Al Salam Alaikum 🌱 

You finally made it.

Six figures. Maybe seven. The podcast appearances. The speaking gigs. Your name in the same sentence as “successful Muslim entrepreneur.” The LinkedIn posts celebrating your journey and achievements. The younger Muslims sliding into your DMs asking how you did it.

You’re standing at the summit, flag planted, photo taken.

So why does it feel like you’re suffocating?

Why does the view from the top look nothing like what you imagined when you started climbing? Why does your success taste like ash in your mouth when you’re alone with your thoughts at 3:00 AM?

Here’s why: You just spent years of life your climbing the wrong mountain.

🏔️ The Mountains We’re Sold

The faith-based entrepreneurship space has become a marketplace of pre-packaged mountains.

“Scale to seven figures”, “Build a faith-based business”, “Create generational wealth”, “Become a Muslim entrepreneur”, “Launch your online course” Each peak comes with its own flag to plant, its own photo op, its own promise that THIS is what you were created for.

And because these mountains are marketed by people who look like us, pray like us, and speak our language, we mistake their summits for divine destinations. We confuse their hustle with guidance. We assume that because they’re Muslim and successful, their mountain must be Islamic.

But here’s what no one wants to admit: Just because a Muslim climbed it doesn’t mean Allah (SWT) called you to climb it too.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him) was once offered the ultimate “successful entrepreneur” package.

The tribes of Quraysh came to him with a deal: Be our leader. We’ll give you wealth. Marry the most beautiful women. Have authority over all of us. Just stop this message that disrupts our economy.

He was being offered the summit that every “faith-first entrepreneur” supposedly wants- influence, wealth, status, and platform- all while technically being Muslim.

His response?

“By Allah, if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this cause, I would not abandon it until Allah has made it victorious, or I perish therein.”

He refused to climb their mountain, even though it looked like success, even though it would have been easier, even though every practical metric would have called it a “win.”

Why?

Because it wasn’t his mountain to climb.

Allah (SWT) had placed a different summit before the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and no amount of worldly success on the wrong mountain could substitute for obedience to the right one.

🔬 The Anatomy of Borrowed Ambition

How did you end up here?

How did you spend years climbing toward a summit you never actually chose?

Let me trace the path:

First, you absorbed the metrics of success from the culture around you. Before you even realized it, you internalized that success means revenue, scale, recognition, and ‘freedom.’ These became your coordinates- the measurements by which you’d judge whether you were ‘winning.’

Second, you encountered Muslim entrepreneurs who had achieved those metrics. They had the businesses, the lifestyles, the influence. They spoke at conferences. They had the aesthetics- the modest fashion, the Arabic in their bios, the Quran quotes in their content. Surely, if they were doing it, it must be Islamic, right?

Third, you conflated their success with divine approval. You made a fatal logical leap: because they pray and they prospered, their prosperity must be a sign that their path is THE path. You confused worldly success with spiritual correctness.

Fourth, you started climbing. You bought their courses. You modeled their strategies. You adopted their language. You set their milestones as your goals. You measured your progress by their metrics. You climbed their mountain, convinced it was yours.

Fifth, you spiritualized the climb. You made du’a before launches. You said bismillah before sales calls. You’ve talked about your business as your ‘ibadah’. You convinced yourself that because you added Islamic terminology to the hustle, you had transformed the hustle into something halal. Something purposeful. Something that would please Allah.

But here’s the question you never asked: Did Allah (SWT) call you to this mountain, or did you just see someone else’s flag at the top and assume it was meant for you too?

🔴 The Signs You’re on the Wrong Mountain

The human soul has a way of telling you when you’re on the wrong path. Your nafs might lie to you, but your fitrah knows. Here are the signs that you’re exhausted at the summit of the wrong mountain:

1. Your Success Feels Empty: You hit the goals. You made the revenue. You got the recognition. But instead of fulfillment, you feel… hollow. Like you’ve been chasing the mirage that evaporated the moment you reached it.

   In Sahih Muslim, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said:

If your summit hasn’t brought contentment- if it hasn’t brought you closer to Allah (SWT), if it hasn’t increased you in shukr and gratitude, if it hasn’t deepened your peace- you climbed the wrong mountain.

2. You Can’t Remember Why You Started: Someone asks you why you’re in business, and you have to think about it. You give them rehearsed answer. But the truth? You’ve lost touch with the original call, the original purpose, the original vision. You’re climbing now because you started climbing, because everyone expects you to reach the top, because you’ve come too far to turn back. This is spiritual amnesia. And it’s deadly.

3. Your Business Requires Constant Compromise: To stay on this mountain, to keep climbing, you have to negotiate with your values. Miss prayers because of meetings. Exaggerate benefits in your marketing. Partner with people whose ethics make you uncomfortable. Neglect your family because “it’s just this season.” Use manipulative tactics because “everyone does it.” Each compromise tells you: this mountain requires you to be someone you’re not. And if you have to shed your Islam to reach the summit, it was never your summit to begin with.

4. You’re Exhausted but Can’t Stop: You’re burned out. Spiritually depleted. Running on fumes. But you can’t stop climbing because stopping feels like failure, like wasted years, like admitting you were wrong. So you keep going, hoping that the next milestone will finally bring the peace you’re missing. The Prophet (peace be upon him) warned us:

If your climb has become unsustainable- if it’s destroying your prayer life, your relationships, your health, your soul- it’s not the climb Allah ordained for you.

5. You’ve Become Someone You Don’t Recognize: Look in the mirror- not at your achievements, but at your character. Has this climb made you more patient or more anxious? More generous or more protective of your resources? More connected to Allah or more distant? More concerned with akhira or more obsessed with dunya? Your business should be making you a better Muslim. If it’s making you a better marketer but a worse person, you’re on the wrong path.

⚠️ The Cost of Staying at False Summits

Some of you are reading this and recognizing yourselves in every paragraph. You know you’re on the wrong mountain. You’ve known for a while. But you’re thinking: “I’ve come so far. I’ve invested so much. I’ve told everyone this is my purpose. How can I turn back now?”

Let me tell you what staying costs:

You waste your one life climbing toward someone else’s ‘heaven.’ Allah (SWT) gave you a unique set of gifts, circumstances, and opportunities. He placed specific mountains before you- challenges that only you, with your particular combination of skills and struggles, can climb. Every day you spend on the wrong mountain is a day stolen from your actual purpose.

You could mislead others who are watching you. When you succeed on the wrong mountain, other Muslims see your success and think, “That must be the path.” They start climbing the same mountain, perpetuating the cycle. Your false summit becomes someone else’s false start. You’re not just lost- you could be leading others into the same wilderness.

You build a prison disguised as a palace. The higher you climb on the wrong mountain, the more trapped you become. Your identity becomes entangled with the climb. Your income depends on continuing. Your community expects you to keep going. You’ve built a life that requires you to stay on a path that’s killing your soul.

You meet Allah (SWT) having succeeded at the wrong tests. On Judgement Day, you won’t be asked about your revenue or your reach. You’ll be asked whether you spent your life in submission to Him or in submission to the culture’s definition of success. The Day of Judgement doesn’t grade on a curve. There’s no partial credit for climbing the wrong mountain really well.

Allah (SWT) warns us in Surah Al-A’raf:

Your lofty palace- your impressive business, your celebrated brand, your influential platform- means nothing it if was built on the wrong foundation, climbed toward the wrong summit, accomplished in disobedience to the One who gave you the strength to climb in the first place.

🔽 ⏩️ The Way Down is the Way Forward

Here’s what I need you to understand:

When you realize you’re on the wrong peak, you have two options:

1. Stay there, pretending the view is what you wanted, slowly dying inside while maintaining the appearance of success.

2. Climb down, return to base camp, and ask Allah (SWT) to show you YOUR mountain- not the one Instagram glorifies, not the one your peers are climbing, not the one that impresses your family- but the one He placed in front of you before you were born.

The second option is terrifying.

It means admitting you were wrong. It means explaining to people why you’re “going backwards.” It means potentially losing income, status, or opportunities. It may even mean starting over.

But it also means you get to spend the rest of your life climbing toward something real. Something ordained. Something that will matter when this dunya crumbles into dust.

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him) made hijrah- he left behind his home, his business connections, his established life in Makkah- because Allah called him elsewhere.

He descended from one mountain to climb another. And that descend was the beginning of everything that mattered. 

⛰️ Your Mountain is Waiting

Somewhere, there’s a mountain with your name on it. Not metaphorically- literally.

Allah (SWT) created challenges and purposes that can only be fulfilled by you, with your particular combination of skills, experiences, struggles, and perspectives.

But you’ll never find that mountain while you’re busy climbing someone else’s.

The first step is the hardest: admitting you’ve been climbing the wrong one.

The second step is harder still: beginning the descent while everyone watches and wonders why you’re “giving up.”

But the third step- when you plant your feet on soil that was meant for you, when you begin ascending toward a summit Allah has ordained, when you climb because becomes an act of worship instead of a performance for the crowed- that step changes everything.

Your exhaustion at a false summit is a gift. It’s your fitrah screaming that this wasn’t meant for you. It’s your soul refusing to celebrate a victory that doesn’t align with your creation.

Listen to it.

This week, I’m going to ask you to get devastatingly honest about whether you’re climbing your mountain or someone else’s.

Ask yourself: If no one ever knew about my business success, would I still be doing this?

Write down what you’re afraid would happen if you admitted you’re on the wrong mountain.

Then pray Salah al-Istikhara about whether this is the path Allah wants for you- and actually listen to what your heart tells you afterward.

💌 I Want to Hear From You!

I know a thing or two about descending mountains. A couple of years ago, I made the terrifying decision to walk away from what looked like success to everyone else but it felt like spiritual suffocation to me. You can read more about my personal experience here.

I truly appreciate those of you who have written back to previous newsletters- your stories, struggles, and breakthroughs mind me why this work matters.

Now I want to hear from you:

Are you climbing the right mountain? Or are you exhausted at a summit that was never meant for you? Hit reply and let me know!

🤲 Closing Dua

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

Ameen