It has been three years since the passing of Ustadh Usama Canon. It is strange, this thing we call “time,” that supposedly heals all and yet is nothing but a human construct. All of us are living at the same time on the same plane if we are always truly present. And yet that’s not how it feels. Maybe it’s in this way that something that could have taken place years ago but the feelings are still the same, like it was yesterday. 

I am a Muslim without a teacher. Many Muslims I think exist without a specific teacher because our religion does not mandate us to access religion through an intermediary. That said, sometimes it is nice to meet someone who has more knowledge than you, to more easily learn. That’s what it means to take on a teacher in adulthood. Unlike when you’re a kid when you have to go to school, to learn from another adult when you’re an adult is a voluntary action. So that said, when you meet someone you want to take classes from and trust to teach you as an adult, it’s a special thing.

I had heard about a really cool Islamic space in a warehouse in Fremont, California, headed by someone named Usama Canon, but I knew of him initially from my brother, who considered him a friend and who inhabited Islamic spaces with him in California in the early 2000s, when my brother was in college. 

I started going to this warehouse during a time in my life that was more exploratory than others and was looking for a new Muslim community. The truth is, for a variety of reasons I had distanced myself from the Muslim community I knew, and I found myself without one. I realized it was necessary to have one so I thought I’d give this warehouse everyone was talking about a try. That place was called Ta’leef Collective, and Ustadh Usama Canon was one of the founders. It became a special and important place in the lives of many people including myself, my close friends (many of whom I met there), and my family. 

Ta’leef Collective was different. Usama Canon was adamant that it was not a mosque and would not become one. He contended that we should learn there and then take our knowledge into the mosques that were largely started by immigrants that arrived with our parents, and with whom many of us had contentious relationships.

When he started each evening of the class called “Living Right” each Sunday, he asked us to introduce ourselves to someone next to us that we did not know. That way, we all got to know each other, even if superficially, but the truth is I have many friends from that time, ranging to extremely close to more peripheral but still full of love. Maybe he intended for us to take this to the mosque too. 

I never felt pressured to wear a hijab, the Islamic headscarf, in Ta’leef Collective, and I didn’t want to. There were a lot of other women who also didn’t wear scarves which wouldn’t have been able to take place in a mosque, even though a mosque is supposed to be an open space for all. This allowed women that often feel unwelcome in mosques to have a space in which they not only felt welcomed but also felt like a part of. I know I did. 

The space was one big carpeted room and they would pass around tea during class while lighting oud. The genders were lightly separated by a few small movable bookshelves, but Ustadh Usama Canon always contended that since Islam doesn’t see people through a sexual lens, it was a non-sexual space. He once said that if she wanted, his wife could enter through the side the men entered through and walk across the room, no problem, no issue, nothing to see. 

This is true about Islam in its inherent nature. Since we don’t see humans first as their sexuality, in our religion and to a certain degree in many Muslim cultures, we are not supposed to sexualize each other, even in the way many Muslim spaces function right now, which I would personally say is the result of an export of Wahabism. 

Ustadh Usama Canon I don’t think ever said he prescribed to seeing Islam through a lens of Sufism, or maybe I just don’t know. But people felt that he and all of Ta’leef Collective leaned Sufi.

The thing is, the way he explained things made so much sense and was steeped in such a beautiful, loving version of Islam, to any level-headed person, it made a lot of sense no matter what you chose to call it. He offered a different point of view on Islam that was different from what I grew up listening to in the mosque, which was a religion that was mostly a set of rites, rules, rituals, and obligation, with very little spirit. 

It is fair to say that meeting Ustadh Usama Canon and entering Ta’leef Collective changed everything for me. In some ways, the way Ustadh Usama Canon taught us religion was through a lens of mercy, a quality of God himself and a quality no one can have more than God. This mercy, compassion, gentleness, and love was something that I have learned, with a bunch of trial and error, to place on all living things, from insects to my husband when we’re fighting—and even myself. 

I spent many years going to Ta’leef Collective. An undiagnosed autistic woman, I have rarely felt a sense of belonging in many spaces, including spaces with other Muslims. At Ta’leef I belonged, not because I was a perfect Muslim but because I was a Muslim and a Muslim that was trying to get closer to God. That was all that was needed from me. And Ustadh Usama would assure people, you could enter the space with even less.

“Come as you are to Islam as it is,” he would say. The idea being that however and whoever you are, you were welcomed to an unchangeable Islam.

“Allah Almighty says: I am as My servant expects of Me and I am with him as he remembers Me. If he remembers Me in himself, I will remember him in Myself. If he mentions Me in a gathering, I will mention him in a greater gathering. When he draws near Me by the span of his hand, I draw near him by the length of a cubit. When he draws near Me by the length of a cubit, I draw near him by the length of a fathom. When he comes to Me walking, I come to him running.”¹

This was a hadith that I remember mulling over at those times and moved me to tears. I won’t go into what the Muslim communities of California are like nor can I claim to know them all, but rarely did I ever feel like it was okay just to take a step towards God but that he’d also take a step toward me. 

There were a few Muslims who we knew that lived near Ta’leef Collective but didn’t go, and had never been, but judged based on hearsay, something that Islam is not okay with and I was amused by this. Someone I knew, and I genuinely can’t remember who it was, said, “they make Islam too easy.”

“Wow,” I remember thinking. The Quran literally says “Allah intends for you ease, and does not want to make things difficult for you” [2:185]; and “Allah does not want to place you in difficulty” [5:6].”

In another well-known hadith, Abu Huraira reported: Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ), said, “Indeed, this religion is easy, and no one will ever overburden himself in religion, except that it will overcome him.”²

It was hard to fathom that these ideas, straight from the Quran and the Sunnah, were not in the understanding of Islam of Muslims in the area and who were our friends. Ustadh Usama Canon did not preach Sufism but words and ideas that are inherent in and from Islam. In this way, he also taught me to stand up for what’s right, even if you’re standing alone, and it’s funny to me that I stand for what I see to be real Islam in both Islamic and non-Islamic spaces.

But he also taught us humility. Since we knew Ustadh Usama Canon, and he lived not far, we’d run into him from time to time. Once we ran into him outside of the Whole Foods while he was leaving the gym that was next to it. “Forgive me Khala,” he said to my mom while gesturing to his sweaty t-shirt. A human man, he still had to exercise. My mom did love him as a son and he also had the humility to acknowledge that any woman in your mother’s age should be treated as a mother, even if you’re the spiritual leader of a Muslim community center that was gaining fame at the time.

“Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying: ‘None amongst you can get into Paradise by virtue of his deeds alone.’ They said: ‘Allah’s Messenger, not even you?’ Thereupon he said: ‘Not even I, but that Allah should wrap me in His Grace and Mercy.’”³

Ustadh Usama Canon also taught us that unlike the mainstream Muslim community, which preached a complete perfection of habits to be worthy of God, I learned that no matter how perfect of Muslims we are we will still need God’s forgiveness.

In a way, I will never be worthy of God just through my sheer might. This means we should not think we are above God so as to think we can be perfect enough as to not require his forgiveness. It also means we should strive to be the best versions of ourselves but be gentle on ourselves. We are not perfect. And we should understand that no matter how much we work on ourselves we are fallible and will need God.

If we are all imperfect that we will all require God’s forgiveness, who are we to hold someone’s past deeds against them?

Who am I to hold someone’s past deeds against them when God may have already forgiven him? Does God ask us to punish someone for their past? If not, why do we do it and how do we claim to do it under Islam?

I realized that humans are far less understanding and forgiving of each other than God himself and God is not this punitive person that other religions and Wahhabi Islam preach. And I learned that that is not what God teaches us to do. 

If anything, it seemed and felt like by seeking a firm grasp on Islam I would have to incorporate an endless amount of non-judgement, love, compassion, and mercy to other people—trying to be more like God and his messenger—and myself. 

Besides teaching me all of this and more, Ustadh Usama Canon also created a space where real relationships could flourish. I made many friends during that time and the friends I made would go on to make friends with each other and other Muslims who did not come to Ta’leef often due to distance. That is, until Ustadh Usama Canon started doing classes in San Francisco. 

Once, running into Ustadh Usama Canon in the elevator of a building while we were both heading to his class, I asked him about his baby. Ustadh Usama Canon had had a baby girl around the time I moved to San Francisco. I was now one of those distantly living Muslims waiting for his classes in San Francisco. He told me about his youngest daughter—a year old now, meaning I had been living away for a year—and he asked me how my mom was. 

The class was filled with people, some of whom had traveled to San Francisco for the class, some of whom lived in San Francisco. These classes were especially helpful for those who lived in San Francisco but did not have cars. 

But the truth is people came from far and wide to see Ustadh Usama Canon. There were regular carpools that came from the Sunday class from San Francisco and even as Sacramento, about a two hour drive. Ustadh Usama Canon in a very real way brought a lot of people together. 

Ta’leef was my home as well as the home of everyone who went there. Ustadh Usama Canon was sure to make sure everyone knew that. In a Facebook message I sent to him on August 19, 2013, I told Ustadh Usama Canon, “Remember when you said that Ta’leef is our home in the Ta’leef photo blog? That’s exactly how it felt the first time I came to Ta’leef. It literally felt like the place I have been looking for my entire life.” I had only been going to Ustadh Usama Canon’s classes for a few weeks at the time and we did not know each other that well. 

And one who loves their home, works in it. I started to volunteer at Ta’leef events. I preferred volunteering at the smaller ones like intensive classes but did the big ones too. Volunteering provided so much to me. I gave back to Ta’leef Collective, I made friends or better got to know friends, including people who were employed by Ta’leef and I came to enjoy very much, I got to attend the event or class in my spare time, I got to rub shoulders with the more general community—all while doing a deed meant to help put something good in the world. Giving away my time for positivity. How much I benefited from him and those events. 

The end of Ustadh Usama Canon’s life was not one we’d find pretty. The ALS diagnosis shocked us all. I believe I was volunteering at Ta’leef Collective’s high tea event, which they usually did in May for people who specifically made large donations. It was one of my favorite events to volunteer for because it was easy, elegant, and for a very important cause, which was raising money for Ta’leef Collective. 

Elegance was something else Ustadh Usama Canon stressed. As someone who liked fashion and style this is something I liked. Ustadh Usama Canon upheld a clean and tidy appearance more than it was trendy or composed of expensive clothes. The people that managed the events always used fresh flowers for the high tea event, which I liked.

The employees and volunteers maintained a clean and tidy appearance too. I until this day practice a belief that it is of gratitude to God that we have what we have so we should respect it. In Islam, we believe cleanliness is required of us to connect with God. We are told to perfume ourselves before going to the mosque. To me, we are told to be elegant. Ustadh Usama Canon never preached this but led by example. I until this day keep my home a certain level of clean and tidy, as well as my own appearance to respect what God gave me. 

It was on that day, the day with the fresh flowers, that my mom pointed out that something with Ustadh Usama Canon felt wrong. 

I couldn’t understand what she was talking about and she couldn’t put her finger on it further. I am truly not sure if she sensed something but I do think his diagnosis came at around that time. He would announce it later and changes would start to come in the community as he would start to ease out of running Ta’leef Collective and more focusing on his family and ostensibly, dying.

Understanding ALS was something we all had to come to terms with after that. It hit many people in the community like losing a member of your own family. In a way, it was. 

My brother has a friend who has ALS and he has had the luxury of being in some clinic trails that have kept him alive longer and more able bodied than others. That’s to say, I knew a little about ALS. I would learn that for most people, they don’t live more than another 3-5 years, and the decline is not something you would prefer for yourself.

Those few years in which Ustadh Usama Canon had ALS were hard. If I recall, he kept giving classes as long as he could, as they searched for new leadership for Ta’leef Collective. His classes started to wane, until eventually, there were none.

New people started to give classes and I personally found them less appealing and their ideas more esoteric than Usath Usama. In some cases I downright disagreed. My own friends started to go to Ta’leef Collective less and less. Accompanied by people’s changing lives—getting married, moving, taking new jobs – the crowd had shifted over the years. Still. With the end of Ustadh Usama Canon’s classes, a certain group of people stopped coming. Maybe it was the human resistance to change. Maybe it was because of circumstances. Maybe they didn’t like the new teachers too. But maybe, they were all just sad. I think that might be it.

For the privacy of the family and what ALS can do to a person, I will not go much further into this part of Ustadh Usama Canon’s life. I saw him once walking outside Ta’leef Collective with his friends during his last days walking. I was unsure of if I could say hi or if I’d be disturbing him. He left his friends to say salaam to me, which means peace.

I would send him messages until the very end via Instagram message. I was always hoping he’d read them and he always did, and he always responded, even though I don’t know how. I always wanted him to know we were thinking of him and that he mattered to us. That he has impacted us.

Our community was dealt another blow during the end of Ustadh Usama Canon’s life in which some of his private mistakes came out. It was sad to see what poisonous hearts people had and what was spewed towards him, even by those who claimed to be his friends or those who had benefited from him. 

The story goes that Marcus Aurelius had a servant or slave follow him each day, who’s sole task was to whisper in his ear, “You’re just a man. You’re just a man.”

People usually use this story to refer to the amount of humility Marcus Aurelius had, or to contemplate his strong desire to mitigate his ego. I think the most important part is that we remember, no matter how great the person may seem in our eyes—he is just a man. Ustadh Usama Canon was just a man too.

Ustadh Usama Canon did not preach perfectionism and was very open and honest with us that he was not a perfect man. He would ask us to pray for him at the end of every class and stressed that he was not perfect. He was just a man.

He preached a variety of things that I want to include more about maybe another day, but compassion and mercy were key in his Islamic teachings. Here were some people completely forgetting what he taught us. The things he taught us are things we know to be true whether Ustadh Usama Canon was the vessel that carried that knowledge or not. How people can just disregard what they know to be true, I will never understand.

How could you join in harming someone who only ever taught us to be merciful?

Regardless of what people were saying and what arguments ensued, Ustadh Usama Canon was having his own experience at that moment. I do think perhaps the person all the commotion mattered the least mattered to was him.

He was facing his lord soon and he knew it. He always knew remembering death and not focusing so much on worldly matters was important. Perhaps his last days were like laying within a beautiful blanket of white, everlasting light. I wonder what a vast and rich inner life Ustadh Usama Canon experienced while dying but also returning to the immaterial plane, unveiling the secrets of the universe in an experiential way that he would never be able to tell us about. May Allah forgive him of his sins and preserve his family, and allow us to be reunited in the afterlife. Ameen.

On September 7, 2021, Ustadh Usama Canon Canon died. His friend, Imam Zaid Shakir, wrote the following:

“As anyone reading these lines knows all too well, Usama was assailed by the ravages of ALS during the latter years of his life. Before being overwhelmed by sadness, reflect on the words of our beloved Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah upon him), ‘Nothing afflicts a believer, neither worry, or grief, or sadness; even the pricking of a thorn, except that Allah expiates his sins (Muslim).’ Knowing this, we should be confident that Usama left this world as pure as he was the day he entered it from the womb of his mother.

Hence, Allah has taken care of any mistakes Usama may have made. It is up to us to make sure that those living on after him know of his good deeds, the lives he has touched and transformed, as well as the blueprint he has written to help guide our efforts to save our youth. Farewell to a friend, student and teacher, one whose true rank no one knows except Allah.”⁴

While many people relished the opportunity to hurt Ustadh Usama Canon at the end of his life, it’s funny to me how alive and well Ustadh Usama Canon is in my life, until this day, and I imagine that’s true of many others. That’s what we call a legacy. 

Lately, I am my own spiritual teacher and have had many spiritual openings by myself that I use to better myself and hopefully better the world by making me a better individual, so I can make a better partner, so I can make a better parent, so I can make a better community, so I can make a better world. I do miss having spiritual openings with a teacher, but life goes through seasons.

But even then, my biggest spiritual openings these days are still based on my first ones. I struggle to go back to basics sometimes because I don’t usually have to, but as I shared Islam with my now husband, not trying to convert him but just help him get to know me, I turned back to what Ustadh Usama Canon taught me. I did this verbally but I realize I do it all the time in spirit. He was one of the people who shaped me.

It’s amazing. Ustadh Usama Canon lives on in so many ways. When my husband became Muslim, I found the books he had given to me for a convert friend in Cuba never had the chance to see. Ustadh Usama Canon had said he would go to Cuba personally to help him learn Islam before the ALS diagnosis.

I find Ustadh Usama Canon still permeates my daily life. I remember what he said about things when I’m unsure what to do, or give advice to friends who aren’t even Muslim based on the things he has taught me. He has played a role in my husband embracing Islam by way of facilitating my own understanding of Islam and also in the practice of my husband in the same way despite the fact that he’s never interfaced with him. Now my husband’s favorite topic is Islam with Muslims and non-Muslims alike. He has no idea how much what he shares is steeped in the way Ustadh Usama Canon taught me.

It is amazing to me that years after a person’s passing, they could still be impacting the world. I remember my key moments with Ustadh Usama Canon like yesterday. It was strange that he was suddenly gone. And it is still strange. I realize that one of his final lessons was how to die.

It’s funny writing this in retrospect. Meditating on a photo I found of Ustadh Usama Canon while knowing he is no longer here, I realize I recognize the shirt. He wore this shirt during class often. Maybe I was there the day it was taken. It is so bewildering to have such present memories of those who mattered to them even if they are past. Even if their existence is now in the past. Behind us. And yet, somehow, ever present.

But that has more to do with how he lived than anything.

Even in death, Ustadh Usama Canon still inspires me to live a life that could reverberate into the world, bringing peace, positivity, love, and in that way, Islam, everywhere. I can’t imagine what it may mean to cause a ripple effect of loving kindness in the world even years after one is gone. If this isn’t what it means to die for a cause, I don’t know what is.

In Islam we believe in contemplating death frequently, the idea being if we can always remember we will die, we will behave on this earth with more humility. Ustadh Usama Canon loved a poem called What the Living Do by Marie Howe. He liked to recite when we broached this topic in class. I want to share it with you.

1. Bukhari, M. (n.d.). Sahih al-Bukhari: Book 97, Hadith 34. Hadith 7405. Retrieved September 14, 2024, from https://sunnah.com/bukhari:7405
2. Nasa’i, A. (n.d.). Sunan an-Nasa’i: Hadith 5034. In Sunan an-Nasa’i (Book 47, Hadith 50). Retrieved September 14, 2024, from https://sunnah.com/nasai:5034
3. Muslim, I. (n.d.). Sahih Muslim: Book 52, Hadith 69 (Hadith 2816f). In USC-MSA web (English) reference: Book 39, Hadith 6764. Retrieved September 14, 2024, from https://sunnah.com/muslim:2816f
4. MCC East Bay. (n.d.). Usama Canon. Retrieved September 14, 2024, from https://mcceastbay.org/usama-Canon/
5. Howe, M. (1990). What the living do. Poets.org. Retrieved September 14, 2024, from https://poets.org/poem/what-living-do

Image via Imamsonline.com