How to leave this Earth

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0:52The Documentary, home of the best documentaries from the BBC World Service.

1:00Dalia Mogahed:I'm in a lecture theatre at one of London's universities watching an unassuming woman in a headscarf take to the stage. How do we live when we cannot guarantee that what we love will last? This is Dalia Mogahed, the American researcher, author and public speaker. She's here a long way from her home in Virginia in the USA to speak to Muslim women about finding peace in an anxious world. It's learning how to be fully human while surrendering to Allah. But as I'm going to discuss with her, she is carrying an almost unimaginable anxiety herself that she's about to reveal in public for the first time.

1:44Dalia Mogahed:This year, Dalia was diagnosed with cancer. Discover and do it. Know your Lord and call upon Him. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm John Offord and in this episode of Heart and Soul, where we bring you stories of faith and spirituality, I'm spending the day with Dalia Mogahed in London. I'm hearing about this campaigner who spent her life offering support to other Muslim women, who's now turning her thoughts to what her diagnosis means for her life and her faith. Hi, nice to meet you. How you doing? Good to see you. You're alright? It's morning in London and I'm meeting Dalia Mogahed for the first time in a hotel.

2:31Dalia Mogahed:Despite the long journey and everything she's been through, there's a big smile on her face. Shall we take a seat somewhere? That's a very good thing to know.

2:44Dalia Mogahed:What does it feel like to be traveling and speaking at this particular point in your life? It's an incredible, incredible blessing. It's exhausting to travel like anyone who's ever traveled. And tours are especially exhausting because you're doing one after the other in different cities. But I see myself as having the best job in the world. I literally get paid to talk about spirituality, to brag about God, to help people find hope when things look dark. I mean, I can't imagine more meaningful work. I feel very, very blessed. I want to ask Dahlia about her diagnosis, but it's a difficult question.

3:32Dalia Mogahed:So I ask her about her life. So what is life like for you when you're not Dahlia Maggahead, the public figure? I have two adult children who live with me. So I spend a lot of time with them, two boys, two men now. And they are the most important human beings in my life. I spend a lot of time in nature. it's where I am nourished I feel like when I'm in nature when I go for long hikes I'm among a chorus of beings in praise of God and so it gives me incredible peace to be among the trees and the birds and and the rivers and I spend a lot of time I'm on projects I care about. I'm just getting to do work that excites me and feeds my soul.

4:38And this is especially important to me because about eight months ago, shortly after I turned 50, I was diagnosed with cancer.

4:50Dalia Mogahed:If you can, can you take me back to the moment you were told you had cancer? What do you remember? I was in the car and we were heading to the halal store. I think I needed cumin. And I get a phone notification. My phone buzzes. And I pick it up. It says new lab results. And I think, oh, good. I just had a biopsy after a mammogram. So many of my friends have had that happen. And it's benign and it's nothing. But it's a hassle when you're going through it and you just kind of want to put it behind you and file it away. So I was relieved, you know, the fact that the lab results were ready. You know, I'm in good shape.

5:39I work out regularly. I'm obsessive about my nutrition. My blood work's always really healthy. So I didn't worry about it. It was just something to get past and move on. And so I opened the lab result and I'm looking for where benign is. And I see invasive carcinoma. And I'm like, what? What is that?

6:16And I was so in disbelief that I put the lab result, which is like pages long. into ChatGPT. I'm like, what does this mean? And ChatGPT told me I had cancer. That that's how I had to find out.

6:41It was the before and after of my life.

6:46And I just started crying.

6:53sobbing that this was going to be what I'd be dealing with.

7:01Dalia Mogahed:It's hard to hear about Dahlia's experience of learning about her cancer, although obviously not as hard as it was for her. The cancer isn't terminal, but the diagnosis has confronted her own mortality, making her feel differently about death and her own Muslim faith. so how has that changed the way she sees things i do think about death i think about god and with all honesty i absolutely can't wait to meet him i love god so deeply i am so drenched in his grace every single day i see it in the small things and in the big things of my life. And that's

7:55why

8:02this diagnosis was both

8:10very difficult to get. But eventually I knew that it was a blessing. And I knew because I knew who gave it to me. And he wants good for me. That is my point of departure. That is my fundamental assumption. He wants good for me. And so he willed this for me and I am already seeing how it's been a protection, a wake up call, a pivot back to my true purpose. so i am very at peace with the idea of going back to god to eternal life to back home we're all just on a journey back home to god union with god where we started so this is a temporary rest stop. That's what this world is. That's what life is.

9:43Oh my God.

9:48Dalia Mogahed:This trip to London is more than just about work for Dahlia. At 11 that morning, an old friend arrives at the hotel. I miss you so much, Haripti. I miss you so much. This is Ina Sarari. They haven't seen each other for almost a decade. Dahlia met her about 25 years ago when she came to the United States for medical treatment for her child. They became incredibly close friends. I lived in the Emirates for almost two years doing research in the region. and got in trouble with the Emirati government at one point because of the research I had done on the Arab Spring. So I was no longer welcomed in the Emirates.

10:43My friend lives in Dubai, so I can't see her. I can't go visit her there. It's very hard to get a visa to the U.S., so we just couldn't see each other for years and years and years and then this opportunity came up where she had a visa to the UK and I was coming to the UK for my talks so we decided to meet here. Look at you. I came all over the way from Dubai to here to meet her after those whole years. We haven't We haven't met for 10 years and I'm so proud of her. Dalia is a soul sister. I consider myself so lucky and grateful to the creator that he gave me this chance to be part of her life.

11:38I'm sorry, I'm using the Arabic.

11:40Dalia Mogahed:Although Dalia is away from home, I can see how important her faith is and practicing it needs to happen wherever she is. Okay, this is us. In the early afternoon, Dalia, Ina and I head to the East London Mosque. The afternoon prayer is at 1.30pm. Yeah. I think I can see the mosque. Can you see the mosque just over there? Right in the corner? Yeah.

12:20It was really good to see the entire prayer space for the women completely full. And you can't help but feel a part of a community. I'm from America and I'm just visiting for a few days. But when you enter the prayer space, you feel like you belong wherever you go.

12:43Dalia Mogahed:So you've just been to afternoon prayer at this East London mosque. How do you feel now? I feel refreshed. I think the five daily prayers are a source of solace for me, and especially when you get to do them in congregation in the mosque. today after the afternoon prayer we also had Ejeneza prayer which is the funeral prayer and it's a it's a reminder of the reality of all of us passing away that this life is temporary and therefore very precious you've spent much of your life explaining and defending Muslim identity to other people. What does it feel like to simply be a Muslim without having to explain anything?

13:39It feels liberating and like such a weight off to get to be an individual individual human being rather than a mascot and it is exhausting to have to represent all the time or explain all the time but when you get to be anonymous and just a person it's a huge weight

14:10Dalia Mogahed:off what does your faith give you personally that nothing else does a way to make sense of life's twists and turns. It gives me a framework to put these events into that make them have meaning, that gives purpose to the pain. And I cannot imagine going through this experience, this human experience that we're all navigating without that, without that compass. I would be so lost. I would be so empty. So my faith gives me meaning and it gives me purpose. And it gives me a way to connect with other human beings. I do truly believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. knowing my relationship to my creator makes me more fully human.

15:21I can't imagine life without it.

15:23Dalia Mogahed:He describes your life, your body and your mind as being on loan from God. What does that mean to you? After someone passes away, what we say to them, it's a verse in the Quran, إِنَّ لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّ إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ We belong to God and to Him we return. and it's this idea we're all on loan. All of us belong to him and he calls us back to him. So my mind, my body, my soul are not my property.

16:08Dalia Mogahed:It's evening now and Dali is preparing to speak to a packed audience at Queen Mary University in London. What are you hoping to give people through these talks? Hope. Coping mechanisms. And an understanding of God that helps them make meaning of the challenges in their lives. What I was being purified from. What I was being prepared for. Maybe cancer wasn't just loss. Maybe it was damaging a boat to liberate it. After the talk, I asked some of the people in the audience what they made of Dahlia's message. I find Dahlia a person of substance and depth. and also because she uses her faith in a way that benefits not just Muslims but I feel like humanity as a whole.

17:13She's someone that I am inspired by. I feel like she's pushed past the status quo and she's gotten to a place of liberation. The biggest thing is the fact that we want to control our lives and that is difficult and this topic resonates with me because we can't control the outcome. It actually gives you a jolt in your brain that actually we're all fragile beings and this kind of health problem is like cancer could happen to any one of us at any time in our lives. It gives you a reminder that we're all fragile and we're only here for a little while, you know.

17:53Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. That's schwab.com slash Washington Wise. This advertisement feature is paid and presented by GoTurkiye. Everyone takes the ferry in Istanbul. It's how the city gets from one side to the other, but stay on board a little longer and you arrive at the Prince's Islands, a cluster of nine islands southeast of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara.

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19:34Dalia Mogahed:This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. For Heart and Soul, I'm spending a day in London with Muslim speaker and author Dahlia Mogahed, who was diagnosed with cancer shortly after turning 50. She's been thinking about what the diagnosis has taught her, about faith, loss and how she wants to spend the life she has left.

20:03Dalia Mogahed:Dahlia's cancer diagnosis has come at a very difficult time when she was already experiencing profound loss. Her father died four years ago. Her best friend died three years ago. Her mother died three months ago. And she has also experienced the end of her marriage. How have those losses changed you? I'll put it this way. Grief is a power wash for self-delusion. What those losses have done is they've forced just a reckoning of what is important and what isn't. they've led to very difficult decisions around ending my marriage, for example. And my mother's passing, I want to comment on that because I think even that was a release for her because she was suffering for years with Parkinson's.

21:14Anyone who's seen advanced stages of Parkinson's will understand what I mean. And her passing was very peaceful among her family. And while I was sad to lose my mother, I was also happy for her because she was reunited with my father and she was no longer suffering.

21:45Dalia Mogahed:What Dahlia has been through would break many people. But after spending time with her, it's so clear to me that what's protected her is her faith. I love flowers. So I have all these flowers in my back porch. And there's this true story. The Dahlia, the flower I'm named after, was wilting. I mean, it wasn't doing well. and I was like how you know I wonder what's going on with my with my plant I took a picture of it put it in an app you know it tells you what's what's wrong said oh this it can recover it's not you know completely dead it's just requires pruning to get more light in and it needs more space to breathe.

22:42And I truly felt in that moment that God was responding to that thought by letting me know in my heart that I wasn't being punished. I was being pruned to let more light in, to make more space so I could grow so I could flourish