As-salaamu alaikum,
In tonight’s video, I mentioned that the extended edition would tell you more about what I discovered in medicine through the people Allah blessed me to serve.
This is that story.
But before I tell it, I want to frame it with what the video established: that Yunus’s running was not a failure of faith. It was human grief overcoming a man who loved his people so much that their indifference broke him. And that Allah — who sees what we cannot see from inside our running — was not waiting at the destination of his escape to punish him. He was waiting there to complete him.
That is exactly what happened to me.
The ER that Broke Me
After years of practicing emergency medicine in the United States, something in me began to fracture.
It wasn’t the hours. It wasn’t the complexity of the cases. It was the particular exhaustion that comes from pouring yourself into people who are actively destroying themselves — and watching them return, again and again, to the same destruction.
Night after night: the same alcohol-related trauma. The same drug-related side effects. The same patients whose primary relationship with the medical staff was aggression and abuse. I remember standing in a treatment room, having just dealt with an aggressive, intoxicated patient who had tried to bite me and the nurse, and asking myself a question that I had never been able to answer:
Is this why I spent all those years training?
That question — asked enough times, in enough exhausted moments — becomes the seed of running. And eventually, I ran.
In 2011, I made a decision that I framed to myself as the first step toward early retirement. I took a position in an emergency room in Saudi Arabia. An ocean between me and everything that had burned me out. A fresh start. A strategic retreat which I had intended as part of my hijrah.
What I found there was not what I was expecting.
The ER that Rebuilt Me
The patients were different in every way that mattered.
Many of them were simple people — families, people from humble backgrounds with limited access to primary care who had arrived in the ER not knowing what to do. They were scared. They were confused. They needed someone to sit with them long enough to explain what was happening.
And they had something that most of my American patients hadn’t had in quite the same way — a faith that was alive, present and available. When I explained a diagnosis and connected it to their tawakkul in Allah, something shifted in the room. When I told them what to do and reminded them that healing comes from Allah and medicine is just the means, their faces changed. The fear didn’t disappear — but it found a container.
And then something happened that I had not experienced ever before in my many years of practice.
They made du’a for me.
Not just a sincere thank you that came from their heart. Not a Google review. Du’a. They asked Allah to bless my parents and have mercy upon them. Allah yarham walidayk.
They made du’a to Allah to protect my children. To reward me in this life and the Hereafter for what I had done for them.
I cannot fully describe what that did to me after years of pouring myself into people whose primary response was aggression or indifference. It was like putting water on ground that had been dry for a long time. Something rehydrated that I hadn’t realized had completely dried out.
This was hayatan tayyibah — the good life — arriving through the very door I had tried to exit.
The Gift Concealed in the Escape
But Allah was not finished.
Through my work in Saudi Arabia, I was given an opportunity that I could not have anticipated and did not deserve: I became one of the personal physicians for Sheikh Jafar Idris.
You know his story from Night 27. The Sudanese student whom Sheikh bin Baz sent to America. The teacher of teachers of an entire generation of American du’aat. The candle whose light is still spreading.
I had learned from him at a distance just before he left the US. And now — through a running away that I had intended as escape — I found myself near him and his family. Caring for him medically, reassuring his family.
As the sheikh had been quite ill, his medical care was primarily managed and organized by his son, Yusuf, whom I had known from the US, but in a formal way more than a personal way. Those years caring from Sheikh Jafar built a great friendship between Yusuf and I, and he quickly became someone that I considered one of my best friends and someone that I loved and respected greatly.
Yusuf Idris
Yusuf Idris is, in every sense, his father’s son — and in every sense, his own man.
He is a scholar who carries his knowledge lightly, which is the most difficult thing a scholar can do and the rarest of qualities, subhan Allah. He has been deeply involved in building New Muslim Academy — an institution dedicated to serious Islamic education for English speakers — and he invited me to teach there during my time in Saudi.
He moved in circles of scholars and educators who are doing some of the most important work in the Western Islamic landscape, and through my closeness to him I was given access to those circles — to a jama’ah of people who were building, planting trees; not just maintaining what existed.
But what I want to tell you about Sheikh Yusuf is not his credentials. It is something harder to quantify and more important.
He is, to this day, one of the most genuinely humble people I have ever known. Not performed humility — the kind that announces itself. Actual humility. The kind that comes from someone who knows enough about Allah to understand how little they know, and who is too focused on the work to have time for self-congratulation.
And he has a quality that I have thought about often in the context of this series: he consistently makes the people around him feel like more than they know themselves to be. Every conversation with Sh. Yusuf leaves me feeling that I have more to offer than I had recognized, that the work I am doing matters more than I had thought, that the direction I am heading is worth continuing. He doesn’t flatter — he encourages, and the distinction is that encouragement is pointed at something real.
I know that is his kindness, and he has been very kind to me, more than I think that I deserve. But I also know it is how he is built. And I know it is one of the greatest gifts a friend can give.
Alhamdulillah for Sheikh Yusuf Idris. A friendship that exists because I ran away — and found, at the destination of my escape, something I had been looking for without knowing I was looking for it.
What the Saudi Years Actually Were
I went to Saudi Arabia with multiple intentions: chief among them was hijrah, but a not so small part of it was to escape medicine too. What I found there was the version of medicine I had trained for — the version that justified everything I had put into it.
I went there to step back from many things. What I found there was the deepest connection to the ummah I had ever experienced — patients who made du’a for my parents and children, a scholar whose trust I was given, a friend whose character shaped mine, a jama’ah I had wanted to belong to my whole life.
I went there to run from my purpose. What I found there was the fullest expression of my purpose I had ever encountered.
This is what Allah does with running. Not always — not in every case, and the running itself was wrong and I am not recommending it as a strategy. But Allah, who is Al-Latif — the Subtly Kind — has a way of meeting His servants at the destination of their mistakes and offering them something they could not have received any other way.
Yunus ﷺ went to the whale’s belly in the wrong direction. He emerged on a shore where a plant was already growing for him. The provision arrived in the place he landed, in the condition he landed in.
I went to Saudi Arabia with the wrong orientation. I emerged from it with patients who quite possibly saved me more than I could ever save them, a friendship that is among the greatest blessings of my life, and a clarity about my purpose that all my years of deliberate career planning had never produced.
Wa kadhalika nunjil mu’mineen. And thus do We save the believers.
The Thing You’re Running From Might be Teaching You
I want to now speak directly to the person who is in the middle of running right now.
Not the person who ran years ago and has already come back. The person who is currently putting distance between themselves and something they know is theirs — a practice, a commitment, a purpose, a version of themselves that feels too far away to return to.
You cannot see what Allah has placed at the destination of your turning. You cannot see it because you are inside the running and the running produces its own darkness. But the promise of wa kadhalika nunjil mu’mineen is not about seeing. It is about turning.
Turn. Not when you feel ready. Not when the darkness lifts. From inside it — the way Yunus ﷺ turned from inside the whale.
La ilaha illa anta subhanaka inni kuntu mina al-dhalimeen.
There is nothing worthy of worship except You; how Perfect You are above all that they associate with you. Truly, I have been among those who wrong themselves.
That is the whole turning. Two sentences. And what is on the other side of them — what Allah has prepared at the shore where you will land — is not something you need to see in advance. You just need to take the step.
The purpose is still there. Still yours. Still waiting.
And if you are very fortunate — there may be a Yusuf Idris at the destination. Someone who sees in you what you cannot yet see in yourself, and who has the kindness and the character to say so.
Tonight’s journaling prompts
Prompt 1: Your Saudi Arabia. Where did you run to? Not necessarily a country — a distraction, a different identity, a period of distance from who you were supposed to be. What did you find at the destination of that running that you were not expecting?
Prompt 2: The du’a you received. Who has made du’a for you — genuinely, specifically, with your name? Who has prayed for your parents or your children or your wellbeing in a way that you felt? What did that do to you? And who are you making du’a for in that same way?
Prompt 3: The jama’ah question. Yusuf Idris gave me access to a jama’ah I had wanted to belong to. Is there a community — a group of people building something real — that you feel pulled toward, but haven’t yet found or joined? What is stopping you?
Prompt 4: The Yusuf question. Is there someone in your life who makes you feel like more than you know yourself to be — not through flattery, but through genuine encouragement pointed at that which benefits? Name them. Thank Allah for them. And then ask: are you that person for anyone?
Prompt 5: The tasbih tonight. Before you sleep — say it slowly, meaning every word:
لَآ إِلَـٰهَ إِلَّآ أَنتَ سُبْحَـٰنَكَ إِنِّى كُنتُ مِنَ ٱلظَّـٰلِمِينَ
La ilaha illa anta subhanaka inni kuntu mina al-dhalimeen.
Not as a formula. As an acknowledgment. You are the One and Only. I was wrong. And I am turning — right now, from exactly here — back toward You.
Resources:
Surat al-Anbiya 21:87-88 — the full Yunus ﷺ account in this surah. Read it alongside Surah al-Saffat 37:139-148 which gives the additional detail of the return to Nineveh and the hundred thousand who believed. Together they tell the complete story
Surat al-Kahf 18:6 — the ayah that reframes prophetic grief. Read it slowly and let it change how you understand every prophet who struggled with the indifference of the people they were sent to
New Muslim Academy — the institution Yusuf Idris has been building. Worth knowing about for anyone seeking serious Islamic education in English
The biography of Sheikh Jafar Idris — search for his lectures and his written work.
The quality of his scholarship and the gentleness of his teaching are still available and still giving light
One more thing
I went to Saudi Arabia to retire early. I came back with a clarity of purpose, a transformative experience of what medicine was actually for, and a best friend.
Allah does not waste running. He meets you at the destination and offers you something you could not have received any other way.
Turn toward Him. From exactly where you are. In exactly the condition you are in.
The shore is already prepared. The plant is already growing.
My inbox is open. Just reply.
May Allah meet every one of us at the shore of our returning, with shade already prepared and provision already growing, and with the friends we didn’t know we were going to find. Ameen.
— Dr. Ali