About the INAYA Care Fund

The Why: As a survivor-centered organization working to support the most marginalized in our communities, we must be responsive to our communities’ needs, especially in moments of crisis. For us this includes drawing upon our faith tradition and integrating care work into our movement building. While direct response and mass mobilization is absolutely essential to responding to the violence, it is not the only mode of resistance. We have created the INAYA Care Fund and Resource Hub to organize, resource, and document how we care for those impacted by and leading the resistance movements of our communities.  Part of our role at HEART has always been organizing community care, mutual aid, and liberatory structures for the communities we serve. This work is part of our advocacy work, and is specifically a part of our Muslim, feminist, and disability justice praxis. 

Islamic tradition is rooted in showing care and concern for each other, our neighbors, our environment, and those directly impacted by grief, tragedy, trauma, and violence. Our communities have modeled this type of care and concern for centuries: preparing meals for families grieving the loss of a loved one, providing emotional support to someone navigating a difficult time, or showing solidarity to our neighbors when they are facing oppression. There is a healing power in community gathering to support one another during a time of need, and it is with this intention we are launching the INAYA Care Fund.

Grounded in the Arabic word inaya, inaya is often translated to mean ‘help,’ ‘kindness,’ ‘care,’ or ‘protection.’ Our vision for the INAYA Care Fund is to invite our communities to show solidarity to the Muslim families and individuals in the United States who are impacted by global and local state violence through community care. Our resource hub provides links and descriptions for how to show up. This could include gathering financial resources, organizing meal trains, volunteering to watch children during demonstrations, or participating in collective prayer, to name a few. Showing up for each other, in whatever ways we can, is deeply rooted in our faith. As the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) said, “the believers in their mutual kindness, compassion, and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever.”

The Islamic model for community care encourages us to approach care as a collective responsibility. It is not meant to fall on the shoulders of a few, or only femmes, but rather, it is a responsibility that is meant to be shared, and practiced generously with a mindset of abundance. There are a number of hadith where the Prophet emphasizes how important caring for others is, when he says: “By him in whose hand is my soul, a servant (of Allah) does not believe (truly) until he likes for his brother what he likes for himself.” 

Moments of crisis often reveal the people we can count on for support and resources, and shine light on the gaps in systems and structures that are failing us. Our INAYA Care Fund hopes to inspire our communities and allies to show their solidarity with US-based Muslims impacted by global imperialist violence. Specifically, our INAYA Care Fund is grounded in care that is interdependent, accessible, and abundant for those who need it.

Community care is not separate from our resistance, but rather it is a critical part of our world-building and abolitionist work. Through community care, we are able to build the worlds we want to live in. While community care is essential to revolutionary efforts, it too often goes unseen. Community care has often been feminized, and subsequently been erased. As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes in Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, “far too often, the emotional labor we do as femmes or feminine people is not seen as labor - it’s seen as air.” Though femmes often carry this labor (with exceptional skill, organization, and intentionality) these skills “are not valued as much as masculine or charismatic leadership, or indeed even seen as skills.” Femmes, parents, and caregivers are often expected to be “tough, invulnerable, always ‘on,’ and never needing a thing.” This is exacerbated even more so when we consider race, class, and ability. Often times the folks carrying the most are thanked the least and have the least to give. 

Not everyone is able to be at protests. Not everyone can disrupt at city hall, or get arrested at sit-ins. We’re not saying these forms of resistance are less valuable: fighting for justice, however we can, is a collective responsibility. But rather, we are also uplifting the forms of resistance that are often erased, delegitimized, and undervalued. As Johanna Hedva asks in their seminal essay, Sick Woman Theory, “how do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can't get out of bed?" With the INAYA Care Fund, we hope to uplift the modes of protest that go unseen. As we do this, we acknowledge and center the wisdoms of the people who have been doing the work. We’re talking disabled elders who have navigated grief and death; we’re talking parents raising children with liberatory practices the best they can; we’re talking aunties and uncles who cut fruit and prep meals; we’re talking our queer community that constantly redefines and reimagines kinship; we’re talking that friend who sends the check in texts and sends the most thoughtful gifts; we’re talking children who teach us faith, imagination, and how to ask the right questions. The work of doing care work is how we keep the revolution going. Check out some of the books we reference on care work here.