Al Salam Alaikum 🌱 

I need to confess something.

For years, I approached Ramadan the way I was taught to approach it: as a personal spiritual project.

My goals.

My Quran khatm.

My taraweeh attendance.

My improvement.

And every year, the same pattern:

Week 1: Momentum, enthusiasm, spiritual high.

Week 2: Fatigue sets in, but pushing through.

Week 3: Survival mode. Counting down.

Week 4: Final sprint for Laylatul Qadr. Emotional duas. Eid.

Week after Eid: Back to normal. The spiritual high a fading memory.

I thought this was just how it worked. Ramadan as a spiritual peak you couldn’t sustain. A mountaintop experience before returning to the valley.

But something was nagging me.

If Ramadan was supposed to produce taqwa- a protective shield, an ongoing state of God-consciousness- why did mine evaporate by mid-Shawwal?

If fasting was supposed to teach me something, why did I keep having to relearn it every year?

If this month was supposed to be transformative, why did I keep transforming back?

The answer, I’ve come to believe, isn’t that I was doing Ramadan wrong individually.

It’s what we’ve been framing Ramadan wrong collectively.

🩻 The Diagnosis

Last week, I introduced the concept of Ramadan as Resistance- a radical reframing of the month of disobedience against the systems that dehumanize us.

This week, I want to make the case for why this reframing is urgent. Not interesting. Not optional. Urgent.

Because something is deeply wrong with the Muslim professional class. And Ramadan- properly understood- might be the cure we’ve been neglecting.

😫 Symptom #1: We Are Exhausted

Look around at your Muslim friends, your colleagues, your community.

Everyone is tired. Not physically tired (though that too). Soul tired. The kind of exhaustion that a vacation or sleep doesn’t fix because you bring it with you.

We’re running on empty because we’re running on a system that is designed to extract everything from us: our time, our attention, our creativity, our labor, our peace.

And we’ve accepted this as normal.

We’ve accepted that anxiety is the price of ambition.

We’ve accepted that burnout is a rite of passage.

We’ve accepted that test is earned, not given.

We’ve accepted that our worth is measured in output.

There are not Islamic ideas. These are capitalist ideas.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) slept. He rested. He took breaks. He spent time with family and community. He laughed. He did not build a civilization through relentless grinding- he built it through presence, wisdom, and complete trust in Allah’s provision.

But we’ve been so colonized by hustle culture that we feel guilty for following his blessed example.

Ramadan offers a forced break from this rhythm.

But if we approach it as “how to stay productive while fasting,” we’ve missed the entire point.

The lower energy is not a bug to be optimized away. It is the lesson. Slowness is the medicine.

🏝️ Symptom #2: We Are Isolated

The average Muslim professional has a hundred online connections and no one to call for help.

We’ve substituted community for network.

And we’re lonelier than any generation before us.

This is not by accident. Isolation is profitable. Alone, you’re a more desperate consumer, a more compliant worker, a more controllable citizen.

Community is friction in the machine. So the machine has systematically dismantled it- and we’ve participated in our own atomization.

We moved for jobs, not for community.

We chose convenience over congregation.

We let algorithms mediate our relationships.

We stopped showing up in person because screens were easier.

And now we wonder why we feel so alone.

Ramadan is inherently communal: congregation, taraweeh, shared iftar, collective worship.

But we’ve managed to individualize this- “my Ramadan routine”, “my goals,” praying at home because it’s more convenient, ordering iftar instead of cooking together.

The congregation isn’t just nice. It’s necessary. Humans are not designed for isolation.

Muslims are definitely not designed for isolation.

The systems want us divided because divided we are weak. Ramadan offers 30 days of practiced togetherness. But only if we stop treating is as a solo spiritual journey.

🪤 Symptom #3: We Are Captured

There’s a concept in political theory called “regulatory capture”- when the agencies meant to regulate an industry are instead controlled by that industry. The watchdogs become the lapdogs, if you will.

Something similar has happened to us.

We were supposed to be a counter-cultural force.

“The best nation produced for mankind” - not to dominate, but to offer an alternative.

To rejoin good and forbid evil. To model a different way of being human.

Instead, we’ve become captured.

We’ve absorbed capitalist definitions of success.

We’ve internalized consumerist definitions of happiness.

We’ve adopted Western definitions of time and productivity.

We’ve accepted individualist definitions of purpose.

And when we’ve put Islamic terminology over all of it, creating a hybrid that serves the system while soothing our conscience.

We’ve become Muslims in name, secular in practice.

Our businesses look like their businesses.

Our schedules look like their schedules.

Our anxieties look like their anxieties.

Our consumption patterns look like their consumption patterns.

The only difference is we say “Bismillah” before meetings and attend Jumu'ah on Fridays.

Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a little to drive the point. But this is what capture looks like.

And the most insidious thing about capture is you don’t know you’ve been captured.

You think you’re free because no one is forcing you.

But the colonization is internal now. You police yourself. You perpetuate the system from within.

Ramadan is meant to break this capture.

To wake you up. To show you- in your heart, in your body, not just your mind- that another way of being and living is possible.

But if your Ramadan is as optimized, commodified, and capitalist-compatible as the rest of your life, it can’t do its job.

📿 Symptom #4: We Have Forgotten What We’re For

Ask the average Muslim entrepreneur why they’re building what they’re building.

You’ll get some version of:

• Financial freedom/Halal income

• Impact

• Helping people

• Leaving a legacy

• Providing for family

Good answers, all of them. But notice something: you’d get nearly identical answers from secular entrepreneurs.

Now ask: what makes your work distinctly Islamic? What are you building that couldn’t be built by someone with no concept of akhira, accountability to Allah, or membership in an Ummah?

The silence is deafening.

We’ve forgotten what we’re for.

We’re not here to build slightly more ethical versions of capitalist businesses. We’re here to build alternatives.

To model a different way.

To create economies, organizations, systems and lives that point to something beyond accumulation and consumption.

Worship is not just prayer. It’s everything done in alignment with Allah’s guidance and for His sake.

Business can be worship. But only if it’s structured by Islamic principles, not just sprinkled with Islamic aesthetics.

Ramadan is a recalibration. A chance to remember what you’re for. But only if you approach it as a fundamental reorientation, not just a spiritual tune-up.

⛓️ Symptom #5: We Are Colonized

There’s a level deeper than capture. Capture is external- the systems have you.

Colonization is internal- you have the systems. Inside you. Running your thoughts.

Frantz Fanon wrote about the colonized mind: the oppressed who have so thoroughly absorbed the oppressor’s worldview that they no longer need to be policed.

They police themselves.

They see themselves through the colonizer’s eyes.

They aspire to the colonizer’s standards.

They feel shame for what makes them different and pride only when they assimilate.

Look at how this plays out in Muslim spaces.

We measure our worth by Western metrics and values.

We’ve absorbed definitions of success that have nothing to do with akhira.

And perhaps most painfully: we approach our faith and Ramadan itself through a colonized lens.

The colonization is so complete that we don’t even have our own vocabulary anymore. We’ve lost the Islamic imagination.

This is not assimilation. Assimilation is a choice. This is colonization- it happened to us before we were old enough to resist, and now it runs so deep we mistake it for our own thoughts.

The most insidious part? A colonized mind doesn’t feel colonized. It feels normal. It feels like common sense.

But common sense is just the sense that’s been made common. And the sense that’s been made common in our world is the sense of the colonizer.

Ramadan is supposed to interrupt this.

To break the trance.

To remind you that there is an entirely different way of understanding faith, time, value, resistance, success, community, purpose, and self- and that way is older, truer, and yours.

But if you approach Ramadan with a colonized mind, you’ll simply optimize the month according to the same foreign metrics.

Decolonization is not a metaphor.

It’s the work of excavating the foreign frameworks from your mind and recovering what was buried beneath them. It’s the work of asking, with every assumption: Is this mine? Or was it installed?

Ramadan is an invitation to that excavation. But only if you recognize there’s something to dig out.

⚠️ What’s at Stake

So what happens if we keep approaching Ramadan the way we have been?

Individually: We stay exhausted, isolated, captured, and purposeless. We keep having spiritual peaks that don’t last because they were never connected to structural change. We keep wondering why our faith feels hollow even when we’re checking all the boxes.

Collectively: We lose the transmission. The next generation watches us practice Ramadan as aesthetics and self-improvement. They absorb the message that Islam is compatible with everything- which means it demands nothing. They drift, and we wonder why.

Civilizationally: We forfeit our role. The Ummah was supposed to offer the world an alternative to the dehumanizing systems of late capitalism. If we’re fully captured by those systems, we have nothing to offer. We become another demographic to market to, not a light to guide by.

This is what’s at stake.

Not just your personal spirituality. The future of what this Ummah could be.

💌 The Invitation

I don’t want to be dramatic.

I’m not saying the entire fate of Islam rests on how you approach Ramadan this year.

But I am saying: how you approach Ramadan reveals how you approach everything.

If you can’t resist for 30 days, you won’t resist for a lifetime.

If you can’t unplug for a month, you’ll stay captured forever.

If you can’t slow down when it’s commanded, you’ll never slow down.

If you can’t optimize community in Ramadan, it will never be a priority.

This month is practice. Training. A simulation of what a liberated life could look like.

And the simulation is only useful if you approach it as the real thing.

🛣️ The Road Ahead

Starting next week (inshAllah), I’ll be sending the “Ramadan as Revolution” series- eight part through the month, plus an Eid and post-Eid special.

Here’s the rest of the roadmap:

🚫 Part 3: The Fast as Refusal- How fasting trains us to opt out of the consumption economy- not just food, but shopping, screens, and the endless appetite capitalism cultivates.

⏳️ Part 4: Reclaiming Time- How Ramadan restructures our day around sacred time, not productive time- and why this is rebellion against the colonization of our hours.

🕌 Part 5: Congregation- How taraweeh, iftar, communal worship rebuild the collective power that isolation has destroyed.

🔇 Part 6: The Withdrawal- How i’tikaf and the last ten nights teach us the liberation of disappearing- total non-participation in systems that demand constant availability.

🕊️ Part 7: The Morning After Liberation- How to maintain the revolution when Ramadan ends- because liberation that doesn’t outlast the month isn’t liberation.

🏗️ Part 8: The Long Ramadan- Building a year of resistance using the Islamic calendar as the architecture willpower could never be. This newsletter will be divided into two parts.

Before Ramadan begins, I want you to do something uncomfortable.

Audit your capture.

Take a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle.

On the left side, write: “What I say I believe”

On the right side, write: “How I actually live”

Then fill it in. Be brutal. Be honest.

The gap between the left column and the right column is your capture zone.

That’s what Ramadan is for. Not to make you feel guilty. To make you free.

Thirty days. One declaration. This is the Ramadan of Resistance manifesto. This is what we’re doing and why.

💌 I’d Love to Hear From You!

It’s been great hearing from some of you who chose to write back and engage- your reflections, your questions, your honesty about where you’re at. I read every message and I’m grateful for each one.

If you haven’t reached out yet, I’d love to hear from you too. How are you approaching Ramadan as your own spiritual resistance this year? What are you refusing? What are you reclaiming? Reply directly to this email- I read and respond to every message. 🌱✊ 

🤲 Closing Dua

“O Allah, show us the truth as truth and grant us the ability to follow it. Show us falsehood as falsehood and grant us the ability to avoid it.”

Ameen