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Getting back into social media

I took a bit of an unplanned break from social media since I made my cover reveal and preorder opening posts. Life has been happening pretty fast and there were a few family things to take care of. I've learned from Palestinians to say Alhamdullilah for it all and get back to it. I'm blessed to be able to rest for a bit but I do not want to let it lead to stasis or despondency.

So what I want to do here is to write out my ideas as 'scripts' for the short videos that I want to make. That way I'll get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper and it might make for interesting blog content as well. It'll definitely shed some light on how I approach social media posting. More after the click.

Preorder Now!

There are a lot of milestones that I'm looking forward to as a new author. Seeing the book in my local library or in a bookstore, holding it in my hands for the first time. I am incredibly grateful to have these events to look forward to Inshallah.

Two of those milestones have been reached this month. The first is preorders have opened for Canada and the United States, Alhamdulillah!

I would be really honoured if you could preorder it. The various options are on my link tree Here

The second is the cover reveal! Click on for more.

Three reasons we don't talk about Palestine

There's way more than three

The deathly silence that surrounds the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people has been to a significant degree dented since the 7th of October 2023, but, here in January 2025, more than fifteen months in, it has proven to be still resilient.

If we are fortunate enough to have a future in which honest histories get to be written, there will be volumes written about all of the reasons that the people of conscience in the West were not able to voice their condemnation of the genocide happening in the name of their values and with their tax dollars, let alone organize against it.

So there's way more than three reasons for the silence, but I feel the need to express my thoughts on why I feel so lonely when I'm wearing a kuffiyeh out in public in Canada and why the topic is so repelling to so many. I have three.

Review of War Of Return

If you do not wish to read further then the TL;DR is:

Summary: This book argues the root cause of the conflict in Palestine is not that Palestinians were dispossessed, but that they wish to no longer be dispossessed and go back home.

My conclusion: I read it so you don't have to be subjected to the ugly idea professed here that for there to be peace, Palestinian voices need to be smothered. I suggest reading something else by someone like Rashid Khalidi, or Illan Pape instead.

Or here are two upcoming books that I have far more hope for:

If I Must Die, by Palestinian Poet Refaat AlAreer

Genocide Bad by Jewish Author and Activist Sim Kern

To expand slightly I find this book to be of almost no value, read on if you wish to know what those bits of value may be.

First step PART II - Be Inspired

So in my last blog post I talked about where I think the idea of my novel came from.

While I believe I did a decent enough job of that, I think I missed something very important, and that is my guess as to why I have ideas in the first place.

So why do I have ideas?

I have ideas because I get inspired.

Which leads to the question. How does one get inspired?

Let's talk about the first step

All writing that comes from a human being (and what a weird world we live in that that needs to be qualified) comes from an idea.

And here I want to speak about where I think the idea of my novel came from, now only ten months away from publication. I cannot do better than that as, in the end, ideas are mysterious things.

The core idea of my novel is the setting of Medina'tul-Agham, which is a medieval city that is not only an Islamic society, but a matriarchal one as well.

As far as I can tell, that core idea came from the question. "Can the law of the faith that I am a part of... Sharia... explain the faith of the family that I grew up in?"

Editing and Miscellaneous other things

Here I am again, late at night, writing a blog post and trying to get a newsletter out because I want to, at the very minimum, post on the 23rd of every month until my book comes out.

So as the last hours of the 23rd of October slip by, let's hear it for achieving the bare minimum!

But that bare minimum included some major progress on a number of different fronts. Read on for more!

The 23rd of September... 2025! Inshallah!

So it's been four months since my last blog post, which was definitely NOT what I had planned. But a lot of progress has been made and I do have a lot of updates to provide.

The biggest being that I do have an 'official' date of publication for Under The Full and Crescent Moon and that is, Inshallah, the 23rd of September 2025! Which is, Inshallah, exactly a year from when I plan to put up this blog post!

That's a lot of Inshallah's already! Read on for a few more.

What do I even focus on?

My life has been very busy lately and I am feeling a little overwhelmed. I am just grateful that at least a little bit of the chaos I'm navigating is caused by what I want to achieve and that I am able to direct some of my efforts towards those ends. It is a privilege that not everyone has and I try to be mindful of that.

But still, because of all the things I need to get done, I need to prioritize. And with that comes the constant sense that maybe I'm focusing on the wrong things.

This site was built on the land of the Anishinabewaki, Haudenosaunee, Attiwonderonk, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. #LandBack.