They struggle to find time for what really matters to them: family and faith.

Family often get the scraps of our energy during the week. Faith or spirituality gets relegated to the odd quiet moment, if we’re lucky. For many, even the five daily prayers don’t get dedicated time; perhaps you squeeze in one or two prayers, rushed and distracted.

I just don’t think that’s the life Allah wants for us.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ came to teach us not to be so consumed by “more” or worldly ambition that we neglect these pillars. And I’m not saying work isn’t important. It forms a critical aspect of our lives. Through it, we can come to profound realizations about ourselves and our spiritual journey.

But here is the key: It’s not about quantity; it’s about quality.

As Surah Al-Mulk (67:2) states: “He is the One who created death and life to test which of you is best in deed.”

Ahsanu Amala. Best in deed. Not the most in deed.

Ahsan relates to Ihsan - excellence, beauty, and deep presence. It is not about how much time you spend, but the quality of that time.

So, if you are struggling with balance, remember: God wants Ihsan. He wants deep presence.

Not all of us can spend hours with family when we have busy jobs. But our job is to be fully present when we are with them. If the five daily prayers are all you can manage, God wants you to be truly with Him during those moments - blocking out noise, going inward, and standing before Him with awe.

This state is called Khushu’. It basically means to be in a state of humility and reverence, it means recognizing the One you are standing before. Attaining this requires intentionality. It means taking a few moments before prayer to go inward, remembering that Allah is with you in every moment.

This is why it’s important we become familiar with the term the Spillover Effect: the idea that presence in one area of life spills over into others. If you are present in your Ibadah or with your family, that calm impacts your work. Conversely, if you are fulfilled and find meaning in your work, you bring better energy home.

But this raises a difficult question: How do you enter a state of presence after a stressful day?

First, I would like you to question whether the work you are doing is:

1. Meaningful to you.

2. Allows for creative expression.

3. Aligned with what you actually want in life.

Or are you just doing it to pay the bills?

I’m not saying ignore the bills - we all have responsibilities. But don’t restrict yourself to one version of reality where you believe there is no other way.

For example, I once worked with a business partner whose style and treatment of people were toxic. It was only after I left that partnership that I realized what I truly wanted and what gave me deeper satisfaction. I may have needed to go through that hardship to realize my values, but we are constantly faced with choices.

You have a choice in the matter.

If you feel a deep sense of anxiety with what you are doing or who you are working with, ask yourself: Does something need to change?

If changing jobs isn’t immediately possible, I encourage you to create a buffer before the day ends. Don’t just walk straight into family time with a busy, distracted mind. Spend ten minutes unwinding, reflecting, or journaling. Bring yourself back to the present moment by remembering that Allah is closer to you than your jugular vein. With the realisation that Allah is always with us, it induces a greater sense of presence.

Ensure your family and your Lord get the best version of you, not the exhausted residue of your workday.

Ultimately, these things are within our control. Don’t trick yourself otherwise. The illusion we tell ourselves is that we have no choice - that stress and anxiety are natural byproducts of modern life.

Actually, no. To a large extent, we are choosing that life. We are choosing, in every instance, how we relate to the present.

Scholars like Ahmad al-Zarruq remind us to ask: What does the present moment demand of me? If the present moment is for family, we cannot be distracted. If we constantly are, we must question whether our current path allows for that devotion.

Stress is part of life - the Prophet ﷺ experienced it. But there is a difference between external pressure and self-induced stress caused by a misaligned career or toxic environments.

So remember: You have a choice. In Arabic the word for choice is Ikhtiyaar, which comes from khair, which means good. So make your choice for your job, career or business one that is fundamentally good for your soul, your relationship with Allah and with your loved ones.

The Prophet ﷺ said: “Part of the perfection of one’s Islam is leaving that which does not concern him.” (Ma la yanihi)

Imam Adrian Wood Smith points out that yanihi shares a root with ma’na (meaning). So, from the perfection of your Islam is focusing only on what gives you personal meaning - and letting go of the rest.

May Allah guide us to that which is most pleasing to Him.

Allah tells us how He creates in the Quran:

“Kun fa-yakūn” - “Be, and it is.” (Surah Yasin, 36:82)

God’s acts are done effortlessly, completely independent of time, space, or material constraints. In stark contrast, humanity’s existence on Earth is defined by struggle.

Upon being sent to this realm, mankind was bound to toil. As the Quran explicitly states: “We have certainly created man into hardship [kabad].” (Surah Al-Balad, 90:4).

One translator says this means “constant hardship”.

The very nature of being human in this world is tied to overcoming difficulty. As it’s this overcoming that proves our worth and is catalyzes our spiritual evolution.

The AI Inversion: Comfort vs. Spiritual Growth

Today’s world, increasingly dominated by Artificial Intelligence, is designed to maximize comfort and eliminate friction. This technological shift creates a profound philosophical dilemma: AI is effectively inverting the primordial human condition.

If the natural state of the human being is to exist in kabad, what happens when technology makes life almost entirely effortless?

To what extent do we remain truly human if we eliminate the struggle?

The Sunnah (cosmic law) of life is that through striving, exerting effort, and overcoming pain that we realize our true selves.

More importantly, confronting our limitations is what reveals our inherent weakness and incapacity (’ajz) before the Divine. This realization of our own vulnerability is precisely what drives us to surrender and submit to God.

The Risk of Absolute Ease

If AI eliminates all friction, we lose the mirror that reflects our own weakness. An existence of absolute ease risks creating an illusion of self-sufficiency (istighna), ultimately eroding our instinct to submit to God.

To prevent this erosion of human character, we cannot simply adopt AI passively. We need a clear, spiritual barometer to govern how and when we use it.

Without strict intentionality, the path of least resistance will always be our default. We will overuse AI, allowing it to think for us, which will inevitably render us intellectually, physically, and spiritually weaker.

Emerging studies suggest this over-reliance is already impacting our cognitive abilities. Neuroscientists warn that under-stimulating our brains weakens our “cognitive reserve” - the mental resilience that helps protect against cognitive decline and conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.

Consider how we create books today.

Humans have poured their souls into writing for thousands of years. Today, an AI can generate a “book” in a few hours.

Yet, the books we cherish and value most are those done with blood, sweat, and tears.

This is not to say AI cannot assist us - we all use it today, it’s indispensable now - but we cannot escape the core Quranic concept of Jihad - which is fundamentally about striving, exerting effort, and enduring hardship for a higher purpose.

Writing a meaningful book requires exactly this: persistence, vulnerability, and deep intellectual engagement.

The Erosion of what makes us human

In classical Islamic philosophy, the human being is defined as al-hayawan al-natiq - the “rational animal,” or as the late Prof. Dr. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas says: “…a certain power and capacity innate in man to articulate words or symbolic forms in meaningful patterns.”

Our humanity is intrinsically tied to our ability to formulate thought, communicate complex truths, and write. When we lazily outsource our writing and speaking to Artificial Intelligence, we are not merely saving time; we are actively eroding the very faculty that defines our species.

“Will you not then reflect?”

The Quran repeatedly commands us to ponder, reflect, and look deeply within ourselves and the cosmos. This process requires silence, boredom and turning inwards

Constantly turning to AI as an oracle for all of our problems blocks this spiritual channel. If we rely on an algorithm to instantly hand us answers, we lose the capacity to sit in contemplation and allow insights to naturally unfurl from the soul.

Our relationship with AI should never be passive; rather, our job is look at what AI shares with us and test it against our own intellect and moral intuition.

Representatives on earth

When Allah established humanity’s high status, He designated Adam as His khalifah (steward) on Earth, demonstrating his superiority to the angels by teaching him “the names of all things” (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:31). This reveals that our highest calling is to articulate and manifest the human potential implanted within us by our Creator.

Therefore, if we are true to our purpose, our job is to act as stewards (khulafa) on Earth, which includes steering AI in the right direction. Ultimately, Human Intelligence must guide Artificial Intelligence.

AI is an incredible asset when used to complement your thinking, streamline repetitive tasks, or organize your work. But we face a serious existential crisis when we outsource our raw creativity, human ingenuity, and the sacred struggle required to make something truly great. Doing so makes us weaker, less capable, and ultimately, less human.

Moving Forward with Intentionality

Much like the lessons we are retroactively learning about the damage of social media on human beings, AI requires much deeper intentionality.

We cannot be passengers or we will, once again, be lead into places that those with nefarious intentions want to head down.

AI should be used to assist us, but never to bypass the essential human struggles that forge our character, deepen our intellect, and keep us connected to our Creator.

As a final consideration, it is true that work need not be inherently agonizing.

The Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) taught us balance; as Aisha (RA) narrated: “Whenever the Prophet (ﷺ) was given a choice between two matters, he would choose the easier course, as long as it was not a sin.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, 3560).

If we contextualize this within the framework of serving humanity, freeing up time from mundane tasks using AI can be a blessing - if we use that reclaimed time to serve others, connect deeply with our families, and exert ourselves in meaningful pursuits.

The Prophet (ﷺ) could have easily sat back and delegated the hard labor of his mission, but he chose not to. He walked alongside people when they needed personal help; he carried heavy mud bricks with his own hands to build Masjid an-Nabawi; and he personally went out to establish and map the marketplace of Madinah to ensure economic justice for his community.

He never outsourced the raw, physical, empathetic work that human beings are designed to engage in.

If we allow technology to steal our struggle, it steals our growth. By establishing a firm barometer of intentionality, we can use AI to eliminate the mundane while fiercely protecting the jihad of the mind and spirit - ensuring that our ease in this world never compromises our surrender to the Divine.

The holy Prophet ﷺ came to teach us how to be human. AI, without deeper intentionality, can make us less human.

Let’s slow down for a moment and take charge of our lives, work and decisions.

1. Be intentional about what you fund.

Avoid paying for mainstream LLMs tied to companies with unethical practices- surveillance, military contracts, or complicity in oppression. Not only does this refuse to bankroll harm, but the free-tier limits naturally curb overuse. If you do need to pay, support ethical alternatives like Thaura that prioritize privacy, sustainability, and accountability.

2.⁠ ⁠Protect your uniqueness.

AI flattens language into a homogenous style that erases individual voice.

Each of us are unique, and we should express ourselves in the way Allah has created us. When we outsource everything to AI, it inhibits and restricts who we are, how we express ourselves and shrinks our ability to think (writing is thinking).

Diversity is part of His design: “We made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another” (Quran 49:13).

When we outsource our expression to AI, we lose the texture, imperfection, and richness that make human communication meaningful.

3.⁠ ⁠Have a healthy skepticism

The truth is, we don’t know where AI is heading and what it’s doing to us. It’s a new human experiment. Of course, AI is not going anywhere, it will likely be a part of humanity for as long as we’re around, but we should treat it with skepticism, especially that the majority of AI development is happening by those who are unwilling to priorities ethics and faith.

To think that much of the AI development happening today has nothing to do with the emergence of the antichrist, is naïve. So each of us have a responsibility to think through this a lot more deeply. I’m not saying not to use AI, or that we shouldn’t be building products, services or helping humanity with it, I’m asking us to question whose AI we are using and how much of it.

For those in and around London, our next Spirituality of Business event is one you should not miss.

We are building a community of Muslims in London who want to work with integrity, depth and sincerity.

The last two have gone really well and this next one, with three exceptional panelists, is on Prophetic Decision Making at Waterloo on August 22nd. It’s designed for CEOs, Founders, Leaders, Managers and anyone who has to make important decisions regularly at work. The aim of the event is to share the Prophetic blueprint to good decision making.

The day has two events, one is women’s-only and the second is the one I’ll be hosting. You’re welcome to book one or both.

Book now

One chapter was titled “The Nobility of the Physician over the Carpenter.”

In it, the Syrian merchant-scholar al-Dimashqi argues that the physician’s work is relatively nobler than carpentry:

One deals with the human body, the other with wood.

One deals with preserving and restoring good health, the other with producing durable furniture.

Also an experienced doctor may treat many patients in a single day; a skilled carpenter may take many days to finish making quality furniture for one customer.

So, the relative nobility of a vocation is evaluated by considering the content of the work and by its purpose and benefit.

Another of the criteria for wholesome work, set out by the scholars, is that which makes you honoured, not debased or humiliated. So, decent work is also very important.

None of these considerations discount the nobility of working with your hands.

The Prophet ﷺ praised manual labour, and even Jesus, peace be upon him, is described in the Bible as a carpenter. The Prophet ﷺ was a shepherd, which is also a very manual, even vexing work.

The point stands: not all work is created equal. There is a hierarchy in work, and in the businesses we choose to build. Learning to discern between their relative merits and demerits matters. For decent work is one which is personally fulfilling and socially beneficial.

Crucially, the scholars of the past didn’t rank professions by income, though al- Dimashqi himself says being well or fairly paid is no bad thing.

They ranked them by a kind of metaphysical hierarchy: human beings are superior to wood, health matters more than furniture, or say, jewellery, and helping more people is better than helping fewer.

You can apply the same pragmatic principles and moral logic today.
Selling something like organic food is better than selling sugary energy drinks. Selling low-emission cars is better than selling high-emission ones.

A job built on real human interaction is better than one mediated entirely through a screen.

So if you’re choosing a business or career, ask yourself:

1. What lets you use your gifts and talents best, giving you dignity and self-worth?

2. What does your community need most at the moment?

South Asian parents may have mostly been thinking about pay, stability, and status when encouraging their kids to go into medicine. The first two are worth taking seriously. Status, less so — a job can be socially respected and still be hollow in respect to meaning and purpose.

The lesson isn’t “become a doctor.” It’s this:

Look for work that sits at the meeting point
of your gifts and what people actually need.

Sometimes that’s prestigious medicine. Sometimes it’s something your parents never would have guessed, like humble carpentry.

On 6th July we’re bringing together three Muslim leaders who’ve wrestled with exactly this question - and built something they’re proud of on the other side. Come and be in the room. I’ll be there hosting.

👉 Join us at The Revival. Limited tickets.

Book here

These acts are beautiful, disciplining the soul and drawing us closer to Allah.

But worship does not end when the prayer finishes, when the fast breaks or when we have given some of our money.

Somewhere along the way, we severed what was never meant to be separated: ibadah from mu‘amalah.

These acts of worship cannot be divorced from our personal ethics.

Our Split Lives

We pray in clean clothes, but we don’t ask if they were made in dangerous, exploitative sweatshops by children.

We break our fast with meat from animals that lived miserable lives, treated as industrial units rather than creatures of Allah.

We give to charity, yet ignore which conflicts our banks fund overseas.

We drink from single-use plastic bottles, casually tossing them back into an earth we are destroying.

We consume products mindlessly, although the Arabic word for consumption is Istihlaak, which means to destroy or use something until nothing is left.

How can we be so sure our worship is accepted when our lifestyles are built on a lack of care for the wider world? A world we have been put in charge of looking after.

What is Mu‘amalah?

Mu‘amalah is not just a narrow legal term for business transactions. It is our religion expressed in the material world. It literally means working together (for the common good).

It is how we trade, eat, dress, employ, and dispose. It is the ethical footprint of every pound or dollar we spend.

The natural extension of salah is not just personal calm; it is a way of being.

Our prayer is training for when we go out into the world.

If we stand before Allah with genuine humility, that humility must show up in our supply chains, our spending habits, and our treatment of neighbours, customers, and the environment.

Similarly, the natural extension of fasting is eating. The question cannot just be: “Did I fast?” It must also be: “What did I break my fast with? Was it ethical? Was it pure? Did it involve cruelty?

A True Revival

I do not believe Islam will be revived simply with more prayers or more Mosques. Those are foundational and absolutely necessary- but they are not enough.

We speak constantly about the revival of the Ummah, yet we remain passive consumers. The truth is that in most areas today, secular voices are leading the vital conversations on ethical business, sustainability, conscious consumption, and animal welfare.

The issue is that we have not made these our issues. Everything above are core Islamic ideas, integral parts of the religion that we are supposed to be following.

If our worship does not fundamentally change the way we live, trade, and treat creation, then something vital is missing. True spirituality cannot exist in a vacuum. It’s time we bring our Islam out of the Masjid and into the marketplace.

So, where do we start?

1. Audit one purchase. Next time you buy clothing or food, ask: Who made this? Was it fair? Perhaps you can purchase something second hand. I often buy from Vinted.

2. Shift your money. Consider moving savings to ethical banks that don’t fund oppression. Triodos Bank is a good option.

3. Reduce waste. Refuse single-use plastics. Choose reusable, like Borosilicate glass or stainless steel (avoid silicone).

Please do your own research. These are based on my research but there may be better alternatives. The point is - there are plenty of options and alternatives, from LLMs to email providers - you just need to look.

You are not here alone, just to wake up, work, eat and sleep, with a bit of prayer and fasting here and there.

We are, as the Quran reminds us, God’s representatives on earth.

If you would like to better understand how to be Allah’s representative on earth, join us at The Revival in London, July 6th. Learn from those who’ve built with ethics how you can do the same, in a room full of people who may open doors for you:

Book now

As believers, I think we’ve adopted a severely distorted view of what it actually means to be productive. Modern Western culture encourages a dangerous imbalance - pushing us to chase arbitrary milestones that leave us feeling entirely empty once we finally reach them.

The most damaging aspect of this? Perhaps our obsession with speed.

We listen to voice notes and YouTube videos on 2x speed.

We read five-minute summaries instead of actual books because we want knowledge now. (Bad news: Knowledge is a slow, sacred process.)

We want instant growth,
instant success,
and instant realization of our potential.

We’d be fools to think this hyper-paced lifestyle isn’t throwing our souls out of balance.

But if we strip it all back, the truth is simple: we would all be a lot happier with simpler lives. There are really just three things we need to focus on.

1. Be fruitful wherever Allah has placed you

Do the right thing in the exact moment you are in. Be useful right where you are.

You might be questioning your current environment today. Maybe you’re stuck in a job you dislike or a season that feels stagnant. It’s great to aspire for more, but remember: you are exactly where you are because God placed you there.

Don’t be angry with God’s decree. Don’t fight it. He is managing your affairs; you aren’t. It’s said that the saints become close to God by abandoning their will for His will.

He can, at any moment, move you somewhere better in the blink of an eye.

Until He shifts your circumstances, your only job is to enhance, beautify, and show excellence (Ihsan) right where your feet are planted.

2. Be good at what you do

Every single one of us is good at something. I genuinely don’t believe Allah would have fashioned you in the womb with trillions of unique cells, and stayed with you your whole life, if you had nothing to offer the world.

“And He is with you wherever you are.” - Surah Al-Hadid (57:4)

For many of us, that gift is still just latent potential. We haven’t uncovered it yet. Often, all it takes is a bit of self-belief and the courage to take what God has given us seriously.

Nurture it, practice it, and keep showing up until you become genuinely good at it.

Take my own journey, for example:

I started The Spirituality of Business four years ago as a tiny passion project. I had no grand master plan, and I didn’t force any doors open. I just consistently poured effort into something I cared about, and Allah opened the doors on His accord where I now give talks across the world.

So don’t stress over forcing the outcomes - focus on the quality of your craft.

3. Be patient

Give your journey time.

Here is the secret: when you are genuinely aligned with your purpose, patience ceases to be a chore. Doing the work itself becomes the reward. The income, the opportunities, the recognition - those are just the bonuses.

The Formula

Forget the modern productivity gurus who preach chronic burnout. It really just comes down to this:

1. Be fruitful where you are.

2. Nurture your unique skill.

3. Remain patient with the timeline.

It’s all right there in the Sunnah of the Chosen One ﷺ.

Tomorrow (Saturday 23rd), we begin the best book on business I’ve ever read, by the great Syrian merchant-scholar, Ja’far al-Dimashqi. I’m really excited to study it with many of you. The feedback from previous study groups has been incredibly humbling - we’ve seen people with MBAs have their entire understanding of business turned upside down, and practicing Muslims realize how little they knew about Islam’s approach to making money.

If you’d like to join us, apply below:

Join the study

In 1950s America, the CEO of one of America’s leading pharmaceutical companies made a decision that made no financial sense. George Merck - grandson of the company’s founder - set a standard that would define the company for decades. He famously stated: “Medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits.”

Though George passed away in 1957, his philosophy became the company’s DNA. Fast forward to the late 1970s: Merck scientists discovered ivermectin, a miracle compound that could cure river blindness - a parasitic disease stealing the sight and life from millions across sub-Saharan Africa.

But there was a massive hurdle...

• No government would fund distribution.

• No aid agency had the budget.

• And the people who needed it most couldn’t afford it.

In 1987, honoring the legacy George Merck left behind, CEO P. Roy Vagelos made a decision that made no “financial sense” on a spreadsheet: He gave the drug away. For free. To anyone who needed it, for as long as they needed it.

Merck didn’t just donate the medicine; they helped build the infrastructure to get it to the most remote villages on earth. They lived the creed that medicine is for the people. And far from going bust, Merck remains one of the most enduring and profitable pharmaceutical companies in history.

Profit is a by-product, not a purpose

Milton Friedman famously argued that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. The statement was, and remains, deeply controversial - widely ridiculed by those who felt it gave corporations a moral blank cheque to pursue gain at any cost.

To be fair, the statement was more nuanced than its critics often allow. Friedman’s argument was not that greed is good. His point was that a business, by doing its job well and generating profit, creates wages for employees who can donate to causes they care about, and returns for shareholders who can invest in social goods. He also argued that it is not the job of businesses to solve all of society’s problems - that is the role of governments and democratic institutions. To ask a CEO to play politician, in his view, is to confuse two very different kinds of accountability.

You can get the logic: A company that goes around trying to fix lots of social issues, rather than doing one thing brilliantly, often ends up doing nothing well.

Alex Edmans, professor at London Business School and author of Grow the Pie, gives Friedman partial credit.

But Edmans raises two objections:

First, the idea that shareholders can simply pocket their profits and donate to causes they care about is often inefficient - if your company is causing harm, it is far better to stop causing it than to profit from it and write a cheque to a charity trying to fix it.

Second, and more fundamentally, a business that filters every decision through profit will only ever do good when it can calculate that the return justifies the cost.

But the most important things a business can do for society - sharing a formula with a competitor, building a product nobody asked for, staying loyal to a worker when the numbers say let them go cannot be justified on a spreadsheet. The Friedman framework, even at its most generous, still makes profit the gatekeeper. And that means the decisions that matter most often never get made.

Edmans spent years gathering the evidence around purpose and profit. His conclusion: companies do not face a trade-off between profit and purpose. Purpose-driven companies - those that genuinely invest in their people, their communities, and their stakeholders - consistently outperform their peers over the long term. The “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” beat their industry peers by 2–3% per year over a 25-year period.

That length of time is too long for it to be lucky. The data is clear as day. Do good and you will receive good.

But purpose alone is not enough

Here is where many well-intentioned businesses fall short. They adopt a mission statement. They talk about values. And then they wonder why nothing changes.

Edmans says there is a difference between a company that does good things on the side - charitable donations, sustainability reports, community initiatives - and a company that is excellent at its core. He calls the first Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). He calls the second Pieconomics. And he is clear about which one creates more value.

Vodafone did not transform millions of lives in Africa by publishing a tax transparency report. They did it by being brilliant at what they actually do - telecommunications - and asking: what else can we do with this? The result was M-Pesa, a mobile money service that lifted 196,000 Kenyan households out of poverty and enabled 186,000 women to move out of agricultural labour and into business.

And it worked commercially too. M-Pesa became the largest payments platform in Africa, processing over a billion transactions a month across 40 million users. Safaricom, Vodafone’s Kenyan partner, grew to become the most profitable company in East Africa - with M-Pesa at the heart of its revenues. The service that began as an act of purposeful innovation became one of the most successful fintech products the world has ever seen.

No one asked for M-Pesa. No one would have blamed Vodafone for not building it. But that is precisely Edmans’ point: the most meaningful acts of service are not the ones you are obligated to do. They are the ones you choose to do, out of genuine care, using the gifts and expertise already in your hands. That’s Ihsan.

This is the question every business leader should ask themselves: what is in my hand, and how can I use it to serve?

Purpose: the answer to why you exist

Excellence needs a direction. That direction is purpose.

Purpose is not a tagline. It is the answer to this: how is the world a better place because your company exists? And you build your purpose by understanding who you serve and why. And crucially, profits cannot be the purpose - they are the breathing that sustains life, not the reason for living.

You cannot survive without it, but it’s not the purpose of life.

George Merck understood this from the beginning. When his company discovered how to manufacture penicillin on a large scale in 1942 - the first company ever to do so - he did not sit on the discovery. He shared it with competitors. Together, they treated 100,000 Allied soldiers in the Second World War. His core value was stated as this: “our business is preserving and improving human life”. Everything else comes after that.

That clarity of purpose is what attracts the right people, retains them, and inspires them to go beyond what any contract could require. As Edmans found, 88% of millennials said they would stay with their employer for five years if they were satisfied with the company’s sense of purpose - compared to just 27% who intended to stay regardless. Purpose is not a soft ideal. It is the most powerful management tool available.

What this looks like in practice

A business built on genuine purpose and a commitment to excellence does not need to be in pharmaceuticals or technology to change lives. Every company, in every industry, can serve society through excellence in what it already does.

But here is where it truly compounds. The most powerful combination is not purpose alone, and not excellence alone - it is purpose aligned with what you are genuinely good at, directed toward the people you are best placed to serve. When those three things come together, the impact multiplies.

Vodafone did not randomly decide to fight poverty. They used their telecommunications expertise - what they had already spent decades developing - and aimed it at a specific, solvable problem. That focus is what made it transformative. A transport company that connects people to jobs and family. A food company that genuinely improves nutrition. A toy company that educates and delights children. These are not inherently inferior industries. Done with real craft and deep intention, by people who have spent years becoming excellent, they are profound acts of service.

“Whatever you do, master it, and that will become your spiritual path,” says Peter Sanders, the legendary Muslim photographer.

Mufti Faraz Adam once taught in a class I was in, our role is to take something from the Prophetic legacy - just one thing - and excel in it.

The trap is thinking that doing good requires doing something entirely separate from your core work - launching a foundation, sponsoring events, spreading effort across disparate causes. Often, the most good comes from going deeper into what you already do, with more love, more precision, and a clearer sense of who you are doing it for.

Excel at something and then branch out.

Concluding thoughts

So just do the right thing. Financial returns come in proportion to the genuine value created.

The entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary said it well: “Every entrepreneur who achieves some massive liquidity event…they don’t even remember the day it happens. They weren’t calculating for that. They created something of such value [it was bound to happen]…”

You will never lose out by doing the right thing.

رَبَّنَا آتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ

“Our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the next, and protect us from the punishment of the fire.”

هَلْ جَزَاءُ الْإِحْسَانِ إِلَّا الْإِحْسَانُ

Is the reward for good anything but good? (Qur’an 55:60)

Build well.
Serve sincerely.
Trust the rest to God.

If you made it until the end, well done, your attention span is greater than most these days :) And you’re also probably the right person to study the great Islamic business book written by a scholar and successful trader, Jafar al Dimashqi. The book is an excellent, practical and spiritual guide on how to do business. You can learn more and apply here:

Learn more

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As an extra precaution here is the link again - https://spiritualityof.gumroad.com/l/aguideformuslimconverts

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The reason I wrote this was because in December last year, I was in India visiting some family.

At one point, I was on Instagram looking for influencers for a campaign, and I came across a few convert Muslim influencers. As the algorithm does, it starts showing you more of what you’re engaging with… and before I knew it, I was seeing hundreds of them.

And it made me realise something.

There are a lot of new Muslims who are becoming influencers - often without even trying. Just by the mere fact that they’re converts, they attract attention. Muslims like to see converts, they feel proud of it, and naturally people start following them.

So you end up with people who’ve been Muslim for a few weeks… and suddenly they’re in the spotlight. But…

They’re still figuring out their identity.
They’re still learning Islam.
They’re still finding their feet.

And at the same time, they’ve got an audience, expectations, pressure - and they have to navigate all of that in public.

So I put this e-book together.

It’s not really for the general public. It’s specifically for Muslims who are converts and find themselves in the public eye.

If that’s not you, that’s fine.

But if you feel like you know someone who’s in that position - or is heading in that direction - then feel free to send it to them.

Read it here

But then will take your money.

You may meet this person at some point in your business life.

They come with warmth. Enthusiasm. They think you are exceptional, they tell you so, and they back it up by doing things for you - small favours, useful introductions, turning up when you need something done.

A friendship develops. Or something that feels very much like one.

And then, when the moment is right, they mention an opportunity.

The trader Jafar Al-Dimashqī described this person 800 years ago. He called them the seducing smooth-talkers.

If you trust them with your money, here is what happens.

After some time they return small amounts to you - and you assume these are profits. You are happy. Your capital, you believe, is working.

What you do not know is that what they are returning to you is your own capital. They have already taken it. They keep returning small sums to keep you calm, until the amounts they have returned add up to roughly half of what you gave them. At that point you start to feel something is wrong.

When you confront them, the warmth disappears entirely. They turn on you. They find people to defend them. They may even accuse you of exploiting them.

Al-Dimashqī says the matter will not be resolved except by Allah in the Hereafter. That is how bad it gets.

This is as relevant today as it ever was.

People do not change.

Not being able to identify these types of people can cost you everything.

We will be studying this in full - and every other difficult personality al-Dimashqī identifies - in a reading of his book starting May 23rd with Dr. Adi Setia.

This is a must-study. It’s one of the earliest systematic books we have within our tradition on how to succeed as a business owner, both financially but also spiritually.

It’s deeply practical, real and gives you a timeless insight into what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur.

Twelve sessions.
All recorded.
£150.

Some of the most expensive lessons in business are the ones nobody warned you about.

Apply here

To understand why, we must begin with a remarkable statement from the Prophet ﷺ:

“I am the closest of all people to Jesus son of Mary in this world and the next. The prophets are brothers; their mothers are different but their religion is one.” (Bukhari, Muslim)

Both prophets were not just spiritual guides but moral economists - sent to remind humanity that wealth is from God and doesn’t belong to us.

Both Muhammad ﷺ and Jesus عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ came to restore humanity’s connection to God - to re-establish tawḥīd, the oneness of God in belief and in practice.

But this was not a disembodied spirituality, detached from the realities of human suffering. It was a faith rooted in the world as people actually lived it - in their hunger, their debts, their exploitation.

To call people back to God meant confronting the idols that had replaced Him - not only stone idols, but the idols of wealth, power, and debt that enslaved people materially and spiritually.

Jesus and the Jubilee

To understand Jesus as an “economic reformer”, as historians like Michael Hudson have referred to him, we need to understand the Biblical Jubilee - an ancient law in which every fifty years, debts were cancelled, slaves freed, and land returned to its original owners. It was a divine reset, ensuring that inequality could never permanently entrench itself.

Hudson argues that this was the very core of Jesus’ mission. His “good news” - the gospel - was, in large part, a proclamation of debt cancellation and the restoration of economic balance, directly echoing these Jubilee laws.

When Jesus stood in the synagogue and read from the scroll of Isaiah - declaring “the year of the Lord’s favour” - he was announcing the Jubilee: the cancellation of debts, the freeing of the bound, the restoration of what had been taken.

The establishment drove him out of his hometown for it.

The religious elite of his time, the Pharisees - the learned and powerful class who occupied positions of authority in Jewish religious life - were not merely spiritually corrupt. They had turned the Temple itself into a financial instrument. They stored money there and loaned it to the poor who were at risk of losing their land to debt, working hand in hand with the political aristocracy to keep the poor bound and the powerful comfortable.

When Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple - an act of physical anger, which other prophets also did when necessary - he was making a statement: the House of God had been turned into a house of exploitation. Those who were meant to mediate between the people and God were instead extracting from them. The sacred had been conscripted into the service of profit.

Muhammad ﷺ and the Quraysh

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ faced a mirror image of this. The Quraysh of Mecca were the dominant tribe - controllers of the trade routes that ran through Arabia, custodians of the Kabah, and the religious and commercial elite of their world.

Pilgrims and merchants came to Mecca, and the Quraysh charged rent for access to the area around the Kabah - turning sacred space into a revenue stream, just as the Pharisees had done with the Temple. Religion became a means to exploit and assert power of others.

Islam dismantled this system piece by piece:

• The prohibition of riba (usury) - preventing debt from becoming a tool of enslavement

• Zakat - redistributing wealth and purifying it through circulation

• Inheritance laws - ensuring no monopoly of property could pass unchecked through generations

• The Prophet’s ﷺ direct challenge to Qurayshi hierarchy - insisting that no man’s lineage or status made him superior

  
  “Woe to every slanderer and backbiter, who amasses wealth and counts it, thinking his wealth will make him immortal.” (Qur’an 104:1-3)

When the Prophet ﷺ preached that wealth must circulate and that blood and status conferred no privilege, it was a direct assault on the entire Meccan social order.

Why they were both persecuted

When the Prophet ﷺ preached that wealth must circulate and that blood and status conferred no privilege, it was a direct assault on the entire Meccan social order.

Hudson makes an observation that cuts to the heart of it: in ancient societies, debt and sin were the same word. To be indebted was to be morally condemned - you were a person of “bad character”, someone who had “failed”.

This framing kept the poor ashamed and the rich righteous. Both Jesus and Muhammad ﷺ came to overturn this - to name the system, not the poor, as the corruption.

Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (RA) also said something interesting: poverty, he warned, leads to kufr - the potential of being so caught up in your grief that you abandon God.

When people are crushed by material deprivation,
their faith is placed under unbearable strain.

Economic justice is not separate from spiritual life. It is inseparable from it.

History shows us that when you threaten someone’s wealth, comfort, and status, they will come for you.

That is why both Prophets were persecuted. In fact, it’s a Sunnah of life that Prophets risk their lives for the sake of the message, and those who follow in their footsteps.

The Quraysh did not resist the Prophet ﷺ because they doubted God’s existence. They resisted because his message threatened their markets. They came to him with offers: status, wealth, women - everything people tend to want.

When that failed, they proposed a compromise: one year, worship our gods; one year, we worship yours. A clean split. What they thought was a reasonable arrangement.

The Prophet ﷺ refused every single offer.

Some things are not negotiable. Some compromises are not compromises - they are capitulations. When what is being offered is fundamentally opposed to what you stand for, the answer must simply be no. Not a negotiated no.

Just no.

This history is deeply relevant to us

Scripture provides us archetypes, like Pharaoh, who keep popping up again and again throughout history. They are self-obsessed and are willing to allow everyone else to suffer to protect themselves.

But it also tells us how society, when bereft of God and justice, constantly tilts into tyranny and oppression.

The messengers show to us what to do about it.

The same patterns are alive today.

Debt growing faster than wages.
Wealth concentrating among a few.
Extreme power among an elite controlling everyone.

To follow Jesus or Muhammad ﷺ is not merely to pray or to believe - it is to ask hard questions about the economy you participate in, and to build and support businesses that oppose these structures, wherever you can.

I have recently come across Vista Pay, a Muslim-founded alternative to Stripe and PayPal, which is rapidly being adopted by medium-large organisations and charities because of its ethics and mission.

If you have a business or charity and would like to switch immediately to an ethical payment processor, where you can feel safe with where your money is going, fill in this form and they will be in touch.

Ethical Payments

They pray. They speak about God often. They present themselves as trustworthy precisely because of how religious they appear.

And somewhere along the way, they end up close to your money, your business, or your trust.

Jafar Al-Dimashqī identified this type 800 years ago and described what to do.

He called them people who use religion as a stairway to worldly goals.

So how do you spot them? He gives some tips.

They gravitate toward wealth and status.

They attend gatherings and show up where opportunity is, and they will win over people with their piety.

They want to be trusted with things that belong to other people. Money. Supervision of important matters. Positions of authority. Getting their hands on what is yours, with your blessing, is the objective. The religiosity is the method.

They are more dangerous than an outright fraudster. He said pretty bluntly: they are worse than thieves and highwaymen. Because at least the thief is honest about what he is. People know to be wary of him.

This type looks like a good man. That is the disguise, and that is what makes them so costly.

This is not about religious-looking people. Most people who appear religious are exactly what they seem - principled, decent, worth knowing.

This is about a specific minority who understand that the appearance of virtue is the most effective currency there is.

The test al-Dimashqī implies is simple. Watch what they do when there is no audience. Watch how quickly the warmth cools when the access disappears.

Character is not what someone shows you in the mosque. It’s actually revealed to people when you do business.

We will be studying this - and the full psychology of difficult personalities in business - in a reading of al-Dimashqī’s book starting May 23rd with Dr. Adi Setia.

Twelve sessions. All recorded. £150.

If you have ever been burned by this type, or want to make sure you never are, this is the room to be in.

Apply here

But if we properly understand the Quranic worldview, we will do business very differently. Here are 7 mind shifts if we can internalize them:

1. Ethics is not a constraint on business - it is the foundation of it

Much of modern business treats ethics like a speed limit: something that slows you down. The Islamic framework says the opposite.

The starting point is: “Desire for others what you desire for yourself” (an tuhibba li akhika ma tuhibbu li nafsika).

If the spiritual depth and moral layer is not carefully integrated, you just have regular business with Friday prayers.

2. The word for “business dealings” literally means working together

Muāmalah - the Islamic term for how we transact with one another - means collective action for the common good.

That’s why it’s not just transactions, which can lend to the idea of extracting from one another, rather than co-operation.

3. Scarcity is not a fact - it is a state of mind

Almost all of mainstream economics is built on the assumption that resources are scarce, which produces anxiety, hoarding and endless competition.

The Quran starts from a completely different place: divine abundance.

“And if you were to count the blessings of God, you could never enumerate them.” (Wa in taʿuddū niʿmata Allāhi lā tuḥṣūhā.) The Chapter of Abrahim:34

And:

“The devil promises you destitution and enjoins on you lewdness, but God promises you forgiveness from Him with bounty.” (Ash-shayṭānu yaʿidukumu al-faqra wa yaʾmurukum bil-faḥshāʾ, wa Allāhu yaʿidukum maghfiratan minhu wa faḍlā.) The Cow: 268

The feeling of scarcity is linked to ingratitude and disconnection from the Divine Source.

By chasing more and more, we never feel like we have enough, but “enoughness” is central to how we ought to live, as we learn from Prophetic teachings.

4. Stop looking for work. Start looking at what your community lacks.

“Looking for a job” makes you passive and market-dependent. Switch your thinking: look what work is needed in society, understand if you have the skillset to do it, and be part of creating that enterprise.

The question is much less

“what will the market pay me for?”

It is

“what do the people around me genuinely need?”

These are different questions. They produce completely different lives.

5. How you pray and how you trade should run on the same values

Classical Islamic scholars taught that the rules of commerce are a direct extension of the rules of worship - the same integrity, same care, same God-consciousness.

You cannot be meticulous in the mosque and careless in the marketplace. A Muslim who knows their prayer rules but not their commercial rules has learned half a religion.

6. Most of us were taught the wrong definition of economics

The word economics comes from the Greek oikos - meaning household - and nomos - meaning management. At its root, economics simply means: take care of your home.

Al-iqtiṣād, the Islamic equivalent, means the judicious, careful use of what you have been given.

It’s not about maximizing or extracting, but knowing how much is enough and using it wisely in the service of others.

So it’s primarily about stewardship.

This means before profit, you are tasked with caring for others.

7. You are not a job title. Bring your whole self to your work.

The Prophetic model says human beings are multifaceted: you are a complete, integrated human being, and your work is the place where all of that gets expressed - not suppressed. Your character and personality is not separate from your business. It is your business.

If you want to learn how to do business in truly an Islamic way, grounded in the Quranic worldview and the Prophetic teaching, join me in our next study taking place next month.

You will learn, study and internalise how the earliest Muslims understood trade, profit and spirituality.

Join over 100 students who have benefitted from our study groups so far -

Apply here

Not how to market.
Not how to raise capital.
Not how to scale.

It skips this: what kind of person are you while you’re doing it?
Jafar ibn Alī al-Dimashqī was a merchant-scholar from Damascus who wrote a manual on commerce 800 years ago.

Before he talks about products, markets or money, he identifies five ways a merchant destroys himself. And every single one of them is a character flaw before it’s a financial one.

The first is niggardliness - refusing to spend on good causes. On charity, on relatives, on people who need help. He says this is not just morally wrong. It is a sign that something has gone wrong inside you.

The second is tightfistedness - being so restrictive that you won’t even spend properly on your own family. You are hoarding at the expense of the people closest to you.

The third is intemperance - chasing pleasure and desire at the expense of sound thinking. You are letting your appetite run your decisions.

The fourth is ostentatiousness - spending not out of need or generosity, but to show off. To signal status. To make people look. He says this person is the worst of all - they have neither wealth preserved nor real pleasure enjoyed. Just performance.

The fifth is bad management - no self-discipline in how you allocate what you have. Spending too much in one place, too little in another, always reacting, never planning.

These five traps, rooted in your lower self, cost you big time.

This is what makes al-Dimashqī different from anything on a modern business reading list.

Al-Dimashqī cleverly links who you are to your business performance, they are inseparable. At the core of your business plan is your character. So if you fix who you are, your decisions and the business itself will naturally improve. And if you don’t concurrently work on yourself while building your business, your business is at serious risk.

This is one of the things we’ll be going deep on in a study of his book starting May 23rd, taught by Dr. Adi Setia - one of the world’s leading scholars on Islam, economics and right livelihood.

Twelve sessions.
Everything recorded.
£150.

If you’re building something and you want to build it properly - from the inside out - this is the place to start.

Apply here

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing a few short reflections on one of the great classical works from Al-Shaykh Abū al-Fadl Jafar ibn Alī al-Dimashqī on how those in business can trade effectively without losing their souls.

“La ilaha illallah, La ilaha illallah.”

My door opened slowly, and there stood Dr Musharraf Hussain in a long grey nightgown with the hoodie pulled over his head, looking at me with a warm, unhurried certainty. “Come on Omar, let’s pray.”

He led me into his downstairs office, which doubles as a prayer room.

I was in Nottingham because the night before, I had given a talk to Dr Musharraf’s local community at one of the mosques he had established - on the spirituality of business. After the talk, he graciously hosted me at his home for the night.

After the Fajr prayer and a du’a, he settled into what I would soon realise was his daily rhythm. He retrieved a well-worn copy of the Tafsir of al-Sabuni - the modern Syrian scholar - and began reading passages on Balagha, the rhetorical beauty of the Quran. He then turned to the hadith Afshu al-Salam - Spread peace - and read it with care, offering some context and background. It was a quiet, generous gesture: this was the very hadith I had referenced in my talk the night before, narrated by Abdallah ibn Salam - the Chief Rabbi of Madinah who embraced Islam upon seeing the blessed face of the Prophet ﷺ.

Dr Musharraf had remembered, and in his own understated way, was honouring the connection.

This, I learned, is how every morning begins. After Fajr, he stays awake and devotes at least three hours to studying and writing before the day takes over. It is the first of three distinct parts that structure his day: the morning for knowledge and reflection, the daytime for his work at Karimia, and the evenings for community, social engagements, and networking.

It is a practice of many of the greats. Abdallah ibn Salam, before embracing Islam, is said to have divided his day into three:

Studying the Torah,
teaching,
and attending to his work.

For those who may not know, Dr Musharraf is one of the most significant British Muslim figures of our time, and we owe a great deal to his contributions.

He holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences and completed his first degree in Biochemistry at Aston University, going on to work as a research scientist. Before that - back in the 1970s - he had already memorised the Quran, received an Ijazah in Tajwid and Qira’at, and learned the foundations of Arabic. Two parallel lives were being formed, long before they converged.

By 1990, having become financially independent through three properties he owned, he made a decision that would define the rest of his life. It was time, he said, to get “properly educated in Islam.” He studied at a seminary in Pakistan under Justice Pir Muhammad Karam Shah - a mufassir of the Quran and a Supreme Court judge - and then at Al-Azhar in Cairo, returning to the UK in 1994. What shaped him intellectually was not only his teachers but the books he encountered along the way - among them the works of Gai Eaton, the British Muslim scholar whose reflections on Islam and the modern world left a lasting impression on him.

Since then, he has written over a dozen books and countless articles, established a nursery, a school, four mosques, a publishing house, and a radio station and more. He produced The Majestic Quran: A Plain English Translation, driven by the conviction that Muslims were losing their connection with the Quran simply because they couldn’t understand it.

He was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen in 2009 for his services to community relations in Britain, and more recently appointed as an Honorary Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham.

A couple of years ago, the two of us also collaborated on a short e-book on how modern Muslims can engage meaningfully with social media.

Check out the e-book

I asked him where he found the himma - the inner drive - to do all of this. He said it was needs-based. When he saw a need, he didn’t overthink it. He looked at what was available, made a plan, and moved. For decades, he did the physical work himself. Only now, later in life, with a team of over sixty staff, does he delegate.

He made it sound straightforward. But he was quick to add - it was intensive.

The tafsir he was reading from that morning? It was either his eleventh or thirteenth time - I can’t remember which - reading it cover to cover. Not skimming, but studying it deeply.

How many of us can say we have read any book three times, let alone an entire tafsir?

Perhaps that is the real lesson. Not so much the OBE, the books, the mosques, or the translation - but the inner drive that produces all of those things.

The man who rises before sunrise.
Remembers God in the stillness of the early morning.
Prepares for his day with hours of study

- every day, day in, day out.

That himma is rooted in a practice, and that practice is rooted in knowledge, and that knowledge came from human beings, and those human beings took it from the greatest of human beings: the Prophet ﷺ.

May we be inspired through these living examples within our own midst.

Study one of the most important books ever written on Islam and business.

It’s the most unique book I’ve read on business.

It covers everything from:

1. How to buy, sell, inspect and invest properly

2. Recognising deceptive and difficult personalities in trade

3. The moral qualities required to sustain success over the long term

We’ll go through it carefully, with discussion and reflection, so you can apply it to the reality of your business today.

So if you’re serious about running an excellent business with high moral character, join us.

You can apply below

Apply here

I recently read a work on business written over 800 years ago by the scholar and trader, Jaʿfar al-Dimashqī.

It’s the most unique book I’ve read on business.

It covers everything from:

1. ⁠How to buy, sell, inspect and invest properly

2. ⁠Recognising deceptive and difficult personalities in trade

3. ⁠The moral qualities required to sustain success over the long term

Most modern business books focus on one thing:
how to make money.

This book does that too - and does it well.

But it goes further.

It teaches the adab, the etiquette, of trade and the Prophetic personality you need to develop.

But also how to deal with all sorts of difficult people you’ll come across in business.

Over the past year, we’ve been studying a series of classical texts - from Imām al-Ghazālī to Imām al-Shaybānī.

And then contextualizing these classical teachings into modern business.

The impact on the students has been fantastic.

We’ve taught over 100 students from all over the world the classical worldview of business in Islam.

“This was a pivotal moment in my entrepreneurship journey. Completely rewired how I approach business design & transactions.”

— Mohamed Elayouty, Tech Leader & MBA Graduate, United States

“The significance of the dialogues cannot be valued in money…a mine of pure gold.”

— Abdul Hasib Castineira, Translator, South Africa

“I didn’t just learn how the economy works - I learned what it is for.”

— Ilyes Machkor, Sustainability Expert, Netherlands

“I was able to apply this knowledge creatively to solve real economic issues.”

— Sanjida Mustharen, Health Advisor, UK

“It strengthened my deeni and dunyawi life and opened my mind to meaningful contribution.”

— Gullshan Tasnem, Investment Specialist, Singapore

Many of these students now see business in a completely new way and are operating their businesses with a new, fresh lens, grounded in spirituality and ethics.

This next study is part of that same journey.

The book will be taught by the scholar, expert in this field and translator of the book, Dr. Adi Setia (senior student of the late Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas).

We’ll go through it carefully, with discussion and reflection, so you can apply it to the reality of your business today.

So if you’re serious about running an excellent business with high moral character, join us.

• We start in May.

• Two classes per week.

• All sessions will be recorded in case you miss any.

• And you will have a fantastic global network of students to study with.

You can apply here - a full overview of the course is in the document at the bottom of the form:

Apply here

The Quraysh, the elite of Mecca, the people who had the most to lose from the Prophet’s ﷺ message - had taken to mocking him ﷺ by distorting his name.

Muhammad means “the praised one.”

Some would call him Mudhammam: the condemned, the disgraced.

It was a deliberate, sustained campaign of trying to publicly humiliate God’s beloved. But he knew what they were up to.

Look at his amazing response:

“Does it not astonish you how God averts from me the abuse of the Quraysh? They abuse and curse ‘Mudhammam’ while I am Muhammad.” (Bukhari)

There’s something interesting the Prophet ﷺ is doing here, and we learn it in modern psychology.

He’s not only engaging with it - suppression is never a good thing - but he’s describing what they are trying to do. This is somewhat similar to what psychologists call Affect Labelling, identifying and naming emotions and feelings.

Last week we looked at the architecture of prevention - how the prayer and Imam al-Ghazali’s framework of Mushāraṭah, Murāqabah, and Muhāsabah build the kind of inner stability that makes you harder to knock off centre in the first place. If you missed it, it’s worth reading before this one.

Read - 'Stressed? Do this.'

But what about when you already are off centre? What do you do when the anger has already risen - when a partner has blindsided you in a meeting, a client has been unreasonable, a colleague has said something that just sits there taking up space in your head for the rest of the day?

What actually happens when you get provoked?

When something provokes you in business - and something always will - the emotional, instinctive part of your brain fires first, well before the part responsible for reason, judgment, and clear decision-making gets any say in the matter.

The result is that most of us end up acting on that first surge before we have had any real chance to think: we send the message we should have sat on, say the thing we cannot unsay, make a call we later realise was driven by frustration rather than clarity.

Business relationships - partnerships, client relationships, team dynamics - do not break down due to strategic decision making.

They often break down over heightened emotional moments. A reaction that should never have happened. Words said under pressure that changed how someone saw you, permanently. Or, come to think of it, just pure greed.

The Prophet ﷺ was asked for advice by one of the companions, and each time he said the same thing: “Do not get angry.” Three times.

But he did not just leave us with the instruction - he left us with the means to actually follow it.

The 30-second gap

Harvard professor Arthur Brooks writes about what he considers one of the most practically important tools for emotional self-management: putting deliberate time between your emotional reaction and your response.

It’s said that Thomas Jefferson would count to ten when angry and to a hundred when very angry - what he was really doing, and what the research now supports, is that you need to give the reasoning part of your brain time to catch up to what the emotional part is already experiencing.

The research Brooks references puts the number at closer to 30 seconds, and crucially, not passive waiting - active imagination.

You count to 30 while picturing the full consequences of what you are about to say or do. You play it forward. By the time you get there, the initial surge has usually shifted enough for you to make a decision you will actually stand behind.

The Prophet ﷺ gave us the same principle: “If any of you becomes angry, let him keep silent.”

Silence creates a gap long enough not to react emotionally.

Three Prophetic techniques for when it happens

Beyond the principle, the tradition gives us specific, grounded tools for the moment itself.

1. Name what is happening

This is precisely what the Prophet ﷺ did in that moment with the Quraysh. He did not absorb the insult as his identity. He observed it from the outside - they are cursing Mudhammam, and I am Muhammad - held it at arm’s length, and in doing so it simply lost its grip on him.

The mechanism is this: when you name what you are experiencing, you move from being inside the feeling to observing it, and that shift - however small it seems - hands control back to the reasoning part of your mind.

In a business context, it could be this: I am feeling reactive right now, I feel disrespected by what just happened, I need a moment before I respond. You are not suppressing anything. You are just creating enough distance to choose your response rather than have it chosen for you.

2. Change your posture

The body and the mind are in constant conversation with each other, and anger prepares the body for confrontation - it stands taller, tenses, readies itself. The Prophet ﷺ gave us a precise counter to this: “If one of you becomes angry while standing, let him sit down; if the anger does not leave him, let him lie down.” (Abu Dawud)

This stuff works. It’s just we never try it.

Lowering your physical position signals safety to your nervous system and interrupts the stress response before it takes over completely.

In practice, this might mean stepping away from the table, going for a brief walk, or simply sitting down and breathing before you re-engage. The body leads the mind - change your position, and you genuinely do change your state.

3. Make wuḍū and pray

God said directly to the Prophet ﷺ, who was under real and sustained pressure from those around him: “We certainly know that your breast is constrained by what they say. So glorify the praises of your Lord and be among those who prostrate.” (Qur’an 15:97–98)

The cold water of wuḍū has a measurable physiological effect - it activates the parasympathetic nervous system and begins to slow the stress response.

And then prostration: your forehead on the ground, your body in its most humble position, in the presence of the One who is greater than any person or problem that provoked you.

Now practise it before you need it

Here is something worth doing this week, before you are in the middle of another difficult moment. Choose one of these three techniques - just one - and decide which you’ll lean into when you next feel a flood of emotion.

Write it down somewhere you will see it. Better still, rehearse it in your mind: picture the kind of situation that tends to get to you, and then picture yourself responding with the technique rather than reacting without it.

Like anything that requires skill under pressure, it has to be practised before the pressure arrives - because in the moment itself, you will not have the headspace to decide what to do. You need the decision already made.

The stakes in business are real.

How you regulate yourself in difficult moments directly affects the quality of your decisions, the health of your relationships, and how people around you - partners, colleagues, clients - come to see you over time.

People notice who keeps their composure and who doesn’t, and that perception compounds in the background of every working relationship you have.

The Prophet ﷺ also said: “Speak good or remain silent.”

When you are overwhelmed, it’s better to just not say anything.

Be silent.
Hold on to your tongue.

People respect that.
And you will respect yourself.

And it buys you the time to respond in a way that actually serves the situation.

Where this leaves us

So what have we learnt over the past week?

🟤The morning contract sets your intention.

🟤Watchfulness keeps you present and on guard.

🟤The nightly review helps you learn from what happened.

And for the moments when all of that still is not enough - describe the situation or count to 30, change posture or make wudhu and pray. Perhaps you may want to try a combination.

That is what the Prophet ﷺ left us: not just spiritual guidance, but a complete methodology for the pressures of a working life.

I was at home, working. And rather than address it in the moment, I internalised it - which, if you’ve ever done that, you’ll know is its own kind of slow burn. The thought just sat there, taking up space, pulling my attention away from everything else I needed to do.

Later, walking with my son to the play centre, I noticed where my mind had gone. Still there. Still chewing on it.

“That guy. What’s wrong with him?” I was thinking.

But I got fed up of the obsessive thought so I made a deliberate choice to redirect.

I brought the “three keys” to mind:

🔑God sees me - He is aware of what I am doing and what I am going through.

🔑God hears me - He listens to everything I say to others and to myself.

🔑God is with me - closer to me than my jugular vein.

“Fear not! I am with you, hearing and seeing.” [20:46]

I felt relief. The grip loosened. By the time we got to the play centre, I was present with my son rather than absent in a grievance.

These three keys sit within a wider system our tradition teaches us on how to manage and regulate ourselves throughout the day, and it’s particularly helpful when doing business.

And key to this system is the prayer.

We worship God because He is the Mabud - the One we direct all of our worship to - and the Maqsood, the goal of existence.

Prayer, in that sense, is utterly for Him. But in another sense, it is also for us. It is a direct, unrestricted dialogue between us and God.

In a hadith Qudsi - a narration where God speaks through the Prophet ﷺ but outside of the Qur’an - God says: “I have divided the prayer between Myself and My servant into two halves, and My servant shall have what he asks for.”

God does not need the prayer. But we do. And most of us have forgotten how to use it.

The Qur’an makes a striking claim: “Indeed, prayer restrains from shameful and unjust deeds.” [29:45]

But have you ever stopped to ask - what are the actual mechanics of that? How does prayer keep you away from what is harmful?

Here is the answer in plain terms: most of the time when we fall short - when we send the email we shouldn’t, snap at someone, or make a decision we later regret - it is not because we sat down calmly, weighed the options, and chose wrongly.

It is because we got dysregulated.
Emotionally flooded.
Knocked off centre.

The Prophet ﷺ, when asked repeatedly for advice said: “Do not get angry.” (Bukhari) Three times. But he also gave us the tools to prevent it. And the most powerful of those tools runs through your day five times over.

Here is what actually happens in your body during a proper prayer.

🤲🏼 When you stand in qiyām, your chest expands and your lungs open.

🤲🏼 When you bow in rukū, muscles stretch and tension begins to ease.

🤲🏼 When you go down into sujūd, your brain can shift toward alpha wave states - a measurably calmer, more relaxed mode of brain activity, the opposite of the frantic mental state most of us carry through a busy workday.

Studies suggest that heart rate decreases progressively from standing to bowing to prostration, gradually unwinding the stress response.

God commands: “Recite the Qur’an slowly and distinctly.” [73:4] Slow, deliberate recitation forces rhythmic, deep breathing - this is literally built into the rules of tajwīd.

And when the breath slows, the nervous system follows. Studies suggest that this kind of rhythmic prayer strengthens what is called vagal tone - the activity of the vagus nerve, which runs from your brain through your chest and gut and acts like a brake pedal on stress. The stronger it is, the faster you recover from pressure.

Prayer, done properly, trains it.

And then there is attention. Prayer is movement, speech, rhythm, and presence working together. God tells us the successful believers are those who are khāshiʻūn in their prayer - present and humble. [23:1-2]

One study found that prayer increased parasympathetic activity - the body’s rest-and-digest mode - and reduced sympathetic activation, which is the fight-or-flight response that makes you reactive, short-tempered, and poor at decisions.

When you have spent some time in this state, even if just a deeply present five or ten minutes, you are not in fight-or-flight anymore. You are grounded. And a grounded person runs a better meeting, writes a better email, and makes a better call.

Some Muslims find themselves drawn to yoga or meditation instead. These things can have their place when done with the right people. But that often happens because we are not actually praying - we are performing a ritual without being present in it. If you learned to pray with genuine attention, you may not need to look elsewhere.

The prayer is 5 times a day. But what about the rest of the day? This is where I want to clarify something, especially after my last newsletter which talked about finding balance between work, family and worship.

In reality, there is no real divide in life.

There is no time for God and time for other than God. Our entire lives are for God, with dhikr at the centre of existence - that doesn’t mean we are constantly saying SubhanAllah or Alhamdulullah all day - it means that our inner orientation needs to be brought back to God.

“And remember your Lord when you forget.” [18:23]

So how do you build this into a life that has deadlines, difficult people, and a full schedule?

Imam al-Ghazali outlines a discipline called Murābaṭah - a complete internal management system with three foundations that structure the day.

The first is Mushāraṭah - the morning contract. Before you open your phone or your inbox, speak to your soul. Tell it exactly what you expect from it today. If you have a difficult conversation ahead, tell yourself you will approach it with calm. If yesterday was hard, decide who you want to be today. Al-Ghazali gives us an example of what that may sound like before you start your day:

“The only commodity I have is my life. As it dissipates, so does my capital - and with it, the hope of trade and the search for gain. On this new day, God has granted me respite and delayed my appointed time... So beware - truly beware - of losing this day. For each breath is a priceless jewel.” - Imam al-Ghazālī, Kitāb al-Murāqabah wa al-Muhāsabah, Ihyā’ Ulūm al-Dīn

The American inventor and entrepreneur Benjamin Franklin began each morning by asking: “What good shall I do this day?” Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor reminded himself every morning that he would encounter difficult people - and that his role was to act with virtue regardless.

These are people who understood that how you begin the day shapes everything that follows. The Muslim entrepreneur does this with far greater depth: in the presence of God.

The second is Murāqabah - watchfulness. Monitoring your internal state throughout the day. Noticing when emotions begin to rise before they take over. This is what I was trying to practise on that walk - catching the thought, naming it, redirecting it.

He sees me.
He hears me.
He is with me.

When practised consistently, this kind of deliberate redirection physically strengthens the neural pathways - the brain’s wiring - associated with calm, focus, and self-regulation.

God says: “Without doubt, My friends will have no fear, nor will they grieve.” [10:62]

Fear relates to the future.
Grief to the past.
The friends of God have learned to be in the present, with God.

That is a skill with obvious value in business.

The third is Muhāsabah - the nightly review. Did you hold to your contract? Where did you fall short, and why? What did you do well? Small, consistent self-observation is the foundation of all lasting change. A journal - even a brief one - builds the self-awareness that makes everything else possible.

In Surah al-Ma’ārij, God tells us that humankind was created with a tinge of anxiety running through it. But He immediately gives the remedy: “Not so those who pray - and are constant in their prayer.” [70:19-23]

Things will make us anxious. Colleagues will be difficult. Clients will be unreasonable. Decisions will weigh on us. That impacting us is part of the human condition. The real question is how we will respond - will we turn to God, or be consumed and made forgetful by our emotions?

The next time you feel that slow burn starting - at your desk, in a meeting, on a walk - remember that God has given us the prayer as our great gift and conversation with Him.

When you lift your hands to your ears for the Takbīr, imagine pushing every problem behind you.

Enter the presence of God.

That is what the prayer is for. It is not an obligation you are supposed to just tick off.

It is a gift you return to.

At the time, his company, Social Chain, was flying. It was being valued in the hundreds of millions - maybe somewhere close to half a billion - and from the outside, it looked like the kind of success most entrepreneurs aspire to.

During that talk, he shared a story that stuck with me.

He was on a treadmill one day, running as usual, when the timer suddenly stopped working. So he kept going - but without knowing how long he’d been running for.

When he eventually stopped and checked, he realised he’d run far longer than he normally would have. Much longer than he thought he was capable of.

He shared this story to say that he realized how his mind had always limited him.

That moment became a kind of mental breakthrough for him - that perhaps the biggest constraint on our performance isn’t reality, but perception.

And it raises an important question for us who are building businesses:

• How much do we push ourselves?

• When do you know when to stop?

• And where does balance come in?

Who Are We Taking Guidance From?

Before we can answer how hard to work, we need to sit with a prior question: where are we getting our model of a good human life from?

Whether it’s Bartlett, who is thoughtful and articulate, or others in the wellbeing industry (some of whom have been linked with Epstein), they’re all in the process of figuring things out in real time.

Beyond that, they are not neutral: they have sponsorship deals and equity in companies that no doubt impact what they say and what they don’t.

They are also primarily operating from a materialistic lens, not a spiritual one.

They are experimenting, iterating, adjusting their frameworks as new information arrives.

The Prophet ﷺ, however, was not guessing. He was in direct communication with God.

We therefore cannot inherit wholesale a philosophy of life from modern thinkers that are built on premises that were never interrogated through the lens of who we fundamentally are and what we are here for.

What Are We, Fundamentally?

And this is where the question of how hard to work must begin - not with productivity frameworks or performance data, but with a spiritual lens.

• What is the human being?

• And what roles are we here to fulfil?

The tradition gives us a precise and layered answer.

We are Abd Allah - created to serve and worship God.

The Abd recognises his or her complete dependence on Allah, surrenders the illusion of ultimate control, and finds in that surrender not weakness but the deepest form of freedom. This role is fulfilled most directly in worship - in salah, in dhikr, in the moments of prostration where the self steps back and the only orientation is toward the One.

We are also Khalifah - representatives, stewards and deputies of Allah on the earth. This is the role we inhabit in our engagement with the world: in building, in trading, in creating, in serving other people through our skills and our effort.

We are here to do God’s work, to mirror His Names and Attributes in creation.

These two symbiotic roles work in our two spheres of life: worship and service of others.

So what is the role of work?

As Imam al-Ghazali says: ‎الدنيا مزرعة الآخرة

“The world is the cultivation field of the Hereafter.”

Partaking in business and earning a livelihood is an instinctive and necessary part of human dignity.

It belongs to the arena of economics, which stands alongside religion as one of the two central pillars of human life.

The two go hand in hand. You cannot fulfil your duties of worship if you cannot feed yourself. As Imam al-Ghazali explains, eating becomes an act of worship when the intention behind it is to gain strength for obedience to Allah.

In this way, earning and worship become two sides of the same coin. Other arenas of human activity - cultural, social, and political - are important.

But none are as central as religion and livelihood, because these sustain both the soul and the body. Business is the arena in which we discharge our role as khalifah - God’s deputies on the earth, especially when the work is in service and to provide for others.

Worship, like the prayer for example, is the arena in which we fulfil our role as Abd Allah - servants of Allah.

In this sense, business occupies a central place in human life because it facilitates worship. You cannot fast if you have nothing with which to break your fast. And you break your fast with what you have earned through kasb tayyib - wholesome and lawful earning.

The Prophetic Model: Intensity With Rhythm

So really our goal is to flow between these two roles seamlessly.

The Prophet ﷺ worked with extraordinary intensity. He exhausted himself in the service of people during the day and exhausted (most of the time) himself in worship during the night.

Allah says in Surah al-Muzzammil: “Indeed, during the day you are constantly occupied.” (73:7) - an acknowledgement, addressed to the Prophet ﷺ himself, that the demands of the day are real and heavy. Likewise, for many of us.

But that same Surah anchors the Prophet ﷺ in the night prayer precisely because worldly effort without spiritual connection empties out over time, and spiritual connection without worldly effort becomes a kind of detachment from the world that was entrusted to us.

What is striking about the Prophetic model, when you look at it carefully, is that it is not one of uniform maximum output. He did not pray the longest prayers every single night - some nights were shorter, some periods more intense than others. In Ramadan, he exerted himself greatly in the first twenty days and then intensified further in the final ten - a deliberate escalation, not a flat line of relentless effort.

The model is one of calibrated rhythm: knowing when to push harder, when to pace, when to rest, and holding all of it within a framework of purpose that never wavers.

And he ﷺ warned explicitly against the kind of extreme that the performance culture celebrates. In one narration he ﷺ is reported to have said: “Do not make the worship of Allah detestable,” (al-Sunan al-Kubra by al-Bayhaqi) - meaning that if you push so hard that the practice becomes unsustainable, you will eventually abandon it altogether. And he said: “This religion is deep, so go gently into it” (Musnad Amhad) - not because depth doesn’t require effort, but because the effort that endures is the effort that is paced wisely.

The Prophet ﷺ also taught sustainability in our actions: “The best deeds are those that are done regularly, even if small.” (Musnad Ahmad)

The Danger of a One-Dimensional Life

The capitalist model of performance is, at its root, one-dimensional. It recognises one axis - output, achievement, accumulation - and optimises relentlessly along it.

The Quran warns of work becoming an end, where your focus is just on wealth generation, but you forget your ultimate purpose.

The Prophet ﷺ lived a multidimensional life. So should we.

The businessman who is brilliant at building and neglects his family will likely regret it later, and his children will likely suffer.

The entrepreneur who optimises for output and lets his worship become rushed and lifeless will have to answer to God why he didn’t dedicate his life in the praise of God, when that’s what everything is created to do.

“The seven heavens and the earth and everyone in them glorify Him. There is not a single thing that does not celebrate His praise…” Quran, 17:44

Baraka, Flow, and Working With What You Were Given

Finding your leverage is important in not burning out.

You have been given specific capacities, specific skills, a specific place in the world where your effort produces more than it would elsewhere. The scholars speak of baraka - blessing - as something that flows through certain kinds of work and certain kinds of intention, multiplying what is produced in ways that cannot be fully explained by the hours invested.

And there is a corresponding concept in modern psychology of “flow” - the state in which skill and challenge are matched, and effort becomes, paradoxically, both more productive and less depleting.

They point to the same reality: that your effort is most fruitful when it is aligned - aligned with your purpose, with your genuine capacities, with the role Allah has placed you in.

In practice, this means paying attention to where your effort compounds rather than just accumulates.

Notice which kinds of work leave you more energised than depleted. Notice where a small input from you seems to produce a disproportionate output - where doors open more easily, where people respond more readily, where things seem to move with less friction.

Pay attention to that. It means directing your hardest work toward the places where you are genuinely built for it, and where your intention is clean. The grinding that happens outside that alignment is often just noise - busy, but not necessarily fruitful.

So How Hard Should You Work?

The honest answer is: hard. Genuinely, seriously, consistently hard.

You push yourself because the work matters, because people are depending on you, because the field of the Hereafter requires cultivation and you only have a finite season in which to do it. You bring your full capacity to bear. You do not use balance as a euphemism for comfort, or rhythm as an excuse for half-heartedness.

But you push yourself within a framework that is larger than the work. You push as an Abd, which means you do not carry the weight of outcomes as though everything depends on you alone.

You push as a Khalifah, which means the building is accountable to something beyond the market.

You take an aim, and you get as close to it as you can. You remain optimistic - because the believer’s optimism is not wishful thinking but theological conviction about who controls the outcome.

You celebrate what is built, because, as the Prophet ﷺ said: “Ni’ma al-māl al-sālih li al-mar’ al-sālih” - righteous wealth for a righteous person is a wonderful thing, and the tradition is not embarrassed about that.

The treadmill story is interesting, and there is something we can take from it. But the Prophet ﷺ showed us something more complete: a man who worked with extraordinary intensity and prayed with extraordinary depth, who served people tirelessly and rested without guilt, who pushed himself further than anyone around him and yet never lost the quality of his presence in any of the roles he carried.

The Prophet ﷺ addressed the idea of balance pretty directly. When he learned that some of his companions had resolved to fast every day, pray all night, and abandon their families in pursuit of maximum worship, he corrected them: “Your Lord has a right over you, your soul (or in another narration “your body” has a right over you, and your wife (“or family”) has a right over you.” (Bukhari)

Finding the balance

From these two roles, three non-negotiable rights emerge - and each requires protected time, not what is left over after everything else.

1. Your Lord has a right over you

This is your Abd dimension. It means salah given its full due, dhikr, and time alone with Allah - not squeezed into the margins of the day but given it’s proper time. Perhaps the early morning before the world begins to pull at you. Or the evening before the day closes. Moments of stillness that are not productive in any worldly sense and are all the more valuable for it.

2. Your family and people have a right over you

This is your Khalifah dimension in its most personal expression. Being present — not physically present while mentally elsewhere, but actually there. Giving the people in your life their due. Showing up for your family in the way that the Prophet ﷺ showed up for his - fully, not as a distracted remainder of a person who spent everything at work.

3. Your body has a right over you

This is your capacity. Rest, sleep, and eating properly are not indulgences - they are the maintenance of the instrument through which every other obligation is fulfilled. Burnout is not devotion. Neglecting your health is not righteousness.

A Rhythm for the Day

From these three rights, a structure emerges:

• Daytime → work, service, building - the Khalifah in full engagement with the world

• Evening → family, relationships, presence - the obligations that money cannot substitute for

• Night and early morning → worship, stillness, connection - the Abd before his Lord

Life will not always conform to this neatly, and the tradition does not demand perfection. But we have to aim for prophetic balance.

When work begins consuming everything, something is wrong.

When worship becomes so excessive that family and health are neglected, something is wrong.

When rest becomes indulgence that crowds out real effort, something is wrong.

The balance is not a fixed formula. It is a continuous, conscious act of returning - to your roles, to your obligations, to the question of whether the life you are actually living resembles the one you are called to.

Every entrepreneur will face it at some point. The late payment that doesn’t arrive. The client you relied on who exits the contract. The month where you’re wondering how you will pay staff.

Financial pressure doesn’t just strain your business. It changes who you are - how you think, what you trust, what you’re willing to do.

What Pressure Actually Does to the Mind

In 2013, Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan and Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir published research that reframed how we understand financial stress. Their central finding was not just that financial hardship is painful - it is that the stress consumes what they called “mental bandwidth”: the cognitive capacity that would otherwise go to planning ahead, weighing options, and making clear decisions.

The mechanism they identified is called “tunneling”. When anyone feels the grip of financial scarcity, their mind locks onto the immediate emergency and everything outside it disappears.

Long-term consequences, important relationships, strategic clarity - all of it shrinks away. The field of vision collapses to whatever is immediately threatening.

What makes this research so important for entrepreneurs is what happens inside that tunnel. Under financial stress, people systematically neglect what is important in favour of what is urgent. They reach for quick fixes whose consequences they’ll be paying for months later. They make permanent decisions from temporary conditions.

Mullainathan and Shafir found that the scores of financially stressed individuals dropped the equivalent of around 13 IQ points - comparable to the deficit seen in subjects who had stayed awake for an entire night.

The entrepreneur sitting at their desk trying to decide whether to take on a risky client, borrow to make payroll, or pivot to a new strategy, is doing so with a mind that is, neurologically speaking, operating well below its normal capacity.

Yūnus ibn Ubayd, a scholar from among the second generation (Tābiʿī) observed more than a thousand years ago: “When poor and in need, one should have strong faith and a powerful intellect.”

In other words, during times of financial difficulty both faith and intellect are most needed, and most under threat. Understanding this is the beginning of navigating it wisely.

The Trap Feeds Itself

During times of deprivation we become more likely to make irrationally risky decisions in the moment at the expense of better long-term ones - the very opposite of what the situation demands. Each reactive decision makes the next one harder to think through clearly.

In business, this manifests in patterns that are painfully familiar.

• The founder accepts a client they know is wrong for the business because the payment is immediate.

• They take on debt without a clear repayment path because the crisis in front of them feels all-consuming.

• They chase opportunities that pull them away from what they built.

• We might cut corners ethically.

• Or perhaps we start to rush our prayer.

Luqmān al-Ḥakīm, a pious man mentioned in the Quran, is said to have counseled his son: “O my son, seek independence from poverty through lawful earning, for indeed, not a single person becomes impoverished except that he is afflicted by three traits: vulnerability in his religion, weakness in his intelligence, and loss of his dignity. And what is greater than these three is people’s belittling of him.”

From Knowledge to Certainty

Most of us live our faith in an abstract way.

We read the verses about provision. We hear hadiths about reliance upon God. We nod in agreement. But when financial pressure appears - when the numbers tighten, when the future feels unstable, when the tunnel forms - the nervous system still reacts with panic.

The knowledge exists. It has not yet become certainty.

Certainty is knowledge that has moved from the mind into our physiology too.

The question is how knowledge becomes something deeper.

The Qur’an says: “Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find tranquillity.” (13:28)

This tells us that if we do x, we will attain y. There is a formula. But what is tranquillity?

In modern economics, we have the term “enoughness” - the idea that you are no longer in accumulation mode, and you don’t feel like something is missing.

But it takes practice. Dhikr is the lifeblood for your soul. It’s what brings ease. You move away from being egocentric, obsessed with your concerns, to remembering God, who is the Owner of all that is.

Dhikr, in scientific terms, describes neuroplasticity - the brain’s capacity to be reshaped through repeated thought and practice. Beliefs that begin as intellectual propositions, rehearsed deliberately and consistently enough, gradually become embodied responses. The neural pathways of panic can be, over time, replaced by something else.

Look at what the Prophet ﷺ would regularly recite, and thus encourage us toward:

“Allah is sufficient for me. There is no god but Him. I place my trust in Him. He is the Lord of the Mighty Throne.” (9:129)

“O Allah, You created me, You guide me, You feed me, You give me drink, You cause me to die and You give me life.”

“O Allah, I seek refuge in You from sorrow and grief, from incapacity and laziness, from cowardice and miserliness, and I seek refuge in You from overwhelming debt and the oppression of men.”

These supplications address the full anatomy of financial pressure: the emotional weight, the paralysis, the fear, the grip on what we have, the burden of obligation, the anxiety about what others think.

We are being asked to recite these daily and internalize them.

Practical steps:

Hasan al-Basri, who is considered among the three greatest of the Tabi’in, is reported to have dug a grave in his garden. Before prayer, he would lie in it, hold the reality of death in his mind, then rise and pray. Whether or not that particular practice is for everyone, what it represents is really powerful: these were people who refused to let their convictions remain theoretical.

He was training his inner world to match what he believed. What he was doing, in modern terms, is visualisation: making an unseen reality so present and vivid that it reshapes how you act in the world in front of you.

Here are three things you can do:

1. Rebuild community.

The isolation of modern financial struggle is not natural - it is a product of how we have organised our lives.

Pre-modern Muslim societies built strong communal structures: the waqf system that funded schools, hospitals, and public welfare for centuries; the extended family networks; the neighbourhoods where people knew one another and stepped in when someone struggled.

We live in a very different environment - highly individualised, financially structured around debt, constantly exposed through news cycles and bombarded with advertising signals designed to make us feel we are lacking, and that survival rests entirely on our own shoulders.

Make a deliberate effort to know your neighbours, even if it’s just going out today to meet one new neighbour. Share your contact details and let them know you are there to help.

2. Practise visualisation.

Don’t let your relationship with Allah’s Names remain intellectual. Set aside time in quiet moments of the day to sit with Al-Qadir (The All Powerful) and Al-Basit (The One who Expands Things), name your specific fears and impossible-feeling outcomes, and ask for Him to look after your affairs. Cultivate the voice within you to regularly speak to God.

3. Let your business be inspired by those who built properly.

There are businesses in the world that were built with vision and ethics first, and profit as a consequence rather than a cause.

Brunello Cucinelli is one example we will return to in a future newsletter in depth: a man who began with a moral commitment, mastered one thing over decades, rooted his company in community, and treated his workers as ends in themselves rather than means.

The architecture of how a business is built matters enormously. Studying models like his provide practical protection against the self-inflicted financial difficulty that comes from building without a framework.

Through this work - this revival - the knowledge we have moves from the page to the chest. It’s not that we won’t feel pain or difficulty. It’s that, at the deepest recesses of our being, we know everything will be OK.

Why?

Because all is in God’s Hands.

He closed his eyes and didn’t respond straight away.

He was waiting. Trying to intuit the answer. It felt as though he was turning inward before he spoke, making sure his response was not coming from impulse.

When he finally replied, it was measured and clear.

That moment stayed with me. But over time I realised something more important: we too can access directly from the Source.

Seeking counsel is good. It’s prophetic.

There are people with a great deal of experience and wisdom we can lean into.

Advice, or Nasihah, is part of the tradition.

But far too often we ignore our own intuition. After all, nobody knows your situation as well as you do.

Allah says, “Call upon Me; I will respond to you” (40:60). He also says, “To Allah belong the most beautiful names, so call upon Him by them” (7:180).

There is no hierarchy in that invitation. No spiritual middle management. No appointment required.

The Prophet ﷺ used to say, “O Allah, do not leave me to myself even for the blink of an eye” (Abu Dawud, Ahmad).

That’s a duā’ teaching us to remain in the presence of God continually. But we can also take from this not to be left to ourselves, so that we draw from ego, fear, insecurity, and old wounds.

Often, our decision making process can be hijacked by a sense of urgency and fear.

Scholars describe munājāh as intimate conversation with Allah. Something we can engage in at any point throughout the day, not just in prayer or dua. But there is an etiquette to it.

•⁠ ⁠You begin with praising God

•⁠ ⁠Then sending blessings upon His beloved ﷺ.

•⁠ ⁠Then seeking forgiveness.

The idea is that you enter in with humility. Religion at its core is the recognition of one’s neediness before God. If the container - your heart - is already full of yourself, what space is there for guidance? For the divine outpourings to enter into us?

The Prophet ﷺ said that hearts rust just as iron rusts, and that their polish is the remembrance of Allah. Over time, through dhikr with presence, through sincere duā’, through repeated return, your heart becomes a clearer receptacle to receive Divine knowledge.

You still think. You still analyse. But you are less governed by anxiety.

I won’t pretend I have this mastered. But I’ve practised it enough now to notice something: the state you are in when you decide matters as much as the logic behind the decision.

The Prophet ﷺ described prayer as the ascension of the believer.

Five times a day, you are given the opportunity to stand before Allah. To step out of the noise. To reorient.

It is not always easy. Presence takes effort. The mind wanders. The body moves but the heart lags behind.

At least once in your five daily prayers, consciously place yourself before Allah - imagining that you are standing before Him, entering with humility, brokenness, and hope. Perhaps you may want to use your imagination to envision yourself standing in Makkah, Madinah or at Al Aqsa, or somewhere you can bring a feeling of awe within yourself.

The Prophet ﷺ said to worship Allah as though you see Him - and if you cannot see Him, know that He sees you (Sahih Bukhari and Muslim).

And this matters in business.

Business decisions shape livelihoods, reputations, and families. They affect your own soul. Yet many decisions are made under pressure, when they could be made with greater clarity by first turning to the Source.

Data matters. Planning matters. But if the inner state is unsettled, the decision will carry that instability.

If you are in regular conversation with Allah - through praise, repentance, remembrance, and honest supplication - you become guided less by ego and more by Him.

Answers do not always arrive dramatically. God communicates with us subtly - He is Al Latīf.

All of this begins to build self-confidence, which is not self-generated, for we cannot do anything ourselves. It is the by-product of reliance. The more you give up your will for His Will, the more strength you gain.

This isn’t just a religious sentiment; even the most secular icons of industry recognized that a cluttered mind cannot lead. People like Steve Jobs, who - whatever his flaws - built a daily practice of meditation into his life. Not because he, and other business leaders like him are religious, but because they understand that clarity of mind is not accidental. It is cultivated.

You don’t need to be a monk. But you do need a practice. Even once a day - at the start of your morning, or before a significant decision - take the time to step out of the noise. For those in the Islamic tradition, you already have the architecture: five prayers, each one an invitation to reorient.

The quality of your inner state shapes everything that follows. You have direct access to the Source. Use it to shape the decisions that decide your life and your work.

The Maghrib Reflection Task:

At the end of your workday today (or the next time you work), sit for 5 minutes in stillness.

Mentally “empty the container.”

Hand over the day’s stresses, the ego-driven wins, and the fears to the One who manages all affairs.

Seek forgiveness for the moments you relied only on yourself.

Speak to God from your heart.

I’d love to know how you get on.