Every Ramadan Gets Worse and Worse

But Ramadan Mubarak anyway

Before we took this picture, my pilgrimage hadn’t been going … well, certainly not as I’d expected, let alone hoped. After this picture, I’d be even more stressed: We’d apparently lost an entire bus of pilgrims, more than three dozen people who disappeared into thin air. Since the Saudi riyal, American dollar, Canadian dollar and GBP stopped with me, this Hijazi rapture was very much my problem.

But for these precious few moments before prayers at Masjid Quba in Madinah, the second-holiest city in Islam, I was calm. I was almost smiling, as you can see. We were all where we needed to be. I could focus on God, not logistics. In the fifteen years since, a lot has happened. I lost that beautiful scarf, which I’d bought maybe the day before in Madinah. I lost most of my hair. But I gained an unexpected confidence, too.

I learned some big lessons on that ‘umrah trip, one of which I shared with the high school boys’ halaqa. The second will be delivered when we resume classes after Eid. I’m not posting this just to wish you all Ramadan Mubarak. I’m not writing this just to share an incredible fact I learned about Madinah, though I will share it. I’m writing this to share two life lessons every young person should learn.

Both of them have everything to do with Ramadan—and all our lives.

This Was My Fault, However

After I graduated from New York University, I stayed involved with the Islamic Center — which I’d given so much time, energy and passion to. For those who don’t know, ICNYU, currently led by Imam Khalid Latif, has been one of America’s most dynamic Muslim institutions for years. Fifteen years ago, that commitment meant I was traveling with an ICNYU ‘umrah trip.

We’d take almost eighty Muslims (enough for two buses), among them fellow alum and community members, to visit the holy cities of Madinah and Mecca, where we’d perform the lesser pilgrimage or ‘umrah. My intention and assignment was to hold a secondary role … though, of course, if you put yourself in that position, as Kamala Harris recently learned, you may be called on (and should probably be ready).

The Imam’s flight was leaving from Toronto—the Imam was the team leader. I was leaving several hours earlier, with the majority of us, coming from New York.

I’d keep tabs on most of the group until we all convened in Madinah and the Imam would take over. Easy enough.

We arrived in Jeddah late at night but one of our group, a woman who’d recently had knee surgery, couldn’t find her bags. Airport security was helpful, although one of the administrators refused to assist me unless and until I explained the problem entirely in fusha, what is also known as Modern Standard Arabic (if you know, you know). Technically, I could do this. I was however also jet lagged, stressed and exhausted.

By the time we got the search going, and this woman found her bags, three hours had passed, during which time the remaining passengers snoozed on our pair of buses. Unfortunately, while we did find the bags, someone had opened these and taken a number of valuables she’d intended to share with family in Pakistan, her next destination (most of the rest of us were coming back to America).

This was a hard note to start on, but alhamdulillah.

As the buses set off, right as I was about to doze off, I got a call from New York.

Our team leader and Imam was delayed for a few days due to circumstances entirely out of his control. For our entire time in Madinah, I’d be solely responsible for dozens of pilgrims. Now, you’d be correct in pointing out that this was something I’d signed up for. I had agreed to assist the Imam, in my defense, but not to be the Imam. Then again, it had never occurred to me the Imam might not arrive in time.

If he did not arrive, of course, I would be the Imam in the interim. That simple logic is terrifying in its implications. Don’t believe me?

Well, how do you feel about sharing the fiqh of ‘umrah on the spot? And how would you feel about sharing the fiqh of ‘umrah a few days before ‘umrah, with a lot of people, including people you’ve known for years, all of whom had saved up a lot of money, some of whom might never come back, and you can guess why I did not sleep on the many hours it took our bus to get to Madinah.

I can’t exaggerate how immediately overwhelming this felt, how high the stakes were, how huge the responsibility felt. This was no longer my ‘umrah.

I hardly slept at all.

Better Than Sleep (But Some Sleep Would’ve Been Nice)

I spent most every free minute of those days reviewing notes and preparing for next steps. I went with the group everywhere, of course. Through our travel agency, we secured a local Imam who would serve as a temporary facilitator, since I could not in fact be in two buses at once, and this left half of our group without someone to pose their questions to during the only real downtime we had — transit time.

This Imam was however so harsh that, after that brief respite in Masjid Quba, we only seemed to lose a bus worth of pilgrims. What actually happened? Everyone who’d been on his bus tried to sneak onto the other bus and hide, because they did not want to ride to Mecca with him. Naturally, this would be illegal and dangerous, albeit comic and memorable; nevertheless, I persuaded these muhajirun back onto their bus.

Other than that, we were good. Alhamdulillah.

We made it to almost every site we’d promised them and largely on time. I did my best to hide any anxiety and concern; we arrived in Mecca to meet our Imam and got to complete our journey with a beautiful ‘umrah. If today I teach and travel for a living, which is an incredible blessing, the credit is to God and the experiences He puts us through and the lessons we learn from these.

I may not have felt ready in that moment. But that was fear—and once I saw past the fear, I realized not only that I had no choice (time to man up) but that God wouldn’t ask of us if we couldn’t handle the request.

It wouldn’t be easy, but it was hardly therefore impossible.

In fact I’d spent my life learning. I’d taught before. That apparently ridiculous security officer, who forced me to laboriously explain why we needed his staff’s help in proper Arabic might’ve in fact been sent by God to jumpstart my Arabic and reactivate long dormant parts of my brain. I’d previously led a tour of Muslim Spain. I’d done ‘umrahs before. I’d spent my entire teenage and adult life learning about our faith.

God will put you in situations that test you. But in many of these situations, if you pause and step back, you’ll see you can get through these.

Do you really believe that, though?

Each of us has, in the individual experiences of our life, quite a lot … not to fall back on, because that’s not the right way to put it. Instead, I’d say God calls on us to bring our experiences together, to creatively apply them to new circumstances. In some instances, we remember confidence, maybe confidence we lost, the confidence all caliphs of God should have.

In other instances, the challenge provokes and produces the confidence, which we will need for later in life. Everything we go through, we go through for a reason. Success isn’t easy. It’s often grueling. Sometimes the road there is terrible. Long. Hard. Uncomfortable. But there’s a difference between pushing on and giving up. I brought together what I knew — and the skills that had enabled me to keep learning.

How to manage my time.

How to put together what I knew.

Even how to ask for help, which is one of the rarest skills in the world—I knew what I could do and what I couldn’t do (i.e., I couldn’t be on both buses. We needed, however temporarily, someone else.) And this is what I told the young men in my halaqa on our last class before Ramadan.

If you build patiently and deliberately, one day the sum of such apparently small skills and modest commitments will be far greater than you could imagine. If you spend ten minutes a day reading, you’ll come out so much smarter a year later. If you work on Qur’an ten minutes a day. If you go for a walk. If you shoot around. If you check in on a friend. Little things make big things.

The converse, though, is also true.

If you spend every waking moment of your life on your phone, watching ten-second clips, you’ll annihilate your attention, and then, you might never get it back. Because your youth is precious. It won’t come back. Had I not been studying for years, I wouldn’t have been assisting with the ‘umrah trip. But had I not been willing to step up in that moment, then would that moment have come again?

We all need to take leaps of faith, absolutely. But we should have a good sense of how likely we are to stick the landing.

Aim Small, Miss Small

I’ve always loved learning. I’ve always loved teaching. Some people think teaching is about communicating overwhelming amounts of information, which most people can’t digest and wouldn’t know what to do with anyhow. In fact, the best teachers give students enough to push them just beyond what they know, while also sharing that in such a way that students might benefit in some meaningful, tangible, ongoing way.

If you can ascribe to a teacher some knowledge that benefited you beyond an immediate grade or circumstance, well, that’s a special teacher.

In search of that excellence, I’m always learning, not just for the joy of learning itself, but because I know—if the countless hours I spend in investigation and preparation changes one traveler’s perspective on the world, then that is forever worth it. But without the preparation, we don’t even have a shot at making a difference. This realization helps us to reframe the rhythms of our lives, too.

Yeah, that 2010 ‘umrah trip didn’t go the way I’d expected—I spent a lot more time focusing on others, and a lot less time focusing on myself.

Initially, that felt monumentally disappointing, until I realized: I was still there. I still got to do ‘umrah. In fact, I helped other people do their ‘umrahs too. If God accepts, of course, that’s a sadaqa jariya. Would you rather have more time for your ‘umrah, or enough time for your ‘umrah and the chance to help others, too? We are an ummah for the people of this world, even as we are not reduced to this world.

There was a lot of time I spent on details, and far less on dhikr, but that in turn gave me confidence that I’ve built on to realize many of the most exciting projects and commitments I’ve undertaken: this halaqa, for one. A travel company, definitely. Most of all, kids. Because if you think Ramadan with kids is going to be like Ramadan before kids, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Also you’ll just be awake a lot more than you’d like to be.

If your perspective is constricted, you’ll think: that’s a lot less time for my ‘ibadah. Once upon a time, in an America far, far away, I went to taraweeh most nights and stayed through all twenty. I also had more hair then. I’m a lot older, less resilient, and can’t recover in time for the obligations of the next day. Because the kids have to be ready for school after fajr, and I can’t sleep in, I don’t get to go very often.

Our local masjid, and the parking conundrum created by a rapidly growing community nobody expected — alhamdulillah — means taraweeh takes far, far more time than just the prayers too. So I often pray at home. That means I miss out on the chance to pray in jama’at especially on weekdays. Fear of Missing Out, non-secular edition. Except who ever told us life would stay the same?

The last few weeks, I’ve had some unusually transparent, unlikely conversations with the high schoolers. We’ve talked a lot about the previous year, about American Muslims, about our democracy. I won’t precisely reproduce these because I want my students to feel they can air difficult questions and have hard conversations; suffice it to say, they’ve punctured a lot of my assumptions.

In turn, I’ve challenged a lot of their opinions, including opinions they hold because they hear them a lot. These young men and women should be able to explore uncomfortable perspectives on the world and themselves. Like, are we making the right decisions? Do we reach our potential? What is holding us back? On occasion, some of my smartest students will appeal to historical sources or arguments.

I like that they do this, a lot. But I care enough about their futures that I ask for more.

Some of them might talk about the difference between Islam historically and Islam presently, but I’ve challenged these framings aggressively. It’s easy to talk in big-picture terms, except those ways of speaking rarely translate to outcomes we can concretize. Or even internalize. What does it even mean, after all, to say that Muslims should learn from the early Ottomans? Or the Spanish Umayyads?

There is in fact a lot to learn, yes. But you don’t just need facts. You need to be able to parse analogies. What’s the same between now and then? What’s different? What explains the similarities and the divergences?

And how does this speak to us?

I left them with this hadith of our beloved Messenger, which too few of us spend enough time with. Instead of focusing on what you could hypothetically be doing, focus on what you can do. Grow slowly, deliberately and intentionally. Build piecemeal, so that you can reflect on your progress—and on your obstacles. But keep this much in mind: This growth has a purpose.

For when an opportunity comes your way, then all that patient accumulation should be worth something. Because here’s the thing about opportunities…

When They Spoke Latin in Madinah

If you’ve read Two Billion Caliphs, you’ll hopefully remember that I explored the question of how we contextualize the life of our beloved Prophet, peace be upon him. In the course of that book, I consider evidence for why the Hijra might have happened. Not just the spiritual and sacred reasons, but the prosaic backdrop against which the most momentous exodus in history unfolded.

Just a few days ago, while doing research in preparation for Queen City Diwan's September trip to Uzbekistan and November trip to Spain, I came across a small fact that amazed me by itself. More incredible still, though, the anecdote suggests there may be even more to the argument in Two Billion Caliphs than even I knew, which provokes me to want to read more, and reflect further, but first that fun fact.

During the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus (incidentally, Augustus was Julius Caesar’s great-nephew), ten thousand Roman legionnaires were sent from Egypt to seize Aden. It was during Caesar’s and Augustus’ reigns that Rome expanded substantially into Africa and, given the existing trade networks, reaching for China made sense. The Chinese and Romans even exchanged embassies.

But this specific instance? I’d never heard of it until I found it in Simon Montefiore’s The World: A Family History of Humanity (well over a thousand pages, may Allah protect me) and the subsequent footnotes (the best rabbit holes not actually made by actual rabbits). These ten thousand legionnaires crossed the Red Sea from the now abandoned port of Berenice, landed near what’s now Yanbu in Saudi Arabia and marched through Madinah on their way to Yemen.

What drew them to Madinah? Did they have allies there?

Also—Madinah?

Might they even have passed by the site of Badr? Who were these men? How did they feel being so far from home? What happened to their families? Did people in Madinah tell the story of the time the Romans passed through?

Of course, that’s the very same Madinah where that flattering picture of your favorite Substacker was taken roundabout two thousand years later.

Yeah, Roman legionnaires in Madinah…

Our 2010 ICNYU ‘umrah tour worked out well in the end. Those Romans, though, got lost in the desert, which is never a good idea.¹ They failed to take Marib, a key city in Yemen (Arabia Felix, as the Romans called it, because it was the green and fertile part of Arabia), and eventually all of them perished. If Romans marching through Madinah sounds like an implausible scenario, I mean, I get it. It’s wild.

But that’s the thing: The world we live in should endlessly surprise us. If it doesn’t, we aren’t paying attention.

The blessed Prophet Muhammad encouraged us to be in the world like travelers.

I’m going to share this with my students, too, once we resume our halaqas in April, God willing.

Lord of All The Worlds

To be a traveler means many things—including, just maybe, that we look with fresh eyes even on subjects we’ve covered two thousand times before. If we hold to that spirit, we’ll never cease learning. Maybe we’re older now, and education is like Ramadan: We have more responsibilities and less apparent free time. So learn when you can, what you can, enough to challenge and grow yourself.

Even if you have less time, you still have time. It’s a gift. Repurpose what you have. Have trouble sleeping after fajr? Sleep earlier. Maybe I can’t go to the masjid every night for taraweeh, but I can wake up earlier and spend time with and for God then.

There’s yet more to paying attention, too. What is the point of learning, after all? We are the ummah of the Prophet who went to Jerusalem and to heaven and then came back. He came back to the grief and hurt, peace be upon him, because he loved us, because he had work to do, because his life was not for himself but for God. We have work to do, however tired and even defeated we might feel.

We are here for a reason. If you don’t stop and look around, you’ll cease seeing it.

What is the point of signing up to assist on a trip—except that one day, perhaps, you’ll have to and maybe even want to lead a trip? Because there’s a secret few will tell you: Opportunities come only so often. I haven’t been back to Mecca or Madinah in over a decade (may God give us the chance to go again). If I hadn’t stepped up years ago, would I be able to do any of the things I do now?

God challenges us. He asks us to see what we are made of. Will we rise to the challenge? Will we grow beyond ourselves? Pay attention so you don’t miss those chances. Take them when you see them. You may never have them back.

Ramadan Mubarak.

1. I promise better navigation and orientation. Incidentally, we learn lessons on every trip: I always plan to arrive earlier than the group, for example. I make sure we have qualified guides who can cover for each other in the event they need to. We make sure we have sufficient people on our team that nobody feels like an afterthought. That’s one reason why I don’t like traveling with large groups. We don’t get to know each other, sit with each other and learn with and from each other.