The struggle with incapability

Helplessness and Hopelessness

I often wonder why what is happening in Gaza worries me so much that it gives me sleepless nights, makes me depressed, and causes my heart to ache like that of a lover for his beloved. Why It worries me so much that it makes me, a self-proclaimed “hard guy,” weep like I haven’t wept in years. And the only possible conclusion I’ve come to is that saying of the Prophet {P.B.U.H}:

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“The believers in their mutual kindness, compassion, and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds with wakefulness and fever.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, 6011)

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But truly and honestly, you don’t have to be a Muslim to see moral depravity, such as the ongoing massacre of an entire population, to feel anger and despair. You don’t have to be a Muslim to see thousands of children being killed to feel enraged. No you just need to be human.

Sometimes the anger and despair fills me so gravelly that I consider just shutting it all off and act like I don’t know what is happening, but my heart won’t let me, I’ve seen too much. I’ve seen a mother wailing in the midst of the rubble for her child trapped beneath it. I’ve seen a father carry the body of his headless child, I’ve seen a man burned alive while an IV Drip hangs from his arm. I’ve seen a child walk among the rubble by herself—lonely, her father gone, her mother gone, with no one but herself—emotionless from the horrors she has experienced, looking for someone to cuddle her and tell her it’s not her fault her entire family is gone. I’ve seen horrors that no amount of horror films can depict, and I’m not even on the ground in Gaza. Imagine what the actual people are going through and witnessing, they don’t even have the luxury of having PTSD because the trauma is still ongoing. They don’t even have time to grief because the killing machine is still killing.

I think of turning a blind eye so my heart can piece itself back together, but then I remember how angry I feel when I read the history books—how angry I feel at the people and the world that stood silent whilst the massacre of thousands, even millions, took place and did nothing. And I realize that by turning a blind eye and disengaging with what’s happening, I become the same people I criticize from history.

But what can I do at the end of the day, other than speak up against this tyranny, protest, boycott, and pray. Yes, prayer. But it still doesn’t make a difference to the child who has been made an orphan; it doesn’t make a difference to the millions of displaced Palestinians who no longer have a place to call home. No, the killings and destruction continues.

I feel hopeless and helpless.

May Allah grant us a liberated Al-Aqsa and a free Palestine in its entirety Ya mujeebu da’wat (answerer of prayers). Ameen.