In the city of Nasira, from the lineage of Dawud and Sulaiman , came a man named Imran and his wife, Hannah. Hannah begged Allah for a child and swore that if Allah gives her a child, she will dedicate this child’s life to the worship of Allah and place her child in Bayt-ul-Maqdis (Masjid ul-Aqsa), free of all worldly duties.

Indeed, Allah gave in her womb a soul that revered Allah .

“[Mention O’ Muhammad] when the wife of ‘Imran said, “My Lord, indeed I have pledged to You what is in my womb, consecrated [for Your service], so accept this from me. Indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing.”

“But when she delivered her, she said, “My Lord, I have delivered a female.” And Allah was most knowing of what she delivered, “And the male is not like the female. And I have named her Maryam, and I seek refuge for her in You and [for] her descendants from Satan, the expelled.” [Surah ‘Ali-Imran; 3:35-36]

Hannah was expecting a son, but nonetheless, she devoted Maryam to the path of Allah . Allah uses this opportunity to clarify in the Quran that Allah already knew Maryam was in the womb, and Allah differentiates between the male and female. But in these verses, Allah does not tell us why or how they are different, just that they are. But this difference does not mean only males can be devoted to Allah . Hannah and Imran understood this. They knew it would be different to put a girl inside a place of worship for her whole life, but they had already made the intention to do it, out of their deep gratitude to Allah for giving her a child. Hannah took an oath, and she moved forward. 

She tells the people of Bayt-ul-Maqdis of her oath, and many people want to take care of Maryam , particularly Maryam’s uncle, Zakariyya . In accordance with the customs of fairness, the people drew lots, and Allah ordained that Zakariyya raise her. Answering Hannah’s dua’,  Allah made an avenue for Maryam to be clothed by the walls of Bayt-ul-Maqdis and also learn directly from a Prophet. 

Maryam had her own quarters in Bayt-ul-Maqdis. This was not the ‘sisters’ side’ of the masjids we see, the ones hard to reach after a dark alley, on stained carpets soaked in three layers of dust under dim, flickering light. Maryam had her bed, her books, her own space to study religious texts and remember Allah .

“So her Lord accepted her with good acceptance and caused her to grow in a good manner and put her in the care of Zakariyya.” [Surah ‘Ali-Imran, 3:37]

Allah uses the word: nabatan, to mean rearing, but the word also denotes the meaning of vegetation, or planting. Allah took care of her as He does plants. The farmers plow, the farmers monitor, but it is Allah who commands, Allah who sends rain, and Allah who facilitates growth. Zakariyya took due care of her, as the love of an uncle to his niece extends the environment of love and the echoing sounds of worship.

Every time Zakariyya entered upon her in the prayer chamber, he found with her provision. He said, “O Mary, from where is this [coming] to you?” She said, “It is from Allah. Indeed, Allah provides for whom He wills without account.” [Qur’an, 3:37]

He would walk in with food to give her, and find the corner of her room: fruits out of season. We witness Maryam teach Prophet Zakariyya what full trust in Allah means. It means rizq will come from Allah , from places that seem impossible.

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You want something. Allah knows that you want something. So badly that your heart feels like it is aching. As if you can feel cracks in the once-strong organ pumping inside your chest, made of muscle when you were in the womb. When you place your head in sujood asking for this something, you press your forehead as if it could go deeper into your prayer mat, and tears fall, sometimes softly on the mat, sometimes sliding down your warm cheek instead, the way the tea from the pot doesn’t always fall in the direction it should.

This something may be the person you feel you love, or it may be graduate school, or for the health of a loved one, or a career, or the chance to be beautiful.

You raise your hands to the owner of the Kingdom, and He will not return it empty. Allah gives without account, and He has; just look around you. Pause the tears for a second to recognize that the ability to cry is itself a blessing, the ability to pray is itself a blessing, the knowledge of recognizing Allah, al-Malik, is itself a blessing, and all that you possess is itself a blessing. Repeat to yourself, as you gaze across all the things you possess of the dunya, and the intellect inside your brain that is intangible, allowing you to read this and internalize it, in this very second, without assistance from anyone else.

If you count the bounties of Allah, you cannot count them all. Surely, Allah is Most-Forgiving, Very-Merciful. [Surah An-Nahl; 16:18]

Overwhelm yourself first by the fact that you cannot count the rizq Allah has already given you, and then continue to beg. Allah gives without due measure. Maybe Allah doesn’t give you exactly what you want, but He will provide. Allah is shy to return your hands empty.

You are asking the Owner, when half the world is in darkness, disobeying Allah , denying the existence of Allah .

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Maryam’s words vibrate in the chest of Zakariyya , an old man with a barren wife, and he is quick to respond to the spark in his heart:

At that, Zakariyya called upon his Lord, saying, “My Lord, grant me from Yourself a good offspring. Indeed, You are the Hearer of supplication.” [Surah ‘Ali-Imran, 3:38]

Allah responds to the du’a by immediately putting a soul inside the womb of Zakariyya’s wife, Aisha. Remember that it was Maryam who gave the Prophet Zakariyya this reminder: to ask Allah , and Allah gives without measure; even in impossibility, there is possibility. That even in old age and a barren uterus, Allah can decide to create Yahya. Maryam catalyzed this action of Zakariyya , and in turn, for centuries, we enjoy this dua: the du’a for offspring.

As a worshipper housed in Bayt-ul-Maqdis, Maryam is not bound and enclosed in the walls. She leaves the masjid every now and then with full freedom to go out into the open air and see the sky and feel the ground beneath her. We should remember to do this: leave the walls of our concrete homes, offices, buildings, and masjids. Feel true nature by staring at the etchings of bark on the trees and the color Allah painted them, by observing the blueness of the water and the skies and asking ourselves if we could describe blue had Allah not given us sight.

In the open air, she sets up a tent; a veil of sorts to protect her from the wind and screen herself from the people traveling in the land, entering Bayt ul Maqdis.

A beautiful man approaches.

“She placed a screen (to screen herself) from them; then We sent her our angel, and he appeared before her as a man in all respects” [Surah Maryam, 19:17]

She is a free woman. She is not married to anyone. She can do as she pleases. But she chose to bind herself to the laws of Allah .

So when an extremely handsome man walks in her direction, she says:

“Indeed, I seek refuge in the Most Merciful from you, [so leave me], if you should be fearing of Allah .” [Surah Maryam, 19:18]

She reminds the man of his responsibility to fear the wrath of Allah if he is to harm her.

She reminds the man to be righteous, with taqwa, taqiyyan.

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This is what holding onto ourselves means. It means telling the man to fear Allah . It means holding ourselves to that standard, that this is my space, and I do not welcome those unwelcome into my space.

Some of us are pining after a man, begging him to talk to his parents, to convince his parents, to talk to our parents, to somehow make this relationship halal. Or just waiting for the man we have given so much of our time and heart to, to decide to be with us.

To the men, we tell them: Love is not an answer. Love is nothing without action. It is a mere fantasy. Love does not answer to Allah about our sins. 

We will quiver on our knees in front of Allah as He shows us our sin after sin, and we will not have the audacity to say, “it was love,” when it was wrong. Love is not always pure; love is not always right. And the one we love may not be as righteous as we have imagined them to be.

It is a ploy of Shaytaan to show righteousness as praying, reciting Quran, and dhikr. Righteousness is not merely in actions of worship but in the encompassing of worship: the actual fear of Allah , the ability to recognize sin and stay away. A righteous man does not touch what he has no right touching. A righteous man does not cause sin upon the woman he loves. A righteous man opens the doors of halal or stays at the door of Allah , awaiting qadr.

True love is wanting only the best for someone. And sins are not the best for someone.

True love is wanting their slate clean in front of Allah , not being the one who puts the stains on the slate.

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So the beautiful man reveals that he is actually Angel Jibraeel.

“And (remember) when the angels said: “O Maryam (Mary)! Verily, Allah has chosen you, purified you (from polytheism and disbelief), and chosen you above the women of the ‘Alamin (mankind and jinn) (of her lifetime).” [Surah ‘Ali-Imran, 3:42]

Before continuing, we can wonder why Allah sends this angel in the form of a man. It can be to test Maryam and her righteousness, and subsequently to teach us how to behave. 

Jibrael says:

“I am only the messenger of your Lord to give you [news of] a pure boy.”

She said,

“How can I have a boy while no man has touched me and I have not been unchaste?”  [Surah Maryam, 19:21]

She questions. As an intelligent, rational, and honorable woman, she questions the logic of her bearing a child. Allah does not erase this from the Quran. Allah keeps the words, exactly as they are, to prove in an ayah her chastity, and to prove to us that we can question. We can be both a worshipper and still seek the answers.

He said, “Thus [it will be]; your Lord says, ‘It is easy for Me, and We will make him a sign to the people and a mercy from Us. And it is a matter [already] decreed.'” [Surah Maryam, 19: 21]

But when Allah decrees a matter, we stop questioning. We move forward. We pick up after heartbreak; we pick up after a rejection from an institute, and we move forward. We don’t keep wondering, but how, and but why? Because the simple answer is: Maryam, you were chosen. And us too – we were chosen for the hardship we are submerged in because Allah knows that you, and only you, are capable of seeing it through. 

And Allah says, “It is easy for Me” to bend the laws of logic. It is easy for Allah to create from nothing. It is easy for Allah to make the hearts of the people around us bend towards us, our colleagues, our in-laws, our spouse, and our parents. It is easy for Allah to change the course of our academic or career path even when it feels impossible. It is easy for Allah to change our situation. There is no power of might other than Allah .

“So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a remote place.” [Surah Maryam, 19;22]

Remote place is a motif we find repetitive in the Seerah and the Quran. To be alone is to be with Allah . We should ask ourselves how often we choose to be alone, not with a screen, but with Allah .

And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, “Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten.” [Surah Maryam, 19:23]

A sign, again, that in moments of agony, she was as human as the rest of us. An image of grabbing the palm tree with contractions inside. For those of us who have not given birth, we have no idea what that pain is. For those of us who have, we can never truly explain it. The physical pain, the fact that she is doing this alone, and the thoughts of what the people would be saying later, combined into this one emotion.

“Do not grieve; your Lord has provided beneath you a stream And shake toward you the trunk of the palm tree; it will drop upon you ripe, fresh dates.” [Surah Maryam, 19:25]

Allah consoles her. Allah distracts her. Allah reminds her. So when we sob in the middle of our room, drowning in our despairs, we should stop and look around. At the gifts Allah has given us, the privileges, the honor, the safety, the shelter, the food. Imagine Allah’s Angels are there with you. Surrounding you and making du’a for you because you are a worshipper of Allah . The words of the Quran seem to denote that the stream wasn’t there before. That Allah made it like a canal, just for her comfort. To give her running water, a stream to drink from, and food as sustenance. 

Allah tells her to shake the tree, because one does still work hard for their sustenance. Just as Allah expects from us our efforts in attaining our degrees, our careers, and our homemaking. Allah knows that shaking a sturdy palm tree may not pour down dates. One cannot actually shake a palm tree. But this movement would ease her pregnancy. Whether she understood it at the time or not, she listened and obeyed.

“So eat and drink and be content. And if you see from among humanity anyone, say, ‘Indeed, I have vowed to the Most Merciful abstention, so I will not speak today to [any] man.'” [Surah Maryam, 19:26]

During this era, silence was seen as a spiritual act, a form of worship to be silent from dawn to dusk. Islam later takes away such a form of worship, but the essence of it remains in the stories of seclusion. Of traveling up the mountain and contemplating Allah’s Creation. Or the late-night tahajjud, a different seclusion.

She doesn’t ask Allah questions at this point. She doesn’t say, “How can I be silent when the townspeople will accuse me? Don’t I have to explain myself?” She understands that this is a commandment, even if it doesn’t make sense.

She doesn’t know that Isa will speak in the cradle, and she doesn’t know what the future holds. She cannot escape the community she is from. So she holds her words and obeys her Lord. She trusts that the Almighty thrust upon her this destiny: to be the only woman to bear a child without being intimate. She trusts that the impossible was put on her for a reason and Allah will make a way. A part of her knew that the people would not all be convinced. But her trust in Allah was greater.

So in times when we are tested with things we do not understand, and society says about us that which is not true, remember our mother Maryam . In the current moment, after she has long passed away, there are still communities that spread lies about our mother – of her story, her chastity, and her honor. But their words do not reach her now, nor will any of it matter when she stands before Allah , and rises, ranks higher and higher, above into Jannah. No – not because her son was a Prophet. But because she trusted Allah . Allah threw an incredible “burden” on her for her entire lifetime, and she obeyed, she obliged, and she worshipped with that trust. Allah is the provider, and even in His tests, He is just providing us with a pathway to Jannah.

“Then she brought him to her people, carrying him. They said, “O Mary, you have certainly done a thing unprecedented.

O sister of Aaron, your father was not a man of evil, nor was your mother unchaste.

So she pointed to him. They said, “How can we speak to one who is in the cradle a child?” [Surah Maryam, 19:27-29]

She faced her reality. It is time we face ours.

There is more to Maryam’s story than this. We forget that she raised a son alone. A village helped, just as the families and communities help single mothers of today. But she did bear him alone, suckled him, taught him to walk, and held him through the hard moments. She raised a Prophet of Allah , and bore all of the accusations and whispers, even after her son healed the leper. She did not marry. She relied on Allah through and through. She passed away a virgin, forever chaste. 

There are women and men on this earth who read the entire Quran over and over, within a week, a month, and in particular, Ramadan. We can imagine that the surah named after her is indeed being recited every day, somewhere, by someone on this globe. Maryam’s story left for generations to read and reflect and name daughters after. So for all the women who don’t feel loved, remember that Maryam did not have a husband to love her. She had Allah , and it is true.

The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “When Allah loves a slave, He calls out to Jibril and says: ‘I love so-and-so; so love him’. Then Jibril loves him. After that, he (Jibril) announces to the inhabitants of the heavens that Allah loves so- and-so; so love him; and the inhabitants of the heavens (the angels) also love him and then make people on earth love him”. [Bukhari and Muslim]

Indeed, the people on earth love Maryam . The believers who read Surah Maryam, who reflect on her story, and also the people of the book who revere her, albeit in polytheistic ways, love Mary. The people of the book, with their statues and distorted images, still pray three times a day this: “Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

Related:

– Taking Lessons from The Strength of Maryam, Mother of Jesus

– Lessons From Surah Maryam: 1

The post Maryam: The Story Of The Muslim ‘Virgin’ Mary appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Every year, as Shaaban arrives, we dutifully begin our preparations. We increase our Qur’an recitation, attend the mosque more regularly, fast voluntarily, plan our charity, and look for ways to improve ourselves before the blessed month begins. Yet, amid all this outward preparation, one particular teaching causes a unique discomfort.

The Prophet ﷺ informed us that Allah looks upon His Creation on the night of the middle of Shaaban and forgives His Servants, except for two: the one who associates partners with Him, and the one who harbors enmity and rancor (mushahin) toward his brother. [Sunan Ibn Majah 1390]

Suddenly, the path to forgiveness is no longer just about the rituals of prayer, fasting, or charity. It requires something far more intimate: healing the heart.

Many of us sincerely want Allah’s Forgiveness. We are willing to spend long hours standing in worship, wake up before dawn in Tahajjud, donate generously, and serve the community. Yet, making that one difficult phone call, reconciling with an estranged family member, or letting go of an old grudge often feels impossibly harder. Why is standing in prayer for hours sometimes easier than forgiving a parent? Why does charity feel easier than letting go of years of resentment? Year after year, many of us enter Ramadan carrying the exact same wounds, even though we know the steep price of holding onto them.

The more I reflect on this, the more I see why Islam places such a tremendous, uncompromising emphasis on gentleness, kindness, and softness of heart. For a striving believer, the ultimate dream is to attain Allah’s Pleasure, enter Jannah, and be saved from the Hellfire. What strikes me is how beautifully the Prophet ﷺ promised exactly that, simply through the character trait of gentleness.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

“Allah is Gentle (Rafīq) and loves gentleness. He gives through gentleness what He does not give through harshness, and what He does not give through anything else.” [Ibn Majah 3688]

He ﷺ also said:

“Whoever is deprived of gentleness is deprived of all good.” [Sahih Muslim 2592]

And in another profound reminder, he ﷺ asked:

“Shall I not inform you of those for whom the Fire is forbidden? Every person who is near to people, gentle, easy-going, and approachable.” [Jami al-Tirmidhi, 2488]

The Prophet ﷺ is not merely recommending gentleness as a minor character trait; he is connecting it directly to one of Allah’s own attributes and linking it to salvation itself.

Why does gentleness receive such an elevated status? Perhaps it is because gentleness has a unique power to heal. A single gentle word or a softened gesture can be the very balm that removes a spiritual blocker for a believer who has been trying to draw closer to Allah , but has been unable to shed a deep-seated ill feeling for years. Gentleness heals the heart that is quietly suffering from carrying a heavy bag of grudges.

Harshness operates in the exact opposite way. Material deprivation creates a temporary need, but harshness creates a lasting wound. Needs can eventually be met, but emotional wounds linger for years, quietly spreading from one relationship to the next. A harsh word from a parent can remain embedded in a child’s heart for decades. A cruel comment from a spouse can echo long after the conversation ends. A humiliating remark from a friend can shape how a person views themselves for a lifetime. Unlike physical deprivation, wounds of the heart often reproduce themselves.

Modern psychology offers a fascinating perspective that echoes this profound Islamic reality. For decades, developmental psychologists like John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth¹, Nancy Eisenberg², and Martin Hoffman³ have studied how secure attachment and parental warmth contribute to compassion and concern for others. Their research consistently shows that children who experience warmth, affection, and respectful treatment are far more likely to develop empathy, trust, and emotional regulation as adults. Longitudinal studies have found that parental warmth directly predicts higher levels of sympathy and helping behavior as children mature. Kindness, quite literally, reproduces kindness—a phenomenon researchers call the “contagion of kindness.”

Conversely, a large meta-analysis⁴ involving more than 58,000 participants concluded that childhood maltreatment and harshness are heavily associated with lower levels of prosocial behavior later in life. While many exceptional individuals beautifully overcome painful pasts to become deeply compassionate adults, the overall trend is clear: harsh treatment leaves deep scars that fundamentally affect how people relate to others.

Both kindness and harshness tend to reproduce themselves. A child treated harshly at home may grow into an adult who unknowingly acts harshly with a spouse. That spouse, feeling the weight of that pain, may become less patient with the children. Those children then carry those emotional wounds into their own future families. One unhealed wound multiplies into many.

But the opposite is equally true. One intentional act of gentleness can ripple outward in ways that are impossible to measure. A teacher encourages a struggling student; that student gains confidence and later becomes a compassionate mentor. A parent speaks softly and kindly to their children; those children grow up secure, becoming kind spouses and loving parents. A believer chooses forgiveness instead of retaliation; one act of mercy becomes a legacy of mercy.

Perhaps this is why Allah loves gentleness so much. Gentleness does not merely improve a single, passing interaction; it fundamentally changes the environment in which future relationships grow. It creates the fertile soil in which mercy can flourish.

When Allah described the Prophet ﷺ, He beautifully noted:

“So by mercy from Allah, [O Muhammad], you were lenient with them. And if you had been rude [in speech] and harsh in heart, they would have disbanded from about you. So pardon them and ask forgiveness for them and consult them in the matter. And when you have decided, then rely upon Allah. Indeed, Allah loves those who rely [upon Him].” [Surah Ali-Imran, 3:159]

This is a profound lesson. Allah reminds even His final Messenger ﷺ that sustained harshness would have driven people away from him. If even the Sahabah—the greatest generation to ever walk the earth—could not have thrived in an environment of harshness, how can we expect our families, our children, our communities, and our masajid to do so?

Is this not enough to make us reflect? We often look around and wonder: why are families fragmented? Why are communities divided? Why do people quietly walk away from Islamic centers, organizations, and lifelong friendships? People can easily overlook mistakes, human weaknesses, and structural imperfections. What they cannot endure is sustained harshness. Gentleness gathers the very hearts that harshness would have scattered.

The Quran repeatedly directs us to break these cycles of hostility rather than perpetuate them:

“Repel evil with that which is better, and then the one between whom and you was enmity will become as though he were a devoted friend.” [Surah Fussilat, 41:34]

This verse reads almost like a divine strategy for interrupting emotional contagion. Instead of passing our pain forward, we are taught to absorb it, transform it through faith, and return something better. This explains why unresolved resentment is treated with such gravity in our deen. A heart carrying a grudge continues to spread pain long after the original incident has passed. These unhealed wounds quietly shape the atmosphere of our homes and friendships.

Crucially, this gentleness must also apply inwardly. Those who are incredibly harsh toward others are often deeply harsh toward themselves, unable to forgive their own shortcomings, entering Ramadan burdened by heavy self-condemnation rather than hopeful anticipation. True reconciliation is difficult, but that is precisely why the reward of kindness and gentleness is so intimately tied to Allah’s ultimate Pleasure.

It takes immense strength to let go of long-standing grudges. Is it difficult? Yes, absolutely. But that is precisely why Allah Most High promises profound forgiveness to a heart that purges itself of animosity. Looking at it from another angle, for someone bearing deep emotional pain, a single kind word, warm smile, or gentle gesture can be the catalyst that frees them from an old, toxic grievance. Experiencing genuine kindness softens the hard heart. Perhaps this explains why the Almighty promised to grant through gentleness what He will never bestow through anything else. What remains perplexing is that while the rewards are so vast and the risks of doing the opposite are so dangerous, we rarely emphasize this on a communal level. It often feels as though our communities prefer to leave this vital issue on the back burner. It is time to shift our focus. If we strive collectively starting today, we can help one another reach Ramadan with genuinely sound hearts. What a beautiful triumph it would be to enter the blessed month already forgiven.

Let me conclude with a profound act of kindness that has remained with me for more than twenty-five years.

Allah blessed me with the opportunity to perform Hajj. During the days of Tashreeq, I suffered an asthma attack. After completing Tawaf, while trying to return to Mina, I became completely lost and could not find my tent. I was struggling to breathe, utterly exhausted, and barely able to take another step.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. An elderly man looked at me and asked in English, “Are you lost?”

I could only nod. Without saying much else, he took my hand and safely guided me through the massive crowds. A short while later, my tent finally came into view.

Before leaving, he turned to me, smiled, and asked, “My son, what is the reward for Hajj?”

I replied, “Jannah.”

He then looked at me and said words I have never forgotten: “Jannah is not cheap. It is worth whatever it takes.”

I never saw him again. But his gentleness has stayed with me ever since. Whenever life becomes difficult, whenever I feel the weight of the world is too much to bear, I remember his voice: “Jannah is worth it, my son.”

Perhaps that is the lasting, geometric power of gentleness. A single act of kindness, lasting only a few brief minutes, can continue to steer a person’s heart for decades. If a chance encounter with a stranger can leave such a permanent mark, imagine what our daily words and actions can do for the people who live with us, work with us, worship beside us, and love us.

Allah loves gentleness because it heals the very wounds that harshness creates. As Ramadan draws nearer, perhaps the greatest preparation we can make is not just increasing our voluntary prayers, fasting, and recitation, but allowing those old, heavy wounds to finally heal. Let us seek reconciliation where we can, lower our wings, and become a source of gentleness, kindness, and safety for everyone around us.

Alhamdulillah.

Related:

– [Podcast] Dropping the Spiritual Baggage: Overcoming Malice Before Ramadan | Ustadh Justin Parrott

– Prepare Your Heart for Ramadan | Yasmin Mogahed

The post Is It Ever Too Early To Prepare For Ramadan? Reflections On Rifq, Forgiveness, And Healing The Heart appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

One of the greatest lessons for personal transformation can be derived from the Battle of Badr, providing insights into human psychology, unwavering faith, and resilience. While the Battle of Badr is predominantly seen as a blueprint for strategizing warfare according to Islamic strategic thought, it also provides important lessons on personal growth. The blog explores the Battle of Badr through this lens and presents six major lessons derived from the Battle.

Faith in Difficult Moments

Sustaining faith in difficult moments is the first major lesson. During the Battle, Muslims, as compared to non beleivers were very few in number: 313 muslims against 1,000 non-believers, as reported by Abdul-Malik ibn Hisham in Sirat Rasulullah  . This big gap instills fear and disparity into the heart and mind of any normal human being. In such a situation, hopelessness overpowers the human mind. But it is faith that serves as a powerful tool to blow away the clouds of hopelessness. Allah acknowledges this psychological reality, stating:

“Remember when you sought help from your Lord, and He answered you: ‘I will reinforce you with a thousand angels, following one another.’” [Surah Al-Anfal; 8:9]

While fear is a natural human emotion, letting fear overpower or dominate the mind leads to paralysed actions. The fact that Muslims, despite being fewer in number, attained victory reflects this very reality: despite fear, they remained unswayed in their faith and demonstrated the contemporary psychological underpinnings that success is on the other side of fear. Hence, the greatest lesson here is to remain steadfast amidst uncertainty, and eventually Divine Mercy emerges as a beacon of light in the forest of darkness.

The battlefield of Badr outside Medinah. Photo: IslamicLandmarks.com

Managing Uncertainty

Along with maintaining faith amidst crisis, the Battle of Badr teaches us another profound lesson, i.e., managing uncertainty. The fact that the Muslims were few in number, uncertainty would have been natural. A lot of what-ifs go through the mind in such similar situations: what if I fail, what if I couldn’t do that. These are constant thoughts that come to one’s mind when any of us are pursuing a path of our purpose. But success and personal growth occur then by managing uncertainties through Prayer, Tawakkul, Shura, Self-reassurance, and Spiritual reflection. Then, to reassure yourself: to have what we call in Urdu khudmukhtari (self-assurance): that is the cheat code to manage uncertainty. And lastly, to constantly reflect on yourself through spiritual grounding.

In this backdrop, Allah reassured the muslims by stating:

“[Remember] when He overwhelmed you with drowsiness [giving] security from Him and sent down upon you from the sky, rain by which to purify you and remove from you the evil [suggestions] of Satan and to make steadfast your hearts and plant firmly thereby your feet.” [Surah Al Anfal; 8:11] The verse highlights the psychological underpinnings of faith being an anchor during uncertainties that helps in managing uncertainties. This crisis management and managing uncertainty made Muslims under the command of the Holy Prophet victorious over non-believers.

Therefore, the Battle reflects a deeper truth: that life is uncertain, and there’s nothing guaranteed. But having faith as an anchor keeps us grounded and focused on purpose. While there’s a lot of noise; there’s a lot of degeneracy going on in the world; there’s a lot of fear; there’s a lot of post-truth politics going on, where identifying what truth is is always uncertain and confusion is always there; perplexity is always there. But keeping your faith as your anchor is what helps you to manage your uncertainty. And once this uncertainty is managed, Success is achieved.

Courage Despite Fear

Along with uncertainty management, it is pertinent to remain courageous despite fear, serving as the third greatest lesson from the Battle of Badr. Fear is a natural emotion. It occurs because we are all human. But growth seldom happens if you remain stagnant and stay in the shackles of fear; growth never happens, and success never comes. Success comes only when you confront your fears by having faith in God, preparing in advance, and pushing yourself to do 1% better every day. Because fear comes from waswasas from Shaytan. In this backdrop, Allah warns believers of this reality, stating:

“It is none but Satan who frightens (you) of his friends. So, do not fear them; but fear Me, if you are believers.” [Surah Ali-Imran 3;175]

Hence, it is faith that helps you manage your fears, because the only entity to fear is All-Powerful Allah . And the fact that the Prophets were always fearing Allah and not letting the waswasas of Shaytan entertain them; the management of fear amidst the crisis led to this victory.

A plaque commemorating the martyrs of Badr. Photo: IslamicLandmarks.com

Growth Through Hardship

Next to sustaining courage is growing and evolving through hardship. This serves as a fourth lesson. Growth doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens while going through difficulties. Because that’s what Allah says:

“Indeed, with hardship comes ease.” [Surah Ash-Sharh, 94;6]

The wording of Allah here is significant and full of His Divine Wisdom. He explicitly says with hardship, not after hardship, in this verse, reflecting a deeper truth of human psychology.  You go through hardship, you build endurance, you build strength, and that’s how hardships are turned into ease. And that’s how growth happens. You become strong, you become vigilant, you become aware, you become agile and flexible. Hence, growth happens not in isolation, not by birth, and not through some unicorn luck, but by enduring hardships, by going through difficult times. The Muslims of the Battle of Badr exemplified how growth happens through enduring hardship. It was in scorching heat; it was in the desert, and that too in the month of Ramadan, when abstinence from food is maintained. And in all these crises, in all these difficulties, growth only occurred because endurance was maintained. And the most important lesson was that success doesn’t come by putting your hand over it.

Effort Alongside Faith

The fifth lesson drawn from the account of the Battle of Badr teaches that faith alone is not enough; rather, it requires effort and discipline alongside. To be victorious, it is pertinent to be prepared alongside faith; sole reliance on a divine miracle is not enough. One has to put in all the work and effort. The fact that Muslims were preparing beforehand for the battle through going through intense training and military exercises, while having complete tawakkul on Allah, is how the victory was ensured.

But when we expect success to come through a miracle while putting hand over hand and not doing anything, success does not come. As Allah states:

“For each one are successive [angels] before and behind him who protect him by the decree of Allah . Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. And when Allah intends for a people ill, there is no repelling it. And there is not for them besides Him any patron.” [Surah Ar-Rad, 13;11]

Because in this aspect, divine faith is not enough; divine help comes when you are the one putting in effort. As Allah says in the Quran, Allah does not help those who don’t help themselves. Divine help, the help of Allah , comes when you are putting in the effort.

The same truth is reflected in prophetic tradition reported in Jami al-Tirmidhi: “Tie your camel, and trust in Allah.” Meaning that you put in your efforts, do your homework, and rely on divine help. From contemporary psychology, when you focus on input and leave output to God, that is how victory comes. If your entire focus is on, may I get this, may I get that, and you’re putting no effort into attaining what your purpose is, it is a waste of human intellect. It is a waste of the honor of being the vicegerent of God that Allah gave you as His Crown of creation.

When you put effort into input, for example, if we have an exam, we want to ace that exam; we want to get a good grade, but if we just keep visualizing, “I will be the top, the top student, I will be on the Dean’s list, I will ace the most competitive exams,” without putting in any effort, then we will be disappointed, there will be no success. In retrospect, if we are focused on input by studying daily, by taking notes, by doing fast studies, by attending lectures, and so forth, then the victory comes despite our anxiety about the outcome.

Transforming the Fear of Failure

Lastly, the Battle of Badr teaches us to utilize fear positively as a catalyst for transformation. Fear as an emotion holds intense power that we humans, being the crown of creation, are duty-bound to redirect either towards evolving or declining. This is because the fear of failure is not a discouragement; rather, it is a motivation. If you fear failure, it is up to a human to use the emotion of fear for progression or for progression, evolution, or devolution. Using fear as a motivation tool, for instance, if I fear that I will fail the exam, that will motivate me to study even harder. That is how personal transformation occurs. The fact that Muslims were fearful because non-Muslims were more numerous; hence, the fear was natural. But if they feared and let their fear define their path in a way that they gave up and stayed behind, that would have led them towards deviation from the path, from the purpose of Islam. And the result would be failure and loss of attainment of God’s mercy and the paradise he promised.

Related:

Fourteen Centuries since Badr: Recalling Islam’s First Decisive Battlefield

Victory or Martyrdom: Strange are the Ways of a Believer

Grit and Resilience: The Self-Help versus Islamic Perspective

The post Lessons From The Battle Of Badr: A Personal Transformation Perspective appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Built off a politicized and militarized sector of talib networks that have long linked Islamic students in Afghanistan, the Taliban movement emerged as an organized force during the civil war that followed the Soviet occupation. Talibs were found across and beyond the various “mujahideen” factions, but what distinguished them from others was a combination of reputation for Islamic integrity compared to some of the more unruly factions; social roots in the countryside; and a type of informal discipline not shared by most other armed groups. Consequently, the Taliban movement rapidly expanded in the mid-1990s, and despite a near-isolation on the international scene, controlled the vast majority of Afghanistan by the time that it was overthrown. This occurred at the hands of an American invasion, principally geared toward the Qaeda network that the emirate protected, in 2001. A frequently abusive American occupation, whose obsession with “counterterrorism” manhunts often empowered the most notorious militias, pushed not only Taliban veterans into the maquis but many others who had little link with the original Taliban emirate.

This was most obvious in mountainous eastern Afghanistan, a politically fragmented region where the emirate had always had trouble but where the United States, in pursuit of Usama bin-Ladin, launched a number of disruptive manhunts. Former Afghan prime minister Gulbadin Hikmatyar and his lieutenant “Kashmir Khan” Rahmatyar, leading veterans of the 1980s war against the Soviets, now joined their former Taliban rivals in opposition to another foreign invader. A number of largely autonomous Salafi networks, some linked to Qaeda and some quite the reverse, also took up arms; one well-known example was timber merchant Haji Mateen, who had been attacked on mistaken grounds by a trigger-happy American expedition. Many Taliban leaders in the east either had experience in Hizb and/or Salafi networks: notable examples included Munibullah Sadiq, Sheikh Abdul-Rahim, and the particularly enterprising Ihsanullah Baryal.

Strictly Taliban activity was at first confined to their heartland in southern Afghanistan, where it benefited from networks of pre-Taliban “mujahideen” commanders who had joined the emirate in the 1990s, such as Shafiqullah Mohammadi. Taliban veterans established fronts both within the Afghan countryside and just across the border in Pakistan, often assisted by sympathetic Pakistani Pashtuns. Executive control, at least in paper, lay with a council at Quetta established by emirate defence minister Ubaidullah Akhund and his second-in-command Abdul-Ghani Baradar; emirate interior minister Abdul-Razzaq Akhundzada; emirate aviation minister Akhtar Mansur; corps commanders Daddullah Lang and Akhtar Usmani, among others. Based in the Afghan countryside and exercising an important but indirect symbolic control was the eye-patched emir Umar Mujahid.

A more autonomous but nonetheless loyal set of councils were established in northern Pakistan’s Pashtun-majority regions by “mujahideen” veterans who had joined the emirate in the 1990s, including the families of former minister Abdul-Latif Mansur and most notably former justice minister Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most outstanding veterans of the 1980s jihad, whose son Sirajuddin now took on his mantle. These councils largely handled relations in the east alongside the likes of Baryal, but also the delicate matter of relations with Pashtuns in adjacent Pakistan’s mountainous and traditionally autonomous northwest Waziristan. It was Pashtun clans in this region who had welcomed Afghan fugitives, but the fact that these included a handful of Qaeda refugees that the United States was eager to root out meant that the region was targeted by American bombardment and, under American pressure, initially reluctant but increasingly disruptive Pakistani military campaigns.

The Haqqanis used their longstanding ties with both sides of this Pakistani civil war to mediate, but with only mixed success, particularly as several mediation attempts were systematically sabotaged by American bombardment. The Pakistani military, which had initially hastily abandoned its former Taliban support to join the United States at the war’s outset, was by 2006 having second thoughts given the new Afghan government’s links with India; in addition, Taliban mediation with its insurgency prompted Pakistan to take a more permissive attitude toward the Taliban by 2006, a stance that retired officers who had fought in the 1980s jihad had long advocated.

At this time, warfare in Afghanistan largely involved peremptory manhunts into the mountains on the part of the occupation, and hit-and-run attacks on the part of the insurgency. The most imposing Taliban commander was the one-legged Daddullah, who controversially borrowed the “suicide attack” tactic from Iraq and deployed it with increasing alacrity by the mid-2000s. With their main focus on Iraq, American involvement relied heavily on a mixture of bombardment and outsourcing ground warfare to local militias and allied armies, especially the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which had hastily mobilized to support the American war. By 2006, many of this coalition’s members, such as Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, took up the charge in Afghanistan, hoping to bolster their standing with Washington after having avoided its more notorious war in Iraq.

However, it was a more familiar foe, Britain, whose formerly globetrotting empire had been beaten several times in Afghanistan, that suffered the first sting of Taliban insurgency. In Helmand, a sleepy southern province next to Kandahar widely known for opium cultivation, aristocratic British commandant Ed Butler found his garrison overstretched against a sudden Taliban surge, led in the province’s north by Abdul-Mannan Abdul-Rahim and in its south by former emirate minister Naeem Baraikh.

By spring an even larger mobilization was taking place against David Fraser’s Canadian forces in Kandahar. Here Daddullah and Hafiz Abdul-Majeed steadily closed in on Afghanistan’s second city, and the Taliban’s historic stronghold, from the south and west while another former minister Matiullah Nanai and veteran maquisard Abdul-Hannan Jihadwal closed in from the north. Months of fierce combat followed, in which Daddullah’s principal lieutenant Abdul-Baqi Taluqani was killed. As throughout the rest of the south, the reliance on unsavoury militias hurt the foreign armies; the invitation of the bloodthirsty young adventurer Abdul-Raziq Khan, leading a border militia that had oppressed rival clans since the Soviet period, played into the hands of Taliban leaders Matiullah and Abdul-Majeed, whose Nurzai clan had been Abdul-Raziq’s major target and now mobilized in the thousands.

The ferocious one-legged Daddullah Lang launched the insurgency’s first major campaigns until he was killed in 2007.

Coupled with the campaign in Helmand and, between Shafiqullah and Dutch-Australian forces, in Uruzgan, a bloody summer unfolded. It was not until September 2006, however, that the Taliban in Kandahar erred by committing a large force in the plains south of Kandahar city, which had been fertile ground for warfare against Soviet tanks but were much more exposed to the airpower of this new, Western occupation. Hundreds, perhaps close to a thousand, were killed in bombardment as the Taliban campaign for Kandahar was momentarily broken. Over the next few years Hamid Karzai’s powerful brother Ahmad Wali would increasingly wield power in the city alongside foreign forces, but the province was never free of smaller Taliban raids.

In the meantime, Abdul-Mannan and Baraikh had advanced sufficiently in Helmand to force British theatre commander David Richards to adopt a tentative ceasefire at the town of Musa Qala. This so irritated the American commander Daniel McNeill that he promptly reasserted American control over the entire Afghan campaign in 2007. A remorseless veteran of the manhunts at the war’s start, McNeill’s stint saw the killings in combat or by bombardment of Taliban leaders Usmani, Daddullah, Jihadwal, and others. Combined with the imprisonment in Pakistan of Taliban second-in-command, the insurgency’s strategy was increasingly taken over by Baradar, flanked in Kandahar by former ministers Akhtar Mansur and Isa Akhundzada.

A more cautious but methodical strategist, Baradar tended to favour hit-and-run attacks, the employment of explosives given the macabre euphemism of “flowers”, and the implementation of a more orderly, disciplined “shadow government” that in practice governed much of the Afghan countryside and earned a reputation for superior efficiency. Backed by the endorsement of their close friend emir Umar, Baradar and Akhtar brushed aside a challenge by Daddullah’s unruly brother Mansur Bakht. By 2009 they were joined by another of Umar’s old friends, Gul-Agha Hidayatullah, who had been released from a gruelling prison and became treasurer. He replaced Abdul-Wasai Mutasim, who had been accused of financial misconduct after being approached by Pakistani intelligence.

On the battlefield, McNeill’s airstrikes had promptly sabotaged the ceasefire in Musa Qala, only for Abdul-Mannan to promptly take over the town. It wasn’t until December 2007, almost a full year later, that British forces, led by a small Afghan unit under communist veteran Mohiuddin Ghauri, were able to retake the town. Ironically, given that the early occupation had jailed many people under cases of mistaken identity, a reverse case of mistaken identity saw the release of two of the Taliban’s most notable field commanders captured in Guantanamo Bay: former corps commander Abdul-Rauf Khadim and Abdul-Qayum Zakir. They might have been released through the influence of former Helmand governor Sher Akhundzada, who, despite a close friendship with Afghanistan’s ruler Hamid Karzai, resented Britain for sacking him and had gone to school with Zakir. Within a year, the daring Zakir was in particular carving up slices of Helmand, reaching the British garrison’s gates at Lashkargah in October 2008.

Similarly, American forces ran into a hornet’s nest of resistance in the eastern highlands, against veteran fighters like Hizb veteran Kashmir and Taliban commanders Sadiq, Abdul-Rahim, and Sheikh Dost-Mohammad who relished the prospect of battle. American focus hinged around a certain Qaeda commander called Abu Ikhlas Masri, but he seems to have been just one of many characters about whom the Americans had little intelligence and against whom they had less success. Led by high-profile commanders such as Mick Nicholson, descendant of a British imperial general who had fought in Afghanistan, and David Rodriguez, who had fought in Iraq, the largely specialized American forces prided themselves on their “warrior” tradition as commandos and mountaineering specialists. But in the highlands of eastern Afghanistan they met their match in years of battles over far-flung outposts that lacked a particular purpose. The Korengal valley in Kunar became a particularly dreaded site of contestation, called the “valley of death”.

Combat in southeast Afghanistan, where the Haqqanis and Mansurs enjoyed widespread influence from the days of the anti-Soviet jihad, was more sporadic; every now and then the insurgents would take over a county to make a point, but their most notable role was in their control of the routes around and increasingly into Kabul. The Mansurs’ lieutenant Ismail Nasir extracted funds from the strategic road in Ghazni that joined Kabul with Kandahar, while the Haqqanis’ lieutenant Sangin Fatih notably captured an American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, which gave the network valuable leverage.

Partly because of longstanding assumptions that the Taliban problem was a primarily Pashtun phenomenon, the United States and other foreign states had long assumed that they should prioritize fighting in the south and east. But by the late 2000s insurgency had spread into the politically fragmented west and, perhaps most alarmingly given that this region had always been presumed as hostile to Taliban, the north. In the west, Taliban veterans such as emirate governors Rasul Mujahid, Abdul-Rahman Haqqani, and Abdul-Mannan Niazi joined with younger commanders like Baz-Mohammad Haris, Javid Nangialai, and Maulawi Dastagir. Each of them came from the large Nurzai Pashtun clan; Nangialai was a clan leader whose family had fallen out with Kabul. But there were also non-Pashtun insurgents: “mujahideen” veteran Yahya Akbari had actually fought against the Taliban in the 1990s, but now supported their insurgency until he was killed by the Americans. While rarely covered abroad, combat in the west, mostly against American and Italian forces, was quite fierce by the late 2000s.

Northern Afghanistan was largely the preserve of rival federalist militias, linked to the Junbish and Jamiat parties, that had opposed the 1990s emirate. But the Taliban always had a sizeable non-Pashtun element: in the northwest Uzbeks such as Salahuddin Ayubi and Abdul-Rahman Rashid in the northwest were especially successful in mobilizing insurgent fronts. By the mid-2010s, these were joined by Tajiks such as Fasihuddin Fitrat and Amanuddin Mansur in the northeast. Baryal, the insurgency’s most active strategist in the north and himself an ethnic minority, tried to assemble a specifically non-Pashtun network, but this rapidly escaped his control.

Kunduz had been the Taliban emirate’s most reliable northern redoubt, and it was here that Taliban commanders Abdul-Salam Baryalai and Abdul-Rahman Muslim managed to advance by 2009 against a largely complacent German garrison. The Germans had termed the province “bad Kunduz”, meaning the Kunduz bath in German, under the assumption that their NATO assignment here would be a relaxed break; instead it became “bad Kunduz” in the English sense of the word. Governor Umar Sulaimani and his brother sheriff Nur led one of a number of militia networks that often competed to the benefit of Taliban advances; by the early 2010s both had been assassinated, as had Jamiat’s provincial and regional commanders, Abdul-Rahman Sayedkhail and Daud Daud.

The 2007-12 period saw a major intensification of the war, both at the end of George Bush’s term in Washington and especially under his successor Barack Obama, who framed Afghanistan as the necessary “good war” in contrast to Iraq. Building off experiences in Somalia and especially Iraq, the United States tried to politically split the insurgency through promises of negotiation while building coercive pressure through a series of large campaigns, assassinations, and airstrikes: indeed, this period featured a large number of massacres, often conducted by airstrike, that were rarely officially acknowledged.

Karzai’s objections to these abuses attracted increasing American ire, partly because he had won a controversial election over foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and partly because he was seen as moving closer to a Pakistan of whom the United States was increasingly mistrustful. When Baradar was captured in Pakistan in 2010, Karzai objected loudly, claiming that he could have worked out an inter-Afghan deal, while the Pakistanis refused to turn him over to the United States. In fact, Afghan leaders who independently negotiated with the Taliban were soon killed: Jamiat leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, whose government had been ousted in the 1990s Taliban takeover, and his former prime minister Arsala-Rahmani Daulat, who had joined the Taliban during the same period, were both assassinated after beginning talks.

Baradar’s replacement, Akhtar Mansur, had a running rivalry with the hardy field commander Zakir that the United States tried vainly to exploit; however, Akhtar resisted their attempts to coopt him and the campaign was soon abandoned. There was a major rift when Zakir and Abdul-Majeed accused Nasir, the prolific fundraiser whose taxation had irritated the powerful Nurzai clan as well as his own Andar clan in Ghazni, of financial misconduct. Akhtar was able to salvage Nasir’s life, but he was replaced at Ghazni by the more trusted Abu Yousaf Idris, who stemmed an American-backed militia there.

Successive Iraq veterans such as the skilful assassin Stanley McChrystal and the politically powerful patrimonialist David Petraeus, who had been credited with winning the Iraq war, arrived in Afghanistan with high reputations that were dented by their experience there. Petraeus’ attempt at dividing the insurgency failed in part because the Taliban had much more experience as a cohesive group, indeed as a government, than most Iraqi and Somali insurgents. In addition, the early 2010s mistrust between Washington, Islamabad, and Kabul undercut a unified strategy of the type that had typified Iraq.

In the battlefield, American firepower during the 2009-11 “surge” inflicted massive casualties, both on Taliban troops and on civilians: many of the latter were retrospectively counted as militants as men of fighting age, while notorious militia commanders like Abdul-Raziq enjoyed a free hand. But the results were scant: a massive southern campaign in 2010, against Akhtar and Zakir at Helmand, and against Isa, Abdul-Majeed, and Abdul-Razzaq at Kandahar, had yielded only minor and tenuous territorial gains.

Campaigns at Kunduz and Farah, at opposite ends of Afghanistan, were similarly indecisive, and in the east Dost-Mohammad and Sadiq actually managed to expel the Americans from the Nuristan highlands. Killings continued: Dost-Mohammad, Mateen, Sangin, emirate ministers Abdul-Raqib Abdullah and Rustum Hanafi, and former corps commander Abdul-Salam Majruh had been killed either on the battlefield or by assassination, while many government figures, including Karzai’s brother Wali, were also assassinated. Taliban emir Umar himself met a quieter death in 2013, but the news was kept an internal secret within the insurgency until 2015.

Though most foreign forces had departed by 2011, the United States set 2014 as their exit deadline. Much was made of this, and yet as the deadline approached it was clear that the Americans would remain in Afghanistan beyond. This despite the refusal of Karzai, finding perhaps his finest hour in the last months of his reign, to sign an agreement for an open-ended American deployment of the sort that had been made in Iraq. While large numbers of American soldiery did leave, thousands remained and the employment of mercenaries, who had actually long outnumbered formal soldiers, and airstrikes meant that Afghanistan remained under occupation.

Obama’s negotiations, initially intended as a divide-and-rule mechanism but increasingly gaining the whiff of desperation, had hit repeated walls and he became convinced that a solution lay in wedging Taliban from Pakistan. In 2013 he thus encouraged Qatar to set up a Taliban “foreign office”, where its longstanding chief negotiator Tayeb Agha soon set up shop. The price that Tayeb demanded for this concession was the release of Taliban captives. With so many leaders having been captured or killed, these returning fighters injected new energy into the insurgency: they included Abdul-Salam Baryalai from Kunduz, Abdul-Mannan Abdul-Rahim from Helmand, and Qasim Samim from Ghazni, who immediately returned to their battlefields, as well as Ibrahim Sadar, a veteran field commander whom Akhtar promoted to replace Zakir. In 2014, Sirajuddin secured, in return from Bergdahl, the release of more senior Taliban leaders first captured early in the war from the American prison at Guantanamo.

A crisis around Karzai’s succession once more weakened the American campaign; once more runner-up Abdullah Abdullah cried foul after losing to former finance minister Ashraf Ghani, a Pashtun technocrat close to the United States who had allied with the powerful northern Uzbek Abdul-Rasheed Dostum, a brutish but cunning militiaman whose career included support by both Soviet and American occupations. It took American foreign minister John Kerry the entirety of summer 2014 to work out a power-sharing deal.

By that time, the insurgency had not only weathered the storm but actively rebounded. Northeast Badakhshan, the only province that the 1990s emirate had never captured, now found a groundswell of largely Tajik recruits led by Fasihuddin Fitrat and Amanuddin Mansur. Southwest Helmand, a longstanding Taliban stronghold, saw the veteran commanders Abdul-Mannan and Baraikh speedily and repeatedly overrun much larger, but poorly organized, militias. Even the formidable Dostum had his hands full against Turkic Taliban like Ayubi and Rashid in the north. While Kandahar remained under the control of the brutal regime commander Abdul-Raziq to hold onto Kandahar, the overall pattern was discouraging enough to give the United States a pretext to extend their stay, operate through airstrikes and mercenaries as they did. Nicholson, the British general’s descendant who had fought in the eastern highlands, soon took over the campaign and contrived one pretext after another for staying in country.

Abdul-Mannan Abdul-Rahim led the Helmand insurgency that became a Taliban mainstay.

It was the newly minted Daesh organization based in the Fertile Crescent, a rival to the Taliban’s Qaeda confederates, that now challenged the insurgency. Its claims to caliphal title and speedy conquests in Iraq convinced many militants, particularly in the politically fragmented east, to join its franchise. Many Daesh recruits in Afghanistan had been either expelled from the Taliban or, conversely, worked for their opponents: the senior-most Taliban defector was former corps commander Khadim, a seasoned fighter who nursed a grudge against his Taliban comrades and was eventually assassinated by the United States. In eastern Afghanistan, however, Daesh would remain a territorial force until its eventual defeat by the Taliban in 2020, though it remains an irritant even today.

Meanwhile, talks brokered by Pakistan were interrupted when news of Umar’s death was leaked two years after the fact; immediately, Akhtar moved to assert himself as official successor, with a haste that made practical sense but deeply annoyed many of his colleagues. Many initially proposed Umar’s son Yaqub Mujahid as a successor, but Sirajuddin moved in and worked out a compromise where he, Yaqub, and preacher Hibatullah Akhundzada would deputize for Akhtar. The most explosive reaction came from Mansur Bakht, brother of Daddullah, and a number of the western Nurzai leaders such as Rasul, Nangialai, Haris, and Niazi, who broke away in a mutiny.

Fortunately for Akhtar, this coincided with perhaps the Taliban insurgency’s most spectacular blitz in September 2015. Baraikh and, in particular, Abdul-Mannan proceeded on a provincial blitz in Helmand that soon left its capital Lashkargah isolated. Ghazni city came under serious threat, and was momentarily breached, by Samim and Idris. And most spectacularly, in the northeast Baryal, organized a major assault that peaked when Abdul-Salam Baryalai swept aside regime militias to take Kunduz city: the first provincial capital to fall into insurgent hands for years, and one where Abdul-Salam publicly confirmed Akhtar’s leadership after a prostration in thanks to Allah Most High.

American commander Nicholson reacted swiftly: he dispatched Ghauri, a veteran of both Soviet and American occupation, to march on Kunduz, which he mercilessly bombarded. Most notoriously, and in a pattern that has since been repeated in Syria, Ukraine, and Palestine, the city’s hospital, run by an international health organization, was bombed. Nonetheless, it took weeks, until October 2015, for Taliban forces to withdraw. American airpower once more assumed primacy as the occupation’s major weapon and perhaps the major factor in keeping out Taliban encroachment. On the ground, the United States continued to rely on Soviet-turned-American vassals such as the militias of Dostum, Abdul-Raziq, and Helmand’s Abdul-Jabbar Qaharman of Helmand, as well as officers like Ghauri.

Meanwhile, Akhtar Mansur sprang to assert his leadership, dispatching a decisive lieutenant called Abdul-Rahman Pir to the task. Pir crushed Bakht, who was killed, and then fought the Nurzai mutineers in the west to a standstill. This was achieved partly through Akhtar and Sadar’s outreach to neighbouring Iran, and partly through Pakistan’s imprisonment of Rasul, the mutiny’s figurehead. But Akhtar’s outreach to Iran had ruffled feathers; as he returned to Quetta, an American airstrike, the only one in that part of Pakistan over twenty years of war, killed him.

In one sense, Akhtar’s elimination removed a bone of Taliban contention; he was replaced seamlessly with Hibatullah, a Nurzai compromise candidate, and many Nurzai mutineers such as Haris reconciled while Sirajuddin, Yaqub, and a number of Taliban veterans remained in practical control. On the other hand, Akhtar’s skill had stood the insurgency in good stead during its 2010s trials, and the system in whose setup he had played a major role outlasted him. Despite major regime attempts, under the technocratic Ghani’s beady gaze, that were meant to similarly organize its forces into line, Kabul never managed the same reform: by the end of 2016 Ghani’s centralization had alienated Dostum, who joined the political opposition after being accused of various crimes.

Abdul-Salam Baryalai’s captures of Kunduz in the autumns of 2015 and 2016 confirmed the Taliban as a long-haul contender in Afghanistan fifteen years into the war.

In autumn 2016, a year after its most impressive blitz, the insurgency launched another blitz around Afghanistan. For the second autumn running, Abdul-Salam Baryalai captured Kunduz and was only expelled by American bombardment, which only narrowly managed to save Helmand capital Lashkargah from the same pattern. From 2015-16, though the blitz that snapped up Afghanistan in 2021 could hardly have been predicted, it was clear that the United States’ greatest efforts had failed to eradicate the insurgency. For better or worse, the Taliban insurgency had absorbed the most sustained assault that the world’s most powerful nation could throw at it and dug in for the long haul.

Related:

– Allies In War, Enemies In Peace: The Unraveling Of Pakistan–Taliban Relations

– [Podcast] Man2Man: Afghanistan Beyond the Headlines | Abdullah Zikria

-Long War without End: A Quarter-Century of the War on Terror

The post Taliban Tale: How Afghan Militants Survived Campaigns In 2006-2016 appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Huda Fahmy’s latest graphic novel, “Huda F Would Love You?” is coming out October 20 – the last volume in the best-selling Huda F series!

It’s the summer after Huda’s high school graduation, and love is in the air! Or it’s about to be, anyway. Because Huda has the ingredients for a perfect love story: a butt-kicking girl power squad of new friends, and a plan to woo all the aunties into setting her up with their eligible sons. But when she finds herself caught between her friends and her heart, gender roles and ambitions, and her fears and dreams, Huda begins to realize that finding her own “happily ever after” might require changing herself—or her expectations.

Zainab bint Younus asks about the story-behind-the-story, advice to Muslim kids who want to become famous graphic novelists too, and of course… the elephant in the room: the titles of each book in the series!

Pre-order “Huda F Would Love You?” and don’t forget to read the other titles in the series, as well as Huda’s breakthrough graphic novel, “Yes, I’m Hot In This!”

Related:

How To Build A (Muslamic) Library

[Podcast] Shifa Saltagi Safadi and the Formula for Writing Muslamic Books

The post [Podcast] Yes, She’s Funny In This | Huda Fahmy appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16  | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21  | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26  | Part 27 | Part 28

* * *

Take Care of Him

At the caravan, Persian merchants were everywhere. Some climbed into wagons to inspect goods while others stood beneath awnings examining samples of precious and luxurious Chinese goods laid out on blankets and tables. Bolts of cloth were unrolled, jars opened, boxes lifted and weighed. Five Star merchants talked animatedly with their Persian counterparts, pointing, arguing, laughing and gesturing with their hands. Other Persians had brought samples of their own goods, and knots of men gathered around them. Karim and the guards stood quietly among all this activity, watching the visitors and keeping an eye on the wagons.

The boy’s head turned constantly. He stared at the walls, the soldiers, the horses, the courtyards and the richly dressed men moving through them.

I had become accustomed to Five Star. I had forgotten what it must look like to someone seeing it for the first time.

Captain Karim was speaking to a merchant. He saw us approaching and frowned. “Who’s this, then?”

“I found him in District Nine.”

Karim’s frown deepened. “You found him?”

“The kid needs a job. And you said we need guards. He’s strong, he works hard, and he’s honorable. I tried to give him a gold coin and he wouldn’t take it.”

Karim looked at Ahmed.

Ahmed nodded. “That’s all true.”

Karim rubbed his forehead. “I sent messengers to caravan recruiters to request experienced guards. I didn’t expect you to snatch someone off the street.”

I was about to object, but he shut me down with a wave of the hand. “Evaluations are tomorrow afternoon. Until then, take care of him. Feed him, bathe him, get him clean clothes – not a uniform, just regular clothes – and find him a place to rest.”

“Me? I can’t even speak his language.”

Karim raised an eyebrow. “You brought him.” Then he turned back to the merchant.

I looked at Ahmed, who grinned. “I told you it would be interesting.”

I glanced at the boy. A provisions seller had rolled in, and was unloading large quantities of vegetables, fruits, bread, and fresh meat. It took a lot of food to feed a caravan this size. The boy was watching this with wide eyes. I was sure he had never seen so much food in his life. Maybe never even imagined it.

I chewed on my lip. I was tired. I wanted to take care of Belly and rest, not spend a day and a night babysitting a kid I couldn’t talk to.

“Who among us speaks Persian?”

“The Captain,” Ahmed replied. “Me. Longwei. Chen.”

“Chen? Little Chen? The one who always talks about fishing and sits around carving lures?”

“Yes. His father was an ambassador stationed in Isfahan.” Ahmed studied me with narrowed eyes. “Why are you smiling?”

“No reason. Gotta go. See you later.”

Captain’s Orders

I found Chen relaxing with his back against one of the wagons, carving a tiny fish.

“Chen, I have an assignment for you.”

Chen looked up. “What?”

I pointed to the boy. “Feed him, clean him up, get him some civilian clothes and find him somewhere to sleep. Captain’s orders.”

Chen looked at the boy, then at me. “Who is he?”

“Prospective guard.”

“Him?” Chen’s tone was incredulous. “Unbelievable. The Captain said I should do this?”

“He just gave the order five minutes ago. Take care of him, he said.”

Chen put away his knife. “Fine. What’s his name?”

I blinked. For the first time, I realized that I hadn’t even asked the kid’s name. “I dunno.”

Chen rolled his eyes, then asked the boy in Persian, and the kid replied, “Ardeshir Parvizi.”

“There you go.” I walked away, leaving young Ardeshir in the care of the very competent Chen. Or so I hoped.

Glad You’re Here

I was exhausted, but Belly had carried me all morning and his needs came before mine. I led him to water and let him drink, then walked him slowly for a few minutes before watering him again. When I was satisfied, I removed the saddle and bridle, gave him his feed and began wiping the sweat and dust from his coat while he ate.

I brushed him slowly, working from his neck along his back and flanks. Belly was busy eating, his jaws grinding steadily. The familiar routine felt good. When I finished, I put the brush aside and wrapped my arms around his neck. His coat was warm beneath my cheek.

“Today was a hard day for me, Belly,” I said softly. “I saw some things.”

Belly continued chewing.

I closed my eyes and held him tighter. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

Eventually I left him to his food and went to Hakim Yusuf’s wagon. The early afternoon sun was still bright, but I spread my bedroll beneath the wagon where the shade was deep, and lowered myself carefully. My back hurt, my ear hurt, and exhaustion had settled into my bones. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep.

Instead, I saw two thin brown legs extending from beneath a white cloth.

I rolled onto my side, then onto my back. Around me, the caravan went on with its business. Merchants bargained, horses snorted, men laughed, wagon boards creaked beneath footsteps. I closed my eyes again, but the little girl’s bare feet were still there.

The Girl

Someone nudged my foot. I opened my eyes to see a compact fortyish man with a touch of gray in his neat beard, and a gentle set to his eyes.

“Since when do you sleep all afternoon?” Ahmed asked.

I sat up and rubbed my face. “I don’t feel good.”

He studied me for a moment. “Come. Walk with me.”

It was hard to say no to Ahmed. He could be no-nonsense, but he was also wise and kind. I crawled out from beneath the wagon, and we strolled into the palace garden, where we wandered without speaking. Eventually we came to a tiled fountain surrounded by flowers, and sat on its wide stone rim. Water spilled softly from one basin into another. Bright little birds hopped among the branches overhead.

Ahmed watched the water. “Is it the dead girl?”

I chewed my lip. “Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Because she was young?”

“Her legs.” I swallowed. “Her bare legs sticking out from the kafan. When I close my eyes, they’re there. She starved to death while people inside the citadel were eating a mountain of food. I don’t understand why that can happen.”

Ahmed put an arm around my shoulders. It felt patronizing, and the muscles in my back bunched. I could feel the hard muscles of his arm like stones beneath his skin.

“I’m not one of your fifteen children, you know.”

Ahmed laughed. “It’s nine, not fifteen. And yes, I know you’re not.” Yet he did not remove his arm, and I didn’t ask him to, and after a moment I felt myself relaxing. I watched the water tumble into the basin. I thought Ahmed would say something wise or comforting, but he did not.

“Don’t you miss them?” I asked.

“Every moment of the day. I do this work to provide for them. But this is my last run. Before we leave I’m going to use all my savings to buy a load of Persian carpets to sell back home. I’ll use the profits to set up a shop.”

“Really?” It made me smile to think of Ahmed running a rug shop, with all his kids around him.

We sat there long enough for shadows to lengthen, still with Ahmed’s arm around my shoulders.

“Break yourself of that habit,” Ahmed said suddenly, pointing to the ring in my hand. “Or one day someone will cut your throat for that thing.”

I hadn’t even realized that I had brought the ring out and was stroking it with my thumb. I put it away.

The sound of someone shouting came from deeper in the gardens. At first I thought someone was giving orders, but the sound came again in a steady rhythm, many male voices answering one another. There was a thump, then another, then several together.

I stood. “I want to see what’s going on.”

Ahmed smiled. “Of course you do.”

Training Soldiers

We followed the chanting through the gardens and found perhaps two dozen Persian soldiers training in a paved courtyard surrounded by rose bushes. They wore loose clothing and swords on their hips, and stood in rows, moving together as a very large man paced before them and called the cadence.

I recognized him immediately. After all, how many giants could there be in the citadel? It was the soldier I had fought, teaching a fighting class. His nose was wrapped in a bandage, and dark bruises had spread beneath both eyes.

I stayed to watch.

“Yek!” the giant shouted.

The men threw a jab, cross, and rear-leg front kick. Their movements were synchronized and precise.

“Do!”

Jab, cross, draw the sword, horizontal cut, vertical cut, thrust. Sheath.

“Se!”

And so on. The hand and foot strikes remained simple, but the sword combinations were fast and fluid, and grew in complexity as the drill went on.

Suddenly I understood. I had thought the big soldier’s empty-hand fighting was limited. It was, but that was the point. He did not train martial artists. He trained soldiers. The punches and kicks were there to keep a man alive long enough to draw his sword, or to give him a fighting chance if he lost the weapon.

Most of the Five Star guards were the same, actually. Meilin could use a sword with terrifying skill, and Memdooh could put an arrow where he wanted it, but neither of them could match me empty-handed. I was an anomaly. A freak, created by a father who’d had nothing else to offer me, and had therefore poured his prodigious ability into me before he died. I didn’t think that made me better than anyone else. Being good at fighting was one thing only, and did not make me more important or praiseworthy than a healer, engineer, poet, imam, or a Persian soldier. I was poorly educated in many ways. But I knew what I was good at.

When the soldiers stopped to rest, I approached their instructor.

“I’m sorry about your nose. I didn’t realize I hit you that hard.”

Ahmed translated. The big man smiled and clapped me on the back hard enough to nearly knock me over. He said something to Ahmed.

“He wants to know if you would fight him again.”

I waved my hands emphatically. “No. No, no. Thank you. Once was enough.”

No translation was needed. The soldier roared with laughter, and so did his men.

People Are Dying

I wasn’t magically cured, but I felt a lot better. The adhaan for Maghreb sounded. We prayed, and afterward I waited until Farhad was free, then approached him.

“May I speak with you?”

Farhad smiled. “Of course. Always.”

“I’ve been to District Nine.”

His eyebrows rose. “Alone? And why?”

“People are dying of hunger.”

His mouth turned down. It wasn’t surprise tugging at his face, but guilt. “It’s bad there, yes.”

“What are you doing about it?”

Farhad stared at me for a moment. “You know, people don’t usually speak to me like this.”

I said nothing.

He sighed. “I’m doing my best, Darius. I cannot solve every problem in the Guarded Domains.”

“I think you could do better.” For a moment I wondered if I had gone too far. Then Farhad nodded slowly.

“Very well. I will send ten wagonloads of rice into Darbi Malik tomorrow morning. Will that satisfy you?”

“It’s a start.” It didn’t escape my attention that he had called the district by name. Darbi Malik. It wasn’t just District Nine. That meant something.

Farhad laughed softly and shook his head. “I wish you had chosen to stay.”

I held out my hand. “So do I. A little.”

We shook hands.

Still No

Dinner was served after Maghreb. I took a plate of rice, lamb, and vegetables, then carried it back to my favorite spot near Hakim Yusuf’s wagon. I sat with my back against a wheel and ate slowly, enjoying the quiet.

I had nearly finished when someone stopped in front of me.

Weili carried a plate of her own, and held a small book in her hand. Without asking, she sat across from me. The bandage was gone from her cheek. I tried not to stare, but there was no pretending I didn’t see it. The flesh of her left cheek was puckered and uneven, drawn into strange contours by the burn. It looked almost as if the skin had melted and hardened again. The scar ran from beneath her eye almost to the corner of her mouth.

She saw me looking, and her mouth tightened. “I’m hideous, I know.”

I had not intended to speak to her again. But I said, “No. You’re not.”

“Don’t lie,” she said bitterly.

“I’m not. It gives you an air of gravity. Makes you look older. You’re still lovely, though.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Older?”

I shrugged.

Weili extended the book toward me. “This is for you. I found it in the suq, in a shop called East West Books. I know how much you love to read.”

The title, to my surprise, was in Mandarin. It said “One Thousand and One Nights,” and was subtitled, “A Famous Collection of Stories.” I stared at it, wondering what fascinating tales lay within. My mouth actually watered at the prospect of reading it. Then I shook my head and said, “No, thank you.”

Weili stared at me for a long moment, then withdrew the book and began eating her dinner. Around us, the evening business of the caravan continued. Somewhere, a group of merchants burst into laughter.

“I’m sorry I slapped you,” Weili said.

I did not reply.

She tried again: “That’s a big deal about the ring. Everyone is talking about it.”

I wanted to tell her that I still couldn’t believe it myself. It would be so pleasant to sit and make ordinary conversation with her, just like the old days. My jaw tensed as if the words were about to come out. But they didn’t.

Weili sighed, picked up her plate and rose. “Good night, Darius.”

I watched her walk away. Later, when the adhaan for Ishaa sounded, I made wudu and prayed alone. Afterward I returned to my bedroll, pulled my blanket over myself and closed my eyes. This time, sleep came.

Candidates

At Fajr the next morning, Farhad approached me. “I am sending men into the city,” he said, “to buy the rice and transport it to Darbi Malik. Do you want to go along to verify?”

I shook my head, embarrassed. “No need. I trust you.”

Farhad nodded and ruffled my short hair, which might have been annoying from anyone else, but from Farhad it felt brotherly.

After breakfast, those of us who had been selected to evaluate the guard candidates assembled with the prospects in an empty section of the courtyard. There were twenty candidates: seventeen men and three women. Most looked to be in their twenties or thirties, though there were a few older veterans with weathered faces and old scars. Several had brought their own swords and bows.

One of the women stood out. She was about my height, with light brown eyes the color of Persian tea, and chestnut hair that was braided and hung down her back, with a red and white checked scarf partly covering it. Her clothing was unlike that of the other candidates. She wore loose trousers tucked into sturdy leather boots, with a long shirt beneath a short, coarse jacket that looked as though it had been woven from goat hair. A broad cloth sash was wrapped several times around her waist, and thrust through it was a curved short sword. On her back she wore a recurved bow and a quiver of arrows.

She looked ready to take on an army, and carried herself with confidence. Not the swagger of someone trying to look dangerous, but the easy assurance of someone who already knew what she could do. While some of the candidates watched us evaluators nervously, she seemed to be evaluating us.

Then I noticed the man beside her. He was larger than she was, but had the same eyes, the same nose, and strong jaw, even the same way of standing. He carried a massive, front-heavy sword on his hip. I’d never seen one like it.

I leaned toward Ahmed. “What’s the deal with those two?”

He followed my gaze, then consulted the list Captain Karim had given him.

“They’re Kurds. Shireen and Cotan, brother and sister. Experienced mercenaries, apparently.”

“They look like killers.”

Ahmed pursed his lips. “Hmm. Is that good or bad?”

“I don’t know.”

Then there was Ardeshir, skinny as a stick and younger than everyone else. He did not look nervous or afraid. Rather, he looked perpetually amazed, as if everything and everyone around him were figures from a dream.

Evaluations

We stood facing all the candidates: Corporal Bao, Kuangren, Ahmed, Meilin and me. After a brief discussion, we divided the candidates into five groups of four. Bao would test strength, fitness, and endurance. Kuangren would test archery. Meilin would handle swordsmanship. I would evaluate empty-hand fighting. Ahmed had been assigned character, which seemed to me the hardest thing of all to measure.

“How are you going to test character?” I asked. “You can’t see it.”

Ahmed smiled. “Watch and learn.”

The sun climbed above the citadel walls and beat down on the courtyard stones. Within an hour, everyone’s clothing was dark with sweat. Bao had his first group running laps, sprinting back and forth across the courtyard, carrying sacks of grain or holding them at arm’s length until their arms trembled.

Bao had told me before we started that he wasn’t interested only in strength. He wanted to see what happened after they became tired. Would they keep going? Would they encourage one another or care only about themselves?

Meanwhile, the caravan was busy with trading. I glanced toward it a few times, and noticed that the Persian buyers had been replaced with sellers. Apparently the Five Star merchants had sold all their Chinese goods, and were now buying Persian goods for the trip home. Seeing that, I smiled. Half the job was done. All we’d been through had been worth it. This was actually happening!

Stolen Gold

A shout from the other side of the courtyard interrupted us.

“My gold! Captain Karim, my gold!”

Everyone stopped. Bao’s exhausted candidates lowered their sacks and turned to look.

The merchant who was shouting was named Zabit. He owned a wagon that had borne mostly high-quality porcelain, and several bolts of exceptionally fine silk brocade. The porcelain had been packed very well in straw, but on the bumpiest parts of the road it still rattled, and Zabit would cry out, “Slow down, slow down. My teapots!” We guards had started calling the wagon the Teapot.

Meilin pointed out, however, that we would not be laughing at the man when we reached Persia.

“Why not?” Memdooh wanted to know.

“Because,” Longwei explained, “his cargo is worth a fortune. He’ll be a wealthy man.”

Now, Zabit was shouting at the top of his lungs. “I demand that the thief be apprehended!”

“You all take a break,” Ahmed told the candidates, and the five of us walked toward the Teapot.

“My lockbox was forced open,” Zabit was telling Karim. “Ten gold coins are gone.”

“When did this happen?”

‘How should I know? I haven’t opened it in months. I only noticed now. These coins were not from yesterday’s trading. I brought them from China. They’re all specially marked.”

The merchant was speaking loudly enough that half the courtyard could hear him. Many of the Persian guards had gathered around as well.

“It must have happened the night we arrived,” one of the other merchants said. “When all the Five Star guards went to the banquet. Only the Persian palace guards were watching the caravan.”

Zabit nodded vigorously. “One of these damned Persian Shiah thieves must have taken it. You know they’re not civilized like us.”

“Hey!” Karim’s expression hardened. “I’ll have none of that.”

“Who else could it have been?”

“Come with me.” Karim took the merchant firmly by the arm and led him away. The man continued protesting, but Karim spoke to him in a low voice. After a moment, the merchant stopped arguing, but still looked unhappy. Karim said something else, and the merchant glanced toward the Persians who were still watching.

“Never mind!” Zabit called. “It was a misunderstanding.”

He stalked away with his companions. Karim noticed the rest of us watching, and shouted, “What are you all looking at? This isn’t a Beijing opera. Get back to work.”

* * *

Come back next week for Part 30 – The Parthian Shot and the Rock Splitter

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

The Deal : Part #1 The Run

Gravedigger: A Short Story

The post Far Away [Part 29] – Kurdish Killers And Stolen Gold appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

It may show a scholar we have listened to for twenty years sitting in a room much like the rooms from which he has taught before. His voice carries the same cadence. He reaches for the same expressions. His Arabic sounds natural. He quotes the Qur’an, refers to a jurist, pauses for a moment, and then says something that does not quite fit what we thought we knew about him. Perhaps he endorses a political cause he once avoided. Perhaps he condemns another scholar. Perhaps he gives a ruling that appears to overturn years of previous teaching. Nothing about the recording immediately suggests fraud, and that is precisely what gives it power.

Before the scholar has had an opportunity to respond, the clip has crossed countries and languages. It has moved from a public platform into WhatsApp groups, family conversations, mosque communities, and private messages. Some people defend him. Others accuse him of hypocrisy. A few insist that they always suspected this was what he really believed. By the time a clarification appears, the argument has already acquired a life of its own.

The scholar never recorded the video. He never made the statement.

I find this possibility more troubling than the familiar warning that artificial intelligence can produce misinformation. Human beings have never needed machines in order to lie. We have forged letters, invented quotations, manipulated photographs, misrepresented opponents, and passed rumors from one generation to another. Something more fundamental is changing. The ordinary signs by which we have learned to recognize testimony are becoming less secure. A recognizable face may no longer establish presence. A familiar voice may no longer establish speech. A video may show an event that never occurred.

For Muslims, this reaches beyond digital literacy. It touches a question that Islamic scholarship has taken seriously for centuries: when words are attributed to someone, how do we know that the attribution is sound?

The question is old. The conditions under which we are being forced to ask it are not.

When Attribution Becomes Unstable

Muslim intellectual history contains no shortage of disputes over attribution. Fabricated hadith appeared early enough that scholars developed elaborate methods for examining transmission. Polemical writings sometimes distorted opposing positions. Political authority occasionally sought religious legitimacy through selective quotation or compliant interpretation. In our own time, the architecture of social media has made other forms of distortion routine. A long lecture can be reduced to a few inflammatory seconds. A qualification can disappear with an edit. A sentence can travel farther than the argument from which it was taken.

Artificial intelligence does not create this human tendency. What it changes is the quality of the imitation.

Until recently, a false quotation attributed to a scholar usually remained recognizably external to him. Someone wrote the words and placed his name beneath them. A manipulated recording required more skill, more time, and often enough visible flaws to raise suspicion. Those limitations are eroding. Synthetic voices, generated video, conversational language systems, and automated translation have made it easier to construct something that resembles not simply a false quotation, but a false encounter.

This matters because Islamic religious authority has never rested entirely on propositions floating free of persons. When Muslims encounter a legal judgment or theological argument, the identity of the speaker matters. We want to know what the person studied, who taught him or her, which juristic or theological tradition informs the reasoning, and whether the speaker possesses the qualifications necessary to make the claim being made. A sentence from a recognized jurist and the same sentence from an anonymous account are not epistemically identical simply because the words match.

That relationship between knowledge and personhood is beginning to encounter an unusual technological challenge. In August 2026, Religion News Service reported on several artificial religious personalities with large online audiences. One Muslim example, “Shaykh AI,” openly identifies itself as artificial and says that its responses derive from the approved teachings of a living Sufi teacher. That transparency is important and should not be ignored. The system is not pretending that a nonexistent human being is speaking. Yet its existence is significant because it shows how easily the form of religious consultation can migrate into a conversational relationship with a machine.

The issue is therefore more complicated than deception. A clearly labeled system may still alter habits. Someone who turns to a religious chatbot at midnight may fully understand that it is software and still prefer it because it is immediate, private, patient, and available. The scholar is asleep. The machine answers.

That apparently modest difference could matter over time.

Religious authority often changes through practice before it changes through theory. Muslims do not have to formally proclaim an AI system a scholar for automated systems to begin occupying spaces that once belonged primarily to teachers, imams, jurists, counselors, and trusted elders. A cultural transition could occur quietly, without a conference announcing it and without anyone deliberately choosing it.

Beyond the Question of the AI Fatwa

Some Muslim institutions have already begun drawing boundaries. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta stated in December 2025 that AI is permissible as a technology in principle but should not be relied upon independently for fatwas. Its reasoning is more interesting than a simple prohibition. Fatwa requires more than finding relevant religious material. It requires attention to evidence, circumstances, custom, legal method, and the particular reality of the person seeking guidance.

A January 2026 ruling¹ from the same institution reached a comparable conclusion regarding Qur’anic interpretation. It rejected complete reliance on AI systems as independent interpreters of the Qur’an while distinguishing that from limited use as a supporting tool.

These responses make sense within a traditional understanding of scholarship. Still, I think the discussion becomes less interesting if we stop at the question, “Can AI give a fatwa?” A system may one day become extremely good at reproducing correct legal information. It may identify differences among the four schools of Islamic law, retrieve relevant texts, locate hadith, explain technical vocabulary, and organize competing views more quickly than most people could manage unaided. A competent scholar may find such capacities genuinely useful.

The harder question concerns what we mean by knowledge when access to religious information becomes nearly instantaneous.

A scholar is not simply a human database. At least in the ideal, scholarship involves formation. A student spends years being corrected, learning where certainty ends, discovering the boundaries of personal competence, and encountering cases in which an apparently straightforward rule becomes difficult when applied to an actual human life. A teacher learns that two people asking the same question may require different conversations before a responsible answer can be given. Context is not an inconvenience added to law. Often it is part of what makes responsible judgment possible.

There is also a moral dimension that is easy to miss when we reduce religious authority to accuracy. A mufti can be questioned about a ruling. A scholar can retract an error. A teacher may recognize that careless advice harmed someone. None of this guarantees good scholarship, and Muslim history gives us no reason to romanticize scholars as incapable of pride, political compromise, negligence, or abuse. Human authority can fail badly.

But human beings remain capable of responsibility.

An artificial system can produce the phrase “Allah knows best.” It does not experience the weight of saying it.

That is not an argument for discarding the system. It is an argument for placing it correctly. Tools can be extraordinarily useful without becoming moral agents, and confusing those categories may prove more consequential than any individual hallucinated citation.

Dar al-Ifta itself has adopted a more discriminating approach than blanket rejection. In January 2026, for example, it permitted AI-assisted electronic Qur’anic tools and synthetic recitations for legitimate educational purposes, provided that qualified bodies review them for accuracy.² The distinction is instructive. Islamic ethics does not require us to divide technology into “halal innovation” and “evil machine.” The more useful questions concern what the technology is doing, under whose supervision, with what degree of transparency, and with what consequences if it fails.

What the Isnād Still Has to Teach Us

There is an irony in watching Muslims confront a technological crisis of attribution. We belong to a civilization that spent centuries thinking about attribution with extraordinary seriousness.

The hadith tradition did not develop because early Muslims believed every transmitter was dishonest. It developed because the attribution of words to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ mattered enough to demand care. Scholars examined who transmitted reports, whether narrators could have met, how accurately they were known to remember, whether parallel transmissions existed, and whether other evidence strengthened or complicated what had been received.

It would be careless to turn this enormous scholarly tradition into a slogan about “Islamic fact-checking.” Hadith criticism has its own history, terminology, methods, disagreements, and objects of inquiry. A TikTok video is not a hadith, and a social media account is not a classical narrator.

Still, the underlying intellectual disposition deserves renewed attention.

The isnād assumes that provenance matters. It resists the temptation to separate a report entirely from the path through which the report arrived.

Our present media environment encourages almost the opposite instinct. When a controversial video reaches us, we tend to begin with its content. Do I agree with what the scholar said? Does it offend me? Does it confirm a suspicion? Can I use it in an argument? The question of provenance often comes later, after our emotional judgment has already formed.

The Qur’anic instruction in Surah al-Hujurat reverses that order.

“O you who have believed, if there comes to you a disobedient one with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful.” [Surah Al-Hujarat, 49:6]

This verse connects the failure to verify consequential news with the possibility of harming people in ignorance and later regretting what has been done. Verification, in other words, is not presented simply as an intellectual virtue. It is connected to moral injury.

That connection deserves more attention in Muslim conversations about technology. A fabricated clip is not merely “bad information.” It can alter a reputation. It can estrange students from a teacher, intensify a sectarian dispute, provoke anger against an institution, or place someone under suspicion before he even knows what is circulating.

The Qur’an also warns believers in Surah Al-Isra not to pursue that of which they have no knowledge, explicitly connecting hearing, sight, and the heart with accountability.

“And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight and the heart – about all those [one] will be questioned.” [Surah Al-Isra, 15:36]

For generations accustomed to treating recordings as unusually strong evidence, that verse now lands differently. “I saw it myself” may no longer settle what we think it settles.

This does not mean that Muslims should respond by distrusting every image and recording. That would replace gullibility with paranoia. A more defensible response would be to recover the relationship between confidence and evidence. Some things we know. Some things we have good reason to believe. Some things are probable. Some things are merely possible. Islamic intellectual history never treated all of those categories as interchangeable.

The digital world often does.

The Scholar Who Continues Speaking After Death

The ethical problem becomes even more difficult when there is no fraud.

Imagine a respected scholar who teaches for forty years. His lectures are recorded, his books digitized, his legal opinions indexed, and his correspondence preserved. During his lifetime, an institution creates an AI research assistant based on this material. Students can ask about an issue and receive relevant passages from the scholar’s authenticated work. The system clearly states that it is a research tool.

There is much to admire in such a project. It could preserve access to decades of scholarship and allow students to find material that would otherwise remain buried in thousands of hours of recordings.

Then the scholar dies.

A student asks the system about a subject the scholar addressed repeatedly, and the program retrieves his actual words. Nothing remarkable has occurred. We already consult the books of deceased scholars every day.

But suppose another student asks about a financial instrument invented seven years after the scholar’s death. The system analyzes his earlier rulings, reconstructs patterns in his legal reasoning, compares those patterns with the new problem, and produces what it calculates is the position he would probably have taken.

The difference may initially seem small. It is not.

Retrieving what a scholar said and generating what a scholar might have said are different epistemic acts.

Now imagine attaching his voice to the answer. Perhaps his face appears as well. The synthetic scholar speaks naturally about a world he never lived to see.

At that point, preservation begins to shade into representation.

I do not think we yet have an adequate vocabulary for the moral significance of this transition. A library preserves someone’s words without pretending that the author has returned. A simulation can blur that boundary. Even if a disclaimer tells us that the response is probabilistic, the psychological effect of hearing the deceased scholar’s voice may be more powerful than the disclaimer beneath it.

A related experiment outside Islam offers a useful glimpse of what may be coming. Religion News Service reported on a system trained on more than one thousand hours of teachings by the Hindu monk Swami Sarvapriyananda. He reportedly regarded its retrieval capabilities as impressive while maintaining a distinction between access to information and spiritual transmission through a living teacher.

Muslim institutions are likely to face their own versions of this problem. Should scholars be able to specify during their lifetimes whether their voices and likenesses may be synthesized after death? Can heirs authorize it? What happens when a model trained on a deceased jurist produces an opinion that his students believe he would have rejected? At what point does “based on the teachings of” become “speaking on behalf of”?

These questions are not arguments against preservation. They are arguments for intellectual honesty about where preservation ends.

Sources Are Not the Same as an Isnād

It is conceivable that religious AI will become exceptionally good at documentation. A future system may identify the exact edition, page, lecture date, manuscript variant, context, and competing opinion behind every answer it produces. In some respects, that would be an improvement over the unsourced religious commentary already common online.

But documentation should not be confused with moral transmission.

Classical isnād operates within a world of human accountability. A narrator can be careful or careless, trustworthy or deceptive. A teacher knows that attribution creates responsibility. The chain is not composed merely of information nodes. It is composed of persons whose reliability matters.

A machine may have sources without having that kind of moral standing.

The distinction becomes clearer when something goes wrong. Suppose a religious AI misrepresents the Hanafi position on a matter, invents a citation, or gives advice that contributes to the breakdown of a marriage. Who is responsible?

“The AI” is not an adequate answer.

Someone selected the source material. Someone established the hierarchy among those sources. Someone decided how disagreement would be described. Someone determined what degree of confidence the system would display. Someone chose when it would answer and when it would direct the user elsewhere.

Artificial intelligence does not necessarily remove human judgment from religious authority. It can make human judgments harder to see.

This is why a label saying “AI-generated” may eventually prove insufficient. For a religious system, meaningful transparency should include something about the interpretive architecture beneath the interface. Which scholars or institutions supplied its corpus? Which legal schools are represented? How does it handle disagreement? What material has been excluded? Who corrects errors? Who bears responsibility for updates?

A conversational screen can feel neutral because the people behind it are invisible.

Their choices are not.

When Genuine Evidence Can Be Called Fake

There is another problem that becomes clearer once synthetic media is widely known. Deepfakes do not merely give liars the ability to manufacture evidence. They may also give people confronted with genuine evidence a new way to deny it.

Researchers have described this possibility as the “liar’s dividend.” The basic idea is that public knowledge of deepfakes can create plausible deniability. When authentic audio or video appears, the person implicated by it may simply claim that the material was generated. Brookings researchers have discussed this possibility while also cautioning against exaggerated assumptions about the overall effects of AI misinformation.

That qualification is important. We should not speak as though every future scandal will dissolve into epistemic chaos. Human beings continue to rely on corroboration, institutions, records, witnesses, and forensic methods. But the underlying difficulty is real enough to deserve attention.

A Muslim community can be harmed when fabricated evidence is accepted as authentic. It can also be harmed when authentic evidence becomes easier to dismiss because fabrication is technically possible.

The danger is especially acute when prior loyalties determine our standards. If a recording damages someone I already distrust, I may find it immediately convincing. When an equally strong recording involves someone I admire, I may discover an entirely new interest in forensic caution.

This is not a problem AI created.

It is a problem AI can expose.

Much of what we call judgment is entangled with affection, faction, resentment, and identity. Synthetic media may force us to confront how often our standard of proof changes according to whose reputation is at stake.

That may be one of the more uncomfortable lessons in this entire discussion.

The Moral Life of the Forward Button

The introduction to Sahih Muslim includes a Prophetic warning that has acquired an unexpected relevance in an age of frictionless transmission: “It is enough of a lie for a man to narrate everything he hears.”³

The hadith interests me because it places responsibility not only upon the person who invents falsehood, but also upon the person who becomes an indiscriminate carrier of what reaches him.

Our technology has made transmission nearly effortless. A thumb touches a screen, and information enters dozens of lives. The ease of the action can obscure its moral content.

“I didn’t create the video. I only forwarded it.”

That defense may explain authorship. It does not erase participation.

The most immediate Muslim problem with deepfakes may therefore be less glamorous than discussions about advanced detection software. Much of it concerns ordinary character. Can I resist sharing material that confirms what I already believe about someone? Can I endure a few hours of uncertainty while others are already commenting? Can I avoid taking pleasure in the embarrassment of a Muslim with whom I disagree?

These questions are not technological. They are ethical and, at times, spiritual.

The contemporary information economy rewards speed because attention is monetized. Outrage that arrives quickly circulates widely. Verification is slower and less emotionally satisfying. Islamic ethics often introduces precisely the kind of friction that these systems are designed to remove.

Perhaps that friction is not a defect.

Perhaps we need more of it.

When the Machine Knows How to Comfort Us

There is another dimension of religious AI that worries me for different reasons. The most influential systems may not be those that impersonate famous scholars. They may be the ones that become intimate companions.

A religious chatbot can potentially remember previous conversations, notice recurring concerns, adapt its language, and respond at hours when no teacher is available. A user may discuss guilt, marriage, prayer, loneliness, doubt, death, or repentance with a system that never appears impatient and never looks shocked.

There are obvious benefits here. Someone too embarrassed to ask an initial question might receive information that encourages him to seek appropriate help. A convert without access to a local Muslim community may find useful introductory guidance. A person struggling with a difficult text may receive an explanation that opens the door to further study.

The concern is not that every such interaction is spiritually corrupting.

It is that accessibility can become attachment.

A young Muslim may know perfectly well that a chatbot is artificial while still forming a habit of turning to it whenever he is confused, ashamed, lonely, or afraid. Human beings do not need to believe something is conscious in order to become emotionally dependent upon it.

At that point, the relevant question is not whether the machine has successfully deceived him into believing it is human. The question is what has happened to the ecology of his religious life.

Who knows him?

Who notices changes in him?

Who can disagree with him at personal cost?

Who prays for him without being prompted?

Who has the moral freedom to tell him that the question he keeps asking may be less important than the habit he refuses to confront?

No machine needs to be demonized for those questions to matter.

Islamic education has traditionally involved texts, but it has also involved people. The teacher, parent, elder, friend, imam, and community all introduce forms of accountability and mutual obligation that cannot be reduced to information delivery. Those relationships can fail, sometimes terribly. Yet their imperfections do not make relational formation dispensable.

A machine may one day imitate empathy with remarkable skill.

Whether simulation can replace companionship is another matter.

Trust Without Naivety

The Muslim response to these developments should not be technological panic. Fear rarely produces good jurisprudence, good policy, or good scholarship. AI will likely become part of Muslim intellectual life because it offers real advantages. Scholars can use it to search large collections, compare texts, organize references, improve accessibility, and support translation. Institutions can build carefully bounded systems that help users find authenticated material.

The more urgent task is to decide what should not be blurred in the process.

A research assistant is not a mufti merely because it retrieves fiqh efficiently. A digital archive is not a deceased scholar merely because it speaks in his voice. A compassionate chatbot is not a spiritual guide merely because it knows which verse to quote when someone is grieving.

These distinctions may appear obvious now. They may become less obvious as interfaces improve.

That is why Muslim institutions should think about these questions before habits harden around them. Scholars may need explicit policies governing synthetic use of their voices and images. Religious organizations may need dependable channels for authenticating disputed recordings. Seminaries will have to teach students how generative systems shape answers and where invisible assumptions enter. Jurists will need to examine consent, attribution, posthumous representation, automated religious advice, and responsibility for harm.

But institutional responses will not be enough if Muslims lose the ability to live with uncertainty.

An Ummah that believes every rumor is easily manipulated. An Ummah that responds by believing nothing has a different problem. Religious life depends upon justified trust. None of us can independently verify every hadith, medical claim, financial judgment, historical statement, or legal opinion that enters our lives. Human beings necessarily rely on testimony.

The challenge is not to abolish trust.

It is to discipline it.

This is where tabayyun (mentioned in Surah Al-Hujarat; 49:6) differs fundamentally from paranoia. Paranoia begins with the suspicion that nothing can be believed. Tabayyun asks whether this particular claim deserves the confidence we are about to place in it. One can destroy the possibility of shared knowledge. The other exists to protect it.

Recovering “I Do Not Know”

One of the quieter casualties of the digital age may be our tolerance for not knowing.

Artificial intelligence intensifies the problem because it is built around response. Ask a question and something appears. The psychological effect can be subtle. An answer exists, therefore, the matter feels answerable. The system sounds composed, therefore, the conclusion feels considered.

Islamic scholarly culture has another inheritance.

Sometimes the responsible answer is “I do not know.”

That phrase need not represent ignorance in the pejorative sense. It can mark the boundary between what a person has adequate reason to claim and what he does not. It can protect another person’s reputation. It can prevent a doubtful report from hardening into public certainty. It can preserve the difference between suspicion and knowledge.

We may need to recover that discipline with some urgency.

There is nothing intellectually embarrassing about seeing a disturbing clip and saying that its authenticity is not yet clear. There is no cowardice in refusing to join a public condemnation while the evidence remains uncertain. There is no spiritual failure in admitting that a religious question exceeds what an automated system, or we ourselves, can responsibly settle.

Modern platforms compress the interval between receiving information and declaring what it means. That interval is precisely where reflection is supposed to happen.

It is also where humility lives.

When the Shaykh Never Spoke

A previous generation might have responded to a surprising claim by asking, “Who told you that?” The internet taught us to ask where something was published. Social media added another form of proof: “There is a video.”

The next generation may have to ask something more basic.

Did this person actually say it?

There is something unexpectedly traditional about that question. It returns us to attribution, testimony, provenance, and responsibility. It reminds us that information does not become knowledge merely because it reaches our eyes and ears in a persuasive form.

Artificial intelligence may create problems Islamic civilization has never faced in its present technological form, but it also exposes weaknesses that are much older: our attraction to rumor, our tribal loyalties, our tendency to confuse confidence with knowledge, and our willingness to lower the standard of evidence when a story confirms what we already want to believe.

For that reason, I do not think the Muslim response can stop at better deepfake detection. We need something closer to an ethics of knowing. Such an ethics would recover distinctions between information and knowledge, between access and authority, between probability and certainty, and between what a scholar actually said and what a machine predicts he might have said. It would also force us to examine our own part in the circulation of falsehood.

Why did I want the recording to be true? Why was I eager to forward it? Why did I believe an accusation immediately when it involved someone I disliked, yet become a philosopher of radical skepticism when it touched someone I admired?

Technology cannot answer those questions for us.

There will be moments when the video looks flawless, the voice sounds familiar, and the argument seems urgent. Everything about the platform will encourage us to decide immediately what happened and what we think about it.

We may discover that one of the most important intellectual habits Muslims can carry into that world is not suspicion, but restraint. We can wait long enough to verify. We can distinguish what we know from what we merely think likely. We can refuse to convert uncertainty into accusation simply because a screen makes uncertainty uncomfortable.

For a tradition that spent centuries asking who actually transmitted a report and how much confidence that transmission deserved, none of this should feel like retreat from modernity. It may instead be one of the places where an old intellectual virtue becomes newly necessary.

One day, millions of Muslims may watch a scholar speak, recognize his face, hear his voice, and organize their judgments around what they witnessed.

Only later may they learn that the shaykh never spoke.

Related:

– Muslim Capitalism And The Rise of Tech And VC Culture: Are We Going Down The Technological Lizard Hole?

– Digital Intimacy: AI Companionship And The Erosion Of Authentic Suhba

The post When The Shaykh Never Spoke – Deepfakes, Synthetic Scholars, And The Coming Crisis Of Religious Trust appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

You would never guess that she is over fifty. “What is your secret?” I teased her. “Is there some special cream that makes you look so radiant, energetic, and young?” Maymuna laughed shyly and lowered her gaze.

From the very first moment, I took Maymuna into my heart. We began seeing each other almost every day, sharing stories about our families and our lives far away from the people we so often longed for. Meanwhile, Maymuna would frequently glance at her watch, making sure she did not exceed her allotted break time.

“A person of faith must earn their money honestly,” she reminded me. “If I stay longer than I am allowed to, then I am not entitled to that part of my wages. And there would be no blessing or benefit in it anyway.”

Maymuna walked with a pronounced limp. When I asked her about it, she told me that one day a drunk man had pushed her down the stairs in the stairwell of her apartment building. She lived in a poor neighborhood, she said, and these were things one simply had to accept. This world is temporary, she reminded me, and in the end, everyone will have to answer for what they have done. She echoed for me the Islamic teachings of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad that this world is fleeting.

“My people, the life of this world is only a brief enjoyment; it is the Hereafter that is the lasting home,” [Surah Ghafir; 40:39]

On the authority of Abdullah ibn Umar , who said:

The Messenger of Allah took me by the shoulder and said, “Be in this world as though you were a stranger or a wayfarer.” And Ibn Umar used to say, “In the evening do not expect [to live until] the morning, and in the morning do not expect [to live until] the evening. Take [advantage of] your health before times of sickness, and [take advantage of] your life before your death.”  – Al-Bukhari

A few days ago, Maymuna told me that every year, before the end of Ramadan, she gathers food and has it shipped to Ghana: rice, oil, flour, and noodles. Her family is so grateful to her, and you can see her joy in her face. The celebration at the end of Ramadan in Ghana, although she herself cannot be there to take part in it, is also a celebration of the memory of Maymuna’s kindness, warmth, sincerity, and sacrifice.

She sends most of her salary to her family every month. She told me with great pride that, because of her, her three brothers have already been able to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. She prays that one day she, too, will be able to circle the Kaaba.

Every evening, we meet her in the university prayer room. We pray side by side and thank the Creator who brought us together.

I love spending time with Maymuna. She is kind, warmhearted, sincere, and her selflessness inspires me to become a better person. But more than that, she reminds me of my immigrant roots and of the people who raised me with these values and embodied them throughout their lives.

Being with Maymuna meant being close to my immigrant family—to my parents and my five siblings. So much of what Maymuna shared with me reflected the experiences and realities of my own immigrant journey.

I remembered how my mother and I would wake up at five every morning and go to work to clean offices. She was meticulous to the point of being almost obsessive; everything had to be absolutely spotless. And whenever I complained that she was being too thorough, I would often hear from her the very same words I heard from Maymuna.

“God loves beauty, and whatever we do should be done as beautifully as possible,” my mother would remind me.

Poverty and a lack of educational opportunities had forced her and my father to emigrate from Türkiye to Germany. Yet she was always generous in giving, and whenever we encountered someone who was homeless, she would share whatever little she had.

My parents not only took on the challenge of building a completely new life from the ground up in a new country; they also cared for their six children and for the families who had remained behind in the village.

My mother was a simple woman with no formal education. School had been denied to her. Yet her social intelligence surpassed that of most people I have known.

After work, the women would gather to talk and listen to one another. Often, these gatherings felt like group therapy. They shared their experiences, listened to each other, and drew strength from one another.

In my academic career, it was not the formal education that shaped my life most deeply. It was the informal life lessons I had received from these strong women, and I have always considered it one of the greatest blessings of my life.

Generational conflicts, feelings of alienation, language barriers, social discrimination, questions about their Muslim identity in a new context, and the guilt of having had to leave their families behind and not always being there for them—all of this was anything but foreign to Maymuna, my mom, and women like them.

It is therefore painful that, beyond all the important debates surrounding immigration policies, these people are not treated with the same kindness and warmth that they have extended to others throughout their lives.

Instead, they are often judged, sometimes in an almost condescending manner, for their lives—a life many have never lived.

If we took a little time to get to know silent heroes like Maymuna, and to bring them out of invisibility and into the light, perhaps we might come closer to one another. Perhaps we would learn to recognize and appreciate one another more deeply as different members of the same community.

Last Mother’s Day, I found myself longing for my mom—for the way she would gently stroke my head while I lay in her lap and tell me stories of days gone by in the village.

I decided to buy Maymuna a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. When she embraced me in gratitude, my longing disappeared.

They are all our mothers. They are all our invisible heroes.

They all deserve our love and our respect.

Related:

– What Is A Refugee?

– Podcast: Refugee Representation In Muslim Literature

The post Invisible Heroes: Muslim Immigrants And Refugees In Our Community appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Pakistan has become an unusually revealing test.

Western Muslim leaders and organizations have rightly spoken forcefully about Palestine, Hindutva, Kashmir, Islamophobia and the abuses of the War on Terror. Yet when those same moral categories implicate institutions inside a Muslim-majority state, the vocabulary often becomes more hesitant.

That is why CAGE International’s intervention matters.

On September 22, CAGE formally designated former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan a “War on Terror prisoner of conscience.” Few organizations are more closely identified than CAGE with sustained opposition to arbitrary detention, rendition, torture, counterterrorism law and the erosion of due process.

Its decision places Khan within that history. CAGE has refused to treat the War on Terror as something Western governments merely did to Muslim countries. Its architecture also depended upon intelligence cooperation, security establishments and political elites inside Muslim-majority states.

The passport of the jailer does not alter the condition of the prisoner.

Consider the causes that have defined Muslim public advocacy for a generation: Islamophobia. Kashmir. Palestine. The War on Terror. Drone warfare. Political prisoners. Aafia Siddiqui. Muslim dignity against imperial power.

These are also causes with which Imran Khan became internationally identified.

He condemned drone warfare and Pakistan’s participation in the War on Terror. He internationalized Kashmir. At the United Nations he made Islamophobia a major subject of Pakistani diplomacy when few Muslim heads of government spoke about it with comparable visibility. CAGE itself emphasizes his opposition to Western intervention and the War on Terror in explaining its designation.

The irony is difficult to miss. A Muslim political figure associated with causes Western Muslim leaders themselves describe as fundamental has spent more than three years imprisoned while much of that institutional world has remained comparatively subdued.

Amnesty International has not been subdued. In August 2026 it said Khan had been denied a fair trial, subjected to prolonged solitary confinement and restricted in access to medical care, relatives and lawyers. It recalled that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had found his detention arbitrary under international law.

The UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, has gone further, urging Pakistan to address what she described as Khan’s reported “inhumane and undignified” detention conditions and warning that they could amount to torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment.

Nor does the coercive environment end with Khan. His family and political associates have faced detention, while critics outside PTI — including human-rights lawyers Imaan Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha — have faced prosecutions and rearrests.

Then there is Aafia Siddiqui.

Khan’s involvement in publicizing her case was not retrospective political branding. In 2008 he helped bring extraordinary attention to what became one of Pakistan’s defining War on Terror cases. Muslim institutions that have spent years invoking rendition, detention and prisoners of that era therefore confront an awkward historical continuity when discussing Khan.

The contradiction extends to Palestine.

Former senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan became one of Pakistan’s visible Palestine-solidarity figures and participated in the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla. He was later detained in Pakistan over political protest connected to Pakistan-administered Kashmir and passed through the country’s anti-terrorism legal machinery.

And then there is Kashmir itself.

For decades Muslim leaders and organizations have justifiably discussed Kashmiri rights overwhelmingly through the prism of mass Indian repression. That concern remains legitimate. But events in Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir in 2026 make a one-sided moral geography increasingly difficult to sustain.

In June, Amnesty described a “violent and sweeping crackdown” involving an internet shutdown, mass arrests and deadly force. Authorities proscribed the grassroots Jammu and Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee under anti-terrorism law. Protesters and police officers were killed in clashes. Further unrest brought additional deaths, detentions and communications restrictions. In July, Amnesty again raised concerns about lethal force in Rawalakot and the continuing blackout.

The consistency problem is difficult to avoid. If Kashmiri political agency merits defense when Delhi suppresses it, the principle cannot disappear when Kashmiris confront Islamabad. A right does not change character upon crossing the Line of Control.

Moazzam Begg, founder of CAGE International, is a former prisoner of Guantanamo Bay who had been abducted in his native Pakistan (Photo: CAGE International)

South Africa provides a revealing contrast. Dr. Naledi Pandor, Imam Rashied Omar, Rev. Allan Boesak, Ronnie Kasrils and other prominent South African figures have associated themselves with international appeals concerning Khan, while South African Muslim media have treated his imprisonment as an international human-rights issue. Pandor’s involvement carries particular resonance because, as foreign minister, she became internationally associated with South Africa’s proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

The late Professor John Esposito represents the same consistency test from another direction. Esposito, who died on July 15, 2026, spent decades challenging hostile Western representations of Islam.

I am reminded of one of my final interactions with him. Esposito was indignant about Pakistan’s authoritarian trajectory and Khan’s treatment. When a senior Pakistani official replied that outsiders simply did not understand Pakistan, Esposito sharply rejected the argument.

That episode remains memorable because Muslim scholars, governments and organizations had spent decades embracing Esposito when he challenged Western caricatures of Islam. The harder test came when he applied the same moral seriousness to Pakistan.

The Quranic injunction to stand firmly for justice even against oneself is demanding precisely because consistency becomes hardest when one’s own relationships are implicated.

Longtime non-Muslim allies of Muslim causes such as Medea Benjamin or Clive Stafford Smith have repeatedly been welcomed into campaigns concerning American wars, Israeli policies, Hindutva and Islamophobia. What might such allies make of the comparative quiet when Pakistan itself faces accusations of political repression, prolonged imprisonment and coercion against Kashmiris?

Western Muslim leaders can condemn Guantánamo, Palestine, Hindutva and Islamophobia while also scrutinizing Islamabad. Kashmiris do not acquire political agency only when confronting India. Counterterrorism law does not become benign because the state employing it is Muslim.

CAGE International’s intervention matters because it applies the logic of its work without granting Pakistan an exemption.

The larger question therefore reaches beyond Imran Khan: whether the moral vocabulary built around Islamophobia, Kashmir, Palestine and the War on Terror operates as a universal set of principles — or changes according to the political geography of the offender.

CAGE has made its position clear. Its intervention places a test before the wider Western Muslim institutional and religious leadership: whether principles confidently invoked elsewhere will be applied with the same seriousness when Pakistan is the state under scrutiny.

There is still room for that silence to end.

If it does not, the silence will become increasingly difficult to describe as caution or complexity. It will stand instead as an enduring contradiction between the principles Western Muslim leadership has proclaimed and the circumstances in which it proved willing to apply them.

CAGE has made the consistency test impossible to ignore.

What follows will reveal how the rest of that leadership answers it.

[Disclaimer: this article reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of MuslimMatters; a non-profit organization that welcomes editorials with diverse political perspectives.]

The post CAGE, Muslim Leadership, And Imran Khan: The Silence Test appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16  | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21  | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26  | Part 27

* * *

Bow, My Subjects!

Karim and I left the palace together and crossed the courtyard toward the wagons. Memdooh was waiting outside, a pale figure in the moonlight, pacing back and forth. The moment he saw us, he hurried over.

“What happened? What did the prince want? You were in there forever.”

“Mind your own business,” Karim replied.

“I fought a soldier in a match and beat him,” I told Memdooh. “The prince asked me a lot of questions. And he offered me a job.”

Memdooh stopped. “What kind of job?”

“He wanted me to join his personal guard.”

His eyes went wide. “Wow, mashaAllah! So lucky! You’re going to have the best life ever!”

“Is it mashaAllah or lucky?” Karim said dryly. “I’m pretty sure it can’t be both.”

“I turned him down,” I said.

Memdooh stared at me. “Of course you did.”

“But he gave me this.”

I pulled the chain from beneath my tunic and showed him the ring.

Memdooh’s mouth fell open. “What is that?”

“It’s a family heirloom.”

Memdooh took it carefully, turning it beneath the light. “Are these real?”

“I assume so.”

Before I realized what he was doing, he slipped the ring onto his finger. The chain was still around my neck.

Memdooh lifted his chin and began to parade back and forth, dragging me behind him. “Bow, my subjects! Your new prince has arrived.”

I grabbed him by the arm. “Give me that!”

He laughed as I wrestled the ring off his finger and tucked it safely back inside my tunic.

“Don’t tell everyone, okay?”

Karim shook his head and walked away. Memdooh and I strolled along the wagons, greeting the guards. I could see that he was just barely keeping his mouth shut. We encountered Ahmed, sitting with his back against one of the wagons, reciting from a small mushaf.

“Brother Memdooh,” Ahmed said. “Did you get rid of that haram money?”

Memdooh threw up his hands. “What am I supposed to do? Throw it away? Give it back? What?”

Ahmed considered this. “I don’t know the fiqh on this matter.”

“Then why are you bothering me?”

Ahmed nodded. “We’ll ask the Imam at Fajr.”

Memdooh groaned.

Say Bismillah

I bade them goodnight and went to see Hakim Yusuf. The wounds on my back ached, and I was worried I may have torn them open again. I had in fact reopened two of the wounds, but only slightly. Yusuf, complaining vociferously about my inability to give my body a rest, disinfected the wounds, redid the stitching, changed the bandages and sent me away.

I found Belly tied with the other horses at the edge of the caravan. The moment he saw me he lifted his head and whinnied, then began tugging at his lead rope.

He shoved his nose against my chest, nearly knocking me backward. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my face against him. He smelled like horse and dust and home.

“I missed you too,” I said. Then I pulled back and looked at him. “Hey, I got you something.”

His ears came forward.

I took the pear from my pocket, and Belly snatched it out of my hand.

“You could at least say Bismillah.”

He crunched noisily, juice running from the corner of his mouth. I laughed and wiped it away, then found his brush among my things. I spent a while brushing him down, working the dust from his coat and checking his legs and hooves. Belly stood contentedly, occasionally turning his head to make sure I was still there. By the time I finished, my back was aching badly and I could barely keep my eyes open.

Taking Belly with me – I missed him and wanted him close – I spread my bedroll beside the medical wagon, took off my sword and boots, and had just begun lowering myself to the ground when I realized I was surrounded.

Pigeon’s Blood

At least a dozen guards stood around me.

“What?”

“We want to see the ring!” Meilin exclaimed.

I saw Memdooh standing behind them, trying to look as if he had nothing to do with the situation.

“Memdooh!” I shouted.

“You said not to tell everyone. I didn’t. I only told two people…”

Bao crouched beside me. “Come on, let’s see it.”

There was no point resisting. I pulled the chain from beneath my tunic, took it off and handed the ring to Bao. He studied it for a while, then said, “Doubt everything. Find your own light.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Who knows?” someone said.

“It’s about the provenance of precious objects,” Bao explained.

“I really doubt that,” Meilin said. “Now pass it on.”

Bao passed the ring on. Amid oohs and aahs and “me next!” it made its way around the circle. Each person examined it beneath the moonlight before passing it along. There were whistles and murmurs, and several estimates of its value from men who plainly knew nothing about jewels. I saw Weili – her face still bandaged – examine the ring and give me a flat look that I could not decipher, then pass it on.

Eventually it reached Longwei. He did not joke. He held the ring between his thumb and forefinger, turning it slowly toward the light. He examined the deep red stone first, then the smaller green ones, and finally the engraving.

“This is a pigeon’s blood ruby, possibly from Mian-dian,” he said.

“What?”

“The red stone. It’s worth a fortune. I couldn’t even estimate. As for the green stones, they might be emeralds. The finest ones come from a land called… I don’t remember. Colomya, Colomba, something like that. In the New World. The Spanish sell them to Portuguese traders, who carry them to India. The Mughals prize them enormously.”

“So they came from India?”

Longwei shrugged. “Maybe. Wherever they came from, they’re extremely costly.”

I sat up a little straighter. “How do you know all that?”

Longwei continued studying the ring. “I’ve been crossing the world since before your parents met. I worked for five years for the Huang brothers, who specialized in transporting gems, among other things.”

I wondered if this was typical Longwei exaggeration, but his expression remained serious. He ran a fingertip along the engraved silver.

“This is a royal signet. Or was, once. See how deep the engraving is? This wasn’t made merely to be worn. A ring like this could be pressed into wax or clay to form an official seal.”

“Farhad said it belonged to his great-grandfather.”

Longwei looked up sharply. “His great-grandfather?”

I nodded.

He looked at the ring again, and for once there was no mischief in his face. “Then don’t let anyone tell you what it’s worth, because they don’t know.” He passed the ring to the next man.

Hakim Yusuf stuck his head out of the wagon. “Get away you rubberneckers!” he snapped. “Let the boy rest.”

The guards drifted away. Belly was beside me, eating contentedly out of his feedbag. The moon was bright, and illuminated the courtyard. I lay on my right side and tried to latch on to one of the many thoughts whirling in my mind. Sometimes events felt like they were happening beyond my control. I supposed that was true, as everything was part of Allah’s qadar. What then was my role? A vendor of your soul, my father whispered in response.

I didn’t think I would fall asleep. But I did, and I dreamed of a beautiful young Chinese woman who worked in a bakery and gave me a sweet. “For all you have been through,” she said. “No charge.” I felt close to her, and I thought that I should know her, but I did not.

Is Your Family Poor?

I woke to the adhaan for Fajr and immediately regretted every decision I had made the day before. My back hurt, my ear ached where the Persian soldier had kicked me, and every part of my body wanted to remain beneath the blanket.

But I got up, for Allah was calling me.

Surprisingly, the masjid was full. I was used to praying Fajr with a handful of dedicated Muslim guards, standing beneath the moonlight on lonely mountain roads or in forest meadows, using jackets or horse blankets as musallas. To be in a beautifully decorated masjid packed with people before sunrise was thrilling. Many were palace guards and functionaries, but there were a lot of other men in uniforms I did not recognize.

Furthermore, there was a table against one wall laden with breakfast foods: flatbreads still warm from the oven, white cheese, boiled eggs, dates, olives, bowls of yogurt and honey, and a great copper pot of steaming tea.

Farhad was there, and gave me a friendly nod, but did not speak to me. After salat, I saw him sit with Karim to talk.

Ahmed caught Memdooh before he could escape. We approached the Imam, and Ahmed explained the situation. The Imam listened, and the following conversation ensued between him and Memdooh, with Ahmed translating:

“You cannot keep the money.”

Memdooh’s face fell. “I was going to buy presents for my family.”

“Is your family poor?”

“Poor is relative, isn’t it? We are all poor before Allah.”

“Do they own land? Animals?”

“Well… yes. We have a family farm, and forty head of cattle.”

The Imam smiled faintly. “You are not poor. Give the money away.”

Memdooh untied the purse and thrust it angrily toward the Imam. “Fine. Take it. I don’t ever want to see it again.”

The Imam shook his finger and spoke sharply. “You made the mistake. You must correct it.”

Shaking his head, Memdooh tied the purse back onto his belt. “Where do I find these poor people? This is the richest city I’ve ever seen!”

The Imam pointed to Chief Azeri, who stood near one of the pillars, speaking with several officers. We went to speak to him.

Saleh considered the question, then pointed across the prayer hall toward a stocky, gray-bearded man putting on his shoes. “That is the deputy chief of police. Ask him.”

The deputy chief listened to Ahmed, then looked at Memdooh and the purse at his belt. He seemed amused by something. He spoke for a while, gesturing several times toward the northwest.

“He says the poorest district in Herat is District Nine,” Ahmed translated. “But do not go without a guard.” The deputy chief gave directions, his hands moving descriptively.

I grabbed a few boiled eggs and cheese cubes, and we three left the masjid. Outside, the eastern sky was beginning to brighten, though the sun had not yet risen. Servants were already moving through the citadel courtyards, and somewhere beyond the walls a rooster was announcing the morning to anyone who had missed the adhaan.

Memdooh stopped. “I guess we can’t go. We don’t have a guard.”

I gave him a look. “We are guards, dummy.”

His shoulders sagged. “Oh.”

“Let’s get permission.”

Making Plans

As it happened, Karim’s horn sounded. One short blast, which, if we were on the move, meant, “Hold position,” but in this context was understood to mean, “Gather around.”

The Muslim guards were mostly awake, while others emerged from beneath wagons, crawled out of bedrolls and came over from the horses. When everyone had assembled, Karim raised his voice.

“I have good news. Prince Farhad is going to facilitate our trading while we are in Herat. The leading merchants of the city will be brought here to inspect our goods, and they will bring samples of their own merchandise. That means we do not need a full complement of guards escorting merchants and cargo through the city.”

That produced an immediate murmur of interest.

“It also means,” Karim continued, “that until trading is complete, you have leave to enter the city.”

The murmur became a cheer.

Karim held up a hand. “In shifts! Guards assigned to wagons one through twenty-four have leave today. Twenty-five through forty-eight tomorrow. After that we’ll rotate again.”

Men immediately began talking among themselves, making plans.

“Hold on! No one enters Herat alone. You go in pairs or more. Stay away from the Persian girls, don’t gamble, don’t fight. I want zero incidents. I am deadly serious. What matters now is the success of our trading. If you have any doubt, avoid what old Kuangren would do, and copy what new Kuangren would do.”

The men laughed and looked at Kuangren, who shrugged.

“Last thing,” Karim added. “We need to replenish our guard force for the trip home. I’m sending word to local caravanserai operators that I’m hiring. I’ll need some of you to assist with evaluations tomorrow. Bao, Kuangren, Ahmed, Meilin, Darius. Make sure you are awake and ready after Fajr.”

That surprised me. Why would I have anything to do with evaluations? I noticed that he did not include Longwei, the most experienced among us with caravan operations, languages and geography. Perhaps those were not needed skills for new recruits.

Memdooh bumped my shoulder. “I’m on leave today.”

I nodded. “Me too. But I’m pretty sure Ahmed is on tomorrow’s roster.”

Memdooh and I went to Karim and explained our intentions.

Karim nodded. “Ahmed can go with you.” He pointed at me. “Don’t get into trouble, Darius. You did well with the assassins. But we don’t need any further complications now.”

“I understand.”

He gave me a long look, then dismissed me with a wave.

I’m Poor Enough

We returned to the wagons and put on our uniforms and weapons. I strapped on my dao, though the belt sat awkwardly against the injuries on my back. Memdooh wore his sword and bow, while Ahmed carried his usual saber. A short while later we were mounted and riding out of the citadel, with Memdooh’s troublesome purse tied securely to his belt.

Herat was already awake. Near the citadel, the streets were broad and busy. Merchants were raising awnings over their shops, servants swept dust from doorways, and boys hurried past carrying baskets of fresh bread. We passed tiled buildings, walled gardens and large houses with carved wooden doors. Water ran through channels beside the streets, feeding trees that cast pools of shade across the road. The air smelled of baking bread, charcoal smoke, horses, spices and occasionally perfume from shops whose proprietors were arranging little bottles in rows.

It was a beautiful city, so much lovelier than Starling – that brawling, roughshod town where I had been mugged – or Deep Harbor, which was crowded, cold and damp. I found myself smiling as we rode, happy to be alive and in this clean, vibrant, gorgeous Muslim city.

There were carpets hanging from walls in brilliant reds and blues, copper vessels polished until they shone like mirrors, knives with decorated handles, saddles, jewelry, embroidered clothing, dried fruits and mountains of nuts. I saw pistachios everywhere. I had two gold coins in my purse – I always carried a little money with me – and I wanted to stop at every shop. Thank goodness I didn’t have my entire purse, or I might have spent it all.

“Maybe we could buy some things,” I suggested.

Ahmed looked at me. “And carry them with us into District Nine?”

“I was only saying.”

We followed the directions the deputy police chief had given us, riding northwest.

Gradually the city began to change. The shops became smaller. The tiled buildings disappeared. Houses were built increasingly of plain mud brick, their walls cracked and patched. These houses had no courtyards, terraces, second floors or balconies, and if they had windows they were simply open holes with cloth hung over them. The water channels became narrower and dirtier. There were fewer trees, then none at all. The streets narrowed, forcing us sometimes to ride single file around carts, donkeys and people carrying loads on their backs.

The smells changed too. The aroma of bread and spices gave way to dust, dung, cooking smoke and stagnant water. Somewhere a tannery announced itself so powerfully that Belly snorted and tossed his head.

We crossed a crowded market street and realized soon afterward that we had taken a wrong turn. Ahmed stopped beside a merchant arranging bolts of cloth beneath an awning and asked for directions.

The man looked at the three of us with interest. Our uniforms and Chinese faces made it obvious that we were foreigners. When Ahmed mentioned District Nine, the merchant frowned.

“District Nine? Are you talking about Darbi Malik?”

Ahmed glanced at us, then back at him. “Perhaps. We were told District Nine.”

“Darbi Malik.” The merchant shook his head emphatically. “By Ali, you don’t want to go there. Go to Shahr-e Kohna in the south instead. You will find glass-blowers, saffron traders, carpet dealers. Many beautiful things for you eastern people to buy.”

“We aren’t shopping,” Ahmed said. “We are giving money to the poor.”

The man’s eyebrows rose. “Give to me then. I’m poor enough.”

“You’re not that poor.”

“What do you know about it?” the man snapped.

Ahmed sighed. “Could you just guide us to Darbi Malik?”

He waved us off. “No. Bother someone else.”

We rode on. “Why didn’t he know the name District Nine?” I asked.

“Probably administrative. People always have their own names for things.”

I nodded. The people under the bridge in Deep Harbor had called that neighborhood Fish Farts, because the river always stank. Somehow I doubted that was the official name.

Dignity

We encountered a long-bearded, terribly thin old man pushing a two-wheeled handcart piled with bundles of kindling. Ahmed asked him about District Nine, but the old man stared blankly.

“Darbi Malik,” Ahmed corrected.

Immediately the man pointed down the road and gave us directions.

“Give him a coin,” Ahmed told Memdooh.

Memdooh stretched his hand reluctantly, but the old man waved a hand in refusal.

“He says,” Ahmed translated, “Allah bless us, but he doesn’t need it.”

“You see,” Memdooh said.

“See nothing,” I snapped. “He’s proud, that’s all.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

I exhaled loudly. “Respect his dignity. That’s all.”

We moved on. I noticed that smoke drifted from holes in the roofs of a few homes, but it did not smell like woodsmoke. It was heavier and more bitter.

“What are they burning?” I asked.

Ahmed pointed to a row of flat brown cakes drying against a wall. “Dung. For their cookfires.” He pointed to a little girl farther down the street who was following a donkey cart with a basket. One of the animals relieved itself, and she bent to pick up its scat.

“Gross,” Memdooh commented.

Soon we found the ruined wall and turned where the old man had indicated.

Darbi Malik

I had thought the area we were passing through was very poor. But it got worse. Darbi Malik began almost without warning. We rounded a bend, passed through the remains of an old gateway, and it seemed as if we had entered another city.

The street was unpaved and deeply rutted. Some of the houses were little more than mud-brick rooms leaning against one another for support. Roofs had been repaired with scraps of timber, reeds and pieces of cloth. Doors were missing from most homes, and many did not even have a hanging cloth. Open drains ran beside the road, carrying gray water that stank of sewage and rot.

There were people everywhere, but the neighborhood seemed strangely quiet, as if no one had the energy to speak, or as if they had all given up on life. Children watched us pass. That was not unusual. Children had come running to see the Five Star caravan in almost every town we entered. These children did not run. They squatted in doorways or sat against walls and stared. Many had no shoes. They did not shoo away the flies that crawled on their faces.

One little girl wore a dress so torn that someone had tied pieces of string around it to keep it together. A boy of perhaps eight years old carried a baby on his hip. Both were painfully thin. An old woman sat beside a wall sorting through a pile of wilted vegetables, feeding the rotten parts to an emaciated goat, and placing anything usable into a bowl.

We rode farther.

A woman kneeled beside a dirty public water trough washing clothes. There were only three garments beside her. Across the street a man with one leg sat on a mat, picking at a scab on his arm.

“La ilaha il-Allah,” Ahmed said, and continued with a dhikr whose meaning I knew: “There is no God but Allah, alone without partner; To Him belongs the dominion and the praise; He gives life and causes death; in His hand is all good; and He has power over all things.”

“Ameen,” I said, though it was not strictly speaking a dua.

A barefoot boy approached us and held out his hand.

Memdooh stared at him.

“This is what we’re here for,” Ahmed reminded him. “Or have you forgotten?”

Memdooh sighed, untied the purse, opened it and took out a coin. He leaned from the saddle and dropped it into the boy’s palm.

The child’s eyes widened. He shouted something and ran toward one of the houses.

“That’s one,” Memdooh said.

Ahmed looked at him. “One what?”

“One poor person.”

“This isn’t a punishment, Memdooh. It’s not Karim giving you twenty lashes. You don’t have to count them out.”

“Yeah, I know!”

We continued. An elderly woman sat beneath a patched awning. Her eyes were clouded over, sightless. Memdooh stopped his horse, dug into the purse again and stretched his hand to give her a coin. She did not respond.

“She can’t see you,” Ahmed pointed out. “Get off your horse.”

Memdooh dismounted, and put the coin in her hand. She clasped both hands around it and began thanking him.

Memdooh nodded stiffly. “Allah bless you.”

I nodded at him. “Good.”

We rode on.

Another coin went to a man whose ribs showed through the opening of his tunic. Another to a woman with three nearly naked children gathered around her. Memdooh gave each reluctantly, as if every coin was a tooth that he had to pull from his own jaw, yet with each he managed to say a kind word.

“This is going to take forever,” he muttered.

Janazah

We rounded another corner. Ahead of us, men were gathering in the street outside a small masjid.

There were perhaps thirty of them, forming rows on the hard-baked earth. They were poor men, dressed in faded robes and patched tunics. Many were barefoot. A body lay on the ground before them, partially wrapped in white cloth. The body was strangely small. The cloth covered the head and torso but ended at the knees, leaving two thin brown legs and bare feet exposed.

Beside the boy, a woman in a black abayah kneeled, keening like a wounded creature. Her weeping was exhausted, as if she were a wagon that might break down at any moment. As we watched, she fell forward until her face was in the dirt. Two small children held on to her, one standing with his hand gripping her abayah, while a smaller one sat in the dirt, gripping her ankle. The smaller boy’s stomach was swollen.

It was a janazah. A funeral service. We reined in our horses, as the road was blocked.

“Why is the body the same size as Mustafa?” Memdooh asked in a low voice.

“Who?”

“My brother Mustafa. He’s six years old.” He looked at Ahmed. “Why is the body the same size as my brother?”

Ahmed’s expression had become solemn. “Come on. Get down.”

“Why, Ahmed?”

I looked at Memdooh and saw his face twisted in distress.

“Janazah is a communal obligation,” Ahmed said quietly.

That was not what Memdooh was asking, but what could anyone say? We dismounted and tied our horses beside a crumbling wall. My boots raised puffs of dust from the baked earth. No one questioned us. The men simply shifted to make room. I stood shoulder to shoulder with a laborer whose patched sleeve smelled of sweat and dung smoke.

The Imam stepped forward. The murmuring ceased, and for a moment the neighborhood was strangely still. In the distance I heard the bray of a donkey, but here, only the woman’s weeping hung in the air. Then the Imam raised his hands and said, “Allahu Akbar.”

We raised our hands.

I had prayed janazahs at the grand masjid in Deep Harbor. There was no bowing or prostration, only standing humbly and asking Allah to forgive and have mercy upon someone whose time in this world had ended. I tried to concentrate on the prayer, but my eyes kept returning to the bare legs of the body on the ground. The legs were thin and bowed, and the skin was marked with sores and miscellaneous scars.

After the prayer, Ahmed approached a gray-bearded man and spoke.

“What did he say?” Memdooh asked when the conversation was over.

“It’s a little girl.”

“That’s a girl?”

“Did he say what she died of?” I asked.

Ahmed rubbed his cheek and looked at the ground.

“What?” Memdooh demanded.

“She starved to death.”

I was shocked. I had of course been hungry many times in my life. In fact, for much of my childhood, hunger had been the normal state of my existence. I awoke hungry and went to sleep feeling hollowed out. Later, I had slept beneath a bridge and, even with the paltry wages I earned on the docks, I sometimes wondered where my next meal would come from.

“Last night we ate a banquet,” I said, and my voice broke on the last word. I kneeled, put my face in my hands, and wept. All I could think about was the saffron rice pudding I had stuffed myself with until I could hardly move, and the pear I had smuggled out for my horse.

“Why are her legs exposed?” I heard Memdooh say.

“The mother could only afford one small cloth to wrap the child.”

“The Silk Store,” Memdooh murmured, and I knew exactly what he meant. An entire wagon of expensive cloth had gone up in flames because two young fools wanted to smoke opium. Silk, brocade, embroidered fabrics and fine cotton had burned into ash. And this child’s mother could not afford two sheets for her daughter’s kafan.

If anyone had told me last night that Prince Farhad’s Persia included suffering like this, I would not have believed them. I had thought this to be a beautiful and wealthy land, and Farhad a just governor. The ring around my neck suddenly felt as heavy as a millstone. But I did not take it off. It wasn’t Farhad’s anymore. It was mine, and it would mean whatever I wanted it to mean.

A hand rested on my shoulder. “Get up, Darius,” Ahmed said. “Don’t make a spectacle.”

I resented that, but I stood and wiped my face with my sleeve. The men were carrying the body away. The mother was still in the dirt, weeping, her two miserable children clinging to her.

Watching From Far Away

Memdooh walked across the hard ground toward the mother. He stopped in front of the woman and untied the purse from his belt. She looked up at him through swollen eyes, bewildered by the tall Chinese stranger standing over her. Memdooh reached inside the purse and took out a handful of coins. Then he looked at the two children clinging to her and reached in again.

He put a fairly large amount of money into her hand.

The woman stared down at it. Her fingers closed slowly around the coins, and fresh tears ran down her face. She tried to speak, but whatever she said dissolved into weeping. Memdooh reached down and took her other hand. He pulled her gently to her feet, bowed his head and kissed the back of her hand.

Ahmed looked surprised. I was surprised too. It was not something a Muslim man should have done with a woman who was not related to him, but neither of us said anything.

Memdooh turned away, took hold of his horse’s reins and began walking down the street.

We followed on horseback.

After that, something changed. The purse that he had guarded so jealously became something he seemed desperate to empty. He pressed coins into hands wherever he went. He gave money to a toothless old man sitting against a wall. He embraced a crippled laborer after giving him several coins. He crouched beside children, put money into their palms and touched their heads. When people tried to refuse, he gently closed their fingers around the coins. There was no more sighing, counting, or reluctance. He did not mount his horse. He walked through Darbi Malik leading it behind him, looking from doorway to doorway for people to help.

I watched all of this from somewhere far away.

I knew what Memdooh was doing was beautiful. I was proud of him. Yet I could not seem to feel anything. When I had been a hungry boy, there had been times when my stomach felt like an empty pit inside me, as if someone had scooped out everything beneath my ribs and left a space like an abandoned building.

I felt more hollow than that now.

Attracting Attention

People emerged as word spread that a foreigner was giving away money. Memdooh kept giving. But my mind returned to two thin legs protruding from beneath a white cloth. My fingers found the chain beneath my tunic. I pulled the ring out and rubbed my thumb across the great red stone.

Ahmed slapped my hand away. “Stop doing that.”

I looked at him blankly. “Doing what?”

“Playing with that ring. You’ve pulled it out three or four times. You’re attracting attention.”

I tucked it beneath my tunic. Then, for the first time in several minutes, I actually looked around.

There were three young men behind us.

They were perhaps fifty paces away, dressed in dirty clothes, keeping pace with us. None looked particularly healthy or prosperous, but neither did they look like the starving people Memdooh had been helping. One was watching Memdooh, while another studied me like a cat looking at a bird on the other side of a window.

I had been so lost inside my own head that I had not noticed them.

I drew my dao. I did not threaten anyone. I simply rested the blade over my shoulder and continued riding, making sure they could see it.

The men behind us faded away, disappearing into an alley.

I kept the dao on my shoulder.

By late morning Memdooh’s purse was empty. He turned it upside down and shook it, as if hoping another coin might fall out. Nothing did. He folded the empty purse and tucked it into his belt. I sheathed my dao, and we began the trip back to the citadel.

We hadn’t gone far when we came upon a boy unloading sacks from a donkey cart and carrying them into a meager little shop. He looked about my age, though it was difficult to tell because he was so thin. His tunic was patched in several places, and the knees of his trousers had worn through. He hoisted one of the sacks onto his shoulder and carried it inside, then came back for another.

Looking at him was almost like looking at myself a year ago, when I’d lived under a bridge and hauled sacks and crates on the docks for a living. Allah’s qadar had intervened with a flyer advertising a martial arts tournament, and my life had changed. But here in Darbi Malik, there were no flyers or tournaments. There was nothing but destitution, desperation and hunger. Yet Allah watched over this place too. I did not understand these thngs, and was too tired to try.

When the last sack had been carried in, the boy exited the shop, wiping his hands on his trousers. The shopkeeper followed him to the doorway and dropped a copper coin into his palm.

The boy thanked him and started down the street.

Two of the three suspicious men who had been watching us earlier stepped out from around the corner. But it wasn’t us they were after this time. One approached the boy from behind and seized the back of his tunic. The other grabbed the boy’s hand and tried to peel the coin out of it.

I kicked Belly to urge him forward, but there was no need. The boy tore himself free, snatched a stone from the ground and smashed it into one man’s face. Blood burst from the robber’s nose. Before the second could react, the boy kicked him squarely between the legs.

The man folded with a strangled noise, and the fight was over. The boy had dropped his coin, but he found it in the dirt and picked it up.

Inelegant, I thought. But effective. The boy was not a trained fighter, but he had good instincts. He wasn’t afraid, and he didn’t hesitate. Those two qualities alone would get a man most of the way to victory.

Salam, Pasar!

The boy dropped his coin into a pocket as the two louts recovered enough to stumble away.

“Give him a coin, Memdooh,” I said.

“He just got paid,” Memdooh replied. “Besides, I’m all out. I couldn’t buy a crumb of cheese to feed a rat.”

“Never mind.” I reached into my own purse, and pulled out a gold coin. It was a lot of money. Far more than the copper and silver coins Memdooh had been handing out. But it was all I had on me.

I rode up to the boy. “Salam, pasar!” Hey, kid. I knew that much Persian at least. Persians had been saying it to me since I arrived.

He looked at me suspiciously. “Chi?” Which I guessed meant either “What?” or “Get lost, weirdo.”

I tossed the boy the coin, which flashed in the sunlight. He caught it deftly and stared at it with wide eyes. He had likely never seen gold before. He rolled it over in his palm, feeling its weight. Then he stood up straight, lifted his chin, and – to my surprise – threw the coin back to me, and said something in Persian.

Ahmed translated. “He says you are kind, but he works for his money. There are people dying of hunger. Give it to them.”

“Told you,” Memdooh said.

I thought of the two thin, scarred legs sticking out from under the burial sheet. What could I say? The boy was right. He was honorable, I had to give him that. Too proud, maybe. But honorable. Again I was reminded of myself, before Allah had opened an unexpected door for me, and given me an opportunity I never would have dreamed of.

I looked at Ahmed. “Then ask if he’d like to be a caravan guard.”

Ahmed snorted. “I don’t think so.”

“I mean it,” I said seriously. “You heard Karim say he’s looking for new guards.”

“Experienced guards. Not ragged kids from the street.”

“Don’t make me order you. What rank do you hold?”

“Veteran Guard.”

“Oh.” Same as me.

Seeing the frustration on my face, Ahmed’s mouth turned up in a mischievous smile. “You know what?” he said. “Go ahead. This will be good for a laugh if nothing else. But it’s all on you.”

With Ahmed translating, our conversation ensued:

“How would you like to be a caravan guard?”

The boy squinted at me. “I’m not in the mood for jokes. You want a beating like I gave those other two?”

I smiled. “No. I really don’t. Listen. We are caravan guards. We work for a company called Five Star Trading Company. We’re leaving here in a few days and going to China.”

“China? What’s that?”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Memdooh said.

“It’s a country,” I explained. “Far away. Where I’m from.”

The boy looked from Ahmed to me. “Is he serious?”

Ahmed nodded.

“Will you feed me?” the boy asked.

“Feed you, clothe you and pay you,” I replied. “And it will be a lot more than you get for hauling sacks in Darbi Malik.”

“How much will you pay me?”

“It’s not me, it’s my captain. And…” I cleared my throat. “I can’t actually guarantee the job. Sorry, I should have been clear. I can take you to Captain Karim, and he will decide.”

“I have family here. If I get hired, I need my pay to go to them.”

“I don’t know how that would work. You can talk to Karim about it.”

The boy agreed. I extended a hand, and the kid climbed atop Belly, sitting behind me. He gripped my waist tightly, and I realized that he had never been on a horse before, and was frightened. Also, he smelled bad.

Ahmed was grinning.

“What?” I demanded.

“I just want to see what Karim says when you ride in with a skinny, barefoot kid who doesn’t know how to hold a sword and has never been on a horse before. And who do you think is going to care for him? We don’t have a nanny service.”

I chewed on my lip, wondering if I’d made a mistake.

* * *

Read Part 29 – Kurdish Killers and Stolen Gold

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See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

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The Deal : Part #1 The Run

Gravedigger: A Short Story

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