Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Thank you participating in the session with your questions.

Please find the 4 questions to which our counselor provided answers. If you do not find yours here, check out our upcoming session or submit it there again.

Thank you for your understanding.

Question 1. Feeling disconnected from Allah

I was indulged in sin for a long time. Even though, it never felt quite right, I was sadly too busy pleasing someone other than Allah. Now that I want to repent and I am repenting, I cannot feel a thing. I am performing the 5 daily prayers, but it seems like I am not doing it out of love, rather out of fear of being exposed for my sins. I have also been diagnosed with OCD, so I cannot really move on easily from fear and things that bother me. And I have been kind a diagnosed with depression. It’s as if my heart has turned to stone. I can’t cry. I just want to feel love for Allah. What should I do? Jazakallahu khayran.

Answer:

Salam alaikom wa rahmatullah, sister,

Thank you for turning to us and sharing your struggle.

You certainly did the right thing when you gave up sinning, sister; there is no doubt about that. As you said, pleasing someone other than Allah does lead us astray, and we pay the price of losing inner contentment and peace on the way.

Now, you are externally back on track—doing your 5 daily prayers—but inside you “cannot feel a thing”. You say you are not doing it out of love but out of fear of being exposed for your sins.

Let me stop here for a moment.

If you have left behind your past and sinful behavior, it is time to move on, dear sister. We all sin and commit errors. Repentance and sincere forgiveness are the keys, along with a commitment to stop sinful behavior.

„As for those who repent afterwards and mend their ways, then surely Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (Quran 3:89)

After this, life goes on, and you may not experience a huge emotional and spiritual shift right then. You may feel the burden of guilt fall, but it may take time until you find comfort and real contentment in your worship.

So, what I first suggest is to take your time. Keep up your practice and do not focus overly on each emotion you feel or the past sins you committed. Try not to think about it too much, as what happened is in the past.

Just trust that you are doing the right thing, and with time you will also feel that. It is the promise of Allah in the Quran, so believe that. Just turn to Allah and share with Him your fears while trusting in His Mercy. You can also start doing regular dhikr and supplications—turn to Him with your own words and ask Him for inner peace and strength. These activities will help you, in sha Allah, feel him closer to you.

Try to occupy your present with more positive, uplifting experiences that make you realize that you do deserve the mercy and forgiveness of Allah. Look around for activities and good deeds you can do: is there a charity around, a volunteer work, helping with the elderly or the youth? Find a meaningful activity and participate in it regularly.

Along with that, you may start a diary where you note your daily good deeds and worship. Reward yourself for them. Realize and recognize how much you do for the sake of Allah in the present.

If you start doubting or thinking about the past, ask yourself: Is there evidence that now you are on the right track? If you are doubting, just check your diary and read through the daily worship and good deed lists.

You said that you were diagnosed with OCD. Are you currently under treatment? If not, and you are still struggling with obsessive thoughts that you cannot control and that take over your life, please seek treatment.

The professional will decide about possible medication and therapy, or possibly a combination of both. This is something that can help you a lot to control your thoughts and learn to cope with them in the long run.

I am not sure what you mean by being diagnosed with depression. You may have symptoms like feelings of depression, sadness, hopelessness, lack of sleep or the opposite, weight gain or the opposite, and a lack of energy and motivation. These feelings can also affect your spiritual life and worship and may cause the apathy (“not feeling a thing”) you talked about in your letter.

In this case, you may not notice a significant change in your mood with these tips, as there is an underlying mental health issue behind your struggle that also manifests in your spiritual life.

However, until you get a professional assessment and diagnosis, it is unclear. So, I kindly ask you to seek help, especially because with an official diagnosis, you can start a proper treatment as soon as possible and have improvement in your spiritual life too.

May Allah help you with this.

Question 2. How do I become closer to my parents?

Peace be upon you Ms. Ilham. In 2018 my younger and only sister passed away from cancer. She was 26 years old. May Allah grant her Paradise. I miss her very much. My parents immigrated from a warn torn country to the USA when we were little girls. We only had one another and grew up together. Two weeks after my sister passed away, I gave birth to my first child, my daughter. I was mentally drained. I didn’t know whether to be happy for the birth of my daughter or to grieve my sister. I felt guilty from my daughter and from my sister in whatever emotion I chose. My parents became very attached to my daughter. I felt forgotten by everyone. When my daughter was born, my father was on the phone with his brother announcing his granddaughter as “little (my sister’s name) has come to us. When hearing those words, I believe that I was traumatized more then my sisters passing and more than my daughters birth. And I let it go thinking he is just enjoying his first granddaughter. But it got worse over time. They started to compare my daughter to my sister whenever my daughter did something as a a baby, or on her skin, her eyes and her hair. I had a two-year-old little boy now as well. But I feel that my parents play favorites with my children. My daughter is now 4 years old and I see the different treatment that they get. I have tried talking to them about it but it is denied. I don’t know if I am being gaslit. Maybe I am making an “elephant out of an ant.” I feel that I haven’t had the chance to grieve my sister and accept that Allah, the most Merciful, has taken her to the real world. I am confused. I want a close relationship with my parents. I love them dearly and have so much respect for them but I feel in my heart that I am not receiving it. I pray every night to Allah to take these thoughts away from me.  What should I do?

Answer:

Peace be upon you, dear sister,

Thank you for contacting me and sharing your story. It was honestly very saddening to read about the loss of your sister. May Allah bless her soul.

That must be a great source of pain and a test for all the family.

Normally, a loss is supposed to be followed by a grieving period, when you and her loved ones come to terms with her passing.

This is a process that takes time and has different stages where you may experience a variety of emotions, including sadness, pain, frustration, and anger. There is no fixed period for these stages; they vary from person to person and situation to situation.

In your case, this may not have happened as it was supposed to, unfortunately, as two weeks after her passing, you gave birth to your daughter, subhanallah.

That must have been a very intense period, dear sister. It must have required great strength to deal with your mixed and contradicting feelings about becoming a mother, nurturing a newborn baby who is your first child, and grieving your recently deceased sister.

I really understand what you wrote about your feelings of guilt for any emotion you chose. I also understand that you wrote that you did not have the chance to grieve for your sister and accept that Allah has taken her away.

And probably this is something that should happen, even after 5 years, to be able to find peace regarding the qadr of Allah. So, I am not sure whether you have tried counseling, but I would definitely try to contact someone specialized in grief who can talk to you and share your story.

That would be important not only for your own well-being but also for your relationships within the family. Maybe it would be beneficial if you were able to unpack those emotions and feelings you experienced during that period and what you might have carried on since then.

So, I kindly advise you to turn to someone and seek talk therapy.

And this is also something relevant to your parents, who became grandparents right after losing their daughter. It seems that the whole family is still affected, which is very understandable but also desirable to find peace with what happened.

Probably their pain was not processed properly either. There might be hurt feelings there too, and they probably unintentionally or unconsciously channel those energies towards your daughter. That may have been their way of coping with the suffering.

I agree with you that comparing your daughter with your sister is not the best thing to do, and it may make things worse.

I am sure they did not intend to hurt you along the way; they just had no means to deal better with the situation.

I am not sure whether you have ever tried to talk to them about this. I know that it can be a sensitive topic and painful for all of you, but still, I kindly recommend trying to bring it back to the plate, as you, as a whole family, need healing.

This would answer your question about how you can get closer to them. I think being able to talk about your feelings and about theirs, about how all this affected you and them, and about your needs of wanting to feel them close to you, would improve your relationship.

Involving a third party would be a good idea to manage the situation and direct the conversation. You may try family counseling or meditation. A professional who is not emotionally involved or affected can certainly be a source of help.

During these sessions, you might talk together about this tragedy, about how to deal with the loss and the mixed and transferred feelings, and about how to separate your daughter and her place in the family from your sister.

You love your parents, and I am sure that they also love you. You say you feel like you are not receiving their love.

I am not sure whether you have always felt this way or only since her sister’s passing. If it is the latter, it might have to do with their grief, their tragic experiences, and their future fears. So again, counseling would help with getting closer to each other, understanding the qadr of Allah, and coping with her possible fears about losing you too.

I am sharing some sources from our site about grief, I hope you find them beneficial:

I Have Lost My Brother; How to Cope with It Islamically?

Missing My Sister So Much…Help!

4 Keys to Overcoming Loss of Any Kind

May Allah bring you and to your whole family ease, may Allah bless you and help you with this, ameen.

Question 3. My husband regrets marrying so fast after he broke it off with his EX

Hi, I have been married for about 4 years now, at first my relationship with my husband has been like a dream but a year later I feel like everything went down.

I married my husband 6 months after getting to know him, we fell in love, had so much respect for each other and filled with life. It didn’t seem like he had any problems then.

I started working in a hospital so 8 hrs a day most days – barely see him as much- and he was working from home due to COVID. I caught him once doing drugs at home and I was so shocked as he is a “religious” person. I was so mad and angry and wanted to leave him as I felt like I don’t know that person I married…We talked it out and it seems like it was something he was doing before we got married but stopped as he knew it was “haram”. He promised that he would not do it ever again. And he didn’t want to lose me and the whole reason why he was doing that was because he felt stressed of his job and his bad past that he can’t get over.

He told me that this drug was something he used to take before he got religious and doing it make him closer to religion and see stuff that he can’t explain…it opened his eyes that this life is not worth it and he wanted to be a strict Muslim. Mind you that as he grew up, he never used to pray and be religious at all.

This was his first time telling me about his past, how he used to date a Muslim girl and they did everything “haram” together and once he become religious. Because of he saw things he never seen anything before he decided that he wanted to change his life for the better and pray on time and fast and so on..

He tried talking to his ex to become a good and hijabi Muslim but she didn’t understand how he flipped 180 and she told him that she will but with time.

But he said that he didn’t want to wait for her to become a better Muslim as he wanted her there and then so he left her…

He met me shortly after and we got to know each other and we married 6 months in… but I bought him doing drugs two times and how he keeps contact with his ex and wants to marry her as a second wife. Because he feels guilt that he left her like that and he wants to make her a better Muslim than she is right now.

Surprisingly she was fine of being a 2nd wife but makes me so mad that how they talk to each other behind my back.

The reason I find that out is that because he told me about that as he feels guilt that he does that but the other times I caught him… of course I am against him marrying her because I feel like they both did my wrong.

I did nothing as a wife and always was there for him through everything and kept forgiving him for everyone he broke my heart.

He does show a lot of sympathy and empathy but we had a lot of fights about it and I can’t seem to trust him anymore.

He told me that he does not do any drugs anymore and how much he regrets that did even after becoming religious…it’s been a year and half since he did…but breaks my heart to see how he keeps thinking about his ex and how much he regrets that he made her go away from deen, as he thinks he is to blame for.

His ex knows that he is married and don’t know why she talks to a married guy and breaks other people relationship.

He still shows me respect and says that he loves me but it is not like how it first started and I feel like we are just roommates.

I don’t know what to do, a part of me wants to leave but another part of me wants to stay. He told me many times that he regrets rushing into marriage and wish he dealt with his past before moving on.

He says that he married me for his mom because I am the type of girl that she would like…

Also, told me that he is not happy with life and makes the days just go by and just go get by because he does not feel happy and feel at loss that he can’t get what he wants.

Breaks my heart to see him like this.

He told me that he loved her so much and still have feelings for her and wish things were differently but does not want to leave me as he does not have problems with me but don’t want to ruin my life too.

Answer:

Salam alaikom, dear sister,

Thank you for turning to us.

You relate the current situation to your husband. It is unfortunately not as “dreamy” as it was at the beginning when you met. As you relate, after 6 months, you got married, and everything was fine before and after for a year.

Since then, you’ve had some very honest conversations when he related things about his past.

You caught him doing drugs, which he admitted to using before your marriage. But according to him, he does not take them anymore. He also said that with drugs, he saw things that made him closer to the deen. He chose to quit it, knowing it was haram, and became more committed to the deen, alhamdulillah.

He also talked about her ex-girlfriend and his past relationship with her. According to him, he wanted her to become a good Muslimah but also did not want to wait for her, so he decided to leave her. And he says that he regrets this and blames himself for not helping her move away from sin.

These are some of the main points from your letter. Sister, on the one hand, it seems that you have quite honest communication about his feelings and wishes. It reflects transparency and open talk about his inner struggles.

I have to point out an important statement: “He regrets rushing into marriage and wishes he dealt with his past before moving on.”

Unfortunately, this is something that can undeniably be the source of marital conflict, even after the best start. We counselors usually emphasize the need to reflect on past experiences and give ourselves enough time to move on emotionally before starting a new chapter in our lives.

Sister, what you present here is actually more about the struggles of your husband, although you suffer the consequences of them. As you said, you did not do anything as a wife in this marriage that could have led to this situation. And I second this: what I can read here is primarily something he needs to deal with and reflect on regarding his past, his decisions, his commitment to them, and his actual situation and sentiments.

It would be great to hear his side too, but as you wrote this letter, I will try to see what you can do in this situation.

First, I recommend marriage counseling. You, as a married couple, need to think about what your marriage is about and what it gives and means to both of you. What do you need as individuals and as a couple, and what are the hopes and feelings that do not belong to the present and to this relationship?

It would also be important to separate the past from the present, especially for him. What happened has already passed. Then he committed himself to this marriage with you. His decision was deliberate, and no one forced him, as far as I understand. He willingly closed his past and chose to be with you.

So, it also requires a form of commitment and fidelity to his decision, as well as fighting past feelings for the sake of this marriage and Allah. But it is something that needs to be discussed with him or together in a marital counseling session.

In your letter, you detail more of his thoughts and what happened and write less about how you feel and what you want.

You say it breaks your heart to see him like this. I understand that you feel for him, but, dear sister, what about you?

Do you love him? Do you want to be with him? Are you happy in this marriage and would like to spend your time with him, having family together? These are important questions to think about, regardless of his stance on this situation.

Marriage counseling would help him and both of you come to terms with the conflicting feelings and find answers to these questions.

If you both love each other and believe in this relationship, you can learn how to close the past, move on, and deal with these struggles successfully.

So I kindly ask you to seek counseling where you can talk together about this challenging situation. Also, keep your conversation honest without harming each other’s feelings. Talk about him, but talk about you too. Try to overcome this as a couple. May Allah help you with that.

Question 4. Born Muslim with the upbringing of a revert

Assalamu Alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatu

I was born into a family that is Muslim by name, but the only practicing one growing up, was my mother, may Allah be pleased with her.

I don’t blame my family, but the truth is, Islam was not taught to me very accurately.  I was taught the shortest surahs as a child, but I did not understand the formal Arabic of the Quran.  I was taught what was haram, and that those who commit haram acts go to hell, but that was all.  I was not even taught of repentance, I thought that was a Christian concept.  I didn’t understand a single thing during prayer, and it felt like a big performance. 

And i was filled with nothing but fear of Allah, to the extent i became an atheist, out of both fear and lack of knowledge of Islam.

It was not until recently when i researched Islam for myself, without any cultural influence, that i understood the religion, and became a believer in Allah. I was truly lost, and he guided me, alhamdullilah.

My concern is that after years of neglecting Salah, and committing kuffur, is it possible to be forgiven? When non-muslims revert to Islam, all of their sins are wiped away, and they are like new born babies. Can the same mercy be applied to me? I consider myself a revert because i was never taught islam correctly, but should i pray all of the prayers i missed over the years? or am i only responsible for the salah i pray when i became a true muslim? Jazakallah kheir. 

Answer:

Salam alaikom wa rahmatullah, dear sister,

Thank you for contacting us.

What you present in your letter is unfortunately not uncommon.

There are Muslims who were born into a Muslim family yet have little knowledge about the deen and do not practice Islam, or just do it occasionally or superficially. Whether in the West or in Muslim-majority countries, you find Muslim families that, little by little, get far away from Islam.

I think in all families you can observe this diversity in adherence to faith, as not everyone is equally spiritual or religious at a given moment. I am saying “given moment”, because until our last breath we have the opportunity to turn to Allah and fully embrace faith, so always have hope that in one day, those less practicing members will become stronger too in their faith and practice.

The hadith says that every child is born Muslim, but their parents make them Jews, Christians, etc. and divert them from Islam:

“The mother of every person gives him birth according to his true nature. It is subsequently his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Magian.” Sahih Muslim 2659a

While the hadith mentions Judaism, Christianity, and Magian. But it can be extended to environmental and cultural influences in general, so-called social influences in psychology.

In this sense, it applies to born-Muslims too, as they can also be influenced and diverted from the religion and its proper understanding.

And the hadith continues:

“Had his parents been Muslims, he would have also remained a Muslim.“

But this does not mean Muslim by name, but by action. Being born into a family where Islam is the religion is not a guarantee of true belief and understanding.

Islam is a way of life, subhanallah. It is a complete religion that covers all aspects of life and perfectly fit human nature. It is much more than a label or a series of rituals; it has concepts (like, for example, forgiveness) that work as shields on multiple levels.

And we were granted free will by Allah, and it also means a responsibility to take a journey and search for the truth once we reach maturity. For non-Muslims, this is the process of searching, finding, and embracing Islam, while for born Muslims, it is realizing and confirming their conviction in the oneness of Allah and in the prophethood of Muhammad, peace be upon him.

This is what happened to you, dear sister. Although you were born into a Muslim family, you did not receive a deeper education about Islam. But once you reached maturity, you started your own discovery journey, realized the beauty and complexity of the religion, and consciously and deliberately chose to follow it from now on.

This can be considered a very similar experience to that of those who embrace Islam. So, by saying your sahada now with your own conviction and certainty, you are beginning a new chapter in your life.

And Allah says that He forgives all our sins if we truly repent and change our past behavior (or attitude toward faith and religion):

“Those who repent afterwards and mend their ways, then surely Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (Quran 24:5)

And he also says that we are not accountable for our deeds until we reach maturity:

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) has stated this, “The pen has been raised for three persons (meaning they are not held accountable for what they do): one who is sleeping until he gets up, a child until he reaches the age of puberty, and an insane person until he becomes sane.” (Ahmad, Abu Dawud, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nasa’i, Ibn Majah, and Al-Hakim)

In light of this, my answer to your question is that, alhamdulillah, there is no need to worry as you can be forgiven for your ignorance, in sha Allah.

Allhamdulillah, you were gifted with real interest, understanding, and faith. May Allah keep your heart on the right path, ameen.

So, what I advise you is to focus on the present and on your religion now, in the present. Keep learning about Islam and practicing the deen.

Try also to be around like-minded, practicing Muslims, but always keep your kindness with your parents and family.

You say you do not blame them, and I think that is a good approach so please, keep up with it.

You never know; may Allah make you the one who will help them find their way back to the deen through your help, in sha Allah.

So be always nice to them and let your good manners and character reflect the true Islamic ways of life.

Find some additional readings on the topic here: Born Muslim vs Born Non-Muslim: Unfair?! New Muslims Are Muhajireen and Born Muslims Are Ansar  Wiping Away Sins with Islam