Maryam Amir – Trusting in Allah faith through anxiety
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The interviewer discusses the complexion of anxiety and the importance of mental health in addressing mental health issues. They share examples of experiences in the century of Islam, including mental health issues and the transformation of mental health. The interviewer also discusses the loss of a woman in a society where they used to bury baby girls and the hesitancy of men to see her father. The interviewer describes the loss of a woman in a foreign language community and the fear of anxiety and trauma.
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Do want to hear from our dear Maryam Mashallah. She has studied
in Egypt to memorize the Quran research a variety of religious
sciences for the past 15 years. She also holds a second degree
black belt in Taekwondo, mashallah, and is recently the
creator of a new app, the woman Quran reciters, Claudia. So let us
please here. Yes, I think that is on if you start speaking there you
go,
just like there.
Let's welcome, please. When I
was in college, I got bit by a spider on my face, and then I was
hospitalized for several days. It was such a dramatic experience for
me that you can imagine, I started having anxiety about spider. If I
saw spider somewhere, I would run out and grab anyone else I could
find to try to take care of the situation. But one night, I walked
into the restroom and there was a huge spider on the wall. I walked
out and was like, nope, not necessary. Close the door. It put
a towel under so can it crawl under the crack. And in the
morning, when I woke up, I walked around the bathroom trying to see
where it had gone. And it wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere. Maybe
it went to a different part of the house, to a small little hole. And
then as I was turning to my left to pick something up,
I didn't see the spider on the wall. I didn't see it on the item
I was trying to pick up, I turned to the left, and Best Game was on
my shoulder.
I screamed. I ran out like, just throwing my clothes all over
trying to get it off me. I went straight out of the bathroom
Facebook and started making hysterical dua.
And after that moment, I sat there after, like, crying and screaming.
And then I realized something, there was a spider right next to
my neck, and I don't have a spider bite and I'm not in the hospital.
Allah had protected me from that spider bite,
and he had willed that I had gotten the other one in the past.
I learned from the experience the first time, but it led to a lot of
my fear and anxiety, but the second time, I realized that I had
the strength, the fortitude, the resilience, to be able to be in
the presence of a spider, I am mashallah now able to take care of
spiders off on my own while screaming and make a dog the
entire time that I can do it. And while that might seem kind of like
a silly example, unless you do have a very strong fear of
spiders, and then it's very real. This level of anxiety, this
inability to understand whether or not I can do something, how my
worth is in relationship to something else that's outside of
my control, is something that young people ask you about them
all the time when it comes to faith, specifically when it comes
to anxiety related to their relationship with Allah's Panama
Tada,
there was a young woman who spoke with me who told me that her
parents, since the time she and her sisters were Little kids, told
all these daughters that they had
that Allah didn't love them because they were girls
from the time they were babies, toddlers, the innocence of a three
year old, a four year old, a five girl, these little girls were told
Boys are better than you. Allah loves boys more. The only reason
you are here is to serve boys. They made that the example through
which their father interacted with them. They would lock them in the
basement. They eventually sold their daughters to the person who
would pay the most money in another country, forcing their
daughters onto an airplane, marrying them off to a distant
relative or someone who would pay very high in a particular tribal
plan. Yes, this is part of a cultural community who sticks to a
particular culture, and this is within the United States,
and once this sister became old enough to realize she can't escape
her marriage, she did. She escaped, but she also left Islam.
She was born and raised Muslim, and has heard her entire life that
Islam sees you as a woman as less than a man.
And so finally she left. She became an atheist.
This story is not
dissimilar to stories I hear about all the time. It might be shocking
to some of us who are not exposed to those types of interactions
with people, but some of it might be, might be echoes of what you
might have.
Heard in your own life from others that you know, or maybe something
that you're living yourself. I've had a number of younger college
students, young professionals, especially on social media, reach
out to me and say that they've left Islam or they're considering
leaving. And if they comment this on a social media video, I make
the responses to this person are 99.9%
Islam doesn't need you anyway.
Who cared? Why you so obsessed with Islam?
We never wanted you in the first place.
And I always ask them,
if you ever feel open to connecting, please send me a
message. And they do every single time. I have never not had someone
send me a message when I've offered and they've said, I'm not
ready to think about religion, but I just want to know why was it?
And let me tell you what the it was, because this is consistently
the question that I receive, why is it that I was struggling when I
was struggling with my mental health, after a parent passed
away, after someone committed suicide, after someone went
through depression, that I was told it's a punishment from God.
How many times do you tell someone it's a punishment from God? It's
punishment from God, it's a punishment from God. It's a
punishment from God, until they finally excite well, then what
about God? Why God?
There was a sister who was going through severe mental health
struggles. She was told she's possessed by a jinn. Every man she
goes to does Roki on her. She still has mental health issues.
Her parents say she's sitting too much. She's not residing in the
Quran. She's not doing it as salah. She converted to
Christianity. She found a community that recognized her
struggle as an individual and helped her feel connected to
community and that it wasn't about her relationship with God.
These scenarios are all around us,
and you may know someone who is struggling with something similar,
but I want us to look at what our community has gone so, so strongly
in the arena of mental health now with mashallah, doctors like
Doctor Mullah, Doctor Reddy Awad, so that's Allah,
all of all of this work towards mental health and understanding
the fact that Islam has addressed mental health from the time of the
revelation is changing the way that our communities look at these
issues, including trainings for demands. So this has such a
wonderful news, but I'd like to also share with you examples in
the Quran and in the time of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa salam,
that allow us to see how we can react when someone comes to us
with those questions.
Meriam Ali has Salam is given the glad tidings that she is going to
be pregnant. The two words used to give her the news that she Virgin
Mary is going to have Jesus,
are the AHA, the lucky it's to gift you and Bushrod, glad
tidings, a gift. And glad tidings a gift, and great news a gift. And
yay.
Now in the time period in which she is given the glad tidings to
the time period in which she gives birth, she might have felt happy.
She might have felt excited, maybe she felt honored, and just this
extreme joy at the idea of becoming a mother, but the Quran
does not record any of those statements.
The Quran records her shock.
The Quran records her almost as if it's a it's not a denial, but it's
a shock. It's like, How is this possible?
The statements that the Quran records of Mariam ale has said are
ones in which she is struggling. She is overwhelmed with anxiety
when she is giving birth, she says, I wish that I had
died before
this. And it was something forgotten, something never
mentioned. Allah's panel to Allah did not have to record that
statement for us, but he did,
and it's such a mercy for those of us who struggle with depression,
or those of us who of us who have children who struggle, or loved
ones who struggle, those of us who have heard these statements
Allah's response to many Ali Sadam is not
similar to the responses we.
In these situations, sometimes
when someone, for example, is unexpectedly pregnant and they
didn't feel ready for another child,
and they are weeping and they are struggling coming to terms with
the idea, and they are told, why are you complaining? There are so
many people who want to get pregnant, why are you complaining
about it? Maybe they get into med school, and they don't want to go
to med school, and they're hoping they wouldn't get in, and the only
reason they applied is because their parents wanted them to get
in. And they get into med school, and it's a disaster for them.
They're devastated. And everyone is saying, Why aren't you? We're
grateful. Do you know how many people want to get into
med school? The gift
to someone is a big test to someone else,
despite the gift to let him. Alaya Salam, by being the mother of the
ASA,
her statement is one of immense pain.
Now, different scholars discussed why she made that statement,
whether because she was in physical pain, or whether it was
because she was the symbol of piety. Her family was the symbol
of piety, that if she she madam the people saw her pregnant. What
could that mean for piety
now she's having these types of anxious thoughts, and they're
cyclical. What is the very next verse after she makes this
statement? It's not Allah denying her emotion. It's a validation of
how she feels,
but it's also an action of what she can do, and this is so
critical when it comes to struggling with anxiety.
Anna Marie obano, she's a researcher in mentor,
acknowledging the issue that's causing anxiety and coupling that
with giving that child the confidence of a task that they can
do, they can face this anxiety. Don't be the one to take it away
from them. As Doctor mogwa so powerfully described, so
powerfully asked, How many of us as parents just want to take that
anxiety away from our kids? We don't want our kids to be in pain,
but if they never experience the pain. How do they build that
muscle of growing and facing as an adult on their own when we can't
always be there for them?
Giving them an action to do is so important because it's something
they have control over. Allah tells her to shake the date palm
tree. And many of us have heard, because even when they go out, we
have to take action Absolutely.
But when someone is having suicidal thoughts, I'm not saying
that many are they suicidal thoughts, although her statement
was one that she wished she had died. Many of us might make that
type of statement in moments of extreme pain, but the cyclical
thoughts of suicide or anxiety, of going through a cycle of
catastrophizing. As Doctor muddle also mentioned that this can
happen, this can happen. This can happen. This won't happen. This
can happen. And how did you even get from here to where that cycle,
if it's broken, a momentary break in which your mind focuses on
something else, even if the thoughts don't go away, the cycle
is broken in the moment.
So for example, I called the suicide hotline for a friend of
mine. They told me that they were suicidal. I had absolutely no idea
what to do. This was the first time someone had told me this many
years ago. I called the National Suicide Hotline. They asked me,
like, 15 questions about myself. And when I spoke to a therapist,
and I told her about this incident, I said, Well, if someone
was actually calling and they needed help, I mean, by the time
they get through your name and your age and your location and all
these other issues, are you even ready to talk about what you have
questions about and she said, No, this is actually a tactic. It
starts stop the cyclical cycle of flocks and allow the focus to be
on something else and then to
come back to them. Allah tells her to shake the date of tree. It
breaks the cycle. It gives her an action to do. Jake, literally
giving birth. Dates are not going to rain upon her just because you
have you ever tried to shake a palm tree, but menu rather does
the action focuses her anxiety somewhere else, or the emotion, it
focuses her emotion on something else.
And this is exactly what we see when Musa alaihi salam comes to
tell
an emotion. Now, the people of venom has the children of men of
his. They've been enslaved. They go through oppression by the worst
oppressor in history.
And they come despite the fact that they've seen so many miracles
of Musa. Are they? Has they come to an ocean and they're saying,
we're going to drown. And what does Musa are they? Has?
Spot with
my Lord is with me. He's going to guide me.
This, this affirmation,
in this moment, Musa, I'm
shows a very
critical point when it comes to a person. The prophets were people
who had anxiety.
It's normal, it's natural to have anxiety. It's helpful to have the
anxiety. But look at what they consistently show us, despite
every type of pain that Allah described from the Quran that they
went through when Musa was first introduced to Allah and spoke to
him directly, first of all, he was scared. Then he was given the task
of going to Hiram. He was scared. Allah
affirms
that he can go. He answers the of his brother coming with him, and
then he has the staff, and it's turned into a snake, and Musa is
scared,
but Allah again comforts him. He's gone through training, he's been
mentored, and now when he's facing an entire ocean, an army behind
him, and people who don't believe despite having seen miracles. But
listen, Paulo Freire talks about in the pedagogy of the oppressed,
when an oppressed people are free, and they've never seen another
form of interaction. They can become oppressors, or they're
still oppressed in their mind, it takes mentorship to move to the
next phase of the way that a picture looks at the world. So
what's that here? His
statement, Allah
records that he's affirming that Allah is with him and that he's
going to guide him. And what does he do? And that should he has
control over in a circumstance in which he has absolutely no
control, he's ordered to get the stuff to the water, he has an
action he can take. I lay him alayhi salam,
we see in the examples of the most righteous of the righteous, that
they faced
pain, poverty, loss,
but they had strong conviction Allah is with them,
and they focused on what they could do in a situation.
And this is something that the Prophet sawallah ad son of mentor
to the companion to life as a father. When you see the prophets
of Allah, AJ, mentoring his own daughters,
he was making tension in front of the Kappa and some of the leaders
of the parade through the inside of a camel on the back of the
Prophet Solomon.
Ibn Israel is the one who narrates this incident. Ibn Israel
mentioned wishing that he could go out and do something, but he was
amongst the most vulnerable people. He didn't have a plan to
back him up and protect him, so all he could do was watch
who went out.
False Mamadi Allah,
she ran, she threw off these
slimy inside of the animal, and then she stood and she spoke to
proclamation.
Where did she have this level of confidence and courage as a young
girl in a society in which they used to bury baby girls,
Israel, heavily shifted in just a generation the way that men saw
women and the way that women saw themselves. But at this point,
it's the beginning of the revelation that society
has not been made and yet the Prophet sawallah, the Wisdom as a
father of daughters
allowed them to know that they have strength and courage.
Fundamentally, didn't say, well, as a daughter, I shouldn't be out
there. You know, she didn't say statements that would make her
feel like she wasn't worthy of standing up for her own father.
She ran out there and thought about she experienced immense
loss, many opportunities for a person to fall not just into
regular anxiety, but clinical anxiety, cyclical anxiety. She
lost her mother at a young age. She was with a persecuted
community. When the Quraysh was persecuting the Muslims, she lost
every single sibling that she had before she passed away, Obi Wan
she she lived in poverty, she watched her loved ones go to war,
and some of them didn't come back. She has lots of reason to fear or
to feel trauma. But at the very end of her life, when Asmaa been
to Ramayana,
was taking care of her as she was sick. Do you know what she told
Asmaa to Ramesh? Will they look on him? Fell to rook on him. Said
that she was worried about the fact that after a person passes
away and they're put in a shroud.
Her that the shape of her body might show as she's taken to be
buried
Asmaa had lived in Abyssinia. She had come to Medina after migrating
to Abyssinia, and so she told her about a practice she had seen in
Abyssinia, in which the people of Abyssinia would create something
from sticks and from leaves that would kind of be somewhat like a
box that would cover the body of the person who had passed away,
and that they would use that box not to bury them in, but to
transfer them from one place to another. Faltima asked to see what
it looked like, Asmaa had it made, and then called Little Nima.
Guaica liked it, and she was taken after she passed away in this
beer, the ier that she was taken from one place to the next rodeo
love life
she could have at the very end of her life questioned because of the
of the immense trauma and the million reasons for anxiety that
She experienced in her life, but at the very end, her focus was
only in her relationship with Allah, so much so she was worried
about her body when she was no longer accountable for her body.
Saltima, the alumna,
shows us
that care and connection with Allah that was built through the
mentorship of a father who believed in her and a prophet who
invested in every single member of
the community,
as nagatomas, who I just mentioned she had experienced persecution in
Mecca. She made Hijrah Hijra with her husband, jafal, the son of AB,
the cousin of the Prophet sallallahu Abu. She gave birth
there to children, to three of them.
She is an immigrant to a new community. She's part of a
religious community whose numbers are very few at this time, she
didn't speak the language, she didn't know the culture and she's
having young children,
like many of you, has children in a foreign land. She, like many of
you, an immigrant, like many of you, is not with her entire
family. May Allah bless every single one of you, so many of you
came to a new land.
I'm not here again.
I have a I have a condition in which I randomly start coughing
because I'm swallowing. And instead of being a huge source of
anxiety for me on stage, I simply allow you to get more rewards in
child love while I take this in the water. That's the anxiety
management. I didn't just have
that. You all became here after because, Inshallah, your ranks are
raised. Every
single one of them. So as I, like many of you, has children in a
foreign land. She, like many of you, is an immigrant, like many of
you, is not like her entire family. May Allah bless every
single one of you, so many of you, came to a new land without knowing
the culture or the language. You had children here. You raised your
children here, may Allah bless every single one of you for the
effort that you live for your kids. And Asmaa Laham and has then
migrates to Medina, many years later, soon after she migrates
with her husband, Jaffa will be alive
Subhanallah,
he is killed in the Battle of Malta.
She's grieving. Her children are grieving. The Prophet, some of the
farthing he was someone is grieving. Now, despite this grief
and the many opportunities in her life
to focus on what could go wrong, to be catastrophizing on the worst
outcome, because many times some of the types of worst outcomes she
did experience.
But instead of that being the only thing she focused on,
she married a welcome on the Aloha.
And when he passed away, he wanted her to be the one to wash his,
her, his body,
many times, specifically, when it comes to anything related to
death, we often hear women are too emotional. Women can handle it.
Women are going to scream. Women are not able to see these types of
things. Asmaa Obi wanha was the one that Abu Bakr a specifically
asked to watch his body the level of resilience it takes to be able
to wash someone that you love so much, despite a lifetime of so
much pain, speaks to a woman who is so connected in her
relationship with Allah, and someone who focused on the actual.
That she can take the girl who I mentioned in the beginning of this
story,
she came back to the masjid
despite all the harm that she experienced as a young girl, she
came back and she asked the Imam of this Masjid that she entered,
why
she described all of the experiences that she had as a
young girl, and she asked, Why does Islam say that women are
nothing? Why did my parents say that Islam tell them to do this to
me because I'm a girl? This Imam sat with her, validated her
emotion, spoke about the fact that this was abuse and unrelated to
Islam, recognizing pain that she went through,
and with his mentorship, Alhamdulillah, she became Muslim
again,
and that shift is a story I'm also hearing about more often.
We are slowly as a community, recognizing that perhaps some of
the language that we use at a certain time, whether it's parents
or community, really pushed away so many
but those people are sometimes ready to ask again
when we as a community affirm the pain that our loved ones are going
through,
promise that we are there to listen and help mentor or find
professional support, that shift allows a person to start Exploring
Islam in a way that's safe for them.
A sister told me that she had been hit and had a chair thrown at her
and been slapped and been told by her mother this entire all of
these incidences were with her mother that she wished she had
never been born. This was the worst thing that had ever happened
to her, that her life was better without her, and she would force
her to pray. And this sister told me that she no longer lives with
her mom, but every time she wants to pray, she remembers that her
mom did those things and told her to pray and she doesn't want her
mom to win. And they told her, Listen, you want a relationship
with Allah. You want to pray. You are giving your mom power over you
when you don't pray because you're trying to get back at home some
way, don't give anyone power over your relationship with Allah, it
is your relationship with Allah. SubhanaHu wa started
praying again, and that's something that we pray, that we
can all help ourselves and our loved ones and our community see
that there is nobody in between them and their relationship with
Allah. And for parents, I specifically recommend a parenting
book. It's called positive parenting, positive parenting in
the Muslim home. You have here two co authors, Lady and Munira and
his Dean lekovich, they've written this book the positive parenting
discipline perspective is one that is very in line with Islamic
values. And inshallah gives our children hope that no matter how
terrified we are, that they can do it. Inshallah. Bless every single
one of you here, family members.