Introduction As-salamu alaykum, welcome to the Ummah Builders Podcast. I'm your host, Mustafa Dustin Craun. It's a blessing to be here and to launch this podcast. We've been thinking about doing this for years. As many of you know, we've had tons of conversations with people on the internet and in person. And now it's time to, you know, have a place where we can feature all of these different things. This is really an opportunity to have deep conversations about what it takes to build community, what it takes to build institutions. We hope to feature people from educators to startup founders, to thinkers, to people doing the work around the world. Really, it's an honor to have this first conversation be with Shaykha Tamara Gray, who visited us here in Seattle a few weeks ago when we were just blessed with her presence. You know when you're when you're in the presence of really special people it's transformative. It can be transformative for an entire community, it can be transformative for a family it can be transformative for individuals. And that's why we seek them out, that's why they are so special. And so we had this small conversation talking about education, really talking about what it takes to build Islamic schooling with tarbiyah and barakah, right? And tarbiyah is this idea of the deep, educational work and the transformation of souls and Shaykha Tamara is someone who's been doing this work for decades she just had this incredible series talking about her 40th shahadaversary, Mashallah and talking about all the things the projects that she's been involved in. Most people know her for her work focused on building Islamic women's scholarship around the world with Rabata. And inshallah, we're going to be launching this idea of Dads for Rabata soon, where people like myself who support that work with Rabata and support our daughters in that institution want to support the work more. Because right now Rabata's funders are about 96% women. So can we at least get it to 80-20%? You know, come on, brothers, we got to we got to do this together. And so it's really an honor and a blessing to have her with us right as we launch this podcast. And you'll see this is a very deep conversation. Unfortunately, we had some camera issues and this recording is not done well. It's not in HD quality. But we thank the people who recorded it at Cordoba Academy here in Lynwood, Washington. Cordoba Academy has been one of our partners as we launch our own work around the School of the Ummah, where we're building towards launching three separate things. One is youth education programs, youth leadership programs, where we do deep experiential learning with young people. Two, where we are inshallah, launching daycares, a set of daycares that we're calling the Little Ummah. And with Little Ummah Daycares, it's really about doing the deep work of transforming Islamic learning from the earliest ages of three to five years old and doing immersion Arabic with immersion Spanish to build adab together and build a deep community for the future of Islam in the Americas, inshallah. And then the third is this idea of an online global Islamic high school that inshallah will be launching in the fall of 2025. So this podcast is sponsored by the School of the Ummah and Cordoba Academy. Thank you again for hosting us at your beautiful campus in Lynwood, where you can feel the barakah and you can feel the reality of the children reciting the Wird al-Latif every morning with our beloved Abdul Qadir Sheikh, also known as Imam Bazi, the principal there at Cordoba Academy. So without further ado, here's Shaykha Tamara Gray. The Center for Global Muslim Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Building Islamic Schools With Tarbiya & Baraka A Conversation With Shaykha Tamara Gray Mustafa Dustin Craun - Thank you for joining us today. We'll read a brief bio for everyone who doesn't know the Shaykha, It's an honor to have you here at Cordoba Academy. My name is Mustafa Dustin Craun, for those who don't know me, I'm the founder of the Center for Global Muslim Life, and now we're starting to found our own school called the School of the Ummah. It's really an honor to be with Shaykha Tamara, She is a globally renowned Islamic scholar and one of the world's leading, I would say, Islamic educators. She has contributed to the development of Islamic schools in Syria and Kuwait, I believe, maybe more, and is the founder of Rabata, one of the largest platforms for women's Islamic scholarship worldwide. Dr. Tamara Gray is the founder of Rabata, an organization dedicated to promoting positive cultural change through creative educational experiences, she holds a doctorate in leadership from the University of St. Thomas, a master's degree in curriculum theory and instruction from Temple University, and spent 20 years studying traditional and classic Islamic sciences, Quran and Arabic in Damascus, Syria. Dr. Gray worked in the field of education for 25 years before moving into the nonprofit world. She is now both the executive director of Rabata and its chief spirituality officer. Shaykha Tamara - Best name ever. Mustafa Dustin Craun - So let's start there because we wanted to start this conversation really thinking about this school, Cordoba Academy, is really rooted in this idea of tarbiyah for children. So being the chief spirituality officer, you may have had many, throughout your experiences in schools, many Islamic schools, unfortunately, are cutting and pasting from public schools. And they don't have... Shaykha Tamara - They aren't cutting and pasting very well. Mustafa Dustin Craun - And they may have Quran and a few other things, but they aren't really doing spirituality. They aren't really doing the deep work of transforming these children's lives. So talk about your role as a chief spirituality officer and your advice for schools as we think about this idea of Tarbiyah Islamic Schools. Shaykha Tamara - Okay, well, first I have to say, I wish I could say I made that up because it's the best name ever, but I didn't make it up. I saw it on Instagram. Like literally there was some big business and there was a guy who was, that was his job. I don't know how he does that job, but I said, we need that job in all of our institutions. So I gave it to myself. In Rabata itself, I'm going to answer that very briefly, then I want to talk about schooling. In Rabata itself, I consider the culture within and without part of that job. So if you work, we have we have how many employees, 30 regular employees, plus another extra hundred when we're doing teaching and about 300 volunteers. So the part of my responsibility as chief spirituality officer in that way of thinking is to ensure a positive, healthy, Islamic, spiritual culture for the women who are working and volunteering because then they'll be able to do what we're trying to do everywhere else. In schooling, then, when you think about curriculum, we can't think about it as, as you said, a cut and paste where we're bringing... I mean, I remember overseas, I would ask teachers or teachers would talk to each other. "What are you teaching today?" And they would say, "Oh, page 52 of whatever book." And my brain would burst out of its seams because we don't teach pages. We're not page teachers. And in the same way, we're not subject teachers by itself. We're teachers of a way of thinking and a way of being. We want to create curriculum and methodologies and objectives and goals so that it's connected to that wider, strategic vision where everyone has bought into it. So, I think in a school, you talked a lot about tarbiyah and the beautiful adhkar you have in the morning, for example. That's a great methodology to reach the tarbiyah of the school. The missing piece—it's not missing, I just haven't heard it yet because I literally had a five-minute tour—is, what are the teachers doing to fill themselves so they can be giving to the students in that space? And how is the school helping to make sure that they do that? Mustafa Dustin Craun - That's powerful. So, let’s go back then. Shaykha Tamra has had this really amazing series on her Instagram recently, where she started with her 40th Shahadaversary. Mashallah, which is incredible. Congratulations. And now you have a new series. What’s the new series about? Shaykha Tamara - So, when I was doing the 40, I did 40 days a year, every day. That was extremely difficult. Like, I would send my husband a message: "What was I doing in 2004?" And he would send me a picture or remind me of things I was doing. On one hand, it was a spiritual process—reflecting on my past 40 years in just 40 days. It was deeply personal and spiritually beneficial. Then, during that time, someone asked me, "What are 40 lessons you've learned over these years?" So, we wrote them down. It was like a gift. I printed them out as cards. I thought I brought one with me, but I must have forgotten it. We’re using them in our fundraising dinners around the country. People started getting confused about some of them, especially the one that says, "Don't be a cooked spaghetti noodle." That’s so clear to me! But people were arguing about it and giving really strange explanations. So, I realized I needed to explain them. That’s why I started this 40 Days Before Ramadan series—one lesson a day, drawn from both life experiences and deep reflections. Mustafa Dustin Craun - Within that, in many of those years in the Shahadaversary series, you talked about the different schools you were working with and things like that. So I want you to talk about your journey as an educator. One of the questions I like to ask teachers is: what was the spark that made you want to become an educator? Maybe even before your Shahada? Shaykha Tamara - Well, actually, if I'm really honest about it, I went to undergraduate school to be
