How heavy does it feel?
Yeah, I know. It gets heavier by the day.
The videos.
The photos.
The tweets.
It weighs heavy.
And that’s the beauty of being a Muslim isn’t it? When one heart breaks, we all break.
But it’s not about how long we can continue to shoulder the weight. Sure if this continues, we’ll continue speaking out, making du’a and donating to causes, but at some point, two things will happen:
- It’ll get so heavy that we can no longer carry the burden.
- The momentum will fade and so will our attention.
So what do we do?
How do we continue standing up for justice and refusing the oppression that’s taking place on blessed lands? How do we continue fuelling our souls to stand up for what’s right?
A little while ago, I read an article by Dr. Tamara Gray titled Tahajjud: Fuel for the Self and Society. Now we all know the significance of the night prayer. We just came out of Ramadan and I’m sure that we all took part in it.
But it was easy then. We were in the zone.
Fast, eat, pray, sleep, Tahajjud, repeat.
Now though, not so much. But here’s why we need it.
In the article, Dr. Gray mentions how Allah (SWT) commanded our beloved Prophet (PBUH) to spend more of his night in prayer than in sleep because he was about to receive the weighty words of revelation. And even later on, Tahajjud was commonplace in the daily routine of our beloved Messenger (PBUH). He spent his Prophethood carrying and spreading a weighted message while also shouldering the weight of generations to come- His Ummah.
As Dr. Gray puts it, “even before the battle of Badr, He sought strength and help in his tahajjud and Allah (swt) sent thousands of angels to the battlefield to help them.”
The weight of the cause will only get heavier. We are not like our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Allah has placed them to defend the sacred lands, while we do what we can from afar.
Maybe Tahajjud is what we need, to continue being strong, from afar, for our brothers and sisters.
You can check out Dr. Gray’s article here.
VASIM KAPADIA 