Ali Hammuda

Make no mistake. The Ed Sheeran saga is a warning to every Muslim figure of visibility who thinks he can live forever in the safe middle ground, always playing the harmless, agreeable figure. How many more times does this need to be said? Reality catches up with that posture every single time. Those who think they can speak or act just enough to say that they spoke, or merely enough to quieten a frustrated following, while remaining detached from the great events unfolding around them and tone-deaf to the pain of the Ummah, need to understand that such a position cannot be sustained forever. When reality finally forces you to stand, it may already be too late. We are watching this principle play out in real-time even with non-Muslim public figures. What, then, of those who have built a name, a following, influence and wealth through Islamic titles, Qur’anic language, the Sunnah, halal, dīn and everything associated with them? Every Muslim with influence or visibility will eventually be cornered by the events of his time—Gaza or otherwise— into deciding what responsibility demands of him. Some will step forward because of duty, whilst others do so only when there is nowhere left to hide. The case of Ed Sheeran is a reminder that, sooner or later, everyone is forced onto one of those two paths, and that picking up duty only when every other option has disappeared is a guaranteed path to downfall. You owe it first to Allah Almighty. Then you owe it to this Ummah, which will always be far above any one of our names or brands.

Raising children, particularly today, can be draining and, at times, a genuine source of agony for parents. Some of the early Muslims said: من الذنوب ذنوب لا يكفّرها إلا الغمّ بالعيال “There are some sins that are only erased by the distress associated with one's children.” (Qūt al-Qulūb) When that worry starts to mount, the Qur’an shows us where to take it – to Allah ﷻ. It is striking just how often the Qur’an features duʿāʾ of the righteous for their children. Contemplate the following, commit to memory and plug into lifestyle: وَأَصْلِحْ لِي فِي ذُرِّيَّتِي “Bless my offspring with righteousness for me.” (Qur’an 46:15) وَإِنِّي أُعِيذُهَا بِكَ وَذُرِّيَّتَهَا “I seek Your protection for her and her offspring from Satan, the accursed.” (Qur’an 3:36) رَبَّنَا هَبْ لَنَا مِنْ أَزْوَاجِنَا وَذُرِّيَّاتِنَا قُرَّةَ أَعْيُنٍ “Our Lord! Bless us with spouses and offspring who will be the joy of our hearts.” (Qur’an 25:74) رَبِّ اجْعَلْنِي مُقِيمَ الصَّلَاةِ وَمِنْ ذُرِّيَّتِي “My Lord! Make me and those believers of my descendants keep up prayer.” (Qur’an 14:40) رَبَّنَا وَاجْعَلْنَا مُسْلِمَيْنِ لَكَ وَمِنْ ذُرِّيَّتِنَا أُمَّةً مُّسْلِمَةً لَّكَ “Our Lord! Make us both fully submit to You, and from our descendants a nation that will submit to You.” (Qur’an 2:128) رَبِّ هَبْ لِي مِن لَّدُنكَ ذُرِّيَّةً طَيِّبَةً “My Lord! Grant me, by Your grace, righteous offspring.” (Qur’an 3:38) وَاجْنُبْنِي وَبَنِيَّ أَن نَّعْبُدَ الْأَصْنَامَ “And keep me and my children away from the worship of idols.” (Qur’an 14:35) Clearly, then, even with every form of modern parenting techniques, workshops and self-help guides, one of the greatest means of raising righteous children is to make persistent duʿāʾ for them, which intensifies in our high-stakes environment and age of unrestricted access. Ya Rabb, protect them, build them and use them in service of Your perfect religion.

Aameen to your Du'aa young man, and to the Du'aa of every child who has been orphaned in Palestine. The case against the oppressor is enormous and the reckoning, in both worlds, will be immense.

Islam in the Spotlight: Why Now? A deep dive into the growing global attention surrounding Islam, why people are increasingly questioning the world around them, and what makes the message of Islam more relevant than ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko-DtWLOplM

One of the strangest inversions in our time is what some people have come to treat as “serious” ʿaqīdah, and what they dismiss as “political” discussion or “contemporary thought” that is distracting people from “real ʿaqīdah issues”. A teacher may spend years with his students dissecting historical errors of taʾwīl, where a sect interpreted a particular divine attribute incorrectly, sometimes through a linguistic interpretation that was itself conceivable in Arabic, even if wrongly applied to that text. This is treated, quite rightly, as a matter of ʿaqīdah. Yet when the very authority of revelation itself is being challenged, when the Qur’an and Sharīʿah are being pushed out of public life, when secularism seeks to trap Islam within the Masjid, when Zionist talking points go unchallenged, when new “Abrahamic” narratives blur the lines of tawḥīd, there is a suspicious silence amidst these champions of ʿaqīdah. Worse, some will say: “Why are you distracting people with politics? Stick to ʿaqīdah!” This is the entirely predictable result of teaching ʿaqīdah for years as a narrow archive of old controversies; a generation of students who are intellectually limited, disconnected from their age, and—worse—hugely vulnerable. They may have an abundance to say about a classical error of taʾwīl, yet stand defenceless before the theological storms of their own time—storms that will reach their own homes, their children and their inadequately trained students sooner or later. In reality, the Muslih who gives serious attention to the theological battles of his own age has “not distracted people from ʿaqīdah”, nor prioritized “politics” over religion, but is speaking at the heart of ʿaqīdah, is nearer to the way of the prophets, and the tradition of the predecessors than many who claim to be its greatest champions.

One of the strangest inversions in our time is what some people have come to treat as “serious” ʿaqīdah, and what they dismiss as “political” discussion or “contemporary thought” that is distracting people from “real ʿaqīdah issues”. A teacher may spend years with his students dissecting historical errors of taʾwīl, where a sect interpreted a particular divine attribute incorrectly, sometimes through a linguistic interpretation that was itself conceivable in Arabic, even if wrongly applied to that text. This is treated, quite rightly, as a matter of ʿaqīdah. Yet when the very authority of revelation itself is being challenged, when the Qur’an and Sharīʿah are being pushed out of public life, when secularism seeks to trap Islam within the Masjid, when Zionist talking points go unchallenged, when new “Abrahamic” narratives blur the lines of tawḥīd, there is a suspicious silence amidst these champions of ʿaqīdah. Worse, some will say: “Why are you distracting people with politics? Stick to ʿaqīdah!” This is the entirely predictable result of teaching ʿaqīdah for years as a narrow archive of old controversies; a generation of students who are intellectually limited, disconnected from their age, and—worse—hugely vulnerable. They may have an abundance to say about a classical error of taʾwīl, yet stand defenceless before the theological storms of their own time, storms that will reach their own homes, their children and their inadequately trained students sooner or later. In reality, the Muslih who gives serious attention to the theological battles of his own age has “not distracted people from ʿaqīdah”, nor prioritized “politics” over religion, but is speaking at the heart of ʿaqīdah, is nearer to the way of the prophets, and the tradition of the predecessors than many who claim to be its greatest champions.

Coming soon, inshaAllah

I once sat in a gathering of highly visible figures, people with huge reach, platforms, and public recognition. The conversation flowed effortlessly as long as it remained personal. So, what content performed, what audiences responded to, how to grow, what to post, what worked for “me.” But then a senior figure asked a simple question: “Since we have all this talent in one room, let’s step back. What are the Ummah’s macro challenges right now, and what should we be doing strategically? Let us benefit from your experiences!” Suddenly, pin-drop silence, literally, as if birds could have perched on their heads. The room that was so loud about metrics became totally mute about meaning and Ummatic strategizing. That moment taught me that when your life is trained to think in personal brand-sized categories, brains can master attention without ever understanding the age they live in, and that it’s so much easier to build an audience over a worldview. Every one of them was able to give a long presentation about why their last reel underperformed but seemed completely unable to diagnose the Ummah’s underperformance for the last 100 years. So, some deliberate retraining is needed, at a time when the Ummah cannot afford to lose any more of its sons and daughters to this. Start by intentionally reducing your access to your own digital reflection. You do not need to repeatedly check your numbers, comments, reach, mentions and performance. If possible, let someone else manage the entire mechanics of your social media. Create distance between yourself and the dashboard. There is something psychologically unhealthy about spending every day watching yourself being watched. Then, deliberately sit with people who think in a jamʿī (collective) way, rather than individually, trapped in the echo chamber of personal “achievements”. Spend time around people who think in decades, institutions, communities, movements and generations. Your questions will eventually begin to resemble the questions of the people around you. Connect yourself to causes larger than yourself. Serve projects in which your name is not prominent. Give time to something that will never appear on your page. Help an initiative without turning it into content. Attend meetings where nobody cares about your following. Regularly place yourself in situations where your usefulness matters more than your visibility. Deliberately work on something that does not belong to you; not your brand, not your institute, not your project, not your audience. Carry someone else’s burden simply because it is a burden of the Ummah, and to train to discipline yourself from the intoxication of the self. If every cause must somehow pass through your logo before you can care about it, then at best, it’s just hobby, and at worst, an exposure is inevitable.

May Allah be gentle with you, our dear people of Algeria, protect you from the wildfires, keep you and your families safe, and surround you with His care and protection.

Dead at 20, and buried at 80?   Have you heard of people who die in their late teens, but aren’t buried until their eighties? Not only is it possible, but is happening at present, and at an alarming rate.   These are a people whose bodies remain alive, organs functioning, but something within them passes away early on: Ambition, high aspirations, the desire to live for something that will outlive them and meet them in the Ākhirah.   Somewhere early in life, they decided that existence would revolve around career, money, fitness, entertainment, personal feuds, personal comfort and personal goals. The whole horizon of life turned inward, where nothing remained large enough to survive the grave.   And so, the body spends the next sixty years slowly catching up with a death that took place decades earlier. How relevant is Allah's invitation:   يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اسْتَجِيبُوا لِلَّهِ وَلِلرَّسُولِ إِذَا دَعَاكُمْ لِمَا يُحْيِيكُمْ   “O believers! Respond to Allah and His Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life...” (Al-Qur’an 8:24)   Your first birth date was recorded the day your body entered this world. Your second birth date is recorded the day your soul decides what it is living for.   The first gives you a direction to the grave. The second gives you a direction to paradise’s highest homes.   That’s a birthday worth celebrating.

The Five Shāms A fascinating glimpse into how Muslim scholars viewed the blessed region of al-Shām way before the modern borders of today. Take a read. Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, an Andalusian scholar, wrote: “The Shāms: 1. The first Shām — Palestine The first boundary of al-Shām, when approaching from Egypt, begins at Amaj [referring here to al-ʿArīsh], followed by Gaza and then al-Ramlah — the Ramlah of Palestine. Its greatest city is Palestine and Ashkelon (ʿAsqalān, just 21 km from Gaza and historically part of the same Palestinian coastal region), and within it lies Bayt al-Maqdis [Jerusalem]. Palestine is the first Shām. 2. The second Shām — Jordan The second Shām is al-Urdunn [Jordan], and its greatest city is Tiberias , which lies on the shore of the lake. The Jordan Valley, Yarmouk and Beisan lie between Palestine and Jordan. 3. The third Shām — al-Ghūṭah The third Shām is al-Ghūṭah, and its greatest city is Damascus . Among its coastal cities is Tripoli. 4. The Fourth Shām — Homs The fourth Shām is the land of Homs. 5. The Fifth Shām — Qinnasrīn The fifth Shām is Qinnasrīn, and its greatest city — where the seat of authority lies — is Aleppo [..] Its coastal city is Antioch, a great city by the sea, with gardens, rivers and cultivated lands within it. It is also the city associated with Ḥabīb al-Najjār, the man who “came rushing from the farthest end of the city” [Qur’an 36:20]. There is also a mosque there attributed to Ḥabīb al-Najjār.” [Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-Farīd] These divisions remind us that al-Shām was once viewed as a single, sacred and interconnected whole, and within it, Palestine stands not at the margins, but at its very beginning and heart.

Priorities During Times of Widespread Fear 📹 https://youtu.be/45uaIelJygM

Priorities During Times of Widespread Fear 📹 https://youtu.be/45uaIelJygM

It was only fifty years after the world declared “Never Again” following the Holocaust that genocide returned to European soil yet again, Bosnia, reaching its horrifying climax in the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995. As we remember its victims in our duʿāʾ and teach their legacy to our community, we do the same for our brothers and sisters in East Turkistan, our heroes in Gaza, our prisoners held by the occupation, our loved ones in Sudan, and every believer whose suffering has never reached our ears. Include them in your sincere prayers and relentless support.

Lindsay Graham dies suddenly   Abū Qatādah ibn Ribʿī al-Anṣārī reported that a funeral procession passed by the Prophet ﷺ  and he said:   مُسْتَرِيحٌ وَمُسْتَرَاحٌ مِنْهُ   “One who has found rest, or one from whom others have found rest.”   They asked, “O Messenger of Allah, what is the one who has found rest, and the one from whom others have found rest?” He ﷺ said:   “The believing servant finds rest from the toil and harm of this world in the mercy of Allah. As for the evil one, the people, the lands, the trees, and the animals find rest from him.” [Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī]   Lindsey Graham has died. Below is the legacy that he left behind.   He said: “Somebody needs to pull the Palestinian school system up by its roots and destroy it.”   He said, “UNRWA is dead to us.”   As a civilian aid ship sailed towards Gaza: “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!”   He said there should be “no limit” to the number of Palestinian civilians Israel could kill.   He invoked the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to defend Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, saying “If I were Israel, I would’ve done it the same way”   He said, "Just flatten it (Gaza). We flattened Berlin. We flattened Tokyo."   Truly, the people, the lands, the trees, and the animals have found some rest.

Reports say that Mohamed El-Waheidi (right), director of the Egyptian committee in Gaza, was killed only hours after Hossam Hassan (left), head coach of the Egyptian national football team, spoke openly for Gaza and raised the Palestinian flag after the match. This sequence - if accurate - bears all the marks of yet another act of satanic depravity and sick paranoia that sees a flag as a threat, and which can only end in further disgrace, exposure and inevitable unravelling of its perpetrators.

"Say, 'The Fire of Hell is far hotter, if only they could comprehend'" (Sūrat al-Tawbah, 9:81)   They push back: "Surely you can make an exception!" But you respond:   وَاللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ أَحَقُّ أَن يُرْضُوهُ إِن كَانُوا مُؤْمِنِينَ   "But Allah and His Messenger are more deserving of being pleased, if they are true believers." (Sūrat al-Tawbah, 9:62)   For every Muslim women who opts for obedience over convenience, I ask Allah to honour her, elevate her, and greet her with the breeze of Jannah.   Then comes the opportunity to fast the day of ʿĀshūrā’. Even the heat becomes part of the gift. Allah increases the difficulty, and through that difficulty He increases the reward. The sun scorches, the throat dries, the body weakens, and a year's worth of sins falls away by the permission of Allah. For that opportunity, we say: Alḥamdulillāh.   Perhaps above all, this weather reminds us of the Day when the sun will be brought within a mile of creation. A day when people will drown in their own sweat according to their deeds. A day when shade is sanity, becoming the most valuable possession in existence. Every prayer you guarded, every temptation you resisted, every act of service to Islam, and every effort to dismantle oppression at home and abroad is, by Allah's permission, another step towards that shade.   All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

Fasting during two heats; summer and genocide   In light of this intense heat that is gripping many parts of the world, as we fast the day of ‘ʿĀshūrā, several realities are impossible to ignore.   Every scorching afternoon, every sleepless night, every moment when the body longs for shade and relief reminds us that what we are feeling is only the faintest breath of a punishment Allah has prepared for those who persist in rejecting īmān, oppressing His servants, and waging war against Him and His allies.   The Prophet ﷺ said:   «نَارُكُمْ هَذِهِ جُزْءٌ مِنْ سَبْعِينَ جُزْءًا مِنْ حَرِّ جَهَنَّمَ»   “This fire of yours is one part of seventy parts of the heat of Hellfire.”   The sun above us this afternoon is a reminder that, even if some have evaded worldly accountability today, the occupiers, genociders, their financiers, propagandists, facilitators, and the Epstein-class of this world are running towards a justice from which there is neither escape nor appeal.   This heat also reminds us of countless workers who spend their days beneath the blazing sun. Men and women who cannot retreat into air-conditioned offices or cooled homes. If they don’t work, they don’t eat. For them, we ask Allah to grant ease, provision, strength, and protection.   It also reminds us to thank Allah for so many of His gifts that only become visible the moment they’re absent. As the hundreds of thousands in Gaza or Sudan today huddle within overcrowded plastic tents that only multiply heat and magnify humidity, what would they give for a shaded home, a working fan, a cold cup of water, a cool breeze, a working vehicle, electricity, a little assurance about tomorrow, or just the dignity to close a door to escape the elements and the gaze of people?   Allah said:   وَاللَّهُ جَعَلَ لَكُم مِّمَّا خَلَقَ ظِلَالًا وَجَعَلَ لَكُم مِّنَ الْجِبَالِ أَكْنَانًا وَجَعَلَ لَكُمْ سَرَابِيلَ تَقِيكُمُ الْحَرَّ وَسَرَابِيلَ تَقِيكُم بَأْسَكُمْ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ يُتِمُّ نِعْمَتَهُ عَلَيْكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُسْلِمُونَ "And Allah has provided you shade from what He has created, and has given you shelters in the mountains, and has provided you with garments that protect you from the heat, as well as garments that protect you in battle. This is how He perfects His favour upon you, so perhaps you will fully submit to Him." (Sūrat al-Naḥl, 16:81)   For every roof over our heads, every shaded room, every glass of cold water, we say: Alḥamdulillāh. Alḥamdulillāh. Ya Rabb, have mercy on our siblings in Islam.   This heat also brings to mind our sisters who remain ever relentless upon ḥijāb, the entire ḥijāb. As a man, I can honestly confess: I don’t know how you do it. The temperature soars and the comments follow: "Isn't it too hot?" but you respond:   قُلْ نَارُ جَهَنَّمَ أَشَدُّ حَرًّا ۚ لَّوْ كَانُوا يَفْقَهُونَ

And just like that, our Change of Heart series has finally come to an end. I ask Allah for His forgiveness and pardon. We started the series almost 5 years ago - November 2021. We covered: Introduction (two parts) Sincerity (الإخلاص) Certainty (اليقين) Watchfulness (المراقبة) Reliance (التوكُّل) Humble submissiveness (الخُشوع) Love of Allah (محبّة الله) Healthy shame (الحَياء) Gratitude (الشُّكر) Patience — Part One (الصبر) Patience — Part Two (الصبر) Ever-returning (الإنابة) Contentment — Part One (الرِّضا) Contentment — Part Two (الرِّضا) Neediness before Allah (الافتقار إلى الله) Glorification (التعظيم) Hope (الرَّجاء) Fear (الخوف) Repentance (التوبة) Yā Rabb, accept this as a ṣadaqah jāriyah (continual charity), make it a means of our collective growth as we journey towards the great days that await our Ummah, and let the world share in the good that will flow from our rise. 📹 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9OPVukugS7xZ-PY008PN6_kGInouP0rz