No new ayah today. Only a letter.
One of the teachers in this community wants to write to you directly. Not as a teacher. As a man who has walked the same road you are walking now.
My friend in Allah,
I remember the day I read Surah 43:61 with my eyes truly open.
I had recited it many times. I had heard it in the khutbah. It had passed through my mouth in Ramadan more than I could count. I thought I knew what it said.
That day I was alone in my room. The Qur’an was open in front of me. I read the ayah slowly.
وَإِنَّهُ لَعِلْمٌ لِلسَّاعَةِ فَلَا تَمْتَرُنَّ بِهَا وَاتَّبِعُونِ هَذَا صِرَاطٌ مُسْتَقِيمٌ
“And Issa shall be a Sign for the coming of the Hour. Therefore have no doubt about it, but follow Me. This is the Straight Way.”
Surah Az-Zukhruf 43:61 | quran.com/43/61
I closed the book. I opened it again. The ayah had not moved.
I will tell you honestly. I was afraid.
I was a respected man. I had studied. I had taught others. The thought that I had carried this book all my life and missed something this plain, that was painful to me. Something rose in my chest. I tried to push the ayah away.
The ayah would not be pushed away.
I went to my prayer mat. I did not speak in the beautiful phrases of the scholars. I spoke the way a child speaks to a father he is afraid of disappointing.
O Allah. You taught me to pray every day, show me the Straight Way. I have prayed it all my life. Today I have read in Your book what may be the answer. I am afraid of it. Show me what is true. Take away what is false. I cannot do this with my own mind. I need You to show me.
That was the prayer.
Allah did not answer in a vision. No voice came from the sky. He only gave me, slowly, the grace to read the Qur’an again. Ayah by ayah. Without my fear, and without my pride, and without the weight of what I had been taught about the text standing between me and the text itself.
What I found in that reading is what these lessons are passing to you. Nothing more. Nothing less. Only what is written.
If a question has been forming in you
I want to hear it.
We are not strangers. We are brothers and sisters in the same search. We have read the same book. We have prayed the same prayer. We have felt the same dust rise.
There is no question too small. No question too strange. No question too forbidden. We have asked them all ourselves.
We will not judge. We will not push. We will carry the question with you, and ask Allah together.
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Write to us. Tell us what has been rising in you. We will answer with care, in your language.
From the Injil
“Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door shall be opened.”
Injil, Matthew 7:7-8 | bible.com/bible/111/MAT.7.7-8
Allah does not turn away the honest soul. He does not shut the door on the open hand. The one who knocks finds it opened.
Knock, my friend. Bring your question to Allah first. And if it helps, bring it to us as well.
A Parable
At the edge of a quiet town stood a small house. An old man kept a candle burning every night.
His wife had gone to Allah long ago. His children had grown and moved to cities where there was work. Every night, after Isha, he read the Qur’an by candlelight. Slowly. Sometimes he stayed with a single ayah for an hour, turning it in his heart, asking Allah what it meant.
One winter night there was a knock at the door.
A young man stood outside. Cold. Afraid. He had been walking for many days. He had read something he did not understand. It was frightening him. He did not know where else to go.
The old man opened the door. He did not ask the young man’s name. He did not ask where he was from.
Come in, he said. Sit by the candle. There is tea on the stove. We will read together.
The young man sat. He drank the tea. He pulled from his pocket the ayah that had been troubling him and placed it on the table between them.
The old man picked it up. He read it. He smiled slowly.
I have known this ayah all my life, he said. We will read it together. We will not rush. Allah will show us.
They read. They prayed. They drank tea. They did not solve everything. But the young man went home knowing he was not alone in the question.
We are the old man.
The candle is lit. The tea is on the stove. The door is open.
What is the question you have been carrying since you began reading?
The one you have not said aloud even to yourself.
You do not have to answer it today. You only have to be honest that it is there.
Leave it with Allah tonight. If you are ready, bring it to us tomorrow.