Assalamualaikum my dear,

How are you? How have the past two weeks been? I hope you and your families had a beautiful and blessed Eid.

This week I started a really powerful surah for my hifdh sessions - Surah Ahzab.

It’s a surah with so many powerful scenes and stories related to it that I always enter this surah feeling a bit excited about what I might find.

Surah Ahzab’s context

The Surah was revealed at the time where so much was happening in Madinah.

The 5th year after Hijra was when the Battle of the Trench took place. An extremely long, difficult and stressful time for the Prophet (s) and his companions. They knew the army coming was many times their size, they knew they had hypocrites who were acting as spies and causing disinformation between then, they knew their families at home were vulnerable to attack too. This surah describes so many of the scenes with so much detail to the emotions of the different parties, it feels like you are experiencing a part of it. Allah really relates the story in such a powerful way.

Apart from that though, the Muslims had been in Madinah for around 5 years now and so more rulings about how to operate as a Muslim community were being set down, with verses of the hijab, divorce, and other social reforms being revealed.

The verse that I always love to stop and reflect on is verse 35 that was revealed because of Umm Salamah’s question to the Prophet (pbuh) about the lack of mention of females within the Quran.

This verse has always fascinated me because of the list of characteristics Allah mentions to be of those who receive the great reward.

But ever since I heard a podcast between Sh Haifa Younus and Tamara Gray, I stop at this verse just to reflect on how Loving and Merciful Allah is to us.

There were three gems from that day that still stick with me today when I read this particularly verse.

(The following section is an edited part of an old blog post I wrote a few years back)

1. Lack of exclusivity

The first gem is the wisdom that Allah didn’t respond to Umm Salamah’s query by revealing a verse exclusively for women. Because if He did, it would exclude women from the whole Quran except this one verse.

But instead this verse refers to a list of 10 qualities in both men and women that make them successful. It emphasises clearly that men and women are spiritually equal in their reward with Allah. It reinforces that whenever when Allah speaks to the ‘muslimeen’ or the ‘mumineen’ in the Quran, it includes both men and women , showing clearly that women have been and will always be a part of this.

2. The ordering of the words

The second gem is the order of the wording. The qualities start from

• the Muslim man and women

• to the Mumin man and women

• to the Qanit man and woman and so forth.

It’s beautiful because these are ranks upwards.

One starts off by submitting to their Creator and fulfilling the 5 pillars of Islam.
Then they raise their rank by becoming Mumins, and this is where they have belief in their heart and this is translated into their actions.
Then they raise their rank higher to the level of the Qaniteen — those who are devout. These are those who are people of tahajjud, the people of voluntary fasts, etc.

It’s beautiful how Allah has ordered the qualities in this way, where each following quality is almost a level up from the last one. It almost provides us a framework for us on how to work our way up this ladder as servants of Allah.

3. The definition of the word Qanit

The final and my favorite gem was more of a tangent to their conversation. They were discussing the meaning of Qantiun (the 3rd characteristic mentioned) and how it’s difficult to translate to English. It’s sometimes translated as obedient, sometimes devout. But in our age the word ‘obedient’ tends to hold negative connotations and the word 'devout' seems a bit vague. So Tamara Gray goes on to explain what Qanit can mean in today’s context.

In two words, she compares it to being a hardcore fan.

When we think of a hardcore fan, I’m sure someone in your family or wider circle comes to mind. They could be a hardcore fan to a favourite footballer or actor or singer.

Let’s take the footballer example: When they hear their favourite footballer is coming to the UK, they’re more than happy, excited even, to travel hours on end just to get a glimpse of them. It’s tiring, difficult and maybe even expensive but they’re more than happy to sacrifice their comforts just to see and maybe spend a few seconds with this person they admire.

They spend the bulk of their pay check or Eidi money buying the sweatshirts and football shoes with the footballers name on. It doesn’t matter that they might struggle with other expenses for that month, for them this is a worthy sacrifice they’re more than happy to do.

The food or perfumes their footballer promotes suddenly becomes their favourite too.

They are pretty much obsessed with anything and everything this celeb does. They are so in love with this person’s that they are basically in devotion to them.

That is the type of relationship we need to reach to become a Qanit. It’s not the 'obedience' with the negative connotation, as though the rulings of the religion are things that are forced in you.

It’s, in fact, the complete opposite.

It’s positive 'obedience' where you completely voluntarily want to do what He’s commanded because you love Him. You want to pray the extra salaah because you want to spend more time with Him. You want to dress this way because He wants you to. You want to do more good and stay away from sin for the simple reason that you absolutely love Him.

I thought this shift in mindset to how we approach our daily worship and our relationship with Allah was beautiful.

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The way she described the word honestly continues to leave an impact on me till today, years later. I used to always see being a Qanit as a characteristic almost impossible to achieve.

But ever since I started to see being a Qanit as someone who simply loves Allah so much that they want to be in service to Him more and more, it’s now something I profusely make dua for.

Because imagine reaching that level!

I pray Allah makes us all a community of Qaniteen and Qanitat. Ameen, Ameen.

Until next time,
Thasneema 🌻