A few days before the blessed month of Rajab entered, I attended a talk about returning to Allah in Rajab. The shaykh beautifully explained that the door to thoba was open to everyone. It was a wonderful reminder as forgiveness requires one to turn to Allah but also to forgive oneself. Often we are our own greatest enemies and we judge ourselves for our mistakes yet they very same mistakes that may be a means of becoming closer to Allah. And truth be told, we would have so much more compassion for a loved one than we do towards ourselves.

The thing I loved the most about the talk was he explained that thoba did not compensate for healing. The door to repentance was open but trauma would not always disappear because you have repented. Sure, miracles can happen, but as Muslims, we can spiritually bypass them. This leads to more physical manifestations of illness connecting to deep-rooted hidden trauma because we have not dealt with the root cause. This talk was a powerful reminder...

By Abdul Aziz Suraqah 

A while back I stumbled on the strange case of Kyle Odom. In his manifesto, Odom writes, “My life was ruined. Ruined by an intelligent species of amphibian-humanoid from Mars. I wish I was joking.” 

He says the amphibian-humanoids were “here long before we ever existed” and their technology is way more advanced than ours. “They take control of ‘wild’ human beings and use them as sex slaves. Don’t believe me? Ask President Obama to take a lie detector test on this one,” Odom wrote. 

He goes on to say that Martians tried to take him but were unable to control his mind and they have been following him ever since. He said this has taken over his life and has done everything to get it back. The document says he tried to commit suicide twice but was stopped by the Martians. He said his last resort was to take actions to bring this to the public’s attention.

Next, the...

This small narration has so much food for thought packed into it.

We tend to use our rational thinking more than the real seat of reason and intuition, our hearts.

According to traditional Eastern Medicine (TCM, Ayurveda, and Unani), People with liver issues who have an excess of liver heat are likely to have anger issues. When a person is angry, they show a lack of mercy. The Prophet (PBUH) has mentioned doing ablution when angry, to extinguish the ‘fire’ and if you are angry while standing to sit, and if a person is still angry, to lie down i.e. to discharge the heat and connect to the ground.  The Earth is cooling by its very nature. 

The spleen is connected to the stomach; they represent the Earth element. The Earth is like our mother, our first source of nourishment. The love the mother instills in us is the ability to care for our ‘mother,’ ourselves, and ultimately care for others.

A person who is imbalanced in this respect may require...