Mental health
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Someone's daughter made me realize that a girl can cry, apologize, faint, beg, Introduce you to her family, pray for you and yet will lie and leave you.
Twenty Years of Silence: What I Discovered by Killing My Phone Every Ramadan
Twenty years ago, I made an uncompromising pact with myself. Long before smartphones became a universal addiction, I decided that every single year, when the sacred month of Ramadan arrived, I would completely remove my mobile phone from my daily existence for four straight weeks.
No scrolling, no digital validation, and no pocket-sized dopamine dispenser.
For two decades, while the world grew louder and increasingly hyper-reactive, I have stepped off the train every single year into an absolute vacuum. As a psychologist, I look at this four-week fast as a vital neurological reset. As a man of faith, I see it as the ultimate protection of our most finite, unrecoverable resource: Time (Al-Asr).
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The Dopamine Bankruptcy
The initial days of cutting the digital leash are always a brutal exposure of how deeply the modern brain is colonized.
Even after twenty years, the "phantom itch" initially triggers the subconscious loop driving your hand toward an empty pocket. Most people use their phones to escape this internal friction they use the screen to numb boredom and drown out anxiety.
By shutting down the digital noise, I force my brain to sit in the quiet reality of the present moment. The world always keeps spinning without my digital supervision, proving a cold fact: Most of what we call "urgent" online is just noisy, irrelevant data dressed up as importance. -
The Expansion of Time and Intellect
By the second week, the biological landscape of the mind completely shifts. The cognitive fog liquefies, and the attention span is fully restored.
The most shocking realisation, year after year, is the sheer volume of time available in a single day. When you are no longer sitting frozen, smiling blankly at a screen for hours, your life stretches out. I read deeper. My clinical thoughts become sharper. My internal boardroom the Nafs al-Lawwamah is no longer drowned out by notifications.
More importantly, my Dhikr and my prayers (Salah) undergo a complete transformation. Without the digital chatter vibrating in the back of my mind, I experience true, undisturbed cognitive presence before my Creator. -
The Sovereign Reality
By the final week, the phone is exposed for what it truly is a heavy, psychological anchor.
When I look at the people around me, completely paralyzed by their devices, I see a profound tragedy. They are living in a simulation. I am living in reality. Twenty years of this practice has solidified a fundamental truth that tech companies desperately want you to forget: You do not need constant connectivity to be a successful, high-functioning human being. In fact, constant connectivity is exactly what is keeping you weak and easily manipulated.
Take the Microphone Back
The month ends and the machine returns, but it has been permanently demoted from a master to a heavily monitored servant. It does not dictate my morning, and it is strictly banned from my sacred spaces.
You do not need to disappear for weeks to reclaim your mind, but you do need to stop pretending that spending hours a day staring into a piece of glass is living.
Turn the machine off for an hour.
Put it in a drawer for a weekend. Force your brain to endure the quiet discipline of reality. The truth remains undefeated: your life is happening right now in the room you are sitting in not inside the screen you are holding. Take your microphone back.
Dr Muhammad
Please be gentle with yourself today.... Allah loves you. There is nothing wrong with you. Even if there is Allah guides and helps you. Please just trust Him....
I’ve realised over the years that part of why I don’t always look forward to Eid is because for many women, Eid can feel less like rest and celebration and more like labour.
Labour to clean, cook, prepare, host, organise, shop, remember ingredients, think ahead, manage people, make conversation, tidy again, and carry the emotional atmosphere of the day.
And sometimes there’s sadness in looking around and realising how normalised it has become for women to carry most of that load quietly.
I think many women would enjoy Eid more if the labour of creating Eid was shared more consciously and generously by everyone in the family - men, women, and young people alike. It’s disheartening to see the same thing play out year after year, decade upon decade.
Hospitality is beautiful. Service is beautiful. But so is consideration. Sometimes I wonder how different Eid would feel if more people noticed the labour that makes it possible.
And I wonder how many women will secretly be entering Eid already tired.
BE REAL🌼. Unapologetically yourself. Nobody's doing it. Everybody now is a copy of a copy. It takes courage to be yourself. To not care. About judgements and opinions and what anybody thinks about you. Be your real, flawed self. Respect your likes and dislikes. Protect what you care about. And be loyal to you instincts. That's what makes you rare.