to my ancestors to help guide me to think about how I come from a lineage of survivors who found resiliency from one another. The reality is, to this day, I struggle with my own survivorship. I struggle with how to do this work and not think about how some mornings I don’t want to get out of bed. How some days I can’t get myself to shower or eat. How some days I’ll stare at the computer screen, frozen because I can’t focus. It’s hard and although there are voices in my head that are screaming: “POWER THROUGH GODDAMNIT!” my heart oftentimes pulls me back and whispers words of compassion: “Today is just not the day to feel or show strength, and it’s okay”.
When I think of resilience and community, I remind myself to call on the calmness of my grandmother and imagine the way she coos at the birds outside on the porch. I think about how my mom softly folds the dough into creases when she’s making samosas. I think about the joy I feel when I’m sharing my favorite meal with some of my closest friends or cooking a meal for my partner. The power of community never fails me. It reminds me that we don’t have to always look to the self to power through. That oftentimes, the “answers” are in the mundaneness of how your chosen community shows up for themselves, modeling that when we are at our worst, we always wake up the next morning and gather a strength fueled by hope, gratitude, kindness, and love.
To my ancestors that have come before me. You are my guiding light. You are my north star. You continue to remind me that I co-exist with the past, present, and future versions of myself, and that it’s going to be okay.
Ramadan Reflection: Resiliency and Rest
by Aisha Ismail
What is the power in thinking about resiliency from the perspective of resting and slowing down?
I remember walking out of my OBGYN’s office the day that I was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome)–a hormonal disorder that affects about 1 in 10 women of reproductive age. PCOS impacts the body in several ways, and everyone differently, but my most visible and obvious symptom was pretty severe adult acne. My OBGYN took my blood levels and gave me an idea of what was happening on the inside of my body that was ultimately causing the acne: my hormone levels were significantly higher than the average person. My body was trying to tell me something was not right.
Since then, I have been on a journey of learning about how to balance my hormones, and get my body in a state of harmony. Along the way, I learned that stress is a major trigger for my hormones to go out of whack.
You may be asking yourself what all of this has to do with resting and slowing down. Well, I am someone who is still pretty high-functioning under stress. I feel the buzz of stress in my body, but can sit on top of it and push through my day. Months ago, it wasn’t unusual for me to skip breakfast and get right to work when I had a long to-do list that was taunting me. And in college, I would say I even used stress to fuel me (where are my “I work best under approaching deadlines” people at?) And while I could function and perform under high stress and pressure, I’ve learned that not slowing down and sitting on top of the buzz of stress rather than figuring out a way to release it from my body entirely was wreaking havoc on my physical health and ultimately required me to choose productivity over self-love which impacted all other dimensions of my being.
Today, I’ve made my practices of slowing down and recovering sacred rituals. Capitalism teaches us to believe that our worth is bound up with how much we produce even when we aren’t well, when we’re navigating individual and collective traumas, when we are burnt out. But I am worthy because Allah created me. When I slow down and rest, I am making room to nurture my relationship with myself, process and recover, and recenter in my breath. Choosing to rest–in my opinion– is not only an act of self-love though, it is an act of community care. When I love myself and treat myself with compassion and care, I have more to give to everything around me: I am more present in my worship and remembrance of Allah, in the work I do in community, and in my relationships with others.
I thought that I was managing stress well, because I could move through it and still produce. But my body was telling me otherwise–it manifested itself one way or another. I can’t help but think about how Allah is inviting us to slow down and feel connected during this blessed month. To invest more of our time and energy on fulfilling our sacred responsibilities like worship of the Divine, building with and taking care of our communities, and nourishing all dimensions of ourselves. And those are the very ingredients that ensure that I am well enough–spiritually, physically, and emotionally–to remain resilient in the face of the challenges that life throws my way.
