💔 I Was Getting Ready for Jummah. Then This Photo of Rafah Broke Me.

I was preparing for Jummah when a single photo stopped me cold. An ancient city erased. Sit with this with me.

Fridays are holy days for Muslims.

Not in a vague, “it’s a nice day” way. In a set-apart way. A day we treat differently on purpose.

Friday is the day of Jummah—the required congregational prayer service where we gather, shoulder to shoulder, hear a sermon, and stand before Allah together. It’s the weekly heartbeat of Muslim life. It’s where you recalibrate. Where you ask forgiveness. Where you remember what matters. Where you try—again—to clean out your heart from the dust of the week.

So on Friday mornings, I don’t move like it’s a normal day.

I prepare my body. I prepare my mind. I prepare my soul. I don’t normally write articles on Friday mornings anymore.

I make ghusl when I can—the full ritual shower—because you don’t show up to Jummah casually. You show up cleaned. You put on your best. You slow down. You make space for dhikr. You try to arrive early. You try to enter the masjid with your ego turned down and your humility turned up.

It’s a holy rhythm.

And today, as I was preparing, someone sent me a photo.

I’m going to put that photo at the very top of this post.

It was taken by an Israeli war criminal. And it is the kind of image that doesn’t just show destruction—it shows erasure.

It’s Rafah.

Gone.

Completely gone.

Flattened, all the way to the ocean.

Not “damaged.” Not “hit.” Not “partly destroyed.” The entire landscape looks scraped down to the bone. Whole neighborhoods wiped out so thoroughly that your eyes struggle to find where streets used to be, where homes used to be, where children used to run, where elders used to sit, where families used to break bread.

Rafah is an ancient city. Rafah has history older than empires that now pretend they can “manage” the Middle East like it’s a chessboard. Rafah carried generations—names, graves, weddings, prayers, laughter, daily routines that make life feel normal even under siege.

And now someone can stand there, take a picture, and essentially say: look what we did.

Family, I’ve seen a lot. I’ve reported on a lot. I’ve carried the weight of images I can’t shake.

But there’s something about this photo that gutted me, because it captures the expanse of the devastation. The scale. The completeness. The sheer audacity of it.

It doesn’t look like a battlefield. It looks like a planet after an apocalypse.

And it’s not “nature.” It’s not an earthquake. It’s not a hurricane.

This is what human beings did—intentionally—using our tax dollars, our weapons, our political cover, our silence.

So yes, I’m writing this on a Friday. On a day we’re taught to seek mercy.

And I’m telling you: if you can look at Rafah flattened to the sea and feel nothing, you should be afraid of what’s happening inside your own heart.

Because no scripture—no Torah, no Gospel, no Qur’an—teaches you to accept the erasure of an entire city as normal.

That’s not security. That’s not defense. That’s not “complicated.”

That’s annihilation.

And I can’t pretend prayer makes me numb to it. If anything, Jummah makes me feel it more sharply, because it forces me to remember that Allah sees everything. Every bomb. Every scream. Every orphan. Every destroyed home. Every war criminal taking a proud photo.

Allah sees it.

And that means we should see it too. One day we will have justice. I am sure of this.

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When you look at this photo of Rafah, what do you feel—and what do you think history will call this?

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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