Healing the Heart (and the Ummah) through the Power of Divine Love

I often get writing requests. I usually turn them down.

A few years ago, however, a friend of a friend was involved in republishing a book on behalf of his Shaykh. One of the things on his task list was to put together a foreword. He was struggling with the weight of expectation a little. I was asked to speak to him to give him some advice about how to write a decent foreword.

After speaking to him, I could tell this was something he was deeply emotional about and really wanted to do it justice. He asked me to write the foreword, but I declined, as I believe the best forewords are those which demonstrate a personal connection the writer has to the book or author, and I didn’t have one.

But he did.

For some reason, seeing how passionate he was about the project and what it meant to him, I offered to ghostwrite the foreword for him, on his behalf. I then interviewed him and asked him some questions about why this book was so important to him. And then I went about writing the below.

I am sharing this now because I wrote this in Ramadan a fair few years ago now, but sadly all I have seen so far this Ramadan, is the opposite. There seem to have been so many online debates and disputes, bickering and bravado, people playing takfir tennis and just general distasteful behaviour that we really do need a reminder to chill out (particularly the part in bold, below).