Omar Suleiman

And when you pursue God sincerely, then he rewards you, not just with paradise in the afterlife, but he rewards you with a great sense of serenity and self-satisfaction here.

So my parents were, well, my father, thank God, is still alive.

My mother was a pious woman, a beautiful woman, a righteous woman, a woman who was known for treating everyone with a great deal of love and respect.

She was a poet.

She used to write poetry about oppressed peoples around the world.

From her homeland in Palestine to the genocide in Bosnia, she followed every conflict before social media and poured her heart into it.

She was a woman of great charity.

So when I think back to my mom growing up, she was known for her smile.

My mom was always smiling.

And in fact, every picture of her, she's smiling.

And at her funeral, people talked about her smile, that she would smile at everyone.

And that was kind of her thing.

So if you were left out of a gathering, she was smiling at you and she'd kind of welcome you in.

I remember my mom to be content.

She was a woman of prayer and a woman of contentment.

So I used to see her in her prayer clothes all the time.

In fact, when I think back to her growing up, I think of her more in her prayer clothes than in her normal clothes, because that's how often she was engaged in prayer.

And I think of her making sure that everyone was included in a conversation.

So she was very interesting in that she had several strokes and each one of those strokes impaired one of her senses to some extent.

So she was partially deaf because of one stroke.