Al Salam Alaikum 🌱 

Let’s be brutally honest about where we are:

The collapse isn’t coming- it’s already here.

The financial system is a house of cards built on interest-based debt, printing money out of thin air, and gambling with people’s futures. Banks fail, savings evaporate, and the middle class gets crushed while being told it’s their fault for not “working hard enough.”

The educational system produces debt slaves with degrees that mean nothing, gatekeepers knowledge behind expensive credentials, and trains workers instead of thinkers. A generation is financially crippled before they even start their lives.

The political system has devolved into performative theater where institutions serve corporations, truth is negotiable, and trust has become a relic of a more native time.

The social fabric is disintegrating. Mental health crisis. Loneliness epidemic. Family breakdown. Communities that don’t know their neighbors' names. Everyone’s connected digitally but isolated physically.

And we are living through a two-year, live-streamed genocide.

And the people in charge?

They’re either getting rich from the chaos or frantically trying to patch holes in a sinking ship with duct tape and hope.

Here’s the question we are not asking:

What if these systems aren’t failing? What if they’re doing exactly what they need to do to keep the status quo in place?

What if an economy built on riba (interest) was always destined to eat itself?

What if a society built on individualism was always going to end in isolation?

What if a world built on materialism was always going to produce emptiness?

The systems are dying. And faith-first entrepreneurs are sitting on the blueprint for what should replace them.

But we’re not building. We’re waiting.

⛔️ How We Learned to Wait for Permission

There’s a scene that plays out in every Muslim entrepreneur’s mind when they think about building something significant:

Unfortunately, this is colonialism’s lasting victory.

For centuries, we were told our ways were backwards. Our institutions were primitive. Our knowledge was inferior. Our solutions were irrelevant.

The West was ‘advanced,’ and we needed to catch up by copying them, validating ourselves through their systems, proving we could be “just as good” if they’d let us into their club.

We learned to be consumers of their solutions, not creators of our own. We learned to seek their approval, study at their universities, work in their corporations, adopt their metrics of success.

We learned to see ourselves through their eyes- and found ourselves lacking.

This is the psychological colonization that survived long after the physical colonization ended.

And it shows up everywhere.

We’ve internalized the lie that we’re here to participate in their world, not build our own.

What we’ve forgotten is that the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) didn’t wait for permission. And he didn’t need credentials. He built.

🏗️ You Were Created to Build

When Allah (SWT) announced to the angels that He would create human beings, He in His wisdom didn’t say “I will create worshipers” or “I will create followers.”

Allah Almighty said: “I will make upon the earth a khalifah.”

A steward. A vicegerent. A custodian. A builder.

To be clear, this is not metaphorical. This is your job description as a human being on this planet. You weren’t placed to consume, spectate, or survive.

Your existence is purposeful and is meant to leave the world better than you found it.

And before you say “that’s too big for me,” remember: The Prophet (peace be upon him) was an orphan who couldn’t read or write. He had no formal education, no political power, no inherited wealth, no institutional backing.

What he had was iman. And a willingness to build.

🧱 The Prophet Didn’t Wait- He Built

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) arrived in Medina as a refugee with barely any resources, he didn’t wait for the existing system to accept him.

He didn’t try to “fix” what was broken.

He built entirely new infrastructure.

Below are three examples of how the Prophet did that:

1) The Market of Medina: The Jewish tribes controlled the markets. They set the prices, controlled the supply chains, had all the leverage. The Prophet (peace be upon him) didn’t compete in their market or complain about the monopoly. He built a NEW market with new rules: no price gouging, no hoarding, no cheating scales, no exploitation. He established principles that governed economics for centuries.

When the system is broken, don’t fix it. Build a new one.

2) The Constitution of Medina: This was the first written constitution in human history- created in the 7th century by a man who could not read or write. It established a multi-faith governance structure, defined rights and responsibilities, created mutual defense agreements, and built alliances across tribal and religious lines.

He didn’t wait for political stability. He created the system that would produce it.

3) Baty al-Mal (The Treasury): The first welfare system. It took care of orphans, widows, travelers, the poor- regardless of faith. It was funded through zakat, jizya, and voluntary contributions.

He didn’t wait for economic abundance. He built the system and infrastructure that would redistribute wealth ethically in the way that Allah (SWT) has prescribed.

And here’s what cuts deep: The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was doing this while being actively opposed, physically attached, and economically boycotted.

He didn’t have favorable conditions. He didn’t have institutional support. He didn’t have a trust fund or investors.

He had a mandate from Allah (SWT) and a refusal to wait for permission.

But even before prophethood, this was his nature:

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) was a young man- before revelation, before prophethood, before any “official” or divine leadership role- there was a dispute about who would place the Black Stone during the Kaaba’s reconstruction. The tribes were about to go to war over it.

He didn’t wait for the elders to solve it. He didn’t defer to the establishment. He created a NEW solution: place the stone on a cloth, every tribe member lift it together, he places it in position.

Leadership wasn’t his title. It was his nature. Building was the Prophet’s instinct.

This is a gentle reminder in case we’ve forgotten: You don’t need a title to build. You don’t need credentials to create. You don’t need institutional permission to solve problems.

You need strong iman and a willingness to start.

📜 The Blueprint Already Exists- We’re Just Not Using It

Muslims love to romanticize the “Golden Age of Islam” while ignoring what made it golden: They built systems that the world had never seen. Systems in thought. Systems in technological innovation. Systems in medicine, etc.

Islam didn’t just teach people how to pray. It created an entirely new civilization from scratch in the middle of a desert.

The Prophetic model gave us:

• Ethical Finance

• Mutual Aid Systems

• Knowledge Democratization

• Environmental Stewardship

• Restorative Justice

• And more

There aren’t “old ideas.”

These are solutions to TODAY’s problems that the world is desperately trying to reinvent- badly- because they refuse to learn from the blueprint that already exists.

And we- the inheritors of this blueprint- are too busy to get validation from the very systems that are collapsing.

🌏️ If We Don’t Build, We’ll Be Forced to Live in Their World

Everything I’ve laid out is not theoretical. This is not “one day maybe.”

This is happening now.

AI is being built without Islamic ethics. Who’s designing the algorithms that will govern the next generation? Not us.

Financial systems are being redesigned without our input. Who’s creating the digital currencies and economic structures? Not us.

Social structures are being shaped without our values. Who’s building the platforms and communities that will define how humans interact? Not us.

The next generation is being formed by systems we don’t control, values we don’t hold, and algorithms we didn’t design.

And every day we wait for permission, for validation, for someone more “qualified” to do it, we’re surrendering another piece of the future to people who don’t share our worldview or values.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) warned us:

We’re already in the lizards hole.

We’ve adopted their economics. We’ve adopted their values. We’ve adopted their metrics. We’ve adopted their gods and worldviews.

The only way out is to build out.

This week, do this:

💌 I’d Love to Hear What You’re Building

Here’s the thing: I don’t write newsletters to broadcast into the void. I write them because I believe the Ummah is full of builders who’ve been waiting for permission that will never come.

So I’m asking directly: What are you building?

Reply to this email and tell me.

The cape is already on your shoulders. Let’s figure out where you’re taking it!

🤲 Closing Dua

“O Allah, use us in Your service and do not replace us.”

Ameen