A website on Hubb’Allah is not complete without confessing to and revealing that a Shaykha is not a carpet lying in everyone’s path to step over, or a doormat to clean their dirty shoes over—she can be, and often is, brutal, fearless, ruthless and blunt and takes no chances and no prisoners when it comes to spotting trouble and sorting it out immediately. In fact, if anything, my heuristics, methods and approach have only become sharper, and this allows me to act quicker than a flash and take decisive action.
Truth be told, in my life, I have always had a quick, good, and clear perception which cowardly fools have spent a lifetime trying to distort, hijack and misguide, or use for their own benefit. As a smart and able woman, one sees only more of this kind of thing in their life, for each person is tested and trialed by their opposite, and sometimes by their like, until their faculties become more perfect and relatively flawless. (Ultimate perfection and flawlessness only belong to Allah and a human being, no matter how much of a master, can be penetrated and infiltrated in a hundred thousand ways every single second. It is therefore by Grace alone and through Allah’s infinite protection and kindness that we are alive. Our human perception cannot enumerate the ways in which we are kept alive, and in which we can fail and flounder.
My personal challenge has long been that I am a gifted and smart person, respecting and abiding by the standards and desires of a hundred fools and idiots, each with their own whims, fantasies, desires and programs. Several of them, including my own caretakers when I was younger, repeatedly critically endangered my life. From dealing with chyld m0lesers, to being robbed twice, to going into a very critical car accident in which I and the passengers came out unscathed nevertheless, to me facing and battling phishing and scamming attempts in the digital realms, I have had my fair share of exposure to trouble.
The stories of what happened in each encounter are wild. Dealing with chyld m0lesters since the age of five was not just my initiation to the reality and darkness of the world, but also the opening through which I made one of my most-earliest pacts with Allah, and held a discourse about the reality and brutality of life. All before I was even seven. There were other, very significant traumas throughout my life. Some were “emotional damages”, others were diseases and accidents and natural afflictions for the collective, and others were brutal assaults and criminal offences. When I was younger, some force would ward them off and as a matter of fact, that force still takes care of a great deal of the issues that I face, and it is known to have taken care of my offenders and problem-creators in very visible ways such that they were so afraid that they confessed to their plots and crimes, and this was how I got to know, through their self-confessions, that they meant ill. In fact, I would try to talk them out of their confessions, at which they raised their pitch higher and higher until they fled: They simply could not stand my energy, presence and vibe (not to say it is a good energy and vibe at all times, but in any case, it did not work with of for them, and it took me years to figure out that the person who fled from me was actually and in fact harmless. And more to the point, I learned about the reality of situation only in retrospect after piecing the puzzle together, and talking to a number of trusted, neutral persons on the way, constantly going over the micro-movements of the events to spot exactly what was true and what was going on.) I also live my life by altered perceptions and see tremendous wealth and beauty all around me, and sometimes that miraculous sight might prevent me from seeing what I call “the worm in the apple of paradise”: the absolute and revolting inversion of what I am seeing, the hidden disease, the secret harm and attack.
It used to break my heart to find this fracture in the continuity of my vision, but I have learned to make my peace with it, and asked Allah to turn things around in my favor and allow me to learn from death, darkness, sickness and betrayal as much as I have learned from my focus on all things good. I am self-taught and I often surpass any and all teachers I meet very quickly. So, I need to teach myself many things by myself, or ask my parents and friends because often Allah hides our insights with the people of our family and out social circles. I hear their stories and their wisdom, and know that I am woven of the same threads and may be experiencing some of the intergenerational demons, traumas and trials that are common to my lineage and people and my social world. By aggregating their stories and wisdom, I can form a better picture and often construct a new pathway or opening for all the people around me by adding one new clue or solution to the puzzle. This brings relief to all the people. I do that task for generations and for communities. I believe that Allah would never bring me trouble and harm on Hu’s own except to benefit me in some way or if I did not have latent skills to solve the issue or if I did not have potential to crack open and reveal a new aspect that had not been seen before in my personal self or collective (karmic) group. In simple words, I find the solution or implement an old wisdom that may have existed but may not have been enacted ably and with courage by the people around me. I cut the ribbon (while others jostle to take credit).
I have many ways to learn to be a wiser human who navigates life, and solves the occasional puzzles, some of which have been around for a long time and hardened and fossilized. I blast through them with increasingly diminishing remorse and regret. Learning to take decisive action when it may look brutal or inconsiderate is something of my area of expertise.
But perhaps nothing teaches you like travel does, and for me, two journeys have become critical thresholds that hold civilizational-grade learning potential:
One, when in 2007 I went to South Africa to a Sufi retreat, and on the side, I examined: townhouses and social enterprise, animals and flora in their habitat, and the proliferation of natural products in the market shelves of South Africa. Those turned out to be the real initiations. What I met in the Sufi school became a gigantic and sprawling mess, akin to some kind of slime mold that keeps on gooing and spreading, contaminating everything in its path. 19 years later, and I am still reeling from the aftershocks, still synthesizing the experience, and still writing learning notes. I was exposed to excessively damaged and damaging psyches, particularly in the realm of women who sought to lift themselves up but practiced the ways of silencing others, backbiting, harm, gossip and rumor. The caretaker of the retreat was a deeply toxic man himself (his then 8-year-old child was much better, a sound young man and a clear guide!), and the Shaykh was given to spontaneous explosion, thinking who-knows-what in his imagination. I became the sitting duck target for everyone’s temper, accusations and explosions. The theater accelerated and deteriorated so fast, that soon enough people who had never met me, joined the fray and began accusing me of events that took prior to when I must have been born, pertaining to people even further removed in this network of relations. For instance, an Australian Sufi woman who I helped gain her way out of Pakistan reached South Africa, and immediately made me a target of her gossip that she not only spread in Africa, but shipped faithfully back to Pakistan, where the very woman who has introduced me to the Sufi School replicated and spread it, earnestly dispatching information to new recruits. With each batch of complaints, all of these people attached their personal traumas, and how I was somehow responsible. Enter, a new Australian Sufi, introduced by the first. I was busy those days in a family wedding. Before I know it, I am seeing messages and posts about me. I am “ignoring them”. Hmm? And just like that, I was accused of somehow being a cause of grief to that second woman, whose face and story I had barely registered. And before I could grasp that, we were on the subject of her mother, who may have been deceased. I dared not ask, but I know I was the culprit. The women shared a pattern of hatred for their mothers, and others amongst the group were being held liable as the toxic spillover of accusations spread. The Pakistani woman, a friend and classmate of mine, then took a dangerous turn that would make me drop a pipe from my mouth cartoon-style, in shock, were I smoker of pipes. Short of that, only my jaw dropped in fear and amazement, and my eyes widened: that lady started a now-infamous campaign to recruit university students to battle India in some prophesized apocalyptic battle (called Ghazwa-e-Hind). I meekly tried to warn her once at which she hissed a warning; she had found a life path. (Looking back, I realize her venomous vengefulness needed a target big enough.) When that campaign was ultimately arrested and mollified by the government, this group changed shape and targets. It’s 2026, and they are still active and dedicated to other campaigns that they execute in their typical, brutal style with a flourish that declares with flair and a visible hint of threat: We are God’s servants, and we will clean the land up. Godspeed. Maybe I am the coward who will not undertake such an enterprise and maybe they are in the right. But my path was never brutal cleanups and punishment, and installation of an order that others have to obey. I think that attitude and approach belongs to the past, and belongs to inferior and fundamentally powerless people who obtain their way through brutality and militancy as well as sabotage, harm and threats. Thy can bring about an order of their choice on the back of brutality and militancy and chaos, but they cannot change people’s hearts. Their path goes from terror to terror, pulling no stops.
I am no lone, light and bubble gums either. I believe in strictness in its own place. I hide it in systems, corrections and values. Clarity of values, clarity of form. Good, strong resilient systems. Economy of expense and effort, and following the most core algorithms and principles of Islam, that are almost secular and are not of a religious nature: they are modes of behavior and conduct, they are mathematical in nature. They are design principles and codes that transcend human realms and call also be found in the natural and cosmic realms. TAQWA is the supreme principle, and I have spent time defining it (publication pending).
My path is very design-oriented, it is arithmetical, it is focused on systems design and on sorting algorithms. Once you have my vocabulary and methods in hand, when you look at Reality again and look at the Scriptures, things begin making sense. Perception falls into place. Both the mythos and the theology makes comically simple and evident sense. You wonder what the confusion, if any, was there, after all.
Alhamdolillah.
So, I am not fond of the deeply inferior and cantankerous approaches, undertaken by frustrated and brutal people who are, in my view, essentially seekers of political and social power using religion and goodness as backdoors to gain power. Learning to let go of that toxic and harmful social circle was a vast, multi-year training in isolating myself from manic harm.
To be continued….
Page created and last update on: November 14, 2026