Empowering Women Through Faith: A Letter of Gratitude to Shaykh

A letter from a student

To the noble Scholar and my teacher, Shaykh Dr. Mohammed Akram Nadwi,

You have changed my life, and the lives of thousands of women.

I actively work in dawah and encouraging women specifically to find healing and empowerment in the Quran and Sunnah. There are verses and Prophetic narrations that are at times abused and make women question their faith. Because of this, women have asked me if Islam is the truth, if God hates women, if they even matter to Allah because they feel like the Islam that has been portrayed to them has no space for women and has not had women’s voices transcribed through generations. They ask where they can even possibly learn a different perspective than one which they’ve been exposed to that claims women do not have rights, or a space, or that harm towards women is acceptable in Islam.

I immediately point them to your work, Al-Muhaddithat, and have shared the book and your lectures online with hundreds of women in person and thousands of women online.

Those very same women come to me months and years later, thanking me. They tell me their lives have been changed. They’re coming back to Allah. They’re praying for the first time in their adult lives. They’re reading the Quran every day, and sometimes they’ve started memorizing it. They’re wearing hijab after having removed it or putting it on for the first time. They’re raising their daughters and their sons to love Islam intentionally when before they didn’t even know if they wanted to raise their children loving Islam.

Shaykh Akram, I just learned that there are some people who waste energy questioning the value of your incredible work and this is so disheartening. Your work is foundational in amplifying the message of Islam’s space for women and making Islam accessible to women all over the world. I receive messages every single day from women from their teens to their 70s saying they’re finding themselves for the first time in their relationship with Allah because of what I teach from your work.

Sometimes, a scholar who is in a certain time period is not appreciated or understood by those around him or her. But when he or she passes, the next generation is ready and seeking the knowledge they have left behind. And that knowledge can shift the course of entire generations of this ummah. May Allah make your work like this Shaykh.

May Allah give you a strong, long, healthy life full of worship and use for His sake and use your work until the end of time. May Allah use your work when you are with Him, to be a tool of saving the Eman of the future generations of this ummah.

If I can be of any service Shaykh, please know it would inshaAllah be my immense honor.

Your student,
Maryam Amir