As salaam alaikum Reader,

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I pray this finds you well. Brave enough and open enough to love Allah and to love whom and what He loves, and to love for His sake.

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Growing up, one of the things I always loved about Islam was that I felt like Allah and His messenger told me the truth. Islam was not about what I wanted to hear, or what sounded 'right' or good to my ears or anyone else's. Allah was gonna tell me the truth, His Prophet (pbuh) was going to tell me the truth, always with love, and always with honor to the reality of what the truth is. I admit, I like that, I respect that...give it to me straight and let me figure out how to deal with it. Alhamdulillah my parent took this attitude with me growing up as well.

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I started wearing hijab the summer before sixth grade. I was the only (at least visible) Muslim in my school. Take it further...I was the only Muslim my age in my whole neighborhood. Aaaand...to give some context...my family is Caribbean/West Indian and the only reference people had for a Black girl wearing a scarf on their head was that I must be a Nun. Not as an insult, but like literally a Nun. So I would be walking down Church Ave. and guys would talk to me on the street and their first question would be, 'Aye gyal...you a Nun?' To say that I was embarrassed as an 11 year old would be an understatement.

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So that summer...I avoided going outside. Then when I did go outside I bough a couple of berrets French style hats, and a cool Rasta hat for if I wanted to run to the store and my dad wasn't home. He was not having the hat as hijab thing...and I wasn't going to disobey him in my own hood...thats crazy!

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School started and I had a dilemma...I started off wearing my hijab but the questions went from, Are you a Nun? to Are you bald under there?

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*Mind you, I was in a new school, but half of these people I'd known since 4 years old at my elementary school. They literally had class pictures of me with my hair out...but I digress.

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The point is, that year I started removing my khimar before school. About 2-3 blocks before I got to school I'd take it off, and then put it back on on the bus before arriving home. This carried on for some time, maybe even the whole year. My mom found out, but didn't bring it up at the time...I think she knew I was struggling and respected the angst of the process. The next summer rolled around and Alhamdulillah I had time to go to the mosque on Friday for Jumu'ah prayer, listen to khutbahs by Imam Siraj Wahhaj and get into reading and discussing more about Islam with my family, and especially my father. School started again and I was faced with the same issue...deal with my uncomfortability, and annoyance of wearing a khimar to school, or take it off and go about my business pretending, or presenting like I was just like everybody else. I remember pausing on the block where I would have removed my scarf and then quickly walking again. My heart heart. I reflected as I walked on, Allah has given me everything, life, faith, and amazing family that I love, so much good...and He is just asking me to do this thing, wear this khimar for His sake...am I really going to say no? I couldn't do it. I couldn't be that person who cares more about feeling uncomfortable than obeying God, who has literally given me everything. That was not the quality of the type of human being that I wanted to be. So I kept walking. I could do this. I could answer a few annoying questions, deal with some stares, and be okay. I was not like everyone else and I wasn't going to pretend to be.

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My father had told us growing up many wise words, one of which I'll share here. He said, people will never respect a person who doesn't respect themselves. If you will sell yourself out pretending to be like everyone else, they won't respect you anyway. So I learned early that I had to make a decision on the type of person I wanted to be. I could be an imperfect struggling version of myself, and thats okay. An imperfect servant of Allah is a servant of Allah open to help and improvement. And all help comes from Allah.

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If we love Allah we have to believe Him and listen to Him. We have to make pleasing Him our top priority and we have to place His pleasure above our discomfort. The funny thing too is that when we do that we will often find that the 'discomfort' is so fleeting, but the pleasure of Allah is expansive and illuminating. In all cases all things of this life are fleeting anyway...so what sell what is eternal for what is constantly passing us by...

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I'm glad Allah and His Prophet (pbuh) love us enough to tell us the truth. I'm blessed that my parents loved me enough to tell me the truth. It could have been easier to affirm my feelings and tell me that its fine, I can do what feels right to me; they could have twisted what they believed to be true into a narrative that better suited my feelings; they could have been all fire and brimstone and made me feel that one misstep at that point in my life would put me on an irreversible downward spiral. But they did none of those. They recognized my feelings, but they stood firm for the truth as they knew it. They didn't budge their rules, and they didn't make the instruction of God subservient to my heart or whims. They lay a very clear choice in front of me, and it's the choice we ultimately all have. The choice to recognize the authority of God over our lives, and struggle to make choices in our lives that submit to Him and align with that reality, or turn away from God and worship our own whims (or the whims and desires of others).

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Love says, take the truth and work on yourself to deal with it and submit to it.

Love says that your struggles to please God are worth it.

Love says that by it you can grow and blossom beyond what you see before you today.

Love is about being truthful with and to the object of your affections.

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May Allah bless us to love Him enough to obey Him and place Him and what pleases Him above what pleases us. May He make us of His beloveds in this world and the next. That is truly success.

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Wa salaam alaikum

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Also,

If you haven't listened to it before, my first podcast episode was all about loving Allah. You can listen to it on Spotify here or on Apple iTunes here​

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