I Am Starting a Blog (and Podcast) About Islamic Productivity

My journey of going from someone who couldn’t even imagine writing about Islam to someone who’s started this ambitious project called Soulful Productivity

Religion used to be a tricky subject for me. I am a practicing Muslim and would love to encourage other Muslims to be better, and to remove the misconceptions about Islam that are prevalent in today’s world, but actually writing or talking about all this? Didn't seem like it would happen any time soon, if ever.

My objections to writing or openly talking about Islam and it’s values were two fold:

1. I didn’t want to offend anyone. I wouldn’t like it if someone else preached their religion to me, so how could I do that to others?
2. I am not an Islamic scholar — not yet anyway. Even though I know the essentials, I have huge gaps in my knowledge of Islam. I am also not practicing everything that an ideal Muslim should (and frankly, as of very recently, some of the teachings seemed practically impossible in today’s world).

This didn’t mean that I didn’t ever aspire to become a better Muslim, or that I never wanted to impart Islamic knowledge to others, it just meant that I didn’t want to do it anytime soon. I wanted to save it for later, when I am done finding success in the world, which is to say when I am forty or something and am all done with studies and job and marriage and kids and no longer have to worry as much about what others think of me or how they will treat me or my family and business etc after my Big Reveals and Sudden Eccentricities.

Classic muslim, right?

We often put off working on our religion till we are old, when death is near and we gotta make up for the past before it creeps up on us. The irony is that I never thought of it that way. Even as we discussed people who’ve undergone a sudden Islamic transformation after retiring or whatever, I never thought this could be me. Maybe because I was not being an absolutely horrible Muslim or because I didn’t think I would become too different from what I am now, or maybe because I was only putting it off till my 40s and 50s instead of the 70s and 80s.

Whatever the reason, I have to admit that I was so wrong.

This is what I started realizing in recent times, which started me on a journey of pondering my beliefs and who I am and what I am doing or not doing as a Muslim, and what I can do to make it better from here on, both for myself and for others.

Okay so I’m gonna hit a break on my personal story for now and spend some time talking about the assumptions we have regarding the teachings of Islam and the challenges we face in practicing them today. After that, we’ll resume my story about how these reflections of mine transformed into this blog and podcast called Soulful Productivity.

The Assumptions About Practicing Islam, and How to Challenge and Change Them

Moving on to the first part then, here are some of the main assumptions we have regarding why we can’t follow Islam fully in the modern world:

‘It is simply impossible in this culture!’

There are certain things that we don’t do because we believe they are incompatible with today’s modern culture. However, this varies from person to person. Praying regularly can be hard for one person, yet effortless to another. Same goes for fasting, wearing Hijab, not taking interest from banks, and everything else that we can think of.

What you need to know here is that it is not as impossible as it seems to follow the path that we’ve been told, as can be seen from the people who do follow these things, and who may not even be extreme in any way.

In fact in some things, it might have been even harder in the past than it is now. For example: Treating your women right. For those in shock, yes, Islam in fact empowers women and no, Hijab and all the rest is not a sign of oppression. In fact, the tribes in Makkah were sad after Islam came because they couldn’t beat their women anymore or treat them however they wished.

Here’s a quick exercise you can do:

Write down all your assumptions regarding what is and isn’t possible to do in the modern world. Then begin thinking of ways in which you can do it regardless. If you just can’t think of anything, think of people you know who practice these things, or research online for ideas on how to make it doable (there are lots of resources, trust me).

P.S. If you think it is not possible for a person in the modern workforce to adopt these concepts, I suggest you read up a book on the topic. A good one would be The Productive Muslim by Mohammed Farris.

Other people

Another thing we (I) often worried about is how other people would react. Sadly, this also includes our fellow muslims who might treat you as an alien orthodox and maybe even make fun of you for being too religious. As for people who are not muslims, we worry they may not accept us or may get offended if we adhere to our practices instead of adopting theirs, and then there’s also the elephant in the room called Islamophobia.

However, you probably can find examples of people who are living their religion fully and still are not too worse off in their lives, and might even be doing better than you are. They probably do get people who hate them, but guess what, you’re gonna get people who hate you no matter what you do, and it is not our goal — either from an Islamic or a secular perspective — to please everyone.

In fact, it is common wisdom (hit up Google if you want!) that you can’t please everyone and trying to do so will only result in you being unhappy.

Try this:

Keep an open mind, and do one thing, no matter how small, that you are wary of doing. Have a religious discussion with your fellow Muslims, share a tradition with your colleague who doesn’t know much about Islam (Ramadan could be a good topic!), install and use an Islamic app on your phone, search up a topic (or find a scholar) that you’re unsure of and have always wanted to know more about.

Bad representation

Lastly, Islam suffers due to bad representation. We all know people who use religion as an object to show off, instill fear of religion instead of love, and confuse people by getting involved in excessive details for the various rulings. These people can negatively impact our image of certain practices and make us stay away from them just because the examples we know of people using them are not pleasant. This is also the reason why people in the western world misinterpret so many teachings of Islam.

There is a quote that comes to mind when I think of this. It goes something like this:

Look at the religion, not the people.

Try this:

Instead of judging an element of Islam by looking at the dude next door, look up a video on that by a trusted scholar. Learn more about the modern research on various Hadith on praying, eating, drinking and sleeping etc. Read a well researched book on Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) like Enjoy Your Life by Dr. Muhammad Adb Al-Rahman Al-Arifi. Watch YouTube videos by Mufti Menk or Bilal Philips.

The awareness these assumptions not being all that right and my new openness to challenge them also made me a lot more aware of what else I wasn’t doing that I could be.

In particular, I realized how it wasn’t as hard for me to give up some of the things that other people found hard, because I had already challenged their need as someone into self help and had thought long and hard about what I actually needed and what the media or society made me believe that I did.

I was increasingly replacing the so-called essential activities (think social media, meetings, checking emails) with things that were actually good for me and added real value, like reading, writing, and taking time to reflect. I was already a believer in and even a practicer of concepts that others found unimaginable and even crazy, such as minimalism, mindfulness, and the whole of personal development in general.

The only eccentric thing missing was the element of Islam. So what was stopping me then?

This realization had me pondering over Islam the way I always had for self help and productivity, setting goals for my religious growth, finding content, books and courses about various aspects of Islam, and thinking up ideas for content that I could create or businesses that I could start that would cater to Muslims as well.

The result was that I was able to hit pause, take a moment to ponder over all my faraway plans about being a better Muslim and learning and doing more about my religion, and to consider start doing them right now.

How the Blog Came Into Being

There’s one thing that has always been true regarding my writing — I write about what I am doing, or what I am currently, constantly obsessed about. And this obsession was now about improving myself on a spiritual level. So I could not go long without writing about this.

I was decided that I would make content about self help and productivity and how to do it in an Islamic way, because this is what I was skilled in and passionate about writing. So I already had my niche decided. Time to get going, right?

But I did have my reservations. Some of these were the same as given in this post but there was also this fact that I have built a little audience and found a few online friends through my blogging journey — a journey that was all about personal development and productivity. So how could I suddenly bombard these people with my changed point of view, and my changed goals in life — goals which they may or may not ever be able to resonate with?

For the longest time, my solution was to run two brands, one about my regular productivity stuff and the other about Islam. However, even as I first thought of it, I knew that this wouldn't work out. I hadn’t ever been too consistent with the one blog I had earlier, so how would I ever be consistent with two different blogs? (and this time, one thing was sure, I had to be sincere — for this was work I was doing for Allah).

And I was not even so busy back then. Moreover, productivity for me had long become a topic that I was saturated with, which was one of the reasons I hadn't been able to stick with it in the first place.

So I knew that If I tried to run two blogs or tried, in any way, to appeal to both audiences with the same blog, I won’t be able appeal to anyone and would actually be unfair to both.

So after much back and forth, I decided to start this space, and so here we are.

And no, this doesn’t mean that I will never talk about my usual productivity and self help stuff from here on at all. It’s just that I have decided to hit pause on my always-present-yet-not-quite-fully productivity brand and to put more efforts and double down into this new niche that has overtaken me mind, body and soul, Insha Allah (If Allah wills). And I can’t help but think that this is such a perfect and auspicious time to be starting this, with me writing this in the holy month of Ramadan.

I will still be posting about productivity over at LinkedIn and my Medium profile, so you can follow me in those places if you like. But if you decide to stick around and see what this new journey is about, I will be more than glad.

So this is it, the whole of my story on how I decided to start writing about (and practicing more of) Islam, even though I was not planning on it anytime soon. I have to admit that I feel somewhat liberated now because, even though I am a practicing Muslim, by never talking or writing about this integral aspect of my life online, I always felt like I was hiding something.

I was also pretty scared about how I will ever write this first post, but now that I have, I feel a lot better about it. I am happy that I have been able to convey my message the way I wanted to, hopefully without coming across as too extreme or preachy.

So for my Muslim friends, I hope and pray that this post will be helpful in increasing your Imaan in some way, and for all of my followers, I hope you will understand my reasons for shifting gears so abruptly, and maybe even follow me along on this new journey!