This is a story of a woman and her love for the Quran and her son’s love for her.
Born in Liberia, in 1966, Aisha Sherif grew up in Freetown, Sierra Leone. She spoke 5 languages including Arabic. Even though she was raised in a Muslim family, the first time she saw the Quran was at the age of 17.
She did have a set of cassettes placed in a cover, shaped like a Quranic mushaf. The voice of Shaykh Sudais, the imam of Makkah, echoed through her rooms, as she passed through different stages of her life.
In 2001, she migrated to America, after her divorce to a life of struggle- a true jihad. In DC and then P.G. County, she began a new stage in life as a single mother with her five children.
A pharmacy tech in the UMD Medical Center, co-workers describe her as a humble person— a woman of gold.
Morgan State University senior, Mohamed Tall, the 2017 Youth Poet Laureate for the City of Baltimore- the first Muslim, Black, and immigrant youth poet laureate of Baltimore- is her son. A current Political Science major at Morgan State University, Tall plans to utilize his experience and education to increase political consciousness in his community. He writes poems on structural oppression, often inspired at tahhajud time, prays Fajr and writes some more. I spoke at length with Mohamed about his love, his mother.
At a TedX Talk at Hebron High Mohamed began his performance with a shout out to his mother for “all the sacrifices she’s made. That is the only reason that I am able to be here in front of you,” he said to the audience. “Listen to my heart, bo bat- God made it do that,” he belts out.
Aisha put her sons in Islamic school in her new home in America. Her greatest fear was what if she didn’t adequately prepare them with the deen.
“We didn’t have milk in the house, but we were going to Al-Huda (an premier Islamic School in the area),” shares her son. Mohamed says that it was very important to Aisha that her boys were raised in God-consciousness.
“We would drive from Baltimore to College Park, and would be late 45 days out of the quarter, but we were not missing any school,” says Mohamed.
Ten years ago, Aisha started to pursue Islamic studies by learning the Arabic alphabet and writing words. Quran and Islamic schools were exclusively for boys in Sierra Leone. Daughters were not subjected to the rough culture of the daras system. “It was for boys. Daughters were sent to regular school," relays Mohamed. He says his mother told him that Islamic schools there were like public schools here, so she was never exposed to the study of Islam.
She enrolled in Tooba University in College Park and then in 2014, Aisha formally started training and completed four years of the six year ‘alimiyyah program at the Al Rahmah Seminary in Baltimore. A decade of persistent learning resulted in her completing the study of 20 interpreted ajza of the Noble Quran and a few thousand prophetic Hadiths with their interpretation, according to her teacher Shaykh Elamin Shingrai.
As stomach cancer racked her body, she did not let that stop her journey studying the Quran. “She was a student of sacred knowledge when diagnosed with her illness, unbeknownst to us her teachers, she was gradually getting worse but she kept coming to class and struggling to master the various sciences we were learning together. What pure intent must have been behind her desire to learn the deen? What intent must have been present within her heart,” said Imam Mikaeel Smith, who was teaching her the Tafaris Jalalain by Imam al-Suyuthi.
Her teacher, Shaykh Shingrai, states that she completed other books in morphology, syntax, rhetoric, Fiqh (Islamic Law), Usul Al-Fiqh (the methods of legal interpretation), and the Prophetic Sirah with “astonishing persistence."
“She immersed herself deeply in learning Islamic studies, although she was a mother of five children and working full-time,” he notes.
She was never absent or late, well mannered, and modest, relays her teacher. “She would arrive after work from her night shift to continue vigorously with her Islamic studies,” he adds.
The shaykh tells us that he was “extremely honored to have taught her and to have known her husband, children, mother, and the rest of her family.’
“Her life was a living example of patience, perseverance, love of religion, and learning with passion Sharia studies. It is also a lesson to learn the value of time and the good use of it,” he advises the community.
And Mohammed served her- he would be events and rallies in Baltimore after cooking, cleaning the home and looking after his 13 year old brother. Regular tweets about her and his undying love for her, normalized a young man’s love for a mother in an era when young men hesitate in associating with their Muslim parents.
In 2016, Aisha went on Umrah. The deen became everything for her after her Umrah. Everything was different. Their house smelled Divine in a way. “It was enchanting,” says Mohamed.
Aisha couldn’t stop talking about everything that she experienced while in the House of Allah. A peace overtook her and her son feels like that’s where she belonged. The world stopped carrying weight for her - she disconnected from the dunya and her studies became easier for her. “I saw something in her that I had never seen before and it deepened her connection to the Quran,” he reminisces.
Her phone was set on ‘Do not disturb.’ Reading, studying and watching lectures was her cycle of life. Tired to the bone, she would listen to lectures while she was sleeping and would retain what she heard. Her studies even went to work her with her. Aisha managed to listen to the Quran and lectures even in the lab, where she wasn’t even allowed to take a phone with her. Allah created a way for her to listen.
In March 2017, she told her children about the cancer. From that point her goal and vision was clear. She wanted to go home to Liberia where some of her family still resided and start a masjid and Islamic School there, with whatever time her master had given her.
Aisha liked to speak Kreyol (Creole); her grandmother was Fulan. Part of her family is “Congo” or Americo-Liberian, descendants of settlers from the United States and a small fraction of the population that has overwhelming political, economic, and cultural dominance in Liberian society. Her farther’s family was Mandingo— a majority of Muslims in that area. The settlers who considered themselves Christians did not want any competition with a people, A. Doris Banks Henries characterized as savages, primitive, belligerent people in her book, Civics for Liberian Schools (1966).
“My mother didn’t care about she rejected the Islamophobic, religiously intolerant society in Liberia and the societal preferences of the Conga people,” shares Mohammed. As members of Liberia’s upper class, she was tired of people being Muslim by name. She wanted to expose them to the religion. “No one knows beyond Salam, fatiha, and a miswak,” says Mohammed. It frustrated her that one could not tell the difference between Muslims and non-Muslims. According to Islamweb.com, the conditions of the Muslims in Liberia is very troubling, Muslims have only one private school, which was founded by the Muslim World League (MWL) in Liberia and very few Islamic resources. Aisha’s concerns included the great need in Liberia for Islamic education and resources for Muslims.
It troubled her that her surname Sherif, a Mandingo name with a strong Islamic heritage, was used by people, who were not doing anything Islamic.
Mohammed knew he was losing her. Death was a constant, silent sign on the wall. Her cancer was at stage four. We constantly recited dua and recalled the story of Ayub (ra) once she cried out to me no body could understand her and I sat there and cried with her.
Seeing her struggle for the family all his life, that last year Mohamed and his siblings struggled for her. The gravity of taking care of her in her final months forced him to acknowledge that she had done this five times for the five siblings and they were just doing it one time for her. The role reversal brought many poignant moments. But Mohamed was prepared for these moments. He had been the surrogate partner for many years. She had raised them to be self-sufficient. “I knew how to cook since I was seven and put on a diaper and make a bottle since 4th grade.” Aisha had no doubt in her mind that her sons could handle it.
Their home was a place of much laughter. In the darkest moments, they found light. Mohammed was named Poet laureate of the city. Aisha had raised him on stories of Hasan Ibn Thabit, the poet of the Prophet, and connected Mohammed’s world of poetry to his faith. “I had never known, I never heard about poetry tradition in Islam,” he recalls.
Aisha would often sleep in the car in the parking lot where Mohamed was competing at poetry contests. She had to make it clear he cannot just be a poet, he had to be a Muslim poet. He had to represent this religion. She would push Mohamed and his brother to go the Madinah to study Islam.
The ‘double agent’ of the family he kept his mother in the loop about everything going on in his siblings’ lives. Aisha would have the understanding and respond to whatever was going on. “She always told us the truth and didn’t raise us with a false sense of comfort. I rather know the truth and find comfort in that,” Mohamed shares his mother’s ethos.
Everything I Did Was For Her
"Everything I did was for her," says Mohamed.
It has been a struggle for him after she passed away: she was the motivation.
He went to see her for the last time, and read Quran for her and in that moment, it all clicked, everything clicked for him. “That is why she sacrificed so much for our Islam—when she couldn’t pray for herself, she had someone to pray for her. I want that for me, too,” he says with firm resolve.
This is indeed a love story between Mohamed and his mother. “My mother was my greatest teacher,” he says to me, taking a few moments to breathe through his pain. After the Bill Cosby rape cases, he was livid. He thought it was a conspiracy to wreck a successful man. “You don’t know how evil men can be,” Aisha reminded him. “Why did I feel to jump to the defense of someone without knowing the entire story?” he asks himself after his mother made him cognizant that he did not need to have an opinion and be critiquing the world without deliberating.
In the hospital room, as the machines beeped, they wanted to put her in the hospice, while the siblings wanted to take all viable options before giving up.
“I don’t want to draw a line on Allah’s Mercy,” were Aisha’s last words. In those moments, Mohamed saw her — the real her— in that moment of pain. “Who wouldn’t want that type of person in their company and I can just want to get to that caliber, where Allah wants me in His Company,” says Mohamed.
Allah subhna wa taa’la called Aisha Sherif back on March 20. 2018.
There were people from several states, countries, ethnicity and communities at her funeral, including former husband’s side of the family- a true testament to her character.
It started snowing out of nowhere, turning the route from the funeral to the burial grounds into a visual testament of her life’s journey- breathtaking beauty in the harshest of conditions.
I ask Allah the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful, to rest this scholar’s soul in peace by His Vast Mercy and to grant her family patience and solace; to reunite this mother and son in the Firdaus.
Truly! To Allah we belong and truly, to Him we shall return.
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