Whenever I felt that hardship in my life was taking a toll on me, leaving me spiritually bereft and hopeless, Yasmin Mogahed’s book Reclaim Your Heart was many times a companion that gave me the naseehah or spiritual advice, and encouragement to renew my hope and tawwakul, trust and reliance in Allah and His Plans.
Using the lessons from the Quran, hadith, and scholarly work, Mogahed gives many personal insights about the ups and downs of life and how we can become more devoted to Allah despite them. I have found it to help me during times of confusion in decision-making, when I felt imprisoned by thoughts of something I coveted at the time, and whenever I felt I needed to refresh my imaan or faith because the world let me down.
About the Author
Yasmin Mogahed is a prolific writer and popular international teacher from Al Maghrib Institute, usually speaking about Islamic spirituality, psychology, and personal development. She has completed a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, and a Master’s in journalism and mass communications, taught Islamic studies, served as a youth coordinator, worked as a writing instructor, and as a staff columnist for a news organization. In addition to being an instructor for Al Maghrib Institute, she writes for the Huffington Post and is the author of several books.
Parts of the Book that Resonated with Me
The book is divided into sections of broad topics titled attachments, love, hardships, relationship to the Creator, women’s status, the ummah, and her own poetry. Each section has several chapters that discuss different angles of each topic. I will delve into three of the sections that have resonated with me over the years.
Attachments
This section is about how attachments to people, material things, money, status, and anything related to the dunya or this world are bound to make you want more and never feel fulfilled. Through its chapters on people leaving one other, filling the inner hole, and taking back your heart from the attachment to the dunya the overarching lesson is to always detach yourself from everything in your heart and turn to Allah.
Turn to Allah when people leave us and make us grieve for them; turn to Allah when pleasure, status, or money do not fill the hole in your chest; turn to Allah when you have sinned and felt extremely guilty, choosing to repent to Him instead of falling into the dark abyss of hopelessness.
One ayah or verse of the Quran she consistently refers to in this section is:
“…But it is possible that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and that you love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knows, and you know not.”
(Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:216)
She pinpoints different situations in how we attach ourselves to certain people and things and then gives the solution as to how we can leave it and turn to Allah. It makes one analyze what he/she may currently be pursuing and thinking about, and then assess how we can subdue it and restore our connection to Allah. Being the first section of the book, I believe it is the perfect way to begin reading it.
Love
One of the chapters in this section, “Escaping the Worst Prison,” focuses on how deep adoration and coveting of a person, your ego, wealth, job, or your children can make us dependent on it to the point of deifying it, making us figuratively suffocate if we are not indulging it. The examples Mogahed uses to show how far people take these false deities include people ending their lives because they could not have children for many years or because they broke up with someone.
She demonstrates that if we value something equally to God in our lives or deep within our hearts, then any calamity or loss from what we strongly attach ourselves to will cause us more pain than we can fathom. Overall, our soul is meant to worship only Allah and nothing else. It is only through seeking His Pleasure and remembering Him throughout our daily lives that will only give us peace. The things or people that we value in our lives should be valued according to how Allah values them. That is the True Love we should seek.
Relationship with our Creator
The chapter from this section, “Salah: Life’s Forgotten Purpose,” embellishes the importance of salah or daily ritual prayer in our lives. Salah is given so much importance that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was asked to come to the seventh heaven to be directly commanded by Allah the Almighty to perform it. He was first prescribed to have his followers pray 50 times a day, however, he managed to bring it down to five (but still with the reward of doing 50). This was done on purpose, according to scholars, for Allah to show how important salah should be in our lives. Since our true purpose is to worship Allah, everything else is “just motions,” according to Mogahed.
She goes on to explain that if we were to truly observe ourselves, we do just the exact opposite; our lives do not revolve around salah – its timings, preparing for it, and establishing it. And this only applies to those who even pray regularly. Those who have abandoned it completely may no longer be Muslim, according to some scholars. Mogahed quotes the hadith:
“The covenant between us (Allah) and them is prayer, so if anyone abandons it, he has become a disbeliever.”
(Ahmad)
It is that serious of an action.
Therefore, we should prioritize establishing our salah at the proper times by making our schedules revolve around those times. We need to put the needs of our soul over our bodies, according to Mogahed, or we risk starving our souls and neglecting what is more important for our eternal life than this temporary one.
Other chapters from this section focus on other ways of coming closer to our Creator such as during tahajjud or pre-Fajr prayer, and reflecting on death as a reminder of our eventual return to Him.
This book encompasses almost every aspect of our lives, making it a dependable resource for reminding us about our purpose in this world, replenishing our faith in Allah, and reassessing our deeds and the true intentions behind them. Best of all, this book is permeated with numerous verses of the Quran, hadith or sayings of the Prophet, seerah or Prophet’s life stories, peace and blessings be upon him, and quotes from scholarly work. One can gain much foundational Islamic knowledge from it, such as concepts of tawheed, Oneness of Allah, and aqeedah, creed.
Depending on what we are going through at the time, reading the lessons from this book feels new every time, helping us gain different perspectives and reflections from it, alhamdulillah, all praises are to Allah.
Sumayya Khan is a homeschooling mother of two and a teacher. She has worked with several Islamic schools and organizations in the last 10 years. She is currently teaching Literature online with Dawanet and studying the Qur’an through Al-Huda Institute. In her free time, she loves to spend time with her family and friends, play sports, enjoy nature, and read books. She currently resides with her family in Toronto, Canada.
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