True success means serving Allah

For the dinner table

Mufti Hussain Kamani told the story of Sumayyah, the first martyr in Islam, who had no tribe to protect her and no one to buy her freedom, yet refused to give up her faith even when the Prophet could only call to her from the sidelines: be patient, your appointment is Paradise. He reminded us that the Prophet's mission began with one believer and, after twenty-three years of sacrifice, stood before over a hundred thousand people, because behind every success there is a tremendous sacrifice. He challenged us not to live as slaves to careers, houses, and cars, drifting from school to work to retirement, only to wonder at sixty what we did with our lives. Instead, every prayer and every act of dhikr is a chance to unplug from the dunya and plug back into being a servant of Allah. And like the poet Iqbal told a broken and colonized world, we are not common birds nesting on a palace dome, we are falcons made for the peaks of mountains, so we should believe we can do more than we are doing right now.