When the lights at Islam21c almost went off

Badr, Qādisiyya, the liberation of Makkah, al-Quds and al-Andalus; Ramadan is the month of heroes and victory. The early Muslims used to make the most out of this month, excelling in as many types of good deeds as possible, from the battle of Badr to studying the entire Qur’ān. For Ramadan in a world under lockdown, this should offer us hope to make the most of new opportunities, rather than be a source of sadness.

You may have seen our Ramadan Heroes campaign. Islam21c’s vision is to see every Muslim confident and impacting the world. So, a ‘hero’ to us is someone who aims to achieve greatness, have impact, be extremely beneficial to others, and excel in all manner of good deeds seeking the pleasure of their Lord, not the praise or admiration of people.

When the lockdown started, we were pleasantly surprised to see a huge increase of people engaging with Islam21c. Amidst a backdrop of people getting bored, wasting their precious time or even increasing in sin, it was heartening to see there is such a large group of people who hit the ground running and used their lockdown time in a beneficial way, engaging with content designed to make them more confident and impactful in their societies.

However, the lockdown also had a severe impact on Islam21c’s financial situation. All our fundraising events had been cancelled, income from advertisers dried up, some supporters paused or had to cancel their standing orders, and so on. We were genuinely afraid that we might not be able to keep it running, no less during the surge in visitors, let alone at the cusp of our busiest time of year—Ramadan.

So, we all passionately beseeched Allāh the Exalted and took the means that He instructed His slaves to take, and here we are, by His grace, still online. Not only did we stay afloat, but we embarked upon a project more ambitious than we’d ever done before—the brand new Netflix-style Online Masjid platform hosting hundreds of halaqas—all created, edited and published whilst in lockdown!—to help people’s Īmān flourish during these unprecedented times.

But we need to find those heroes whom Allāh has determined will be the means for His assistance to reach Islam21c at this desperate time.

Islam21c’s strength of looking to build Muslims of the future, makes it slightly more difficult for some to see the importance of building confidence and impact in Muslims, compared to other avenues of sadaqa that are open to us—all of which we should endeavour to support. It takes foresight to see the importance of sowing seeds of a strong, confident, impactful community tomorrow, today.

The times we live in require these people not to give up but to continue to take action to build strength and change the situation of Muslims, before the inconvenient obstacles of today become the insurmountable challenges or crises of tomorrow. Indoctrination of children under the pretext of “Relationships Education”; our youth’s confidence in Islām; the problematisation of Muslimness; stigmatising Muslim minorities as an ‘enemy within’; structural injustice; Islamophobia; the list of challenges Islam21c provides leading discourse and narratives on—by the grace of Allāh—goes on, and is increasing.

From tonight and every odd night at 21:30 BST, we will be releasing parts of our new production, showing you a very important, heart-touching series of stories we’ve been working on to highlight the plight of many a normal British Muslim family, to stress the importance of this work. Some of it will shock you, some of it may anger you. But we’re hoping that there’s a select group of Ramadan Heroes out there that will be inspired by it to see the importance of strengthening the confidence, impact and power of the Muslim community, going forward.

You can help in two different ways:

1. You can either create a LaunchGood page and start to fundraise for Islam21c by clicking here and joining our Lifeline500
2. Or you can click here to donate to support Islam21c for our Ramadan Heroes campaign.

Stay tuned for the first story in this series, coming soon in shā Allāh.

Source: www.islam21c.com

The views expressed on Islam21c and its connected channels do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation.