What I’ve Been Up To

As salam alaikum dear Sisters and Brothers,

I hope you are all doing well with Allah’s remembrance. 🙂

I am sorry for being “missing in action” for a while. I have started teaching full-time at my children’s school. They needed a history teacher and it has kept me extremely busy.

It has been an overall good experience, Alhamdulillah. I live in Northern Iraq (Kurdish region) so I have been teaching a mixture of Kurdish and Turkish children (it’s a school run by Turkish people).

Since I have been busy, it has been a less spiritual phase of life for me. But I try to remember Allah (swt) as much as possible, infuse Islamic ideas in my teaching, and treat people with kindness just like our Prophet (pbuh) taught us.

I think it’s totally normal to have less “spiritual” phases of life. We shouldn’t feel like we are “bad” if our spiritual feelings are not as high as before. In the end, Islam is about remembering Allah and treating people well. A person who prays a lot but treats people badly will be bankrupt on the day of Judgment.

Another activity that I am involved in is called an empathy circle. Every 2 weeks, I meet a group on zoom and we practice showing empathic listening to each other. It’s actually very therapeutic and helps you to feel more connected with others. It’s totally free, so if you are interested in joining this empathy circle, which lasts for 2 hours per meeting (every other Tuesday), please email me at howtobeahappymuslim@outlook.com and I will put your email on the mailing list.