The Qurʾān is filled with duʿāʾ. Not as occasional moments of need, but as a continuous thread running through revelation from beginning to end. Prophets ask. Believers ask. The language of asking, longing, returning, and reliance is woven into the fabric of the Book itself.
Some of us have grown up with these words as background to salāh, or as phrases repeated in moments of distress. We know the words. We may not yet have met them.
Empty Hands exists for that meeting. It is a place to encounter Qurʾānic supplication as something more than text to be memorised. As a way of speaking to Allāh that can become, over time, a way of being before Him.
Each duʿāʾ on this site has its own page. The Arabic, the translation, the context, the themes it carries. That is the starting point.
Around each entry, there is a growing body of writing. Some of it sits close to the duʿāʾ itself: close reading, reflection on a single word or phrase, attention to what is being asked and how. Some of it is practical: tools and reflections for living with a duʿāʾ, not just knowing it. And some of it reaches further out: writing that connects this duʿāʾ to the wider patterns of Qurʾānic supplication, the themes and spiritual architecture that run across many entries at once.
Alongside all of this, a separate collection of foundational writing on duʿāʾ itself. Its nature, its conditions, its inner dimensions. The kind of understanding that makes everything else go deeper.
The site is organised. But it is not meant to be consumed in order. Come to a single duʿāʾ. Follow a theme. Read about the nature of asking. The entry point is wherever you are.
This site was built by Farid Abu Safwan. Trained at the Islamic University of Madinah, he helped produce the first English translation of Ḥiṣn al-Muslim over thirty years ago. He has been teaching duʿāʾ ever since.
Empty Hands is the structured form of that long engagement. A place where what has been learned, taught, and lived with can be organised, deepened, and made available.