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 halaqa or address your community, when you send the email or post the announcement, you are not recruiting soldiers for battle. You’re offering a threshold, or a doorway into an experience that will ask something real of them whilst giving something essential in return.
What you’re actually asking
Be clear about this from the start: you’re asking sisters to fast, to dress in modest clothing that will become heavy with mud, to spend hours pushing their bodies through obstacles designed to be difficult. You’re asking them to be cold, tired, hungry, frustrated. You’re asking them to arrive the night before and to keep going when every muscle wants to stop.
This is not a fun run. It’s not about personal achievement or Instagram-worthy moments of triumph. Rather, it’s about walking, however briefly and imperfectly, in the direction of understanding what refugees endure. When you frame it honestly, you’ll be surprised by what happens. The women who respond are not necessarily the fittest or most confident. Often they are the ones who hear in your words an echo of something they’ve been seeking without knowing how to name it: a way to embody their faith rather than just profess it, a path towards solidarity that requires more than passive sympathy, a container for the grief and helplessness they feel when they see images of displaced families and don’t know what to do with that ache.
Speaking to reluctance
Some will hesitate, but don’t mistake that for weakness. It’s wisdom: healthy, genuine respect for what the challenge demands. You must not try to talk them out of their reluctance. Instead, honour it as part of the journey.
You might say: “Your hesitation isn’t a flaw. It means you’re taking this seriously, understanding that this asks something real of you. That hesitation is appropriate. Perhaps it’s even necessary, because refugees don’t have the luxury of choosing whether to face what terrifies them. Your willingness to proceed despite uncertainty is itself a form of solidarity.”
Reluctant participants often discover the most profound insights, precisely because they never mistook the challenge for entertainment or self-improvement. They know from the start that this will be difficult, and they choose it anyway, not because they’re confident in their ability but because they recognise the call to action even when it frightens them.
The metaphor made flesh
When you explain the challenge, help your community see how each element corresponds to refugee experiences. The fasting mirrors the hunger of those who flee with nothing. The modest dress perceived as inappropriate for the setting reflects how refugees cannot simply shed what marks them as other, how their very identity can become a burden they carry through hostile terrain. The obstacles represent borders designed to exclude, bureaucracies constructed to delay, natural barriers offering no accommodation to those who must cross them anyway.
The mud is perhaps the most visceral teacher. It clings and weighs and refuses to be ignored. It gets everywhere: under fingernails, somehow in hair despite hijab, caked on clothing that will take hours to properly clean. This is the challenge saying: you cannot do this and remain comfortable, nor participate and stay clean. You cannot walk this path and remain unchanged.
Frame all of this gently and with kindness. This is not about making your community feel guilty for their comfort or safety. Instead, it is about offering them a rare opportunity to step outside that comfort deliberately, to choose solidarity when they could just as easily choose ignorance, to let their bodies teach their hearts what words alone cannot convey.
Who this is for
The Trials & Tribulations challenge is not only for young, fit women who already love physical activity. This is for the sister who hasn’t exercised since her children were born, who wonders if she still possesses the strength she remembers from youth. For the professional who spends her days in offices and meetings, whose body has become merely the vehicle that transports her mind from commitment to commitment. For the student juggling studies and family expectations, looking for something that matters beyond grades and career prospects.
Make clear that fitness is not a prerequisite. The only requirement is willingness: to try, to struggle, to keep going when it would be easier to stop, and to let the experience work on them rather than trying to master it. Those who would never describe themselves as athletic often discover reservoirs of determination they didn’t know existed, not because the challenge made them strong but because it revealed strength that was always there, waiting for a worthy reason to emerge.
Creating containers for transformation
Your role as organiser includes helping participants prepare spiritually as well as practically. Consider hosting a gathering beforehand where sisters can discuss their intentions, fears and hopes for what the challenge might open within them. This is not motivation or hype but spaciousness, creating room for honest conversation about what it means to choose discomfort in solidarity with those who have no choice.
Some will frame their participation as an act of worship and a way to draw closer to Allah through embodied empathy. Others will speak of needing to do something tangible, tired of feeling helpless in the face of refugee suffering. Still others might struggle to articulate why they feel called, knowing only that something in them responds. All of these are valid. Your job is not to provide the “right” reason but to hold space for whatever arises, trusting that the challenge itself will teach what needs teaching.
The invitation’s shape
When you craft your actual call to action, be it an email, announcement or social media post, allow it to breathe. Avoid exclamation marks and hyperbole. Speak as you would to a dear friend you’re inviting into something meaningful and difficult, that matters enough to be worth the cost.
You might write: “Imagine the heart-wrenching journey of a refugee fleeing from war or natural disaster. Picture the fear, loss, and uncertainty as they leave behind everything they’ve ever known in search of safety. How would you cope with such an ordeal? Now is your chance to walk, however imperfectly, in that direction. We’re organising Trials & Tribulations this autumn, in which sisters spend a day in solidarity with refugees. It will be wet, muddy and harder than you think. But it will also gift you something precious: a visceral understanding of what it means to keep moving when your body wants to stop, to carry weight that wasn’t meant to be yours, to choose the difficult path because the alternative is abandoning those who walk it out of necessity rather than choice. If this calls to you, even if it frightens you, I hope you’ll join us.”
Then provide practical details: date, location, what to bring, how to register, where sponsorship funds will go. But let the invitation itself remain simple and honest, trusting that the sisters who need to hear it will recognise their own call within your words.
After they say yes
Once someone commits, your role shifts to support rather than persuasion. Send reminders about preparation (gentle walking builds stamina), what to wear and bring, and the importance of sleeping well the night before. But also send reflections: quotes from the Qur’an about perseverance, hadith about the Prophet’s ﷺ own encounters with hunger and hardship, stories of refugee experiences.
Help them see their preparation as part of the spiritual practice, not just logistics. Each step walking can become meditation on what refugees walk towards and away from. Each moment of hunger during fasting can prompt reflection on those who go hungry not by choice but by circumstance. What you’re helping to build is not just physical capacity but spiritual readiness, preparing them to meet the challenge with open hearts and minds attentive to what it might teach.
The call continues
Remember that your invitation doesn’t end when registration closes. Some sisters will hear about the challenge too late this year but begin wondering if they might try next year. Others will participate once and then become ambassadors, calling their own friends and family to future challenges. Still others will decline participation but support through sponsorship, their generosity flowing from your willingness to extend the invitation in the first place.
This is how movements grow: not through pressure or manipulation but through honest invitations issued with care, through creating containers where transformation becomes possible, trusting that when you offer something genuine the people who need it will find their way to it. Your call to action is itself an act of service. May your words find the hearts that need to hear them, and may those hearts find the courage to respond.
