Anse Winy Haryanto is a wife, mom, Rabateer, and community member who lives in Long Island, NY. She serves as a volunteer, community care guide, and program coordinator at Masjid Rabata—specifically the weekly Qiyām program. Anse Winy also lends her beautiful voice as a reciter and singer when the need arises. She contributes to her community by teaching at a Saturday religious school and several ḥalaqas.
Like many Muslim women, she was practicing before Rabata, but she longed for a framework: a community where she could learn, be held, and grow closer to Allah.
Then one day, while searching online for an ʿālima program in Shafi’i fiqh, she was pleasantly surprised to find the Murabbi ‘Alimah program offered by Ribaat Academic Institute. She signed up in 2018 and discovered Rabata.
Fast forward to 2020, which was the heaviest time of her life and she was carrying it alone.
Her family is everything to her, and she was facing a devastating trial within it. When she found out, she was shocked, ashamed, and kept it to herself for two to three years. She didn’t even tell her husband. Her parents had also passed away. There was no one to confide in.
This was all happening during COVID. And Masjid Rabata had just launched the Qiyām program online.
She decided to volunteer. And then she poured everything into it.
Qiyām became her therapy because she couldn’t afford therapy. All week she held in a torrent of tears, staying strong for her family. But in qiyām, she felt safe to cry. She was remembering Allah, so she trusted she would not get lost in her grief. She could let go.
She loved the song by Anse Amena called “Qul Ya Aẓīm,” where the name of Allah is repeated. She would weep and it would soothe her aching heart.
Serving in the Qiyām program every week made her stronger. She had a safe space to grieve. It was cathartic. And she began to grow more consistent in her daily practice, including reciting Dalāʾil al-khayrāt.
That consistency carried a full-circle story she hadn’t seen coming.
In 2008, she visited family in Indonesia and met a friend of her father’s from South America. When he learned she lived in the United States, he made a decision to give her an ijāza in Dalāʾil al-khayrāt so she could carry it forward and spread it. At the time, she didn’t fully appreciate it. She didn’t yet understand the weight of what had been placed in her hands. She returned home and sent him copies of Dalāʾil al-khayrāt as a gift—a kind gesture, but not yet a calling.
Who knew that over a decade later, it would become a central piece of her healing through Rabata’s Qiyām program.
Even as the trial continued, Anse Winy kept growing. As a child, she had loved music but she had grown up in Muslim communities that told her it was haram. Rabata returned that gift to her. She took drumming lessons, which proved deeply therapeutic: another unexpected doorway to healing. She kept taking Ribaat classes, year after year from 2018 on. Each one strengthened her īmān and deepened her knowledge. Rabata had become one of the pillars of her heart.
Now, Anse Winy shares and reteaches what she learns across several ḥalaqas. She was invited twice to teach educators in Maryland, drawing on what she learned from Ustadha Safiyyah’s Teaching Methodology course. And today, she leads the reading of Yāsīn and dua, a role that came to her the way so many things do at Rabata: organically, through community. Imam Fadiyah saw her social media post mentioning she was looking for a group to read it with and invited her in.
Today, Anse Winy says she is actually grateful for her trial. She believes Allah knew exactly what she needed.
Her message is simple: Seek support, and Allah will provide. We cannot sit and dwell. As Anse Tamara says, “ḥaraka baraka,” movement brings blessing. As you move closer to Allah and do good deeds, you will find solace and spaces to remember Him. And always remember: Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change themselves.
What began as survival rippled outward. The healing spread and flowed into so many other things. For instance, the sisters she found, the friendships that became anchors, the spirit she now passes forward. She has witnessed how everyone goes through tests. She has watched women finally break through to consistency in their worship and feel the full joy of Eid after completing Pilgrims at Home. It is the reward of doing it together, multiplied by community and challenge. “I finally felt Eid. Like really felt it.”
And from that place of hard-won peace, Anse Winy wants to start a support group for women walking the same road she once walked alone.
She wants you to know—from these ayāt:
“And [that] Allah may aid you with a mighty victory” (Sūrat al-Fatḥ, 48:3).
“It is He who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the believers that they would increase in faith along with their [present] faith. And to Allah belong the soldiers of the heavens and the earth, and ever is Allah Knowing and Wise” (Sūrat al-Fatḥ, 48:4).
Anse Winy is still in the middle of her story. And she is no longer carrying it alone.
