u/Garaad252

In many languages, the heart is the seat of emotion and affection and is deeply engrained in many types of folk culture. It's why, for example, the heart is conceptualised as the seat of love in the English language.

However, in other languages such as Berber, Malay, Indonesian as well as Somali, it’s actually the liver that governs emotion (and life).

In the Somali language, the liver denotes life, love and emotional distress.

For example, in a famous Qaraami song, one of the lyrics goes:
𝐴𝑛𝑖𝑔𝑜𝑜 𝑏𝑢𝑘𝑎 𝑏𝑎𝑎ℎ𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑖𝑦𝑜𝑜 𝑘𝑢 𝑏𝑎𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑟𝑘𝑢 𝑚𝑎𝑦 𝑔𝑜'𝑎𝑦 (𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑠𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢, I 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑑𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑏𝑦; 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑚𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘?)

Some other references in everyday Somali speech that signifies the liver as the source of emotion:

𝐵𝑒𝑒𝑟-𝑛𝑢𝑔𝑢𝑙 (literally sensitive liver) conveys a gentle heart.

𝑊𝑎𝑎𝑛 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑎𝑐𝑎𝑦 is a hyperbolic expression to show that one’s heartbroken. Similar to the phrase 𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑎ℎ 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑟𝑘𝑎!

𝐵𝑒𝑒𝑟𝑘𝑎 𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑢 𝑞𝑎𝑏𝑎𝑦 is a rude imperative that’s hyperbolic and used to demonstrate anger, rejection, or indignation towards someone. It’s very similar to the English equivalent 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑝 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑑 or be disconnected from the source of life.

Hi everyone! I'm coming from Turin, Italy for a conference in Celje soon and I'm hoping to sort out a dental problem while I'm there.

I chipped my front tooth (upper incisor) hitting a door. I already got it checked at a hospital here in Italy. The X ray and exam confirmed it's a simple crown fracture, the tooth is still vital (nerve is fine), no mobility, and they recommended a conservative composite restoration/bonding. So the diagnosis is done, I just need the actual repair.

Problem is the public waiting list here is months long, and the private quote I got in Turin was €400 for the bonding.

From my research it looks like private dental care in Slovenia is cheaper and the quality is just as good or better. So a few questions:

1. Celje or Ljubljana: which would you go to for cosmetic/composite work on a front tooth?
2. Any clinics or dentists you'd personally recommend? I've been looking at Diamant in Celje and Modri Zob in Ljubljana but would love real opinions.
3. Roughly what should I expect to pay for composite bonding on one front tooth?
4. Is it realistic to get an appointment on short notice as a foreigner?

I can bring my Italian report and panoramic X ray with me. Any advice appreciated. Hvala!

If you are a stay-at-home mom and you are struggling with feelings of worthlessness or insignificance, I completely understand you.

If you feel like you are all alone, stuck at home with the kids, just changing diapers, cooking meals that are only half-eaten, cleaning up messes all over the house, and nursing the baby, you're not alone.

You probably feel like the world is passing you by, as you stay home barefoot in your pajamas tending to toddlers, while others are out there in "the real world" going to prestigious jobs, earning money, and "contributing to society," and you feel very small.

Some mothers in this situation even become depressed, because of feelings of isolation, inner self-doubt, and external feedback from others that implies that what you're doing is meaningless.

We live in a world that values only the material, the tangible, namely: cold hard cash. Worth is measured financially. Value is counted only when it involves earning a paycheck. Importance is assigned only to jobs that come with pay stubs.

So, if you don't have one of those cushy jobs that pay you a yearly salary, then...what do you even have? Who are you? What is your worth?

You are nothing.

But the reality is that you, as the stay-at-home mother raising your children on Islam and molding their character on the sunnah of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and shaping their personalities as strong, healthy, physically and mentally and emotionally and psychologically sound human beings, are doing the most worthwhile, significant, and much-needed work that exists.

You are everything.

To your children, you are everything. To your husband and family, you are everything. To society, you are everything.

While, to a large corporation or company that might give you a job, you are nothing but an easily replaceable employee who can be hired and fired.

Nothing is more important than the Islamic tarbiya of offspring.

Imagine the potential for reward in being the person who teaches another human being how to pray salah (الصلاة)! Or the reward for teaching another human being surahs of the Quran! Or the reward for teaching another human being how to make wudu (الوضوء)!

Each time any one of your children makes wudu or prays or recites Quran, you get a share of the reward. And when your children grow up and teach their own children wudu or salah or Quran, you get a share of the reward!

You are looking at the potential for infinite reward for teaching Islamic knowledge that reverberates through the generations.

Because the reality is that you are not only raising just your own children; you are raising entire generations of believers inshaAllah.

So don't worry about the snide comments, belittling remarks, or condescending questions of "What do you even DO all day?" from shallow people stuck in the limited scope of the material and the here-and-now.

Even though modern society gives zero honor, zero prestige, zero status to mothers who leave paid jobs to dedicate themselves to the proper raising of their children, Islam bestows the greatest honor, dignity, and status upon mothers.

Allah says,

وَوَصَّيْنَا الْإِنسَانَ بِوَالِدَيْهِ حَمَلَتْهُ أُمُّهُ وَهْنًا عَلَىٰ وَهْنٍ وَفِصَالُهُ فِي عَامَيْنِ أَنِ اشْكُرْ لِي وَلِوَالِدَيْكَ إِلَيَّ الْمَصِيرُ.

"And We have enjoined upon man [care] for his parents. His mother carried him, [increasing her] in weakness upon weakness, and his weaning is in two years. Be grateful to Me and to your parents; to Me is the [final] destination." (Surat Luqman, 14)

The Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم said, when asked about the person who most deserves our good treatment and companionship: "Your mother," three times, before saying, "Your father."

حديث أبي هريرة قال: جاء رجل إلى رسول الله ﷺ فقال: يا رسول الله، من أحق الناس بحسن صحابتي؟ -يعني: صحبتي، قال: أمك قال: ثم من؟ قال: أمك، قال: ثم من؟ قال: أمك، قال: ثم من؟ قال: أبوك.

As Muslims, this is our measuring stick: the Quran and sunnah. These are our standards, and we don't care about the external standards of the secular modernist world that is fixated on the financial, the material, the surface-level.

We don't judge our worth or inherent value by hedonistic secular criteria. We judge everything by the criteria of Islam.

May Allah reward you for all your contributions to society and for every good thing you teach every one of your children and pass on to your progeny, ameen!

Hi all, I chipped/broke part of a front tooth and need it fixed (probably bonding or a crown, not sure yet — waiting on an X-ray). I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest option, I care more about actual quality and not being pushed into unnecessary extra treatments.

A friend recommended DentalPro, but from what I've read online they're a big chain and some reviews mention being upsold on treatment plans. I'm also considering the Dental School at Lingotto (university clinic) but heard visits can involve a lot of waiting and less experienced students doing hands-on work.

Has anyone had a genuinely good experience (skilled dentist, honest pricing, no unnecessary upselling) with a private studio or specific DentalPro location in Turin? Looking for names/recommendations based on real experience, not ads. Thanks!

Today’s khutbah at my local mosque was built around Uwais Al Qarni, and it stuck with me.

Uwais lived during the Prophet’s SAW time in Yemen but never met him, he stayed behind caring for his elderly mother and never left her side long enough to travel. Yet the Prophet SAW described him by name to his companions, a man from Yemen, best of the Tabi’een, with a mother, healed from illness except for a small mark, and told them if they ever met him, to ask him to pray for their forgiveness. Years later Umar ibn Al Khattab found him exactly as described, and asked this unknown man, no title, no wealth, to pray for his forgiveness. Uwais did.

The only thing Uwais was ever known for was how he treated his mother. That’s the whole khutbah in one image, birr al walidayn isn’t a side virtue in Islam, it’s one of the most direct paths to Allah’s pleasure.

From the Quran, Surah Al Isra tells us to lower the wing of humility to our parents and never even say “uff” to them as they age, and Surah Luqman reminds us our mother carried us through hardship upon hardship.

Two hadith the imam tied to this:

“Who among the people is most deserving of my good companionship?” The Prophet SAW said, “Your mother.” Asked three more times, same answer each time, “Your mother.” Only the fourth time did he say, “Then your father.” (Bukhari and Muslim)

“The pleasure of the Lord is in the pleasure of the parent, and the anger of the Lord is in the anger of the parent.” (Tirmidhi)

What made it hit even harder for me is something separate I’d been thinking about, the actual roots of our own words for mother and father in Somali.

Hooyo comes from two roots. The first is hoy, meaning home, and a house is only truly a home once it’s filled with love, care, and presence, which is exactly what a mother’s presence does to any space. The second is hoo, which means to give someone something valuable without expecting anything back. A mother’s love is like that, unconditional, unquantifiable, impossible to repay.

Aabbo also comes from two roots. The first is ab, meaning descent or lineage, carrying your father’s name as proof you belong to it. The second is aab, which has two senses, someone worthy of unwavering respect, and also a waterproof vessel made from tree bark sealed with fat. A father’s guidance does the same thing, sealing the gaps that would otherwise let a child’s confidence and wellbeing leak out.

Our language was teaching us this before we even had the words for it.

May Allah make us good to our parents.

What was the khutbah about in your local mosque today?

That guy who just won a primary election in America — Dr Abdul El Sayed — and has been making waves, has a lesser known story that resonates strongly with me.

Since yesterday the headlines have been saying three things about him:

He’s a Muslim.

He’s a progressive, a socialist.

He beat the candidate backed up by 30 million dollars of pro-Israeli money.

But these are not the most interesting things about him.

The culture war caricature doesn’t begin to tell his full story.

A freind tagged me to a video that led me to the real Dr El Sayed.

This is a guy who trained as a physician but chose not to practice as one.

He took his MD from Ivy League Columbia and then left the bedside.

It’s the classical story of the doctor who decides to go out there to tackle the diseases sending patients to the hospital, rather than wait for sick people at the bedside.

He once said: 15 hours to Egypt or 15 minutes into a Detroit neighbourhood, either way a ~10-year gap in life expectancy.

So, he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and took a doctorate in public health.

In 2015, when he was barely 31, he took over the Health Department of an American city that had gone bankrupt and privatised its public health function out of existence.

He was the youngest health officer of any major American city.

He built back the Detroit Health Department from the floor up.

This was a Health Department responsible for almost 700,000 souls.

This was one of the swiftest turnarounds of any a public health department in the country.

He tested for lead in schools to safeguard the health of the kids.

He provided free eyeglasses for kids who couldn’t see the board.

He cut the sulphur dioxide a refinery was belching into deprived neighbourhoods.

He later ran the Wayne County’s Health Department catering to almost two million residents where he led efforts to erase $700 million in medical debts, provided free glasses for schoolkids and built an air-quality monitoring system.

He was living the dream of an interventional epidemiologist.

And he’s not an academic lightweight, having published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers with over 4000 citations.

He has also published two books and hosted a podcast — 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥.

From his successes as an epidemiologist and public health administrator, endorsed by Sanders and AOC, he tried the guber primaries in 2018 and lost to Whitmer.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he turned his podcast into a pandemic explainer.

America Dissected pivoted to a COVID season in 2020, twice-weekly episodes on how the crisis happened and what policy could get the country out.

It became one of the more credible science-communication channels of the period, and it's still running.

I now remember seeing his talking head on CNN.

He was also a CNN political contributor throughout, one of the physician-epidemiologist voices doing on-air interpretation of a chaotic evidence picture.

We almost never let the people who genuinely understand how to keep a population healthy anywhere near the rooms where the decisions get made.

We prefer them as consultants, as commentators, as names on reports nobody reads.

Michigan just came within one point of sending one to the Senate — and may yet finish the job in November.

Meanwhile, JD Vance is worried he might become POTUS in three years time.

I was in Ethiopia recently, and while I was there I visited a university that actually has a real academic program dedicated to Somali Studies, looking at our politics, our society, our foreign policy since independence, all of it. It genuinely surprised me how seriously they’ve built this out. Western universities do something similar with regions that matter to their interests, look at how many programs across the US and Europe are dedicated to Middle East studies alone. Countries that take a region seriously study it properly, at an institutional level, not just informally when a crisis happens.

So when I got back home and thought about our own universities, I realized something. I haven’t come across a single Somali university that offers a real Ethiopian Studies program. Not language, not politics, not history, nothing dedicated specifically to understanding our neighbor.

And that’s strange to me, honestly, because Ethiopia is not just any neighbor. It’s a country of roughly 120 to 130 million people, the most populous landlocked nation in the world, and it’s been searching for direct sea access ever since Eritrea’s independence in 1993 cut it off from the coast. Right now it relies on the port of Djibouti for something like 95 percent of its trade, which reportedly costs Ethiopia over a billion dollars a year in fees alone. That single fact explains a huge amount of Ethiopia’s foreign policy toward all of us in the region, including the 2024 memorandum of understanding it signed with Somaliland for coastline access, which caused a real diplomatic crisis with Mogadishu and is still an open wound in the relationship.

We are the smaller nation in this relationship, and we’ve had real friction with Ethiopia for decades, going back long before this port issue. That should be exactly the kind of relationship we study seriously, not just react to when tensions flare up. Ethiopia clearly studies us, their intelligence and policy circles understand Somali politics in real depth. I don’t think we can say the same the other way around.

So here’s my honest recommendation. Somali universities should start offering Ethiopian Studies programs, covering their politics, their internal ethnic and regional dynamics, their foreign policy, their history. This isn’t about hostility, Ethiopia is our neighbor and there’s no changing that. But understanding a neighbor you have real tension with isn’t optional, it’s necessary. We need a generation of our own people who actually know Ethiopia well, not just through headlines during a crisis, but through real study. That’s how serious countries operate, and I think it’s time we did too.

On the worst flight of my life, I got up to use the lavatory only to discover the toilet clogged with an indecent mountain of tissue paper. To make matters worse, I had already spent several minutes absent-mindedly scrolling through my phone before actually getting down to business.

The sensible thing would have been to walk out and use another lavatory. But then it hit me: anyone waiting outside would naturally assume I was the one who had committed this crime against civilisation. So I stayed. My dignity, apparently, was worth more than my sanity. That is how I found myself spending nearly twenty minutes performing emergency toilet engineering at 35,000 feet.

When I finally emerged, I locked eyes with the man who had gone in before me. I gave him the hardest stare I could muster, hissed in his direction, and walked off in righteous indignation.

Looking back, I have no idea why I cared so much. But I had spent enough time inside that lavatory for everyone to conclude I had been the culprit. We still had almost ten hours together in that cabin, and I simply could not live under such a cloud of suspicion. There was also a second reason, and it was even pettier. I was the only Black passenger in that section of the cabin, and, in my head, I had somehow become the appointed ambassador for the hygiene of an entire race. I was not about to let history record that the Black guy clogged the aircraft toilet.

Then came the twist. Hours later, after we landed and were walking across the tarmac, the very man I had glared at caught up with me and apologised.

“I was too embarrassed to tell the flight attendants,” he confessed. “I thought the tissues would flush, but they wouldn’t. Then I assumed I just didn’t know how these toilets worked, and that someone else would.”

Someone else, it turned out, was me. We went our separate ways after that. Whether I forgave him remains uncertain. But I do know this. Somewhere over the oceans, I spent twenty minutes defending both my reputation and, for reasons known only to my overactive imagination, the honour of an entire race against an offence I hadn’t even committed.

I want to talk about something that's been on my mind, the Nairobi apartment market and what's happened to it since the end of last year.

For years, Somalis poured money into apartments in Nairobi, especially around Eastleigh and the surrounding suburbs. It became almost a default move, if you had savings, you bought an apartment in Nairobi. But since late last year and continuing into this year, prices in several of those same suburbs have actually been falling. In the year to March 2026, apartment prices in Westlands dropped 7.9 percent, Upper Hill fell 6.8 percent, Lavington was down 6.4 percent, and areas like Ongata Rongai and Ruaka fell around 5 percent as well. This isn't a one off dip either, Nairobi apartment prices have now declined for 13 out of the last 14 quarters. Meanwhile new building approvals in the city dropped 9.3 percent in the twelve months to December 2025, which tells you developers themselves have finally noticed the same thing renters and buyers have been feeling for a while.

The reason isn't complicated. Too many people built too many apartments in the same few neighborhoods at the same time, more than there were buyers and renters to fill them, so prices had to come down. That's just supply and demand, when there's more of something than people actually want to buy, the price drops until it evens back out.

What actually bothers me isn't the price drop itself, that part makes sense. What bothers me is why so many of us ended up in the same trade at the same time in the first place. Nobody really sat down and asked whether Nairobi could absorb that many new units. People saw others buying and just followed, the same way we always do.

And it's not just Nairobi. This is a pattern in our community generally. Someone starts one thing, and suddenly everyone is doing the exact same thing. If one well known Somali businessman buys an apartment in Cairo, within a year half the community seems to be trying to buy in the same building or the same neighborhood in Cairo too. Nobody stops to ask whether Cairo even has enough buyers and renters to support that many of us doing the same thing at once. We just follow whoever moved first, and that's exactly how a lot of people end up holding property nobody wants to buy back from them once the trend cools off.

If people want to invest, and I understand the instinct, there are other options. Investing back home in Somalia itself, in sectors that actually need capital, or simply spreading money across a few different things instead of everyone chasing the same trend at the same time, would put our money to better use and probably serve us better in the long run too.

But there's a deeper problem underneath all of this that I think matters even more. While parents are busy chasing apartment deals and ayuuto rotations, something quieter is happening to our kids. School reopens after the holidays, and other children come back with stories, where they traveled, what they did, new shoes, new experiences. Our kids sit there with nothing to say, not because we can't compete with generational wealth, nobody expects that, but because the time and attention that could have gone into them went somewhere else instead. I'm not talking about buying kids expensive things to keep up with anyone. I'm talking about the basics, a holiday, tutoring, someone actually asking how their year went. Small things that add up to a child feeling like they matter as much as the next deal does.

If people have money to invest, our children deserve at least as much attention as concrete does. A summer with their parents, real support with school, someone checking in on how they're actually doing, these matter just as much as any apartment building. The gap isn't about wealth. It's about where our attention goes.

We need to break this habit of copying each other into the same investment without asking whether it actually makes sense, and start putting at least some of that same energy into the people who are going to inherit whatever we build.

A conversation with a friend recently left me thinking about something I don’t think we discuss enough.

We spend a lot of time talking about Somalia’s politics, economy, security, and development. Those conversations matter. But I wonder if another issue will shape our future just as much.

The Somali diaspora.

This is only my own theory, but I would not be surprised if, within the next forty or fifty years, there are more Somalis living outside Somalia than inside it.
If that happens, what will it mean for us?

For the first generation, the struggle is often adapting to a new country, a new language, and a completely different way of life. Many quietly ask themselves the same questions. Should we return to Somalia? Should we stay where we are? Would life be easier in a Muslim majority country? For many families, there are no easy answers.

For the second generation, the challenge becomes identity. They grow up between two worlds. At home they are taught Islam, the Somali language, and Somali traditions. Outside, they are shaped by the society they were born into. Balancing those two worlds is not always easy. It is not unusual for them to ask themselves, Who am I?” and “Where do I truly belong?”

Imagine a Somali family a few decades from now. Three siblings build their lives in different countries. Years later, their children meet for the first time at a family gathering in Somalia. They share the same grandparents and the same heritage, yet each has been shaped by a different language, culture, and society. They are all Somali, but their experience of being Somali is different.

That future does not seem unrealistic to me. In many ways, it is already happening. The children growing up in London, Minneapolis, Stockholm, Melbourne, Toronto, and countless other cities are just as much a part of the Somali story as those growing up in Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Garowe, or Kismayo.

I do not have the answers. I am simply thinking aloud.

Do you think the Somali diaspora will eventually outnumber Somalis living in Somalia? If so, what will that mean for our identity as a people?

It’s ridiculous to dismiss Moroccans as Africans. First of all, Africa is not a race. It is a geography. Morocco sits on the African continent, on African soil and African bedrock. No diplomatic quarrel, racial prejudice, or football grievance can rewrite physical geography.

Secondly, claiming that Morocco is not African because you had a racist spat with some strangers who admitted so on the internet could not be more ignorant. The overwhelming majority of Moroccans are of Amazigh descent, the indigenous people of North Africa, whether or not they still speak an Amazigh language. Centuries of Arabisation may have shifted language and culture towards Arabic, but they did not uproot an indigenous population from its own ancestry. The Amazigh are among Africa’s oldest continuous populations, present on that soil long before Arabs, Romans, or Phoenicians arrived. You cannot be foreign to a continent your ancestors never left. In fact, the most famous Moroccan footballer our generation witnessed was Amazigh, Mustapha Hadji.

Thirdly, Morocco was a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, the very body created to advance and defend African solidarity. It left the organisation in 1984 over the Western Sahara dispute and returned to the African Union in 2017, welcomed back by the continent as one of its own. You do not get readmitted to a family you were never part of.

Fourthly, the Almoravid Empire, founded by an Amazigh dynasty and centred in what is now Morocco, stretched from Spain deep into the western Sahara in the 11th century. For centuries, trans-Saharan routes tied Fez and Marrakesh to the great kingdoms and empires of West Africa. Trade, scholarship, faith, and migration connected Morocco to Mali, Songhai, and the wider Sahel long before European colonisers drew the modern borders we now mistake for timeless truths.

Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan, crossed the Sahara and left one of the earliest surviving firsthand accounts of the Mali Empire. An African documenting Africa.

Whatever grievance you have with some strangers on the internet, geography, ancestry, institutions, and history all reject your claim.

And yes, I am supporting Morocco!