“I DON'T worry about things like that,” the woman said, waving her hand dismissively at me. She sat opposite me at the small table that the school’s maids had dragged outside into the assembly area hours before to use for the parent-teacher conference.

Moments before, she had asked my opinion on her daughter traveling alone to America to attend a university where her daughter had won a full scholarship. Her daughter would live on campus, but they had no family or close friends in the city, or country. The mother and father would remain in Saudi Arabia, where they had lived for many years.

When she had asked, I felt tightness in my chest. We had been discussing schoolwork, and how well her daughter was doing academically. This query had been off-topic, to say the least, and it was wholly unexpected.

I had been silent momentarily. But when our eyes met, I could see she really wanted some advice. I didn’t feel completely comfortable responding, especially since offering my personal advice was not a required part of the parent-teacher conference.

But it was a required part of our religion.

“The religion is good advice.” The words of the Prophet, sallallaahu’alayhi wa sallam, came to me, and I knew I couldn’t remain silent.

In that moment, I had thought of the woman’s daughter, her beautiful smile and bright eyes as she talked to me about something from my lesson that had inspired her spiritually. I thought too of how her daughter, like several other students, was struggling with being regular in her prayers and with wearing hijab. My mind’s eye transferred that same beautiful face and innocence to an American college campus.

My heart grew heavy.

What was it that my husband had said that day when we were talking about how difficult it was to remain on the right path?

“Shaytaan has a way of seeking out innocence in people and destroying it completely.”

“Well,” I said, exhaling. I let my gaze fall to the light blue grade book in front of me, and I arranged some papers next to it. I lifted my gaze and looked beyond her, the sounds of other parents and teachers talking at nearby tables becoming distant right then.

In that moment I remembered how it had been to live on campus when I was in school. It hadn’t been easy, though my carefree youthful zeal and ever-active status in the MSA and in da’wah events would have prevented me from seeing my spiritual struggles as such at the time.

And I had family living minutes away.

And I had been praying and covering.

“The thing I worry about,” I said, unsure how to put my thoughts into words (for some thoughts simply do not have words), “is her emaan.”

I had to tread carefully and choose my words wisely. The modern thinking that emphasized the necessity of high marks and Western degrees and trivialized the necessity of practicing Islam openly was still new to me. I didn’t understand it.

As indigenous Americans, my parents had grown up Christian and embraced Islam the year I was born, and it was all I had known. Islam had been the heart of my upbringing—and the heart of my academic success as a high school and college student. It had never occurred to me that there was, or even could be, any contradiction between being academically successful, in America or elsewhere, and being outwardly Muslim at the same time.

But I was learning. This was a world in which I only marginally belonged. I was a stranger. And although I knew of the hadith in which strangers are given glad tidings for being just that, I didn’t feel any solace at that moment.

I didn’t like being a stranger, and among Muslims—in an Islamic society. This was made all the more uncomfortable since my strangeness was due to, of all things, encouraging Muslim students to pray and cover.

I’d imagined, when I’d read the hadith about strangers, that you had to do something remarkable, maybe even phenomenal, and most certainly beyond the Islamic basics, to earn the status of “strangeness” that could earn you glad tidings from Allah.

But now I wasn’t so sure…

I drew in a deep breath. “It’s not easy there,” I told the mother, “Islamically, I mean. The people are nice, but a lot of Muslims don’t make it.”

I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t get the image of her daughter’s innocent face from my mind. “A lot of them just leave Islam.”

I exhaled, relieved that I had found the words. “So no,” I said with a thoughtful shake of my head, “I don’t recommend it. It’s not easy to practice Islam there.”

“I don’t worry about things like that,” she had said in response, waving a hand at me. “As long as you have strong emaan, you don’t have to worry about doing anything wrong.”

I didn’t want to point out the obvious—that not praying regularly was wrong, not wearing hijab was wrong, and even sending a young Muslim woman alone halfway across the world with no family or mahram was wrong—so I just smiled and nodded, and said what I shouldn’t have.

Because it was a lie.

“That’s true.”

Then I returned to the topic of her daughter’s schoolwork.

“We had to learn emaan.”

I put the book down. This simple reflection from one of the Companions of the Prophet was a revelation to me. And it gave me pause. I needed time to digest it.

I stood up and paced my bedroom, where I had been reading. I couldn’t relax. These words had changed something for me. But I couldn’t fully comprehend it, at least not then.

As a youth, I’d never thought of faith as something you learned. It was something you had. It was like academic acumen, or even something deep in your heart. It was just there. Whether you chose to use it or not was up to you.

But never did you have to acquire it, or work for it.

And you certainly didn’t have to learn it.

Yes, you could learn Islamic knowledge, and details about how to pray and fast.

But you didn’t learn faith…

Of course, I was wrong. As I had been for all of my youth and adulthood up until that moment.

We had to learn emaan.

Had I learned it? The thought troubled me.

But how could I have learned something that I’d assumed I already possessed, and in totality? Like the mother I’d speak to at a parent-teacher conference many years later—in a land in which I never imagined I’d live one day —at that time in my life, I had no worry about faith or doing anything to jeopardize it.

Yes, I was human and could make mistakes (as I often did). But making mistakes was human. But faith was faith. You couldn’t lose it.

Yes, you could let go of it… if you felt the world offered something better, but you couldn’t lose it.

…We had to learn emaan.

But how does one even go about such a task? I wondered.

From what I was reading, it was clear that the Companion was not speaking about any book learning or even study circles with the Prophet—at least not these study sessions alone, although the latter was certainly a fundamental part of this learning for those early Muslims.

He was speaking of faith like one speaks about….What was the word I was looking for?

Patience.

Yes, that was it.

Patience. Learning emaan was, in essence, like learning patience, he was saying, although the Companion hadn’t used this analogy.

It was the context, his explanation—his very life, that made this analogy an apt one.

SubhaanAllaah, I thought, halting my pacing to reflect on the profundity of this Companion’s words.

A person could read a million books on patience and compose at least as many related quotes. And still not know the least about the reality of patience…if he didn’t implement it, daily, into his life…

A single moment of anger, a single moment of frustration, or a single moment of giving up—or in—could mean the loss of every bit of it in his heart.

“I’m a pretty patient person…” I remembered people saying often—usually moments before adding that inevitable but, explaining an incident that had occurred during which they just couldn’t “stand it” any longer because of some annoying person or another…

Or was it I who often said that? I couldn’t remember...

…“I thought I was a patient person,” one of my sisters had told me once, a slight chuckle in her voice. Her thoughtful reflection was apparent even in her humor, and I could almost feel her personal struggle, even though we were miles apart as she spoke into the receiver of her phone and I listened on the other end. “Until I got married…”

I laughed in agreement. But it was a laugh of discomfort—that scratchy, intangible uneasiness that makes you shift in your place, pull at a piece of lint on your clothes, or put the phone to the other ear—anything to distract yourself from that heaviness of self-realization growing in your heart.

I pulled at a piece of thread on my skirt…

….Patience was not something you had. It was something you had to learn.

And the lessons never ended.

It was at the moment you thought your learning had ended when you had lost all hope for patience in truth…

For there was no moment where you suddenly became a “patient person” and lived “happily ever after.”

Patience was there firmly one moment, and in the next, you felt it slipping…and in another moment, it was simply…gone.

Yep, it’s true, you could get it back…

If you lived long enough to make amends—with your own heart and soul. But who was guaranteed such second chances in life?

…The theory of patience—the kind you learn in books and in study circles—was certain. It was firm, even unequivocal and definitive.

But the reality of patience—the kind you had to learn to live, even in (if not especially in) moments where you just couldn’t “stand it” anymore—was uncertain. It was volatile.

It was never firm or unwavering enough to warrant one giving such a solid ascription as “patient” to oneself…

And so it was with emaan.

...I don’t worry about things like that...

The mother’s dismissive words stayed with me even as I rode silently back home that night. The streets were dark except for the glowing lights from passing cars and street lights lining the roads. I stared out the side window from where I sat alone in the backseat, my driver dutifully silent as he drove.

I thought of something else I should have said to the mother, I thought of many things in fact, but I knew the parent-teacher conference wasn’t the right pace. Besides, there hadn’t been time. Other mothers were waiting to speak to me.

That’s true, I had said weakly, not wanting to argue.

But did I have to say that? It was completely untrue.

In a Qudsi hadith, Allah says,

“I do not combine two states of fear or two states of safety for My servants,

So whoever feels safe from Me in this world,

I will cause him to fear Me on the Day of Judgment.

And whoever fears Me in this world,

I will cause him to feel safe from Me on the Day of Judgment.”

As long as you have strong emaan, the words echoed in my mind as the car engine hummed gently as I neared my home, you don’t have to worry about doing anything wrong.

No, I thought to myself, although the woman would never know my true response—or hear this good advice. Those with strong emaan—whoever they were, for only Allah knew the reality of the hearts, as this was hidden from a person himself even though it lay in his own breast—they were in constant worry about doing wrong.

And they certainly did do wrong at times.

But they constantly repented and corrected themselves. And even thereafter, they ever lived in a state of fear—fear of Allah.

Fear for their emaan.

It was only these people who would feel safe on the Day of Judgment.

Meanwhile, the rest of us preferred the façade of strength, which was the height of weakness—of oneself and one’s emaan, reassuring ourselves that we were okay, that we weren’t so bad, we’d done the best we could. This, so we could go to our comfortable lives and warm homes…

I got out of the car and walked to the door of my house, feeling relaxed and safe already, mentally putting behind me the conversation I’d had with the mother. It’s okay, I told myself. I’d done the best I could.

That’s true, I’d said.

But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true at all.

Once inside, I relaxed on my couch, relieved to be home… In that moment of calm, thoughts came to me—thoughts of patience, thoughts of emaan...

I started to feel that heaviness of self-realization growing uncomfortably in my heart…

And I pulled at a piece of lint on my abaya…

…So we could feel safe in this world.

Because it made us imagine we’d also feel safe on the Day of Judgment.

Umm Zakiyyah is the internationally acclaimed author of the novels If I Should Speak, A Voice, Footsteps, and Realities of Submission. To contact her, write to ummzakiyyah@yahoo.com or join her Facebook page.

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