My Islam belongs to the Revolutionaries and the Mystics. For the mountains of South Lebanon.
Joined June 2011
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The best work you can do is the work that inspires you when you look back at it.
Inspired, you create more work that inspires the future you to create even more inspiring work.
If this sounds pompous, you already do it, just with guilt and shame. You do shameful things to escape the shame of the last shameful thing.
I'd choose the cycle of inspiring yourself over the infinite cycle of guilt tripping yourself any day.
When you give yourself no alternative and risk it all.
When you burn all the ships because you already decided that you’re not going back. That is not merely a leap of faith. That is a leap that you will need every ounce of courage you can muster in order to succeed in making.
When you throw caution to the wind and believe completely in the decision you have made, willing to take it with you to the grave.
It’s when any other choice is simply unacceptable to you, so you’d choose death over remaining where you are.
So you take the leap without the rope.
By the time you graduate high school or college, you would have spent 80% or more of the total hours you will ever spend with your parents before they die.
Cherish what you have left, make up for lost time, forgive their wrongs, and give them whatever love you can.
Some people just built different
UFC Champion Cain Velasquez Reveals How He Survived 9 Months in Solitary Confinement
“You got nothing. Got these four walls, this little room. ... I mean, this little room for 21 hours of the day, three hours to get out, shower, get a little TV time ... Like I stayed happy within myself. And the guards were like, how can you be happy right now?”
“I thought of it as, look, you're breathing and you're conscious. ... Be happy with yourself. Be happy with yourself. That's it. You don't need anything else to validate it. You don't need anyone else but you. You create it all. You create your happiness. So I did that, I did that, I was happy, man. ... Things I can't get back. But all I can focus on was the here and now.”
-Cain Velasquez
Ambition and shame are two sides of the same coin.
Some people try to become something they're proud of because they're ashamed of who they currently are. Achieving money, success, & respect feels good because it offers relief from this shame. But every time we need to achieve something to feel worthy, we reinforce the belief that we're not worthy without it.
Shame fuels ambition. Ambition promises worthiness. Achievement offers temporary relief. Rinse & repeat. But you don't need to stop wanting more... You need to change what's driving you.
Are you building something meaningful, or trying to prove you're someone worth being? You can either spend your life trying to prove you're enough, or build a life from the belief that you already are.
Why does Surat al‑Ikhlas open with 'Huwa' before it ever says Allah?
Because there's a station before any name. The nameless station. And it changes how you read the whole surah...
This is a short clip taken from last night's Tafsir Circle that we held on Substack. The full lesson goes much deeper and is now online for those who wish to catch up.
Understand the capacities of the people around you. Protect yourself from the dormant ambitions of those you love, but also protect them from what neither of you is yet aware of. Be conscious, be kind, be forgiving, but above all, be wise. Wisdom will save your soul.
‘Love your beloved moderately, for perhaps one day he may become one you dislike. And dislike the one you dislike moderately, for perhaps one day he may become your beloved.’
- Imam Ali (a)
Look inwards. What you often resent in other people is a reflection of what you unknowingly hold inside yourself.
You're not responsible for the whole world. You're responsible for your corner of it.
Clean the ground you stand on.
'You built castles in the air. That's where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.' - Thoreau
People say 'castles in the air' to make you feel stupid for dreaming big. But no. The castle is meant to be in the air. If your dream already fits comfortably on the ground then it's not much of a dream.
The foundations are what no one sees to clap for. The early mornings. The studying. The years of building while people tell you you're wasting your life. You may even have doubted yourself once or twice.
But you don't bring the dream down to the ground.
You build the ground up to meet it.
I teach Islam in creative ways on substack.
Tafsir Quran lessons and weekly articles on faith, spirituality and becoming who you were made to be. Join for free on: hussainmakke.substack.com
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The way I've chosen to live my life comes down to one sentence:
'If you knew how quickly they forget the dead you might stop living to impress people.'
When I'm gone, most will offer a moment of silence, a few kind words, and then life will carry on as it always does. So why would I hand over so much of who I am to the opinions of those who will barely pause at my passing?
Spend your life devoted only to the One who never forgets, and commit to the few who will truly carry my memory.
When God was about to create Adam, the angels asked: "Will You place on earth one who will cause corruption and shed blood?" (2:30). In a sense, they were asking Madara's question. Why create a being who can choose wrong, and cause all that suffering?
But God told them He knows what they do not know, and taught Adam the names, and Adam spoke in front of the angels.
This is the reason for creation: a being who can know, and who can choose.
In the end, Madara died alone after a long life dedicated to this one goal, admitting he had never really had what he was chasing.
The Quran calls this world "nothing but the enjoyment of delusion" (3:185), though it is our actions and choices in this world that determine our fate in the next.
Imam Ali (as) said: "People are asleep; when they die, they wake up."
- Read my full substack piece here 👇
It does not matter what you end up owning externally.
If you never take command of your internal situation it will catch up to you.
Many people believe happiness is not possible in this world but it truly is. Though it must be intentional.
You have to connect to a plane above this world through your mind and soul.
