The idea of philosophy didn’t make sense to me growing up, why would someone’s profession simply of thinking about things. With age, more concrete aspects of philosophy came into view—logic, for instance. My mathematical mind could make peace with that. But the notion of being a thinker, as a vocation, still felt elusive. Until, without intention or plan, I found that I had become one.

To make sense of the world around me, I wrote. And writing cannot truly happen without thinking — except that as a child, one does not recognise it as thinking in the philosophical sense. As one matures, it becomes easier to understand that deep reflection on the subject at hand is necessary, but that an even deeper introspection is required to make one’s writing cohere. Without both, the writing falls flat.

I believe firmly that when I realized this, Allah added strength to my words. Not in the contemporary way of measuring things through ratings, likes, subscribers, or comments. But through what it means for my life in this world and in the hereafter. Through the legacy I leave behind, both in my children and in my writing; something for people to read and be immediately prompted to examine their relationship with Allah, understanding that to fix that is to begin fixing everything else.

I’m not there yet, I admit. I also acknowledge wholeheartedly that I have a very long way to go. But just as He made me capable of writing with cognizance, He has enabled deeper insight into aspects of our lives that we otherwise find mundane.

For years, for example, I struggled to make peace with the domestic demands of Ramadan—the chores, the cooking, the relentless rhythm of it all particularly with young children and the weight of other responsibilities. The past two years, something shifted. I was able to redirect the focus of the entire household away from the elaborate spread at iftar and toward a simple, sincere alhamdulillah for whatever we had been given. Some days, there is more on the table than others. But what has changed is where my worry now lives. It has moved from food to the deeper dimensions of Ramadan. And on the mornings I do rise before everyone else, standing over a hot stove while the household sleeps, or while others are made hungry simply by entering the kitchen, I am steadied by the knowledge that the Allah who loves me is watching, and that He is granting me ajr beyond my fast, making me the vessel through which others are able to sustain theirs. That realization finally allowed me to accept: this, too, is ibadah. It was not easy. But setting the intention, asking Allah to help you see it as such, is always the first step. To make du’a for Him to grant you acceptance of your circumstances, while also keeping you striving in His path and opening doors you did not even know you needed.

This is a small, domestic example of a much larger truth I want to demonstrate. As an ummah, we have stood at the brink of moral and spiritual collapse many times, and it has only been through du’a and the sincere efforts of a devoted few that we rose again. I have prayed, time and again, to be counted among those few. I have asked Allah to use me rather than replace me. And I have prayed to the Almighty that we witness the liberation of Palestine within our lifetimes.

These du’as are easy enough to articulate. Internalizing them is another matter entirely. When one begins to dissect such a prayer, to truly reckon with what it asks of you, it either stops you in your tracks, or it compels you to set aside the fantasy and face reality. To be part of this change demands an individual and collective yaqeen in Allah’s wisdom and plan. It demands a willingness to make sacrifices far greater than most of us are currently prepared for. Sending money to charitable organizations, while meaningful, begins to feel modest against the weight of the new realities reshaping our world. And those realities are shifting daily—global political orders overturning at breathtaking speed, in line with technologies we can barely keep pace with.

In this sense, the Muslim ummah holds a rare and weighty advantage. The upheavals unfolding before us—the political convulsions, the cruelty, the collapse of old orders—have not arrived without warning. They were foretold, in the Quran and in hadith, for those who have studied them in depth. Where others are caught entirely off guard, we may be shaken by the timing, or by the sheer scale of the brutality on display, but we were never in the dark. We have been taught to meet these events with physical and spiritual preparation, not merely to watch events unfold. This knowledge is not one to be passively held. It is a responsibility to be actively carried and passed down to the coming generations.

What helps is that we are in Ramadan. It reorients our moral compass toward where it should always have been. And because this Ramadan, like all those before it, arrives with its own particular health and geopolitical trials, the heart feels the weight of that realignment more acutely. May Allah keep it so long after the month ends. May we carry its transformation into the months beyond, for as long as we live and may we live to witness a free Muslim ummah, that practices freely and can think for itself as a collective and united body!