Huffington Post - Ramadan Reflection Day # 23: Sustaining the Soul of Success

Imam Khalid Latif

Ramadan Reflection Day 23: Sustaining the Soul of Success

Imam Khalid Latif is blogging his reflections during the month of Ramadan, featured daily on HuffPost Religion. For a complete record of his previous posts, click over to the Islamic Center at New York University or visit his author page, and to follow along with the rest of his reflections, sign up for an author e-mail alert above, visit his Facebook page or follow him on Twitter.

This is Shahad. She is currently living in a refugee camp in Lebanon.

Shahad's picture was taken by Islamic Relief USA's Creative Director Ridwan Adhami. I got to see this image, along with many others, that Ridwan has taken while helping Syrian refugees who have fled from the horrific violence and bloodshed taking place in their home country. Ridwan shared with us briefly Shahad's story:

Two and a half year old Shahad has a bullet wound in her back that has left her paralyzed from the waist down... she has feeling in her feet and with the correct medical treatment and physical therapy the doctor hopes she can one day walk again...Hopefully she can walk back proudly into her home in Homs, Syria.

Last night, we hosted a special fundraising iftar at the Islamic Center at NYU for the people of Syria, proceeds of which went to Islamic Relief USA. For those of you who are unaware of the famine that has afflicted that region, I had written about it earlier in a blog post entitled, "A Prayer for Syria." We were able to raise more than $205,000 and donations are still being counted and coming in. Our venue kept us to a sold-out audience of 300, but there were so many more who wanted to come and be a part of the night. The fundraising portion of the evening started off with a $10,000 donation and as we started to open up envelopes on stage so that we could update the audience on what we had raised, I came across an envelope that had no name or address included, and held inside of it a five dollar bill. There was another with $20, some with $10, and one envelope had nothing in it at all, but the person wanted us to know that if they were in a such place where they had something to give, they would definitely have given it. It's truly a blessing to be around such amazing people.

One of the blessings of seeing our potential is such that it enables us to tangibly see what we are capable of. Many times success brings passivity. I don't think there is anything wrong in celebrating achievement and I believe that there is a categorical difference between confidence and arrogance. The danger lies in our celebration of a moment preventing us from creating more moments that can be celebrated....to continue reading please click here