November brings Men's Health Awareness Month, a season when conversations about wellbeing get the attention they deserve. Muslim Aid is using this moment to say something we believe all year round: the mind needs care just as much as the body does.
November brings Men's Health Awareness Month, a season when conversations about wellbeing get the attention they deserve. Muslim Aid is using this moment to say something we believe all year round: the mind needs care just as much as the body does.
Ayaz Mohammed from Doncaster was a loving father who seemed strong and happy to everyone around him. In 2019, aged 48, he took his own life. His wife Akeela was afraid of how the community would react, so for six months she told people he had died of a heart attack.
Reflecting on the pressure Muslim men face as heads of their families, she asked: "where do you go? Who would you talk to?" Today she runs a wellness conference in Doncaster to break the silence around depression in Muslim communities. (Doncaster Free Press, 2025)
If you're struggling, call Samaritans free on 116 123.
What your donation can do
Could provide an hour of psychosocial support for a young person
Could provide one-to-one trauma support sessions for a child
Could provide one-to-one trauma support sessions for a child
Could train teachers to protect and support children's wellbeing
Could provide trauma support for three displaced families
Islam has never treated mental wellbeing as separate from faith or from physical health. The Quran describes ease as the companion of hardship, not its opposite: "Indeed, with hardship comes ease" (Quran 94:5-6).
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught that no fatigue, illness, sorrow, grief or hurt befalls a believer, even something as small as a thorn's prick, without it counting for something greater, a hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari.
A Prophet who wept
When his infant son Ibrahim was dying, the Prophet ﷺ cried openly. A surprised companion asked, "Even you, O Messenger of Allah?" He replied that this was mercy: "The eyes shed tears, and the heart grieves, but we say only what pleases our Lord." (Sahih al-Bukhari 1303)
The best of men never treated grief as weakness.
Muslim Aid recognises that the people we serve, and the people who support us, carry burdens that don't show up in a casualty count or a food basket. A displaced mother in Gaza, a young man in a UK city pulled toward violence, a child adjusting to a new country and a new language: each of them needs their mind looked after as much as their body. That belief shapes how we work.
Muslim Aid have placed mental health at the forefront of many projects, including:
Your support helps us keep mental health where it belongs: at the centre of how we care for people.
اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْهَمِّ وَالْحَزَنِ، وَأَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْعَجْزِ وَالْكَسَلِ
Allahumma inni a'udhu bika minal-hammi wal-hazan, wa a'udhu bika minal-'ajzi wal-kasal
"O Allah, I seek refuge in You from anxiety and sorrow, and I seek refuge in You from helplessness and laziness." (Sahih al-Bukhari)
May Allah grant ease to every mind carrying a weight too heavy to name, and make us among those who reach out and those who are reached.
We are a faith-based British international charity that provides help to people who are victims of natural disasters or conflict or suffering from poverty, hunger, disease, homelessness, injustice, deprivation or lack of skills and economic opportunities.
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Serving humanity since 1985.
