Maryam Amir – Emotional Support in the Muslim CommunityMAS Convention
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses issues that affect the mental state of people, including suicide, sexual abuse, and addiction. They encourage people to acknowledge the emotional aspects of these issues and talk about them outside of the Muslim community. The importance of counseling and support systems in the Islam community is emphasized, as it is difficult to discuss these in community. The struggles of Islam's message and the struggles of people struggling with self image and praying for their parents' love for Islam are also discussed. The importance of forgiveness and working on forgiveness are also emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
About issues that have to do with body disorders, about doubts of
faith, about suicide and self harm, about pregnancy and
abortion, about sexuality, about all of these different things that
we struggle with. And we hear about them in school, we see them
on Netflix. We can talk about them everywhere else, but when we come
into the masjid, and in the message, there's no discussion on
these issues, except to say that if you're going through this,
you're not praying hard enough. The message that that sends is
that the emotional things you're going through isn't just
emotional, it's actually spiritual. And yes, emotions and
spirituality have a connection, but if you're already going
through something emotionally, and then you're being told that it's
because you're not faithful enough. And yet, you're praying
five times a day, and you're waking up for Qiyam, and you're
reading Quran every day. You're doing all of that, and then you're
told this is a punishment from Allah because you're not a good
enough believer. That not only affects your mental state, but it
affects your iman, then you have a spiritual crisis, and that's far
more difficult to address sometimes, because we can talk
about you have an addiction and you need help. If you're not in
the Muslim community, you can talk about this outside in the Muslim
community, we should talk about an inner community as well.
Alhamdulillah, we started to shift towards that conversation, but at
the same time, when it you, when you link that with what you're
going through spiritually, it leads to people that I've seen in
my generation no longer coming to the masjid as adults, no longer no
longer associating with Muslims, and God forbid, may Allah protect
all of us. Yo, Allah protect all of us leaving Islam. So why it's
so important for us to have conversations like this is to
recognize that sometimes people engage in what we see as an
unhealthy, inappropriate behavior, like, for example, being in a
relationship with someone, for example, a sister, having a
boyfriend, not in an appropriate relationship. But when you go back
to why she's in that relationship, she tells me it's because she was
sexually abused as a child and this as a means of coping. This is
not a healthy means of coping. This is not a good safe space for
her, and it's not an appropriate way to cope. But sometimes we'd
have no tools and dealing with the stresses that we have and the test
that we dealt with in our lives, and we don't know what else to do,
and so people turn to things that are not helpful, are not
religiously sanctioned, and are not healthy. Instead, we should
look to the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, who
when he went through the most difficult times in his life, the
Prophet saw them, went through an extremely emotional time when he
received revelation, right? Wasn't he freaked out. SallAllahu, alaihi
wasallam. He had no idea what his identity was. He had no idea what
was happening to him. He was worried about what people were
going to say about him. He was really, really, really scared. And
what did he do
exactly? He went to Khadija rah he didn't stay in the cave sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam, he came out and sought help, and Khadijah was a
counselor for him. In that moment, she was a support system, and she
gave him support and advice on how to move forward. When the Prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam went for the Trini, pudavia, and the
companions were so distraught that they actually were not following
the actions of the Prophet. SallAllahu said they weren't
following what he was suggesting. Following what he was suggesting.
And these are the companions who love the Prophet. So they were so
emotionally overwhelmed. He went to om Salam, and when he explained
what's happening the um Salam, Alaikum gave the Prophet salallahu
Salam advice on what to do with the Ummah, advice on what to do
with the companions. He sought her counsel. Counseling is a part of
our religious tradition, and it's really important to recognize that
the prophets, yakubalahi salam, his children, his own sons, the
children that he raised, threw his other son down a well, I want you
to think as a parent, God forbid. May Allah protect all of you if
your children did that to one of your other children. That's
heartbreaking, and it's awful. But what are you thinking about
yourself as a parent? What are you feeling about what you might have
done wrong in all of those years that you've tried and what's
happened to your children? Yahubala, Islam is a prophet
greater than all of us on earth combined. And yet alayhi salam, he
grieved Yusuf, alaihi salam's departure for decades, and Allah
brought them all back together. He healed that family system.
And yet, we don't say that it was because Yaqub alaihi salam, walay
abula didn't have enough Imaan, Yaqub alaihi salam was the
greatest person of Ibn in comparison to everyone on Earth,
and yet he went through something extremely difficult when it comes
to his emotions. Alaihi salam, and he is not the only prophet we know
of so many different prophets who went through trial after trial
and.
And who suffered that pain for decades.
So when we look at what we're going through, it's sometimes it
seems like we can't talk about it in our community, or if somebody
were to find out, we even ask our parents. I've had so many youth
tell me that their parents have forbid them from going to see a
counselor. I've had so many youth tell me that despite the fact that
they're doing it self harming, despite the fact that they've
actually had a suicide attempt and have been hospitalized, despite
the fact that they have anorexia, their parents will not allow them
to see a counselor, and they tell them that Salah is enough. Salah
is a lifeliner. Is a lifeline. Quran is a lifeline. But when you
climb a mountain and you hold that rope up. You also need to wear
shoes. You also need a backpack with your supplies. That's your
support system. That's counseling. We need those things as well. When
we look at the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, there
was a companion who was an alcoholic, Abdullah radila. He
would drink, and he would deal with the consequences of drinking,
and at 1.1 of the companions cursed him. He's like, how many
times you're going to go through this and cursed him? And who knows
what? The Prophet saw them said,
Don't curse your brother, otherwise you're giving him,
handing him over to shaitan. The Prophet saw his Salam told this
person not to aid shaytan against his brother and the Prophet saw
the witness that this man has love for Allah and the Prophet,
salallahu, alayhi wa sallam. Now of course, drinking is not
something appropriate. It's not something that we say is something
good, but a companion of the Prophet SAW, excuse me,
you from Northern California, and we had major fires. And you guys
have fires here too, but the air quality has affected our breathing
so much, and I live four hours away from the fire Subhanallah,
four hours away. And we can't. We haven't. We can't even go outside.
Having done that, I came a few days ago and I heard that the rain
has helped. But I just You never think.
I think you I haven't thought so much, not just about what you
know, obviously you think of *. I think of *, but also not just
the fire, but the effects of the smoke. And from so far away,
subhanAllah, may Allah make it easy on the people that are close,
and Allah, SWT everything will make it easy on everybody, and
protect stuff and yourself to fit those that would be very seven. So
the Prophet saw them is affirming this person's belief, yes, and
his, not just belief, his love for Allah. And the Prophet saw you
might be going through something yourself. You know, sometimes
people post a million different selfies, not because they're
really trying to bless Instagram with their beautiful looks, Masha,
Mata Bala, but it's actually because they're really struggling
with their self image. And sometimes we hear things like the
youth they spend so much time on social media these days. Sometimes
it's because you're lonely. That's how you feel like you connect with
someone, you just feel alone. What
we take from this companion is that sometimes we might not be
doing something that's appropriate, but it doesn't mean
that all of us is not beloved to Allah. We might have issues, but
that doesn't mean that Allah doesn't love you, or that you
don't have the capacity to love Allah and the way that he sees me,
but the way that you see yourself is not necessarily a reflection of
the way that Allah sees you.
And Allah's panel to Allah tells us that the way we draw closest to
him is through the obligations. So start by just trying to pray five
times a day. And if that sounds impossible to you, do the one you
know you can do, maybe at the end of the day, pray the last prayer.
Pray that salah, and start with that. And you know Subhanallah
Khaleel, some of you know her. She wrote positive discipline for the
Muslim home. She was she's my mother in law from the super bless
me, Allah, bless her. And she was talking to me about how she's
mashallah tabatical up and praying for over 40 years, 40 years of
praying five times a day. And sometimes she feels that spiritual
connection, sometimes she feels that sweetness, and sometimes she
doesn't, and it's a blessing that Allah didn't obligate upon us to
feel sweetness in Salah every time you're not talked about over and
over and over those thoughts that keep going talk to him about those
thoughts that you're having, say that in sujood, pour your heart
out to him. And the second thing is that, excuse me, there's a
narration of the companion of the Prophet, sallAllahu, sallam,
coming into the masjid, and he's distressed, and he's so distant in
my sins and my hope in your mercy is greater than my deeds, your
forgiveness is greater than my sins. You think your sin is too
big for Allah. What is that saying? Awhile Allah is greater
than everything. He can forgive everything. So.
He can obliterate your sins, He's saying Your mercy is greater than
my sins, your forgiveness is greater than my sins, and my hope
and your mercy is greater than my actions. Because no matter what I
do, sometimes I'm going to fall short, and even if I did enough,
it's not going to be enough to thank you for the blessings that
you've given me. So my hope in you, the fact that you're a
Shakur, you are the appreciative, even when I'm not appreciative of
you. If we woke up tomorrow with the things that we thanked Allah
for today, how many things would we have tomorrow? We would have
maybe one thing. I would maybe have one thing. But Allah SWT
still gives because his mercy is greater than our actions. So the
Prophet Muslim told the companion to say, this one time, then second
time, then a third time, and then he told him to stand up, you've
been forgiven
now. The Prophet's Muslim didn't say, for the next five years, ask
for Allah to forgive your sins, and then you'll be forgiven for
these actions. He didn't say, beat yourself up for the next 20 years
and define your life by the mistakes you've made in the past.
The principle that the Quran teaches us, indeed the good deeds
wipe out the bad. We make a mistake, we ask Allah to forgive
us, and then we move forward doing good, and if we fall again, we
repeat that cycle. Don't despair.
It's so easy to move forward. Ah, okay, maybe not so easy in our
process, but so easy for Allah's forgiveness and Allah subhanahu wa
being there for you. And finally, I did not associate myself with
Islam very much when I was in high school, it took a very long
journey for me to find Allah, and today, I am so grateful to him for
his guidance. The one thing that kept me grounded when I was
struggling with everything was making the decision to read the
translation of the Quran. I am not Arab. I didn't understand Arabic
at that time before I studied it, so reading the Arabic language for
me, made I knew the word Jannah. How many of you relate read the
Quran? You know the word Jannah, but
if you read it in English, you start recognizing the messages.
And I did that every single day, and I slowly started changing. I
changed on the inside until the point that I found myself actually
feeling happy and actually feeling like I have this connection with
Allah. And sometimes that changed. Sometimes I went up and down, but
that started to affect the way that I acted on the outside.
Most importantly, though, I knew that I wasn't alone. And when
you're going through what you're going through, and you and you
don't feel like you can talk to your parents, and you don't feel
like you can talk to your friends, and you feel like you can go into
the mission and talk about this, or hear about this. I want you to
know that you can talk to Allah
and seek therapy and talk to Allah, Subhanahu wa and he is not
going to he's not going to leave you. Subhana wa taala, a
translation that I've heard recommended a million times, is
mass Abdul khalim, read one ayah a day, and Inshallah, through that
process, see from today until next year, how will those 20 seconds of
your day will change your life?
We may not feel like we can forgive ourselves for something
that we did a long time ago, and that's affecting the way that we
see ourselves on who we are today. But remember that Allah, He
forgives, and he changes the bad deeds into good. When we make
Tobit him and we go back to him, there's always hope for you,
Allah, so easy for him to forgive you. Subhanallah, so work also on
forgiving yourself.
You
Zechariah.