What is it to believe?
Philosophical musings on leaving a career and forging a new one as a mother
There are 27,478 people killed in Gaza, 70% of whom are women and children.
That’s 19,235 Palestinian kids and mothers killed.
It could be me.
There’s a deep and enduring ache that persists where the heart should be.
Where is the moral indignation, the rage that leads to absolute clarity that leads to action? It’s gone.
In its place, I feel a brain freeze but it’s over my heart instead of my brain.
What would it take to change the cultural narrative that does not see Muslim life as deserving of empathy?
When I worked in policy and communications, questions of culture and narrative change kept me up at night. My team considered the deservedness for black and brown kids, grappled with the systemic racism that was embedded in our own institution, and still to talk about Muslim life was considered “outside of scope.”
I felt this erosion of my soul when I worked in policy and systems change. It was the same when I worked in direct services. I’d cry about the 14-year-old girl who said she had to abort her baby or the 15-year-old who told me how she watched her father die from a heart attack at age 40 with no health insurance. During a site visit, I’d cry when a black elderly woman with eyes that were as shiny as marbles, described her recovery from meth, and how she was trying to get her first job in computers now that she was clean. My heart melted with sadness and rage. Where were the supports for these people who suffered? Who or what do people turn to in their grief?
This feeling of sadness did not propel me forward to do more work; it made me vegetate and feel like there was no point to my 40-50 hours at the office. Despite the billions of dollars invested in social and policy change, there was no impact, no change. Human suffering etched itself in my heart, with every interaction. I could never forget it once I had witnessed it. It affected my sleep. I wanted to do something, be responsible for something aside from making pretty slides and writing research papers.
It’s why I became a writer and storyteller.
I couldn’t sleep from the weight of questions that had no answers. I fantasized about working in a place that made medical tubing, something neutral and inconsequential. Maybe I could work at a company that makes shampoo? Who could hate shampoo?
People love their shampoo more than Other people.
I was the Other. I could see myself in that grandma who was trying to restart her life after addiction, and I could see myself easily duped by a cute boy in high school and getting pregnant at the wrong age. I could see all the possible futures when I met these other people through my work.
I was a creative that absorbed other people’s stories. I could remember details in their faces and hands but not when the 12th draft of board deck was due. (This was probably due to sleep deprivation as a new parent).
I hated the part of myself that couldn’t turn my brain off, especially when I got home to my family.
I wanted to watch a few episodes of The Office or reruns of Seinfeld, just feel a little lighter for a moment before dozing off. That’s what a healthy person would do in the modern age. That’s what my friends and family advised me to do, as well. Relax. Eat another slice of pizza. Stop taking work so seriously.
Instead, I was the person who woke up with panic attacks. I also had a baby to nurse, so I was awake anyway, but instead of doing things like reading or watching a rom-com, I was consuming content that made it impossible to go back to sleep. The faces of the refugees who drowned, trying to flee their crumbling city. The world always felt like it was getting worse for Others, like me.
So, I stopped.
I left that career and narrowed my focus.
My focus narrowed so much from $12M projects about “equity” in my portfolio to my house and the people who lived in this home. The world shrank but it expanded in other ways. As a mother, I had a direct and irrefutable responsibility to these children, to ensure that they would not end up victims of boundless desire. I learned about mindful mothering, modeling my behavior, and being more conscious about what we consume as a family. I read voraciously, learning all kinds of things I didn’t have time for because of a 9-5 job.
When I started learning more about my faith, one of the first things that surprised me was the concept of dua or supplication.
Dua is the weapon of the believer.
Dua, the concept of asking God for something seemingly impossible, is something that I cannot quite explain with science or communications theory. Why does it work? How does dua work? What makes it useful? Why do people pray?
Asking for the Impossible
Asking for the impossible thing — God, please end this genocide, please grant victory to the people of Palestine, please forgive us for our complicity in this war as tax-paying American citizens — is worthwhile.
I wish I had the courage to go to jail like Ali or Thoreau or Gandhi for moral conscience. I wish I had the courage to get doxxed right now.
I have no moral courage at all.
I don’t even use my full name here, I am so scared.
I don’t reach out to my friends or colleagues from my past life, afraid to know their personal or political views. I haven’t logged into Facebook in 8 months.
But I do get up in the middle of the night, to make these pleas with God. I make these asks without any confidence or guarantee because I believe. It gives me, an insignificant person in this expanding universe, power because I am doing something as a writer. I’m telling the stories, and bearing witness to the horrific times we’re living through as Muslims, as people of faith united against oppression.
I can hear the part of my brain that asks, how does praying in the middle of the night actually change policy? None of the research, comms firms or think tanks would touch this question. It’s irrelevant, they’d say. Family is irrelevant, they’d say. There are some people (the non-experts) who are irrelevant when it comes to policy change, they’d say.
But I write this anyway, without requiring any evidence at all.
Thank you to
’s piece, “Living Together in Times of Moral Alienation” for inspiring this piece. I will restack it once I figure out how to do that. My writing is a first draft, so please excuse any errors.Today is my kids’ 100 Days of School and I have muffins to bake but I ask that you keep the people of Gaza and Palestine in your prayers.
And also, thanks to the beautiful gathering last night with the community of Dhikr and Fikr with Shaykh Yasir Fahmy. Being with a group of 300-400 people in one place, saying the same things, asking God for the same things is an incredible gift for the soul. I will reflect on that later…
Ugly Shoes, Paper Planes is a reader-supported publication. If you have the means and value my work as a Muslim mom becoming a digital creative and starting my author business here on Substack, I’d be so grateful if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber or upgrading your membership. It would mean the world to me!
Thank you for writing this, Sadia. It pulls at my heart because I have been there with you, questioning why is there so much suffering for such innocent beings? The images and stories coming out of Gaza are heart-wrenching and I know we’ve both cried out of sympathy and anguish for these fellow mothers, daughters, Muslims who are suffering in part to our funding of this war.
There are so many big feelings of anger and betrayal as Muslim Americans. Many of us voted for the people who are perpetrating this ongoing funding. Part of me wanted to share my hatred and disgust by disengaging. But I’ve come to the realization that in order for any of this to change, the opposite is required. If we’re not standing up and organizing so that those in power recognize they need us, we won’t be able to change much.
We will always need to pray, and the catharsis one feels in submitting to God and pleading with Him is an absolute necessity in these times. But we have to do more. As Americans with resources and access, we have to.
Thanks for writing this. There is a collective feeling of helplessness, sorrow and complicity in regards to the Palestinian genocide. We should do all we can to help, but you rightly identified prayer as a key — and often overlooked — factor. Your piece evoked a reflection on prayer by Ali Quli Qara'i that I'd like to share:
'Of all human communication, prayer is unique in some ways.
While all other communication is directed outwards and addressed to someone 'out there', prayer is addressed to Someone who is in some way inseparable from one's own self, who is not only near, but nearmost and most accessible, being, in the words of the Qur'an, "nearer to one than one's jugular vein' and so close as to be "interposed between one's self and heart."
While all other communication is addressed to some fellow creature, real or imaginary, prayer is addressed to the omnipresent and all-knowing Sustainer of the self and the universe, whose presence fills the inner environs of the mind and the soul as it does the physical cosmos.
Prayer takes recourse in this greatest Resource and Power. Therefore, it is not only the most potent and effectual act of speech one is capable of making, but also the most powerful and far-reaching action one is capable of performing.'
- Ali Quli Qarai, A Treasury of Islamic Piety.