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Going to work, coming home from work and eating alone had become my daily ritual. It was also a lonely time and I had become impatient for a friendly face and company. My mother was coming over tomorrow, and I was counting the hours.<\/p>\nGoing to work, coming home from work and eating alone had become my daily ritual. It was also a lonely time and I had become impatient for a friendly face and company. My mother was coming over tomorrow, and I was counting the hours.<\/p>\n
Fatima and I talked daily, and she together with Umme constantly apologised for not being with me during my first Ramadan. Having online \u201cfriends\u201d didn’t help with the loneliness, but I remember my mother saying that sometimes you can be surrounded by people, but you would still be lonely.<\/p>\n
With only a few people within my circle, I had to ensure that they were good for my soul and not just in my life to fill a gap. But as I didn’t venture out much, it had become more difficult to meet people.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay Sam, stop feeling sorry for yourself\u201d, I scolded as I looked through my list of things to do. It was dull and gloomy outside adding to my already grey outlook.<\/p>\n
A soft rain began to fall and with it came the earthy smell of the soil, reminding me of rebirth, newness, and Allah’s blessings. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with gratitude for the barakah Allah had bestowed upon me.<\/p>\n
Mum used to tell me that I should make a point of being thankful for one thing each day, to appreciate the many things we were given. I sat, looking out the window, and thanked Allah for my many blessings, especially for being a Muslim, algamdoelillah.<\/p>\n
How do I thank Allah for His many bounties? That was a question I needed an answer to and Mualimah was the person who would have an answer for me.<\/p>\n
Mualimah walked me through the steps of Salat-al-Shukr, she went on to say that The Prophet (PBUH) performed the salah upon the conquest of Makkah. She also said that when one expresses his\/her gratitude to Allah, Allah increases his bounties upon that person.<\/p>\n
I prayed the 2 rakah, with sincerity and a sense of joy enveloped me as I thought of every single thing that Allah had favoured me with, my family, Fatima, a job, my home and so much more. But knowing that Allah had bestowed the best blessing of all brought tears of joy to my eyes.<\/p>\n
The grey feeling had dissipated, and I felt peaceful, happy. Allah is Ash Shakooru the one who accepts gratitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Going to work, coming home from work and eating alone had become my daily ritual. It was also a lonely time and I had become impatient for a friendly face and company. My mother was coming over tomorrow, and I was counting the hours. Fatima and I talked daily, and she together with Umme constantly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mumtaz-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/BLOG-Muslimah-Navigating-Islam.png?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pc0QIf-cJR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 00:23:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}