Reclaim Your Heart

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Reclaim Your Heart
Yasmin Mogahed



However the problem wasn’t with the vase, or even that the vases kept breaking. The problem was that I kept putting them on the edge of tables. 

Yet the people who broke me were not to blame any more than gravity can be blamed for breaking the vase. We can’t blame the laws of physics when a twig snaps because we leaned on it for support. The twig was never created to carry us. Our weight was only meant to be carried by God. We are told in the Quran: “…whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold that never breaks. And God hears and knows all things.” (Qur’an, 2: 256)

My mistake was not in having expectations; as humans, we should never lose hope. The problem was in *where* I was placing those expectations and that hope. At the end of the day, my hope and expectations were not being placed in God. My hope and expectations were in people, relationships, means. Ultimately, my hope was in this dunya rather than Allah.

, “Detachment is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.”- Ali


What kind of Muslim are you? The question seems odd, but for those who seek to divide and conquer Islam, the answer has become increasingly important. Even more disturbing are the labels we assign ourselves.

We have to stop and really examine where we are as an ummah (nation) and what we have become. There was once a time when Muslims were revered in the world, a time when we were loved by our friends and feared by our enemies. Today we have become the most targeted, vilified, and hated group in the world. In a recent Gallup poll, more than half of Americans said their opinion of Islam is “not too favorable” or “not favorable at all”, and 43 percent admit harboring at least “a little” prejudice against Muslims—more than double the percentage reported towards Christians, Jews or Buddhists.

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