Assalamualaikum my dear,

How are you? I have a very random reflection for you today that’s been playing on my mind a lot these past few days.

So grab your cuppa — this is a bit of a long rambly one (but I think you’ll find it interesting, in shā’Allāh!).

—

The Cashew Nut Video

The other day, my husband and I were scrolling through YouTube together when we came across a random short about a cashew fruit — the fruit that the cashew nut hangs off.

Did you know that the cashew nut actually comes from a fruit? Here’s what it looks like:

I had no idea about this until after I got married, and my husband showed me and told me about their farmland back in India that used to have rows of cashew nut trees!

So since we were already on YouTube, I told my husband to search up a video where we could see the process of extracting the cashew nuts and exporting them across the world. We both love seeing short documentaries like this, and so he immediately searched it up and clicked on the first video.

The video was based in Sri Lanka and showed the full process in depth — from the picking of the fruit to removing the cashew nuts.

We learnt how difficult and delicate the process was to remove the cashew nuts from their husks, and how a lot of it was still done manually. We also learnt how varied the prices of different cashews were based on if they were able to be extracted as a whole or not, even though the costs still remained the same.

—

The Video Didn’t Sit Right with Me

As the video continued, I couldn’t help but feel a lump make its way to the back of my throat.

I hated what I was seeing.

I hated that I was seeing women — the age of my grandparents — hunched over a big pile of unhusked cashews, trying to remove the husks as gently as possible.

I hated that this nut is so difficult and expensive to harvest, yet the countries that harvest them the most — India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria — are still drowning in poverty and extreme financial difficulty.

I hated that it was so easy for me to simply walk to the nearest shop and buy a packet without it even pinching my wallet. That I can walk home and open up a packet of whole, unbroken cashews and sit on my couch to devour something that would’ve taken hours to dehusk — by a lady who looks like my grandmother on the other side of the world.

The video finished and we both sat in silence.

The thing is, the video had nothing to do with labour rights or the exploitation of nature or anything like that… but we both had a bad taste in our mouths.

I'm not sure how to describe it, but it didn’t feel right.

It didn’t feel right that there was so much difficulty involved in providing a luxury item for us.

Cashew nuts are meant to be a healthy snack that I munch on while trying to avoid the chocolate bar sitting there. But seeing the hardship, the difficulty it takes to process them, they no longer seem as healthy or pure anymore.

People will argue, “But look, they have jobs.” But the fact that old women are hunched over, worrying about a cashew breaking just so I can have an afternoon snack… it just didn’t feel right.

—

Cashews and the Topic of Barakah

It took me back to the book I had just started reading the day before — The Barakah Effect by Muhammad Faris.

I’ve always been intrigued about the topic of barakah and always been on the search for more of it in my life, which is one of the reasons I decided to pick up this book.

If you’re wondering what barakah is, one of my favorite definitions for it is that it’s a gift from Allah that ‘that brings increase to a person’s life without a defined input’.

It’s the idea that you can do more with less — the very premise of Muhammad Faris’ book (which I haven’t finished, but I already recommend you check out!).

In it, he mentions how, in our day and age, a common complaint is the lack of time to do anything. Among Muslim crowds, you’ll often hear that barakah is missing from different parts of our lives — from time, to money, to work.

The crazy thing is, we have so many technological devices that should help us do more with our time compared to our predecessors.

We have cars to help us travel faster, keyboards to help us write faster.

And in the world of food, we’re in the times of meal deals, Uber eats and even liquid food (Huel ehem ehem).

You’d think the amount we achieve would be so much more than people in the past. We don’t even need to cook food anymore.

But we don’t. Instead we have so much less.

As Muhammad Faris explains:

And that extends to so many areas of life.

—

Why do we lack barakah?

There are many reasons why we may be lacking barakah in our life.

Many of the common reasons we hear are because of all the distractions those technological advancements created for us: doomscrolling, binge-watching, etc.

But what if you’re someone who is trying to limit those distractions - maybe you’re not on social media or you don’t indulge in binge-watching, why does it still feel like our levels of barakah are so vastly different to our predecessors.

And that’s why I was reminded of this book while watching the cashew video — because it hit me that maybe there are other, less obvious reasons barakah is missing from our lives.

Like the cashews we consume that come from exploited unhappy workers.

I wonder, could this also be a reason for lack of barakah - the fact that the food I eat might have blood, sweat and tears on it?

And if the cashews are…then what about the eggs and meat we buy from cooped up chickens, the vegetables we eat that are pumped with preservatives, the pistachios we indulge in that destroys trees and wildlife?

—

Food and its impact on our barakah

I think as a society we’ve kind of forgotten how much our relationship with food has evolved compared to our predecessors, especially in the Muslim world.

I remember a few years ago I was really interested about the difference between HMC meat and normal halal meat and I went down some internet rabbit holes learning about food habits of the past.

One of the most interesting food habits I learnt about was how the process of cooking was actively seen as a process of ibadah (worship). How the mothers would cook with the intention to provide healing and energy for their families. How they would cook while making dua, while asking Allah to make this food a source of barakah and energy for their families.

Apart from that, the way our predecessors sourced their food was so different to us. Before the globalisation of the food industry, people knew the butcher they got their meat from, they knew the potato farmer, they knew who was dehusking the cashew nuts they bought from their market.

Compare that to the processed packet of chips that are cut and packeted in a factory run by overworked workers!

—

‘You are what you eat.’

I’m sure this is something we’ve all heard sometime in our lifetimes. It’s usually attributed to the physical and mental health of our body. The healthier you eat, the healthier your body and your mind will be since food is the fuel for us to function.

But why do we forget about our spiritual state?

A Hadith that really brought this to reality for me is the following one -

The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said:

The Hadith continues -

It doesn’t relate directly to barakah but there is this idea that what we do, what we consume has a direct impact on our relationship with Allah.

The most interesting part of this hadith was how it begins with focusing on verses of the Quran where Allah tells us to eat pure good food - ‘Tayyibat’.

It’s not about halaal and haram alone, but a level higher than that.

So if the food we eat (and the clothes we wear) is harvested through exploitation, hardship and injustice — how pure, how tayyib, is it all really?

And as a result, how much barakah will we really gain from it in our lives?

—

My takeaways and action points

When you start to think about how much of what we consume might be taking away the barakah in our own lives, it can start to feel overwhelming.

Please don’t feel overwhelmed! I’m not sharing my reflections on this topic, to make you feel hopeless.

In fact, I really hope today’s (rambly) letter might give you more hope instead!

If you ever feel like you’re stuck in an endless cycle of searching for more barakah in your wealth, your time, your soul, then maybe there are other things you can do to increase the barakah in your life.

Like focusing on what you eat - what you allow into your body.

Here are a few things I’m planning to do more consciously with my food -

1. Stay far far away from boycotted goods.

It’s one thing to eat food which you’re unsure of its negative impacts, like the cashews.

But if there is one way to completely strip the barakah from your life, it’s to allow food into your body that is, without doubt, complicit or supporting the killing and oppression of our brothers and sisters around the world from Palestine to China and elsewhere.

Boycotting these brands has to be the basic but most essential first step.

2. Infuse my cooking with barakah

As the chef of the house, I have the power to ensure how much barakah the food on the table has.

How? By firstly making cooking an act of worship, by intending that the food you make gives you and your family members the strength to worship Allah more.

But secondly, by infusing my cooking with dua, dhikr and Quran. Playing Quran in the kitchen when I’m cooking, saying Bismillah with every onion I begin to cut, every tomato I throw into the pot.

3. Fast more voluntary fasts.

I’ll be the first to say this might be my biggest struggle but I realise there must be a powerful barakah factor to staying away from food once or twice a week.

It almost feels like the equivalent to zakah of our money. Just like zakaah removes the impurities from the money we earn, it’s like fasting removes the impurities in the food we consume.

4. Eat less processed food

This is so tough for someone like me who loves anything sweet! But just realising how much impact food has on my spiritual state, I want to try move towards eating more homemade food and making that more of a norm in the household.

That may mean it’s on me to learn more cool recipes, but I really believe that the barakah element will outweigh the time spent learning to cook and bake those yummy treats that are so easy to buy off the shelf.

—

Wow, that was a really long letter! If you’ve reached the end, honestly hats off to you my friend. Jazakallah khair, I really appreciate it!

I know this is a bit different to my Quranic reflection letters, but I really wanted to share with you my reflections on this topic burning on my mind.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! 🩶 May Allah fill your home, time, and heart with endless barakah.

Until next time, Thasneema 🌻