“Know that transformation sometimes begins with a fall. So never curse the fall. The ground is where humility lives. Take it. Learn it. Breathe it in and then come back stronger, humbler and more aware of your need for Him.”
Ever read a book where almost every sentence made you pause and ponder? Reclaim Your Heart by Yasmin Mogahed made me do exactly that. It is not just another self-help book with technicalities and solution formulas. It’s a book of internal revolution. Yasmin Mogahed doesn’t just list off advices, but explains them with beautifully written metaphors, anecdotes, analogies and more.
Surprisingly, though her language is eloquent in the use of metaphors and similes, her writing is simplistic. Anyone can pick up this book and have an easy time understanding the concepts she discusses. The simplicity makes it a quick read.
Mogahed has a way of putting messages across extremely well. She breaks down life’s most pressing issues into small bits for ease of understanding and reflection; she has the power to makes her reader think – think about their life, their struggles and their relationships with both God and the people they love and interact with every day.
In this book, Moghahed does not preach, nor does she write with self-righteousness shadowing her wisdom. She takes you on many journeys. Her personal journey, the journeys of the prophets of Allah, the journey of the holy Qur’an – and within this, she allows you to manifest all of it in a way that reminds you of your own journey. Your own peaks and dips of faith, your own heartbreaks, your own disappointment and your attachment to the material world!
Throughout the book, though she covers many aspects of life and faith, she consistently reminds us of purpose. Everything has its purpose. At one point, she spoke about the verse, “Verily with hardship comes ease.” (Surat Insyirah 5-6) and how she misinterpreted it for much of her life. Most of us, including her have interpreted this verse to say that Allah has given us a systematic structured formula that after hardship will come ease, when the verse clearly states that hardship comes with ease. Perspective is key to everything good or bad as things may not always be what they seem. Mercy is in everything and not only must we treat hardships as blessings, but we must also find hardship in periods of perceived ease.
When she talks about the journey of this life, the broken hearts, the pain and the difficulties she does not leave us there unattended. Instead in the next chapter she talks about Detachment from pain.
“That broken heart and pain are lessons and signs for us. They are warnings that something is wrong,” she writes. We want to remember and believe that Allah’s wisdom is stronger than our desires. We want to remember that pain means he has saved us from something worse, but than why are we hurting so much? Mogahed not only shows us the mercy behind pain, but the practical reasons for it. Not only she simplifies the complex concept of pain, but she also takes us to see it through the lens of spiritual gratitude.
Another very important part which makes this book a must read especially for us women is the presence of a whole chapter dedicated to women’s status in Islam, a very important topic of conversation but not usually discussed much amongst us.
So you are honoured. But it is not by your relationship to men – either being them, or pleasing them. Your value as a woman is not measured by the size of your waist or the number of men who like you. Your worth as a human being is measured on a higher scale: a scale of righteousness and piety. And your purpose in life – despite what the fashion magazines say – is something more sublime than just looking good for men.
There is so much beauty in this book to discover. The language and explanations used are also very simple. At the end of the book, you will be greeted with a collection of poems by the author herself – a nice touch to end the reading experience
On the whole, Reclaim Your Heart is an absolute must read for anyone at any point in their life. Her words are gentle advices that remind you of the powerful Lord above us who does not leave us alone and has wisdom that we cannot comprehend. Though we are commonly reminded to not to get attached to this world, but we usually cannot grasp this concept practically. Reclaim Your Heart is a book that shows us that we can live in this world but still detaching ourselves from it, simply by reminding ourselves that the perspective may only be relative to that moment and may mislead us. What we need to do is to fall back on the fact that Allah’s mercy and wisdom is beyond our imagination to guide us.
This book also encourages us to reclaim the control of our heart just as the title suggests and that we are much stronger than we think of ourselves to overcome the desires of our self. By the end of this I can with all my heart make this claim that anyone who picks up and reads this book will be benefitted from it.
The writer is a student of English Linguistics and Literature at Air University. She can be reached at [email protected]