Nigeria

Disclaimer: I tend to write a lot during exam season.

There is honestly no place I love like home.

No matter where I travel to, no matter how beautiful another city may be, no matter how organized another country seems, there is something about Nigeria, something about Arewa in particular, that continues to pull at my heart. It is the place that shaped me, raised me, gave me my people, my memories, my language, my faith, and my sense of belonging. There is no place I would rather be.

Yet loving something also means grieving it.

This newsletter has been a long time coming. In fact, I have avoided writing it for a while because I feared it would not be received the same way my newsletters about love, marriage, friendship or healing often are. Perhaps because talking about tragedy is uncomfortable. Perhaps because we have become so accustomed to hearing bad news that it barely registers anymore.

And maybe that is what scares me most.

Somewhere along the line, we became desensitized.

Our brothers are murdered, and we scroll. Families are displaced, and we scroll. People are kidnapped from their homes, from their farms, from roads they have travelled for years, and we scroll. Entire communities live in fear and somehow life goes on.

The news comes in waves now. Another attack. Another kidnapping. Another Janaaizah. Another family left behind. Another mother waiting for a child who may never return.

And because it happens so often, we have unconsciously (or consciously) trained ourselves to move on before we have even processed what happened.

Imagine a house slowly catching fire. The first spark would send everyone running for water. The second would create panic. The third would have everyone shouting for help.

But if the fire burned every single day for years, eventually some people would begin walking past it as though it belonged there. The fire would not become less dangerous. People would simply become used to seeing it.

That is what frightens me about us. Not the fact that terrible things happen. The fact that they happen so often that they no longer shake us.

I have often wondered why so many of our influencers never seem to use their influence. Why people with thousands, sometimes millions, of followers rarely speak about the suffering around them. Why our timelines can be full of entertainment while entire communities are grieving.

But recently I was forced to confront an uncomfortable realization. I was asking that question as though I was standing outside the circle. I wasn’t. I have a platform too. Perhaps not millions, but thousands. Over 3,000 people willingly subscribed to hear my thoughts. And if influence is simply the ability to reach people, then I have influence too.

The truth is that many of us are waiting for someone bigger to speak. Someone more qualified. Someone more powerful. Someone with a larger audience.

And while everyone is waiting, silence continues to grow. The Prophet ﷺ taught us that the believers are like one body. When one limb suffers, the entire body responds with sleeplessness and fever.

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6011, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2586

Yet I wonder whether we still feel each other’s pain the way we are supposed to. Because if your hand is injured, your eyes do not say, “That is not my problem.” If your foot is bleeding, your heart does not continue as though nothing happened. The entire body reacts. The entire body cares. The entire body responds.

So what does it mean when entire communities suffer and we feel nothing?What does it mean when Muslims are crying out and our greatest concern remains what outfit we will wear next week?

What does it mean when we know the names of celebrities but not the names of the people buried in our own communities?

This is not me pointing fingers. I am writing this because I am included in the “we.” I am guilty too.

Sometimes we feel so helpless that we convince ourselves there is nothing we can do. But perhaps we underestimate the weight of small actions.

Not everyone can donate. Not everyone can organize. Not everyone can advocate publicly. But every one of us can make du’a. And I think we often forget how powerful that is.

The companions understood something that we sometimes overlook: Allah is not limited by our limitations. When we cannot reach someone, Allah can. When we cannot protect someone, Allah can. When we cannot provide safety, Allah can. When we cannot change a situation, Allah can.

Yet some of us do not even mention our brothers and sisters in our du’as. We spend long moments asking Allah for our careers, our marriages, our exams, our businesses, our homes and there is nothing wrong with that. But how often do we ask Allah to protect those who sleep in fear? How often do we ask Him to return the kidnapped safely to their families? How often do we ask Him to grant patience to the grieving and relief to the oppressed?

The Ummah is not an abstract concept. It is not a slogan. It is a responsibility.

And perhaps one of the greatest victories of Shaytan is convincing us that someone else’s suffering is someone else’s problem.

It isn’t.

Every tragedy that strikes a believer should affect us in some way, even if all we can offer is a sincere du’a in the depths of the night. Because on the Day of Judgment, I do not want to stand before Allah and realize that I witnessed so much pain and responded with indifference.

I do not want to become so accustomed to hearing about loss that I forget how to grieve. I do not want my heart to become comfortable with what should break it.

And so this is my reminder to myself before it is a reminder to anyone else.

Talk about it. Pray about it. Care about it.

Do not let your heart become numb.

Because perhaps the greatest danger is not that darkness exists. It is becoming so familiar with the darkness that we stop searching for light.