Sarah Sultan – Attaching to Allah #04 How Do You Cope With Uncertainty

			And then it just kind of became repetitive right after each other and all of a sudden, I thought the
floor underneath me was going to drop. And I jumped out of the room and I heard a big crash.
		

			A chandelier shaking and I look into the room and I'm like, nothing so what happened? And then it
dawned on me. It was downstairs where my mom is
		

			Allahu nexonia Behala li Qian haram ik what else Nene we've opened the cam and see work
		

			so one of the things about Ibrahim alayhis salam is he's the perpetual refugee. And you know, they
have that shirt that I've seen, you know, Abraham was a migrant, how to use that Moses was a
migrant, how to use that or use it is that um, Jesus was a migrant, Mohammed slice and um, was a
migrant or refugee right, like this idea of connecting to them like with Brahim Isilon, you go from
Iraq, and then Egypt and then Palestine, and then Mac, back. And it's not just that, right, with
every single move of his,
		

			he's leaving behind something as well. Family Stability, possessions, right? There's a story when
you start to build a home. Can any of you relate specifically do you have a refugee story in your
own family or migration story in your own family where that stability was taken away? And, you know,
it dawned upon you or dawned upon them, this idea that your stability is being found in a loss of
power? It's out of rather than those places?
		

			I think for for me, personally, you know, we've dealt with this quite a bit growing up. My, my dad
was in the government back home in Mali.
		

			Seems like these African countries, there's cruise after cruise every few years. So this was in the
1990s, there was a coup. And so the government was overthrown. I mean, we're living a pretty decent
lifestyle. I mean, just overnight, everything changed. You know, they, they came, they burned down
the houses. And we
		

			Hamdulillah, you know, we were able to kind of get out of the house on time. And then we had to
leave the country. But this was, you know, we're still pretty young kids. So the middle of the
school year, went to a different country, and kind of start over, get into the whole different
school system. And a few years later, we went back to Mali, you know, things kind of got a little
bit stable. And then, in a few years, again, the same thing happened, another turmoil happens. And
then you have the scores of people, populations, cities, villages, just got to moving out of the
country, and you know, moving to Mauritania, or Algeria, and some of them are still there.
		

			Whenever I go back home, and try to visit the spaces, it's, you know, they live in tents, no water,
the end. But just few years before that, they had total safety. And I know this is just a family
this is happening all over the world. And it just gives you an appreciation of, you know, just
safety and all that at the same time. You always have in the back of your mind, you know, this can
all go in one day.
		

			And that's kind of my take on that, you know, just looking at Abraham moving from one place to the
other and, but again, bringing it back to the whole part you know, things will get better one day,
and if it's not in this dunya Inshallah,
		

			Allah relates the experience of being a refugee to death. Last Panther says we'll enter GitHub now
it him anecdotal and full circle with him in the end. If we were to prescribe upon them to kill
yourselves or to leave your homes, some of the scholars say subhanallah to leave your home can be
like death. And And truly, you look at the prophets lie some in his companions. And this moment of
heartbreak as amazing as Medina was, it's not Mecca. And the prophets lie some turns around and he
looks at Mike and he's very emotional. And he says to Mecca, he's speaking to an O Mecca, in necky.
ahead will be doubted. You are the most beloved of places on earth to me and the most beloved of
		

			places on earth to Allah had your people Stanley speaking to my co head Europe people not run me
out. I would have been
		

			never left you, I would have never left you. And you have been out of the law on one level back at
all the long time. And I mean talking about death, as soon as they get to Medina, writing poetry
about how much they miss Mack getting sick, homesick, literally. It's amazing, because you then look
at, and it matches with the experience when you talk to people who have been through that, like, you
then look at the emphasis in the Quran, on providing warmth to people, you know, to the orphan, to
the wayfare to that person who's in that experience that that Crom that honoring of them the way the
unsought honor the prophets lie some of the companions so that they don't feel like a burden, they
		

			feel a sense of stability, your home, your home, Welcome home, right, that love that's so necessary.
It's not just food and drink. And in the case of Ibrahim Ali Salam, who's welcoming Ibrahim is when
he gets to these places, either a tyrant or nobody, right? He's either being welcomed by a tyrant,
or, you know, a barren desert. And so he has to find that comfort and that stability. Only in Allah
subhanho wa taala. You know, what, have any of you ever felt like, when have you felt that Allah
subhanaw taala gave you stability? When the ground underneath you, you know, in the case of a
refugee, literally the ground underneath you changes, you're pulled off of the ground underneath
		

			you, but the ground is being pulled from underneath you. Have you ever felt a moment of stability in
Allah subhana wits ad or anything from the Quran, or from the stories of these prophets that really
resonates with you? And that sounds to them? Well, Don's ago,
		

			I was upstairs trying to reorganize a room. And I started hearing this noise. It was like a tap, tap
tap. And I was like, What is my mom doing downstairs? And she's thinking that same thing downstairs.
She's like, What is that noise? And then it just kind of became repetitive right after each other.
And all of a sudden, I thought the floor underneath me was going to drop. And I jumped out of the
room. And I heard a big crash.
		

			A chandelier shaking, and I look into the room and I'm like, nothing fell, what happened. And then
it dawned on me. It was downstairs where my mom is. And I just ran downstairs and you know, your
mind is going to be flooded with everything wrong and everything bad. And I'm just literally I have
to say no, no, no out loud, just to shut those thoughts out of the way. And I come down.
		

			And I'm not saying that. I'm not trying to belittle what somebody who's been a refugee
		

			has experienced, but it looks like a war torn space. Just dust everywhere the entire ceiling fell.
And I couldn't see anything I couldn't. I couldn't I couldn't figure out I did not look like my
living room. And I said to my mom, mom, mom, and she's like, in a quiet voice. Yeah.
		

			Where are you she's like, I don't know where you are. But I'm on the couch.
		

			Where and I realized that there is a part of this is some of the old houses at least have this like
double stuffed cement wall.
		

			And head two plies kneaded with wire exactly tented over my mom. Everything else is broken and in
pieces everywhere else. And it's in the perfect shape over my mom. And I get in there. And I'm of
course I'm scared that more was going to fall and I wasn't even paying attention. I didn't realize
that there were shards of glass all over, I had no idea. And I ran in and I was just struggling
trying to tear off the cement. And finally took her out and we went and I'm like,
		

			like, what just what just happened? SubhanAllah. And that immediacy of not safe to you know, to
being safe was just kind of surreal to this point. I'm still like, I mean, handed it it's from a
less my dad that the LS safeguarded her.
		

			But this was a very, you know, trying experience for us. And it took us a whole year to be able to
fix the damage that it happened, which meant that we were living literally in one room the entire
year. And so that instability is it really shakes you it can rock you in so many,
		

			many ways that that you don't your funk your functionalities almost kind of like what I was
mentioning in the past of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you're you're only trying to focus on your
safety. You know, one of the things from a spiritual perspective
		

			beyond just connecting to those that are refugees in this world
		

			nominal Josie Rahim Allah has this really interesting thing he says that you know the believers
homesick for Jenna, you're homesick for Paradise. Like if you look at the Hadith of the Prophet
slice Allah
		

			when he says be in this world as if you were a stranger or Wayfair confit dunya, Kanika Hadid be as
if you are a stranger. Hi Vito Sabina wayfare. You know, and he said that the the example of me and
this dunya is like a person who just is on a journey and you take a break under a tree. And that
idea that, you know, in this dunya, you're never really satisfied, just like the refugee, no matter
what you give them in terms of luxuries, or if you give them a nicer house and better
accommodations, like objectively speaking, Medina is nicer than Mecca, right palm trees versus
barren desert, you know, no matter what you give them, it's not home. And the believer always feels
		

			that sense of being homesick from Jana, like I was not created for this world that was created for
agenda and aims to get back home and sort of sees this world as merely a pause in that journey. And
so any pause within that journey, is still just a pause within a pause, as opposed to any semblance
of stability, which as believers we really only seek in the hereafter.
		

			So Sister Sara, unpredictability is a part of everybody's life, maybe not to the extreme level it my
son's life, but how do we cope with unpredictability
		

			and predictability is something that is inevitable. It's part of our lives, whether a lot of times,
we don't realize that it's a part of our daily lives. But it absolutely is, you know, subhanAllah,
you take the same route on your way to work or school every day. And then one day, you get into a
car accident, you know, that unpredictability, we have this,
		

			this misconception that our lives are predictable. If we do the same thing each day, then the same
thing will happen. But that's just not the reality of life. And we see it at different stages of our
own lives, where that fact is amplified. You know, when COVID hit, it was amplified in everybody's
lives that unpredictability, when somebody transitions from being, you know, from pregnancy to
becoming a parent, that that unpredictability that then results, you know, the different the
different things with somebody who you love passes away, there's so much unpredictability in our
lives, we just don't always expect it. And that's what makes it unpredictable.
		

			Well, the story of Ibrahim is that um, and I and I often think about his wife headshot, and the
unpredictability of you know, one morning you wake up, and your life is as you expect it to be. And
then by the end of the day, you're in the middle of a desert with your baby, and and nothing around
you Subhanallah Is there anything more unpredictable than that? And that perpetual refugee status
that you mentioned that Ibrahim, it said I'm has? So how do we deal with the inevitable
unpredictability in our lives? Number one is to accept the fact that life is unpredictable. And then
you know, and to realize that that also Selim tells us, you tie your camel and you trust in Allah
		

			Subhana Allah and that's the best antidote to deal with unpredictability is you do your part you
take every moment, as if it's your last moment, you take advantage of five before five as the
prophesy Selim says, Because you have time now you won't have time later, you have youth now you
won't have us later.
		

			And so doing the most with every moment, and then when things happen, that you can't control that
you just have to accept. How do we do that is that's where we trust in Allah subhana data, that we
realize that in every single moment, we are already trusting in Him that we have the air in our
lungs that LS pancetta allows to come into our lungs that this is an active trust that we have to
have a less Pat data. And then finally to one of the things that I find really helpful is the Vic
have Allahu Akbar, right that Allah is greater. Allah is greater than what Allah is greater than
everything, every source of unpredictability that we might be going through every difficulty that we
		

			might be going through, and to remember that can also be really helpful in dealing with the
inevitable unpredictability that we're gonna face. So do you remember a time where you felt
homesick? And have you ever felt homesick for Jana? Please share with us in the comments below.