3/1/09Confessions of a Disabled Muslim
I want to talk about disability. I want to talk about disability, because as Muslims, it’s something that no one speaks openly about. Our voice is not one that is heard at Friday prayers or at Qur’an study groups. Too often we’re blinded by ideas about who disabled people are, what they should act like, and what their experiences should be.
I have been affected by illness and disability for most of my life. I have been overwhelmed by the despair and lack of control that can come from being disabled. Alhamdulillah, when I became a Muslim in January of this year, it was because I found comfort and solace in Islam. It helped me understand my feelings and who I was in light of my struggles.
Accepting that there is only one omniscient, omnipotent creator was perhaps the biggest change for me. A sister of mine, who is also disabled, was instrumental in guiding me to the deen. She explained it best when she said that when the doctors can’t fix it, your friends can’t fix it, your family can’t fix it and you can’t fix it - when you realize that you do not even have the power to get out of bed or the strength to take your own life even if you wanted to - it is in these moments that the true meaning of la ilaha ilallah - there is no God but God - is revealed. I began to understand on a very deep, intuitive level of the power of submission to Allah.
For many people, realizing that no one in this world has control can be depressing. For me, coming to accept the fact that Allah is the only constant in our lives, the only One we can rely on, was so freeing, and it is through this freedom that my struggles finally began to make sense.
Sheikh Khalid Yasin said, “Life is always fair, and the reason for that is the hereafter. For anyone who believes in the hereafter will realize that every hardship will hit a dead end. And that dead end will have a door. Beyond the door is the reward. When one accepts fate, situations, hardships, pain, they have already passed 50% of the trial by accepting it. Then it’s about getting through it. Knowing that Allah is the only one who can give it and also clear us of it will make us turn to Him and then we will find it so much easier.”
But accepting disability does not make it a virtue, which is an idea that is particularly pervasive among religious individuals and Western society. I do believe that Allah gives us tribulations in our life for a reason. I realize one of the benefits of tribulation is to be humbled before Allah. I also realize that my experiences are much worse than some and much better than others. I realize I am who I am today because of these experiences and I have much to be grateful of for that fact.
But having told you all of this, I do not know of anyone who would choose to be sick or disabled. Consider how miserable you would feel (and make others feel) when you are sick for a short time. Now imagine being sick all the time.
Disabled people, or alternatively the disabled, are silenced and marginalized by the idea that illness is a virtue or a blessing for which we should be thankful and not complain. Yes, tribulation is sent to us for a reason, but that reason is between Allah and us; it is not the place of others, particularly the well, to decide what this reason is or how those who are ill should react. But it’s often made out that disability is something that ill people should simply accept as a fact of life, or worse, that it’s something we should be excessively grateful for.
Another damaging attitude is the implication that a disabled person must have done something wrong in order to end up in this situation. Doctors and healthy individuals talk as though sick people had only made certain choices - followed a particular diet, or weren’t so fat, exercised more, weren’t female, or didn’t take this medication or didn’t refuse to take that medication - which ultimately led to a prolonged sickness.
The reality is that these assumptions are overly simplistic - spend enough time in a hospital and you’ll realize that doctors don’t have all the answers. These attitudes put an unfair burden on disabled people - how many able-bodied people do everything their doctors tell them to? And even when I do everything they say (and sometimes because of it) I get sick.
Worse still is the idea that the illness is a punishment from Allah, as though we have done something wrong to deserve our suffering. Normally these attitudes are accompanied by the preconception that disabled people should be acting out some sort of saint-like role; that we should be happy with our situations and not complain.
Disabled people do not deserve to be blamed for their disability. We are, more than anything else, human. Trying to feel validated while being told conflicting things by doctors, family, and friends, on top of coping with illness in the first place and making difficult decisions about life and treatment, is hard. I don’t know how many times people have felt the need to tell me about their friend of a friend of a friend who was so desperately sick but never complained up until the day they died. This ideal of the sick person who does not take up anyone’s space or time or energy and never opens their mouth to say a bad word is nice in theory, but the reality is, disabled people need care. We have concerns. We have problems. We have hopes and dreams. The idea that we are supposed to fit into a particular ideal of what a sick person is does not and should not work, in reality, and sick people who do not fit this motif are often left invalidated at best and emotionally and physically abandoned at worst.
The best way of coping, for both disabled people and the able-bodied interacting with them, is to allow the disabled person to self-define and allow the interaction to go from there, rather than the other way around. Often the kinds of “platitudes” disabled people receive can actually be helpful, but a lot of the time, they can be hurtful, too. It’s better to tread carefully and not to label someone or their experience, regardless of whether you think that experience is a good or a bad thing.
My understanding of Islam has been extremely beneficial in coming to terms with my experiences as a disabled person. But every disabled person has the right to come to terms with those things on their own, because ultimately, only the person themselves and Allah can have an idea of what it feels like, and ultimately only Allah can truly know how this tribulation works in this person’s life, and after all, Allah knows best.
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Thank you so much for writing this article and I applaud the Western Muslim for publishing an article on issues that we don’t hear about in other muslim magazines. I really feel more discourse and attention need to be brought to disabled people in our community.
Thumbs up to the WM ... once again.
Thanks grateful for your comment 
If anyone wants to read more of my writings (I try to write on disability often but also write about feminism, eating disorders, being a college student, etc.) my blog is at http://meghanrosehils.blogspot.com and you can email me anytime at angelofpeace@gmail.com.
After reading your article, I have a whole new outlook of how much a disability can affect a person’s life. As you said, once you’re on terms with Allah, a lot starts to make sense. A really well written article Sr. A’ishah, keep giving voice to the voiceless. I look forward to reading more of your pieces.
reading ur article has opened a whole new door of insight for me… thank you
GREAT insight. I LOVE the light you shed on the delicate, yet very real AND felt connections between abled and diabled. Society definitly is the worst part of dealing with almost any event, society INCLUDES MOST CRUCIALLY FAMILY! They can be a whole other experience and their education is a huge task, let alone ALL of society.
Thank you for all your insight a very well written article
Very well written article. Thank you for sharing this topic with us all
Keep talkin’, sister.
asalamu alaikum sister,
jazakallahu khair for writing such an insightful and needed article! alhamdullilah. you have covered many issues that those of us who have disabilities would like to read, and would like to have discussed in an Muslim based forum. so thank you, thank from the bottom of my heart. i would be so bold as to say, however, that some of us are actually grateful to Allah subhanahu wa tala for our disability- for me personally, without the trials and tribulations of the disability i have, i would almost surely not be the same person i am today. these difficulties based on disablity truly shape our worldview and distinguish our perspectives from those who are not struggling with physical or emotional disablity issues.
thank you again for such an important article, sister.
As-salaamu aleykum…
Mashallah, it is wonderful to see people thinking deeply about these kinds of issues. I have Type 1 diabetes, my sister had a grapfruit-sized brain tumor and wound up deaf in one ear, my mother had breast cancer, my father had cancer of the salivary glands, my grandmother died of what was probably lung cancer, my aunt just died of a brain tumor, my cousin (her daughter) just died at age 40 from a blood clot, and her father (within two years confronting the death of both his wife and daughter) has now developed the symptoms of Alzheimer’s and is currently in a nursing home. (Inshallah, if any readers might say a Fatiha for him… jazak Allah khayr) And that’s not even mentioning his grandchildren, two of whom were born as premature twins, and one who spent her first 2 years on a respirator with severe heart abnormalities… Ya Allah.... Allah Shafi Allah Hu…
My point here, of course, is not “Look at the suffering in my family”. Audhubillah. Rather, that how many of us have seen such illness in our families? Decent, good people who believe in Allah and do their best by Allah and their neighbors and their world… but are still afflicted by such suffering.
Yet still, the idea that illness is a punishment from Allah prevails. Or the nearly-as-disturbing idea that it is all a test from Allah. Healthy people reassuring us we have a golden opportunity provided to us…
I asked my shaykh once (a Rifa’i from Turkey) if Allah really designed these things for us. His answer was that we should not even question this. “You will just make yourself crazy on these questions. Accept that the world is the way it is, and see what you can learn from it.” In a strange way this was kind of liberating, in the since that I let go of the sense that those of us who face illness are being punished by an omnipotent enemy (astaghfirullah al-adhim) as I had begun to feel) yet it still didn’t quite fully answer my questions. Many (maybe most) of us, or our families or friends face these constant tragedies as a result of illness, yet we are NEVER given satisfactory answers for why these things happen. In the best case scenario, we are told not to think about it. That’s at least better than being told that Allah has singled us out for punishment or a special call to superhuman patience.
Perhaps the best I have heard are when my shaykh’s assistant told me “Oh you have Type One Diabetes? Mashallah! That is wonderful training for constant remembrance of Allah. In our tariqa, we always struggle to learn how to go on with our lives while always remembering Allah, and you have to keep your blood sugar in mind while going on with the day’s activities.”
Perhaps even better, was a quote I read from Mevlana Jalal ud-Din Rumi-- “God turns that broken leg he gave you into a wing”. I must confess that that one made me cry…
Forgive me for this one --the source is not Islamic at all-- but I also read a beautiful story from the Yoruba tradition in West Africa. I am, of course, a Muslim (Ashadua la Illaha Illallah wa Muhammadun ‘abduhu wa rasullu)but the following story helped me a lot. I approach it as a mythology, not a religious statement of doctrine. As a Muslim, I would encourage the reader to approach it as one might read a Greek myth (a story we tell ourselves about ourselves) and of course not as an alternative theology-- astaghfirullah.
According to the story (again, don’t take this literally!) Oludumare (the Creator and Master of the Universe) gave his servant Obatala the task of forming the bodies of human beings (obviously, no Muslim should believe this… but it’s a folk story, and it can mean something even if the theology is totally off from a Muslim point of view) but back to the story…
According to the traditional Yoruba story from Nigeria (totally non-Muslim)an ancestor named Obatala was given the task of fashioning the bodies of human beings. He was offered some palm wine by a friend. He argued, saying that he had a lot of work to do, telling his friend that he was supposed to make all the human beings in the world by dawn. His friend said that the palm-wine would help his creativity. Eventually, Obatalla gave in and imbibed. He got totally drunk, then wen home and started to make all the people in the work. In a fit of drunken inspiration, he gave one a huge head, another no feet, one with a tiny body and no arms, some absolutely gorgeous but with only one leg, etc. In the morning he woke up and saw what he had created…
but what was done was done. He cried and appealed to God to take back the mistakes he had made. He promised never to drink alcohol again, but God said that his actions were done. Because of that, he never drank again and always promised a special sympathy and protection for those he created that night.
I love this story-- though as a Muslim, I obviously do not believe it in any literal way. As a Muslim, I do not believe that anyone other than Allah created us. Nor do I believe that our creator was drunk (astaghfirrullah) but the overall message that Allah recognizes our particular sufferings and that our creator especially looks out for those of us who have suffered from our medical conditions opened some doors for me.
I know that some readers will probably read this story and think i am a total kaffir. Astaghfirrullah. Again, I emphasize that this is not a story i suggest taking literally. But the meaning is that Allah takes special care of us. Even if he gives us particular challenges, he also gives us even greater sympathy and care. In short, for each broken leg he gives us, he registers a wing.
Again, I appreciate you looking deeply in these issues. Allahu ‘Alim. May Allah reward those who look deeply for answers to life’s challenges and do not give up on Him in spite of whatever we may suffer. ALLAH Shafi, ALLAH HU....
As-salaamu aleykum. Please forgive me if I have misspoken. I encourage only that we always struggle to find our faith in Allah, and never give up up, whatever we may face.
Again, thank you for a very thoughtful post.
La Illaha Illallah.
Hu......
Ashik Nedim er-Rifa’i
asalaam alaykum sister, thankyou very much for the very inciteful article. we have an organisation in west yorkshire in england and we are going to provide care and facilities for disabled muslims . i would really appreciatte your advice . please could you email me . may Allah reward you. AHC