Call to action – Trials & Tribulations

Issuing the invitation

Sadaqa — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 08:18:51 +0000

There is an art to inviting people into discomfort. Too forceful, and they recoil. Too timid, and the invitation dissolves into background noise, forgotten by teatime. The call to participate in Trials & Tribulations requires a particular tone: honest about what awaits, compelling about why it matters, and spacious enough to honour hesitation as a legitimate response. When you stand before your…

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Turning vision into reality

Sadaqa — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 15:10:03 +0000

It begins with seeing, not just the surface idea of women walking through mud, but glimpsing what such a challenge might unlock. You envision sisters gathering on a Friday evening, spending the night in prayer and discomfort, rising before dawn to walk miles whilst their stomachs empty and their bodies protest. You see them supporting refugees not through distant charity but through embodied…

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The niqabi adventurer

Sajdah — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 10:55:00 +0000

The question arrives sometimes, hesitant but genuine: If this is a ladies-only event with female supervisors, do they really need to wear niqab? And technically, of course, the answer is no. The same could be said of modest dress generally — in a space where only sisters gather, some requirements relax. But here is what you must understand as organisers: for niqabi women…

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The wisdom of hesitation

Sadaqa — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 21:27:00 +0000

There is a sister who stands at the edge of commitment. She hears about the Trials & Tribulations challenge and feels not excitement but apprehension, imagining the cold water, the mud, the exhaustion of fasting whilst walking for hours. Everything in her that prefers comfort whispers: Perhaps not this time. Perhaps this is not for you. As organisers, you will meet this reluctance often — in…

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Grassroots first

Sadaqa — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 16:25:15 +0000

The most profound transformations rarely announce themselves with fanfare. They don’t require centralised administration or elaborate infrastructure. They happen quietly, in small gatherings where sisters know each other’s names, where trust doesn’t need building because it already exists, where the challenge becomes not something imposed from above but something chosen together.

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Trials and triumphs

Sadaqa — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:35:04 +0000

At the start, they gather like the blossoms of spring — modest Muslim mums adorned in salwar kameez that catch the morning light, abayas that flow like rivers of devotion, jilbabs in colours that speak of dignity made true. They could be arriving for an Eid celebration, their garments alive with elegance and grace. Only the scuffed trainers on their feet betray what awaits them…

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The art of invitation

Sadaqa — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 21:12:26 +0000

You will encounter her in every community: the woman who listens to your description of Trials & Tribulations with genuine interest softening into visible doubt. Her eyes say yes whilst her body language whispers no. She is the mother who hasn’t thought of herself as capable of such things, who sees outdoor challenges as belonging to a different sort of woman, who feels the weight of a thousand…

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When doubt becomes the obstacle

Sadaqa — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 17:07:37 +0000

The idea arrived during a trek through countryside, years ago when I was still a student. Not as a fully formed concept but as a seed: small, persistent, impossible to ignore. It settled into my mind and would not leave: a challenge for Muslim women utilising wilds much like those. Something that did not yet exist but felt necessary, urgent, as if it were waiting to be born. But immediately…

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Age is no barrier

Sadaqa — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 14:33:00 +0000

When you envision participants gathering for Trials & Tribulations, what faces do you see? If you are honest — and honesty matters here — you likely picture younger women. Students perhaps, sisters in their twenties, bodies still unacquainted with the particular aches that accumulate across decades. Energy abundant, recovery swift, the kind of physical resilience that makes muddy obstacle courses…

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The gift of going first

Sadaqa — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 19:12:00 +0000

Leadership carries a particular loneliness: the sense that eyes are always watching, that every decision carries weight beyond your own experience, that what you choose often ripples outward in ways you cannot always predict. As head sister of your university Islamic Society, you carry this weight daily. You are the one sisters look to when questions arise, whose example — whether you intended…

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