Ramadan 2021/1442: Ramadan Kareem

Assalam alaikam all my dear readers,

I pray that this message finds you healthy, happy and that Allah (SWT) is pleased with you and accepts your good deeds.

This beautiful month is with us again, a month of opportunity and blessing. I can’t remember a time I felt less prepared to welcome this honoured guest into my home, but more keen to see it. After a year of worry, anxiety, and confusion and after seeing the grief of so many around me, this Ramadan feels like healing medicine.

After a year when so many faced such hardship, and I managed to keep working, school my child and keep my health, Ramadan feels like a time of deep thanksgiving and an opportunity to make intense dua for my brothers and sisters.

I pray this Ramadan, the Muslim community step up as always to serve, to help and to pray for others. But I also pray that the future is not too harsh for us, that we get through this time with our health, wellbeing, and livelihoods intact and with our iman (faith) in a better state than before.

If Allah (SWT) has tested us, he has sent us this blessed month full of opportunities to raise our taqwa (consciousness), to try and better ourselves and to turn to him for help and sustenance insh’Allah.

This Ramadan be gentle with yourself and kind to those around you, please remember me and my family in your dua’s and may Allah (SWT) have mercy on every brother and sister and all of humanity.

"Oh you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you many learn piety and righteousness" ~ Qur'an 2:183

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle (peace be upon him) said, “When the month of Ramadan starts, the gates of the heaven are opened and the gates of Hell are closed and the devils are chained.” ~ Bukhari - 31:123

The Prophet (peace be upon him) declared, 'Three men whose dua is never rejected (by Allah) are: the fasting person until he breaks his fast (in another narration, when he breaks fast), the just ruler and the one who is oppressed.' ~Ahmad, at-Tirmidhi – Hasan.