When I was 17, two friends and I came up with a business idea. Like most 17-year-olds with a business idea, we were convinced it was brilliant. There was only one problem: we needed around $15,000 worth of equipment to get started. Between the three of us, that meant finding $5,000 each. I decided to…
There is a sentence I think every parents finds themself saying far more often than we’d like to admit: “Don’t worry, I’ll just do it.” Your child is trying to help you build something, but they’re taking forever. You’re cooking dinner and they want to help, but somehow helping means twice the mess and three…
I used to run a tutoring centre. Every week, hundreds of students would walk through our doors, hoping to improve their marks and achieve goals that they had set – or more often, goals that had been set for them. I would always ask our high school students a simple question: “What do you want…
As a teenager, I spent time around a lot of friends who were passionate about the Deen. We would pray whenever we were together, argue and debate about different religious issues, attend lectures and talk about what was happening in the Ummah. Many of them were incredibly intelligent, charismatic and talented. They had an ocean…
I read a quote years ago that immediately stuck with me, and I’ve been trying – unsuccessfully – to find its again ever since. I can’t remember the exact wording, but it went something like this: A successful society needs mixing of the ages and segregation of the genders. Today, ironically, we see the opposite….
There is a beautiful moment in Surah Maryam where Zakariya عليه السلام, now an old man, turns privately to Allah with a concern that has been weighing heavily on him. He is old. His bones have weakened. His hair has turned grey. His wife has never been able to have children. But his concern is…
My dad was born in a village in Dura, Palestine. The world that he grew up in, back in the 1950s and 60s, sounds almost alien to me. His entire street was made up of only his close relatives, who he spent every single day around. His parents had grown up with his teachers, families…