There are some stories you don’t realize you’ve been carrying until you finally sit down to tell them (or, in this case, write them), and this is one I have returned to again and again, not because it is easy to tell, but because it has shaped the way I understand faith, mercy, and what it truly means to be blessed by Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ.
I grew up with a brother with autism. But that sentence, as simple as it is, does not capture the fullness of who he is. It doesn’t tell you about the way he laughs with his whole body, or how he memorizes patterns I can’t even see, or how deeply he feels things that most people overlook.
It also doesn’t tell you about the quiet weight that settles into a family when the world is not built with your loved one in mind.
For much of my childhood and teenage years, I understood our family’s difference before I ever had the words to articulate it. I noticed it in the way our outings required a kind of preparation other families did not seem to need, in the way unpredictability was woven into our routines, and in the way people responded to us in spaces that were supposed to feel like home. As a child, I remember watching other families at the masjid, kids sitting quietly beside their parents and rows aligned. Calm. Stillness. And then there was us. The stares came first. Then the whispers. Then the subtle distancing. Sometimes it was well-meaning discomfort. Sometimes it wasn’t.
What I internalized, without anyone explicitly saying it, was that there was something about us that didn’t belong.
And that feeling… that feeling of not belonging in the very spaces that are supposed to center mercy, stays with you.
Slowly, my parents began to withdraw from their communities, no longer feeling the same sense of belonging within the circles of friends and family they had known for years. It was not rooted in shame, but in a quiet, lingering sadness that settled into their hearts and minds. As deeply as they loved my brother, they could not escape the questions that surfaced in those early days of his diagnosis: Why him? Why us? How could our only son have autism? Before his diagnosis, autism was something unfamiliar to us, something distant and undefined. What followed was a gradual process of learning, unlearning, and slowly finding our footing in a reality we had never anticipated.
And yet, as I grew older, I began to realize that what felt like a difference to the world was, in many ways, a form of closeness to Allah that I had not fully understood before. In Islam, those who are not morally accountable in the same way (those whose abilities are different) are not burdened with sin in the way the rest of us are. There is something humbling about that. To live in a state where your existence is not weighed down by hisab in the same way as others is not a naqs; it is a rahmah. It is the kind of spiritual purity that many of us spend our entire lives striving toward and still fall short of.
I have come to see this not just as an introspective concept, but as a lived reality. There is a sincerity, an unfiltered honesty, and a depth of presence in people with special needs that exposes how performative the rest of us really are. They are not concerned with social expectations, with appearances, with the quiet competitions that occupy so much of our energy. They feel joy in its fullest form. They express discomfort honestly, without hesitation. They exist in a way that is unburdened by the constant calculations the rest of us make. To me, this is a beautiful reminder of what it looks like to be Allah’s creation in its most unguarded form.
Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ says in the Qur’an:
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَـٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍۢ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلْنَـٰكُمْ شُعُوبًۭا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓا۟ ۚ إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتْقَىٰكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌۭ
“Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you” (Surah Al-Hujurat 49:13).
Not the quietest. Not the most socially conforming. Not the easiest to accommodate. Righteousness is something deeper, something rooted in the unseen. And if anything, growing up in this space has taught me that closeness to Allah is not always found where the world expects it to be.
Being a sibling in this space has never felt like a burden to me; if anything, it has always felt like an unearned blessing that I am still trying to live up to. To grow up alongside someone who teaches you patience not as an abstract virtue but as a daily practice, who teaches you to slow down, to observe, to advocate, and to care in ways that are often unseen, is a gift that reshapes you from the inside out. It forces you to confront your own limitations, your own impatience, your own assumptions about what matters. It strips away the illusion that ease is the standard by which a life is measured.
I often think about the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ:
الرَّاحِمُونَ يَرْحَمُهُمُ الرَّحْمَنُ، ارْحَمُوا مَنْ فِي الأَرْضِ يَرْحَمْكُمْ مَنْ فِي السَّمَاءِ
“The merciful are shown mercy by the Most Merciful. Be merciful to those on the earth, and the One above the heavens will have mercy upon you.” (Tirmidhi)
How do we, as a community, treat our brothers and sisters with special needs? Mercy is not passive. It is not just a feeling, it is action. It is accommodation. It is patience. It is advocacy. It is making space when it would be easier not to.
The stigma that exists in our communities often stems from a lack of understanding, but also from an unwillingness to sit with discomfort long enough to grow from it. It is easier to look away, to create quiet distance, to treat disability as something separate from the universal experience of life. But the irony is that in doing so, we distance ourselves from some of the most profound lessons Allah places in our lives. These are not lives on the margins; they are lives that carry barakah and lessons in ways we do not always recognize.
For a long time, I felt this uncomfortable distance. I loved my community, but I did not always feel held by it. That began to change when I found MUHSEN (Muslims Understanding and Helping Special Education Needs). What they created was not just accommodation, it was belonging. It was a reimagining of what our communities could look like if we truly centered mercy and empathy. I saw families walk into spaces where they did not have to explain themselves, where their children were not seen as disruptions but as members of the community. I saw siblings like myself find language for experiences we had carried quietly for years. And in that environment, something shifted in me. The isolation I had normalized began to dissolve.
Performing Umrah with this group last year felt like a culmination of everything I had been learning, both about faith and about what it truly means to belong. My buddy on that trip was a young woman with Down syndrome whose presence was impossible to overlook. She spoke her mind with a kind of unfiltered honesty and carried a warmth that drew people in effortlessly. In a matter of days, she became a friend to everyone around her and, in many ways, a living reminder of what actually matters. She was consistent in her prayers, attentive to her worship, and never missed an opportunity to make duaa. May Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ bless her and preserve that sincerity within her.
Standing in front of the Kaaba, there is a leveling that takes place that is difficult to articulate. It is the kind that renders the hierarchies and judgments we carry in this world almost meaningless. Everyone is there for the same purpose, dressed in the same simplicity, moving in the same rhythm of devotion. In those moments, the categories we use to separate one another lose their weight. What remains is sincerity, intention, and a quiet, collective hope for the mercy of Allah.
I vividly remember the moments that required us to become each other’s eyes, voices, and strength. We found ourselves describing the Kaaba in soft, careful detail to a blind participant, trying in our own limited way to translate something so sacred into words they could hold onto. Nearby, conversations unfolded through hands as volunteers communicated in sign language with a deaf family, every gesture filled with care, patience, and presence. And then there were those in wheelchairs, gently lifted and carried through the crowds so they could reach the Kaaba, so they would not be kept at a distance from what their hearts had longed for. No one was left behind, not even for a moment.
In a place overflowing with people, space was made. Strangers paused, stepped aside, and softened without needing to be asked. I watched as these pure souls were brought forward, closer and closer, until they could place their hands on the Kaaba. It was overwhelming in a way that is hard to explain, the kind that sits in your chest and rises to your eyes before you can name it. It felt like mercy unfolding in real time, like a glimpse of what our ummah is meant to be when we truly see and carry one another. SubhanAllah, even now, I struggle to find words that fully capture what it felt like to witness that.
My time in Makkah and Madinah made me reflect on how differently Allah measures us. Alhamdulillah. I pray that Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ extends the invitation to all of us.
There is a version of myself from years ago who sat in masjids and dawats (gatherings) feeling out of place, trying to make sense of why the world didn’t understand my brother. I carry her with me still, but I no longer carry her confusion. What I have now is a clarity that came slowly, shaped by experience, by faith, and by the people who entered my life at the right time. I understand now that what once felt like isolation was, in many ways, a form of divine wisdom from Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَىٰ, a placement in a life that would teach me things I could not have learned otherwise.
To grow up with a sibling with special needs is to be given a lens that reveals both the shortcomings in our communities and the rahmah embedded within our faith. It is to witness, firsthand, the gap between what we claim to value and what we actually practice. But it is also to witness something far more enduring: the way Allah places lessons in our lives through people we might otherwise overlook, and the way those lessons, if we allow them to, can transform us.
I do not see this as a story of hardship. I see it as a story of barakah, of being entrusted with a relationship that continually teaches me what it means to be patient, to be present, and to be merciful in a way that is intentional rather than convenient. And more than anything, it has taught me that the people we are sometimes taught to see as “different” are often the ones who carry the most clarity about what it means to simply be.
And that, to me, is not just meaningful. It is sacred.
