Al Salam Alaikum 🌱 

Niyyah doesn’t die dramatically. It doesn’t collapse in a single moment of corruption. It dies the way most things die in the spiritual realm- slowly, quietly, in small compromises you barely notice until one day you look up and realize you don’t recognize the person running your business anymore.

⤵️ Here’s how it happens:

Stage 1: The Shift: You start checking metrics before you check your heart. Revenue becomes more exciting than doing things with Ihsan and Itqan. A client win feels better than connecting in salah. Nothing’s technically wrong, but the order of your loves has shifted.

Stage 2: The Justification: You tell yourself it’s still about the mission. The growth serves the purpose. The money enables consistency. You’re just being strategic. Smart. Professional. The rationalizations sound so reasonable you don’t notice they’re covering up a dying heartbeat.

Stage 3: The Numbness: Someone asks you why you started your business and you recite the answer automatically, like a script. The words are right but they’re hollow. You feel nothing. Your “why” has become a marketing message, not a living conviction.

Stage 4: The Flatline: You realize one day you haven’t thought about Allah in your business decision for weeks. Maybe months. You’re successful by every worldly metric, but spiritually? You’re running on fumes. Your niyyah has flatlined, and you’ve been performing CPR on a corpse, pretending everything’s fine.

🫀 What the Prophet Knew About Niyyah

The Prophet (peace and blessings upon him) said:

Read that again. Not “actions are judged by outcomes.” Not “actions are measured by revenue.” Actions are but by intentions.

This means your entire business- every product, every service, every transaction, every strategy- is spiritually worthless if your heart isn’t in the right place. You can be doing all the “right” things with a dead niyyah and still be building a monument to your own ego instead of an act of worship.

The Companions understood this in their bones. They would spend more time examining their intentions before, during, and after every action than planning their actions. They knew that a small deed with pure intention outweighed massive accomplishments done for show, for profit, for pride.

Imam Ahmad would say: “I wish my entire life could be intention, without any action.” Why? Because he understood that the hear’s orientation toward Allah is the foundation of everything.

Yet we’ve flipped the script entirely. We obsess over strategies, systems, and scaling. We optimize everything except the one thing that actually matters: the state of your hearts while we’re doing all of it.

🖤 The Contradiction of a Dead Niyyah

Let me show you what a flatlined intention looks like in real life:

You started to serve the Ummah, but now you avoid community because they “don’t understand business.”

You started to demonstrate faith-based principles, but now you’re hiding your methods because they’re not actually that different from conventional businesses.

You started to draw closer to Allah, but now you’re too busy for Quran, too stressed for contemplation and tafakur, too exhausted for anything beyond obligatory prayers.

You started because you wanted barakah, but now you’re chasing bigger numbers because the barakah isn’t hitting the same anymore.

You tell new entrepreneurs to “start with intention,” but you can’t remember the last time you renewed yours.

Here’s the painful truth: a dead niyyah turns your business into an idol, even if every transaction is technically halal.

When profit becomes your purpose, when growth becomes your god, when success becomes your standard- regardless of what your website says about “faith first”- you’re worshipping something other than Allah.

⚕️ The Mercy of Spiritual CPR

But this is what gives me hope: Allah (SWT) built renewal into this religion.

We renew wudu. We renew shahada. We renew our repentance. We’re supposed to renew our intentions- not once at the beginning, but constantly, regularly, as an ongoing practice of spiritual maintenance.

The scholars say you should renew your intention before every prayer. Before every act of worship. Before every significant action. Why? Because intention drifts. Hearts wander. The nafs is slippery, and shaytan is patient.

Your niyyah flatlined not because you’re a terrible person, but because you treated it like a one-time transaction instead of an ongoing relationship.

Think about it: you wouldn’t marry someone and never speak to them again. You wouldn’t have a child and never check on them. Yet we start businesses with pure intentions and never revisit them, never check their pulse.

The difference between spiritual death and spiritual life is the practice of return.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) would make istighfar seventy to one hundred times a day. Why would the most perfect human need forgiveness that frequently? Because he understood that hearts need constant recalibration, constant realignment with Allah.

Your flatlined niyyah isn’t a permanent condition. It’s a call to perform CPR. To breathe life back into the reason you started. To resuscitate the heart that once beat with purpose.

🛣️ The Practical Path to Revival

Reviving intention isn’t mystical or complicated. It’s brutally practical. here’s what it actually looks like:

1. Name What Died: You can’t revive what you won’t acknowledge is dead. Write down what your original intention was. Then write down what actually drives you now. The gap between them is where the works begins.

2. Identify the Killers: What specifically killed your niyyah? Was it comparison? Greed, Fear of failure? Pride in success? Exhaustion? You can’t heal what you won’t diagnose. Be ruthlessly honest about what poisoned your heart.

3. Return to First Principles: Go back to the moment you made du’a before starting. What did you ask Allah ask? What promise did you make? What moved your heart then? That’s your baseline. Everything else is drift.

4. Make Intention a Daily Practice: Start every work day by literally saying out loud: “I intend with this business to please Allah, His creation, and prepare for the akhira.” Say it even when you don’t feel it. Especially when you don’t feel it. Your tongue can teach your heart what it’s forgotten.

5. Create Intention Checkpoints: Before major decisions, stop and ask: “If I only had six months to live, would this still matter? If Allah (SWT) asked me why I did this, what would I say?”

6. Purge the Poison: Some opportunities, partnerships, or strategies are spiritually toxic, even if they’re profitable. You might need to walk away from “good” things because they’re killing your heart. That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom.

This weekend, I’m inviting you to perform spiritual CPR on your business intention. This exercise takes 10 minutes but might change everything.

Get alone. No phone, no distractions.

Set a timer for 10 minutes and answer these questions in writing:

1. If Allah asked me right now, “Why are you doing this business?” what would I honestly say (Not what I should say- what I would actually say in this moment.)

2. What excites me most about my business right now? Is it growth metrics, money, recognition, impact on people, pleasing Allah, or something else?

3. When was the last time I made a business decision primarily to please Allah, even when it cost me something?

4. If I could only keep one aspect of my business but had to give up everything else, what would I keep? What does that reveal about my real priorities?

5. On my deathbed, what would I want this business to have been about?

The final minute: Write one sentence that captures what you want your niyyah to be, starting now. Make it specific and truthful.

Put that sentence somewhere you’ll see it daily. Make it your screensaver. Your morning alarm. You calendar header.

Renew this intention every morning for the next 30 days. Out loud. Before you check email. Before you dive into work. Before you do anything else.

Watch what happens when you perform CPR on a flatlined heart.

Sayidna Omar Ibn al-Khattab (RA) said: “Take account of yourselves before you are taken to account.”

Your business success means nothing if your heart is dead. Your halal income means nothing if your intention is corrupt. Your growing platform means nothing if you’ve lost connection with the One who gave it to you.

But here’s the mercy: as long as you’re breathing, your niyyah can be revived, inshAllah.

The difference between the successful entrepreneur and the spiritually successful entrepreneur isn’t talent, strategy, or market conditions.

It’s intention. Renewed daily. Checked constantly. Realigned ruthlessly.

Your niyyah doesn’t need to be dead. It needs CPR. And you’re the only one who can perform it.

Stop pretending your flatlined intention is “just a phase.” Stop justifying why you’re too busy to check your heart.

Revive the reason you started. Or stop lying about what you’re still going.

💌 I’d Love to Hear From You!

If this reflection sparked something in you, I’d love to hear it. You can reply directly to this email- I read and respond to every message. Share your thoughts! 🌱 

🤲 Closing Dua

“O Allah, we seek refuge in You from knowledge that does not benefit, from a heart that does not fear You, from a soul that is never satisfied, and from a supplication that is not answered. O, Allah, make all our deeds righteous, and make them purely for Your sake.”

Ameen