By Naqiyah Ahmad Murad

وَٱللَّهُ يَدْعُوٓا۟ إِلَىٰ دَارِ ٱلسَّلَـٰمِ وَيَهْدِى مَن يَشَآءُ إِلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍۢ مُّسْتَقِيمٍۢ

“And Allah invites ˹all˺ to the Home of Peace and guides whoever He wills to the Straight Path.”
Quran 10:25

My name is Naqiyah. According to my father, it means pure, as in a saint. He could be wrong about this as none of us are native arabs. But the idea is that, my parents clearly wanted me to be one. Surely, every parent put a lot of thought into naming their children, like how one would name their daughter “Hafizah” in hopes that she would be a memorizer of the Quran, or naming their son “Ibrahim” in hopes that he would emulate our Prophet. May Allah fulfill the noble intentions of our names and make us better than what others assume us to be, Ameen.

I was born and raised a Muslim, but it felt like I was never really a Muslim all my life. My reality is that I hardly knew, or even remembered Allah while growing up. I’ve had to witness questionable things as a child that clearly had an effect on me as an adult. You don’t understand much of the things you see or hear, unless you are taught about them by someone. You get to scream in frustration, or wail in sadness, or laugh out loud without a care, but that’s because you don’t know any better. As an adult though, there is so much to hold back. Somehow, you just always have to keep yourself together.

You see, it’s not like I didn’t know who Allah was, I knew He was my creator. But did I understand Him? Not at all. Often I wondered to myself: “So what was my future like? Why do I have to suffer?” I genuinely wished I could tell the 10 year old me that there is a big difference between a test from Him and abuse. So in my early teenage years, I harbored an unhealthy amount of anger and jealousy in my heart. I hated it. I ended up becoming this selfish, grumpy little thing that hated everyone and everything, even herself for being such a spiteful person.

There was another negative thought I had: “My whole life has been like this, did He abandon us?”

I couldn’t witness His presence in my life at all because I was so blinded by my own despise. And for a very long time, that’s all I was.

Angry. At myself. At them. At everything. So much to the point that I didn’t see any meaning in being alive. Unfortunately, I turned to unhealthy coping mechanisms to tide through life. May Allah protect & heal us.

I wanted to do everything I could to escape this little endless misery. I grew tired of dealing with the same thing over and over again for most of my life. It seemingly doesn’t end. I wanted to numb the pain I was dealing with. There were days when I couldn’t get out of bed. More like, I couldn’t tell if I didn’t want to or if I just couldn’t so I didn’t. Ironically, Ramadhan that year was also the worst time for me. It wasn’t just the personal horrors I had to deal with, but I also got expelled from university and was unemployed for the longest time.

But it’s really weird how Allah speaks to you, maybe a better word would be magical. I wasn’t practicing at all by that point of time. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to, I just didn’t want to. Naturally at that point I thought, “Why should I bother? I’ve been a disappointment to Him, He probably left me long ago”. For the life of me, I can’t recall where exactly I got this quote from, but it was the biggest slap in the face.

“ALLAH NEVER LEFT YOU, IT WAS YOU WHO RAN AWAY FROM HIM.”

All I wanted to do was escape from this endless and exhausting pain. Looking back on it, it was quite stupid of me knowing what the answer was all along, but still choosing to turn to everything else that made things worse. So for the first time in a long time, during that Ramadhan, I took out my prayer mat and garments that was sitting in the corner of my closet, took my ablution and performed my Solat (prayer). After all those years of missing them, somehow I still remembered how to do them.

A rush of regret came over me.

I wished I wasn’t so blind to notice that He was waiting for me to call to Him, He was waiting for me to walk to Him so He could run to me. It felt like this weight on me was lifted off me after that Solat. And I never stopped praying ever since. I can’t explain it in words, but even if all I did was shed tears in my Solat, or while attempting a doa with my hands out, it was clear Allah heard everything I had to say to Him. He knows my heart better than I know myself. It feels like the Solat itself, was a conversation between me and Him (because it definitely is).

It wasn’t that hard. It was painless too. In fact, I felt a lot better and had a clearer lenses on life. Turned to Him, and He granted me endless, endless gifts. He gave me an adorable cat for a best friend to keep me company in those lonely nights, He gave me an entire community of sisters to support me in my pursuit of Him, He reunited me with my godfather whom I thought I lost for over 10 years, He granted me the best big brother I’ll ever have, my teacher.

IT SEEMS THAT WHAT I’VE LONGED FOR IN MY LIFE WAS LOVE, AND I FOUND IT THROUGH HIM. THE LOVE I FELT FOR MY LORD IS LIKE NO OTHER. THE MOST ROMANTIC LOVE STORY I HAVE IN MY LIFE IS WITH HIM, AND HOW I KEPT HIM CLOSE TO ME, AND HE KEPT ME CLOSER TO HIM.

But the thing is, the only reason I could get up to pray, was because He granted me the ability to do it. That’s how much He loves me. And I have to keep reminding myself of that, because somehow every once in a while, I’m reminded of my past. They are like ghosts that continues to haunt me, making me feel less worthy of myself. As I’m writing this, I still harbour so much pent up anger and hate for the ongoing struggles of my past, but I know a better way to deal with it now. So if I don’t Solat, if I don’t do my zikr, if I don’t keep the words of the Quran close to me, I’ll go crazy.

No matter what mentally and physically draining struggle I’m in right now, I’ll take it with honour. It’s easier said than done of course, but at some point I’ll tell myself: As long as I call on Him, I will always have Him. And He will never leave me, like He promised. Sometimes I will fall apart, but He will always be there to put me back together.