Mommying While Muslim

01/02/2026

🥳🥳🥳Happy New Year!

2025 was hard for me. I'm so grateful for a new year, new slate and I pray yours is even better than I pray for you all.

There's a short "episode" today. Big kudos to running for Texas Comptroller. Do BIG things, y'all, even if you have to do them scared. 🙌🏾🙌🏾

⚠⚠ BUT a warning to those in the DMV: Swipe left to witness those closest to Allah, who can't communicate with words. And then listen to what I reported about behavior and their refusal to make reasonable, long lasting reparations via .

Send them a message and find other planners who don't just do their jobs, they care about and practice DEI. Our faith requires that we be DEI, and of course, the West has colonized the term for our way of life. We are all accountable to Allah, especially when we wrong the most vulnerable among us.

No, I don't call out women, but I have zero tolerance for those who reject sincere naseeha (advice) and dig deeper into their ignorance. As always, send me your sincere naseeha and feedback. Tune in now and next week. 🎧

12/06/2025

Perfect Saturday morning

11/25/2025

Me after the whole world (especially non Brown, non Black non Arab capitalist “influencers”) jumped on the Dubai chocolate bandwagon because “we don’t trust (read: h8) Arabs but NOT Dubai” and now means all that knockoff Dubai chocolate stuff gonna grow mold.

10/16/2025

Still time to make a difference!

Final stretch to fund the 2025 Women’s Giving Circle Cyclde :rocket: Your gift supports nonprofits led by and/or serving American Muslim women—and initiatives meeting unmet needs in underserved communities. The Circle also invests in you: members get education, resources, and networking to lead and give better.
We’ve received 18 nominations. Voting members will select the top three to receive this year’s grants—collective action at work.
We’re at $14.5K and aiming for $17.5K by October 31. Every dollar helps.
Donate today on Grapevine: bit.ly/AMCFGC

09/12/2025

Tell me again about young.

09/12/2025

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. Not the end of a horror film, but the end of a troubling journey of work, life and love lost with a happy ending. Don't be scared.

I owe you the completion of the Sahabiyat Series, so here's this week's episode on Sawdah bint Zam’a (RA), the second wife of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. While it's hard to find English language information on her, it is possible alhamdulillah thanks to shayookh out there interpreting those texts for us.

Tune in at 6pm EST to hear the 6 lessons I learned from her life, and how they help me mother and live right now. For Muslimahs today who are navigating faith, family, and societal expectations, this is a good listen!

07/12/2025

Blessed moment of peace this morning before the work is ON.

For those wondering what’s going on with the publishing schedule, I drafted and did not actually schedule on my hosting platform. Admittedly, I’m not firing on all cylinders right now and I can’t. I’m okay with that. I’m attributing it to a normal phase of a mom’s evolution, to a Muslim American’s revolution, and the good news is, it’s dynamic. So I’m grieving, celebrating, witnessing, crying, thrashing, unlearning, sleeping, writing, and thriving.

For those who could care less about this podcast and just want to know where my cup is from .

06/28/2025

I noted that the pines in Swat were typically Christmas tree shaped at the tops, but the middle and lower branches were chopped short. I wish I’d paid more attention in college botany, but didn’t and had to ask why.

This is done to help the tree grow, and these pines are centuries old. Also, locals use the wood of the lower branches and don’t fell whole trees because well, indigenous communities know not to deforest their land. Use what you need, and leave the rest for the next generation. Novel idea, right?

But THIS tree outside our hotel was really intriguing. The vine covered 2/3 of the tree, using it to gain height and flower. Meanwhile, the tree has lost nothing of its glory, age, or the wealth of its upper branches. It was a beautiful symbiosis I wish the richest dudes on earth could see. I wish it was one I will always remember if I hesitate to redistribute the wealth that I have.

Prayers for the flood victims of Swat yesterday. Even the wisdom preserving the forests here can’t combat global warming. When billionaire pollute the air with 100 jets for their wedding spectacles and apartheid states elevate global temps with their actual WMDs (paid for by us!), the earth fights back. We must steward the planet, and each other, better.

Who’s ready for deets on how to raise funds for a maternal ultrasound at the CDRS clinic?

06/22/2025

The US has fully invested in WWIII started by its closest ally, but Clinic Day 5:

1. Fridays are half days because of men going to Jumaa prayer, so women don’t flock to clinic because men are often their transport. So we’re vey light today at 269 patients. And 💔 that it’s our last day here.
2. A case of a child vomiting a live worm gave me brief pause, but not to vomit myself. I’d just never heard of worms coming out of that end before. 🪱
3. I suspect there’s a genetic bone condition here given some very thick foreheads, jaws and hands among the women I’ve seen, but all I can treat is symptoms, and with that comes diabetes. A lot of it. It’s hard not to investigate the root cause, but I’m used to a lot of time, money, waste and patient runaround at home that these women can’t afford. 🦴
4. Kids with kohl in their eyes and talismans around their necks (totally un Islamic btw, but a cultural vestige of pagan practices) are going to haunt my dreams for a while. The best talisman is duaa: May Allah protect them from every evil, known or known, and forgive our shortcomings in creating a safer world for them. 🤲🏽
5. Our tiny team was supported by the local docs and techs, and a lot by our own children. Make duaa for their success in deen and dunya because each was new to travel here, and each suffered physically but quietly bore it with meds and duaa. If they weren’t helping with intake or pharmacy, they conducted important field research and I can’t wait to read the data assessment. Me and data, right? 📈
6. This beautiful countryside has so much potential, but a ways to go to uplift it alone. Without foreign economic colonization or domestic corruption and greed, it’s going to take probably another couple of generations to get there, but I can dream of that, too.

My fundraiser for the incredible hosts of IMANA at CDRS is just a couple of hundred short of goal. I want to leave Pakistan this week knowing it was met. Help me out and share the Khair!🏹 Donate: https://ig.me/22T15mAWF3fmahN

And THEN I’ll fundraise next week inshaAllah for the maternal ultrasound the clinic direly needs, but had to BORROW from another doctor this week!

06/21/2025

While formula has run out in Gaza, Clinic Day 4:

We are here with a “camp” that arrives 3-4 times a year with IMANA. The real heroes are the local doctors who serve the community daily. It’s not easy living up here where roads are small, resources scarce, temperatures extreme in summer and winter, and municipal services lacking. But they stay because “these are our people.” Their dedication has the teens on our team scratching their heads.

“They’re so smart!”
“They could earn so much money somewhere else.”
“Why would they stay here?”

The western capitalist imperial vise is loosening on their young minds, and it’s an honor to witness. That money and status are not the be all end of all of our lives is seeping into their understanding. May it be a guiding force to lead them in their deen and dunya.

We were slackers today with only 452 patients, and it gave us time to visit Malam Jabba, a hilltop escape with the longest ski slope in Pakistan. Ngl the ski lift scared me, and I chickened out of zip lining down. I have patients and kids to go back to! But the view of fairytale forests below and a fiery sunset from the top was spectacular.

06/21/2025

As the world burns, Clinic Day 3:

In serving 503 patients today with 5 doctors, I lost all sense of time and direction. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many patients in a day.

It was simply, go, go, go until the one watery brown-eyed boy, not much older than my youngest, with fatigue and huge lymph nodes. Time stopped, knowing what his resource stretched thin mother would have to face with him in the coming months. But I’m one person, and the devoted local docs here will follow up to resolution, which I pray is not cancer. I could only make the referrals, emphasize the importance of following up, and put a bandaid on his symptoms. The lowest point of my day.

Musings otherwise:

1. It’s HOT. 98-100 degrees. To wear a burqa on top of the cultural 3-piece shalwar suit carrying children and baggage is a hero’s feat. Only a woman could pull it off.
2. The men go upstairs to be seen all alone and the women bring all the kids downstairs and have their appointments en masse. So I’m seeing 3-6 patients at a time, every time.
3. Moms are primarily breastfeeding here where formula is luxury, often extended breastfeeding past a year, and concerned that it’s not enough. Just like moms in the States, they need to hear, “You. Are. Enough.”
4. For those who can’t, formula is scarce so they water down cereal and feed that, wondering why their babies are malnourished. Formula prices are sinful all over the world.
5. Women literally carry households. I hope I remember never to take it for granted.

06/18/2025

Due to wonky Internet, idk what stage of WWIII we’re in, but Day 2 of clinic:

1. There is no getting over small brick homes or 3-sided huts with a tin roof nestled on 3 sides by onion patches, rice paddies, and orchards, and on the 4th side by graves. Life and death exist seamlessly together here. Fear. Less.
2. Hope is a lifestyle as endless construction abounds, and it’s not uncommon to see a gleaming, lacquered baby blue door (among other colors, but this one is my favorite) on a half finished build with exposed rebar and no roof. There’s always a way in if you really want to do it.
3. Not a small percent of women here continue to wear the burqa, despite the Taliban leaving years ago. Burqa is part of their ancient culture. I know it’s a hard pill for feminists to swallow, but EVERY woman gets to exercise bodily autonomy however she wants. Let’s get over it and choose saving women’s lives globally over obsessing about their faces and hair.
4. Women’s colleges and girls’ schools dot the long road and I think it would make Malala’s dad smile now. I don’t have to be her fan to appreciate her parents.
5. Ironically,, health literacy is so critical, but we have little time to educate a public that expects medication, as if it’s panacea. For a drug avoider like myself, it’s a hard pill to swallow.
6. Cool pediatric cases of murmurs, epilepsy, and chest deformities are getting worked up and referred to tertiary care centers because of CDRS’s connections, so truly no one gets left behind.
7. Big Guy misses home and his siblings, but he’s being a good sport about seeing what we can while we’re here.
8. 474 human beings served today, and I feel like I’m #475.