Pen and Paper

Faith & Reflection Dua in the Dark: When You've Been Praying for Years With No Answer A letter to every soul who keeps raising their hands — even when the sky feels silent. MA Mariam Awan Pen and Paper  ·  May 27, 2026  ·   " And your Lord says: Call upon Me; I will respond to you." — Surah Ghafir, 40:60 There is a kind of prayer that doesn't look like prayer at all. It doesn't have tears rolling down cheeks or hands raised dramatically in the golden hour. It looks like a person lying in the dark at 2 a.m., staring at the ceiling, lips barely moving — asking, again, for the same thing they have been asking for years. Quietly. Desperately. Without an answer. Maybe you know this prayer. Maybe you are living it right now. You have made dua for a person you love to come back. For an illness to leave. For a door of provision to open. For peace to return to a heart that forgot what peace felt like. You have asked in sujood. You have whispered in the stillness of F...

  Islamic Occasions · 9th Dhul Hijjah یومِ عرفہ Youm e Arfa يَوْمُ عَرَفَة The Day of Standing — the Greatest Day of the Islamic Year 9th Dhul Hijjah Plain of Arafah, Makkah Pillar of Hajj Among the most sacred days gifted to the Muslim Ummah, Youm e Arfa — the Day of Arafah — stands alone in its spiritual magnitude. Falling on the 9th of Dhul Hijjah , it is the crown jewel of the Islamic calendar, a day when the gates of divine mercy open wide, sins are forgiven in multitudes, and the distance between a believer and their Lord dissolves into nearness and whispered prayer. This is the day Prophet Ibrahim (AS) completed his trials. This is the day the religion of Islam was declared complete. This is the day millions of pilgrims gather on a vast sunlit plain outside Makkah — and it is a day that carries equal grace for those who are thousands of miles away. Origin & Meaning What is Youm e Arfa? The word Arafa (عَرَفَ) in Arabic means to know or to recognise . The Plain of Araf...

  Pride at the Dead Sea: A Political Agenda Disguised as Progress? Every year in June, the world witnesses another wave of Pride campaigns, rainbow branding, celebrity activism, and massive public festivals promoting LGBTQ ideology. But the upcoming 2026 Pride festival near the Dead Sea in Israel feels different  not because it is larger, but because of the symbolism behind it. As someone who believes in religious morality and traditional values, I cannot look at this event as “just another festival.” To me, it reflects something much deeper: a deliberate attempt to normalize what every major Abrahamic religion has historically considered morally wrong, while simultaneously using it as a political and international branding strategy. And perhaps the most disturbing part is the location itself. The region around the Dead Sea has long been associated in Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions with the story of the people of Prophet Lut (Lot) a nation destroyed because of m...

  Book Review Blog: This Book Won’t Burn (2024) by Samira Ahmed If you’re looking for a YA novel that feels painfully real, politically urgent, and emotionally intense, Samira Ahmed ’s This Book Won’t Burn (2024) is exactly that kind of book. It isn’t just a story about teenagers and school drama—it’s a fierce narrative about censorship , identity, and the courage it takes to speak when the world wants you silent. This novel burns with anger, grief, and rebellion, and it proves that words are not harmless. Words are power. Plot Overview (No Spoilers) The story follows Noor Khan , a Muslim-American teenage girl whose life is already falling apart after her father suddenly abandons the family. Noor, her sister Amal, and their mother are forced to relocate from Chicago to a small town in Illinois, hoping for a “fresh start.” But Bayberry High School is not fresh. It’s suffocating. Noor quickly discovers that the school district is quietly removing hundreds of books from the library—...

  Smiling outside. Breaking within. There are days when nothing feels physically wrong… and yet, everything inside feels unbearably heavy. No visible wounds. No dramatic breakdowns. Just a quiet exhaustion that settles deep within the soul. This is not a story of a moment. It is a story of a pattern—one that repeats itself in the quiet corners of someone’s life. She was never the kind of person people worried about. She laughed easily. She listened more than she spoke. She knew how to make others feel seen, heard, and valued. If you met her, you’d probably think “She has it all together.” And maybe that was the problem. Every evening, as the world slowed down, her thoughts began to race. It always started subtly a small worry, a passing memory, an unfinished conversation. But within minutes, her mind would turn into a crowded room, filled with voices she couldn’t silence. Questions without answers. Feelings without names. And the worst part? She didn’t know how ...

It Was Never Her Fault healing-from-self-doubt She once told me she was tired—not the kind of tired that sleep can fix, but the kind that settles deep in the soul. The kind that comes from hearing the same words over and over again until they start to feel like truth. They used to tell her, “You can’t do anything… you don’t even know how to speak… you won’t make it.” At first, she would ignore them. Then she would question them. And eventually, she began to believe them. One day, she asked me something I still cannot forget: “Tell me honestly… what is my fault?” I had no answer. Because the truth was, there was no fault to name. She did not choose the life she was born into. She did not choose the absence that shaped her childhood—the silence of a father she never knew, a presence she could never hold onto. She grew up watching others receive a kind of love and protection that always seemed just out of her reach. And yet, she was the one made to feel incomplete. What broke her the most...