I am humbled...

*This is the website where I found the photos of the Atlas Mountains in Tunis.*

As a convert, we always hear (and agree in our hearts) that we have given up so much to become Muslim. Often we lose family and friends, sometimes our livelihood, and are treated like strangers in our own country. Alhamdulillah we are happy and grateful to make that sacrifice but really inside we feel pretty proud of ourselves, looking at what we have given up for Islam.

My husband was just preparing for Jumah prayer and he said, "Alhamdulillah. Sometimes we forget the mercies of Allah." Of coures I asked what he meant specifically by that. He related the following story to me:

"When I was a young man in Tunis a group of like-minded brothers and I went around the countryside, giving dawah. Many times we had to sleep in inhospitable conditions. I remember sleeping in the mountains once in the winter and all we had to cover ourselves were plastic bags. We lay there, shivering all night long. When fajr came I was washing myself with water and by the time I finished the water around me had started to freeze. Just now, as I was taking my hot shower, I remembered that cold morning and and it reminded me how ungrateful we are for the bounties from Allah."

Subhanallah.

As my husband was telling me this I was thinking to myself, I am sure I would have just made tayyamum (ablution without water) and begged the rahma of Allah. I would not have doused myself with near-freezing water on that frigid morning. I would have never slept on the cold, hard ground and risked my freedom and life to bring the word of Allah to those who had forgotten it.

Of course he related more than that to me; look up human rights in places Tunisia, Syria and Libya and you will find stories of torture and state-sanctioned police brutality. These atrocities occur in so-called "Islamic" countries. This is the price you pay for being a practicing Muslim and daring to remind others of their responsibility to Allah.

May Allah have mercy in this life AND the next on those who suffer in His cause, who put the eternal souls of their brothers and sisters above the comforts of this world. Amin.