The Journey Hebah Masood

At age 16, Ustadh Omar Popal was an extremely homesick madrasa student in Campertown, South Africa. He was far from home, his family and friends. He was struggling to adjust to life at Madrasa In’aamiyya, so different from his public high school and life as he knew it in Fairfax, Virginia. He found his way to the madrassa library, and there he found a mentor in Maulana Muhammad Abbas Omar, who befriended him and took him under his wing. In the same library he found three books which awoke a thirst for knowledge within him and were his introduction to tasawwuf: Protecting Yourself from Whisperings of the Devil, the Path to Perfection, Ma’arif Al Mathnawi. After completing two years in South Africa, Ustadh Omar returned to Virginia and continued studying the Islamic Sciences and completed high school as one of the first students at Mufti Yusuf bin Yaqub’s school, Madinatul Uloom.
After high school, he was looking for the next opportunity when his father heard about Tarim, Yemen. He had met someone whose daughter was studying at Dar al Zahra, the girls madrassa in Tarim, and so he decided to send Ustadh Omar and his sister to Yemen as well. Ustadh Omar spent two years in Tarim at Dar al-Mustafa, the boys madrassa, including one year at a campus in Ai’nat. The Ai’nat campus was even more remote, academically rigorous and challenging, and he was the only Westerner there at the time. Despite the challenges, he grew fond of his unique time in Ai’nat and refers to it as the best year of his life.
After returning home, he continued his studies at Darul Qasim in Chicago with Shaykh Amin Kholwadia and later with Dr. Recep Senturk in Turkey.
Ustadh Omar is now the founder of the Tanwir Institute in Fairfax, VA. where he is attending to the educational and spiritual needs of Muslims in his hometown as well as the DMV area (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia) at large.

In this episode, he discusses both the struggle of adjusting while studying overseas as well as the many distractions and difficulties that come with seeking knowledge while staying in the West. He gives heartfelt advice to students of knowledge on humility and setting priorities.

His story intersects with many familiar names:
Habib Umar bin Hafiz, Maulana Haroon Abbas Omar, Maulana Muhammad Abbas Omar, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Mufti Yusuf bin Yaqub, Shaykh Yahya Rhodus, Maulana Ibrahim Muhammad, Maulana Ridwaan Desi, Shaykh Amin Kholwadia, Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Shaykh Khaled Al-Kharsa, Dr. Hamza al-Bakri Dr. Mahmoud al-Masri, Shaykh Faisal Matadar, Shaykh Hamzah Wald Maqbul, Shaykha Mariam Sheibani, Dr. Recep Senturk

His grandfather Dr. Sheikh Ramadan Deeb, one of the oldest living scholars in Damascus, is a renowned Syrian scholar who built important bridges between western and eastern scholarship. He grew up watching his father Shaykh Abdallah Deeb lead a Muslim community in Orlando, Florida.

But, even though he was born into a family of Muslim scholars, Imam Ahmad Deeb struggled as a teenager seeking answers to fundamental questions about religion.

It wasn’t until university when he began attending a local halaqa and listening online to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf that Imam Deeb felt his mind and his heart begin to find a connection to Islam. Upon graduation he turned his focus to seeking knowledge at a higher level.

Shaykh Muhammad bin Yahya al-Husayni al-Ninowy, a family friend, invited him to join a Madina Institute pilot program he was starting in South Africa. Imam Ahmad Deeb spent a year at the Madina Institute in Cape Town. When he returned he continued studying with local scholars, including his father, and began a Masters in Islamic Studies at Bayan Islamic Graduate School in Claremont, California.

Today, Imam Ahmad Deeb is the imam at Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, located in one of the oldest muslim communities in North America. He is the co-founder of Pillars Seminary alongside Shaykh Ismail Bowers, which focuses on teaching the foundational Islamic sciences to busy professionals, as well as the co-founder of Itqaan Institute, dedicated to developing love of God through a relationship and mastery of reciting Qur’an, with his father as the primary teacher and leader.

In this episode he talks about Muslims who are seeking answers to fundamental questions about their religion. He advises them to seek out reliable teachers of Islamic knowledge and spend time reflecting on any potential barriers they may have to a relationship with Allah SWT.

His story intersects with many familiar names: Shaykh Ramadan Deeb, Shaykh Muhammad bin Yahya al-Ninowy, Shaykh Abdallah Deeb, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Dr. Sherman Jackson, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad / Timothy J. Winter, Shaykh Jihad Hashim Brown, Shaykh Ismail Bowers, Ustadh Arthur Richards Jr., Dr. Ali Shahata, Imam Mohamed Masri.

Sidi Mustafa Davis’ timeline follows many in the ‘90s who took their shahada and travelled overseas seeking knowledge. He converted as an atheistic college student after finding clarity in Surah Mariam. Soon after, he met Shaykh Hamza Yousuf and his teachers in California. That led him on a journey to Mauritania, Spain, the UK, Syria, and eventually Yemen with his friend and travel companion Shaykh Yahya Rhodus.

While in Tarim, Yemen, his path took a different direction. Habib Omar advised him that media production would be his path to Allah swt. And so he began his work with Habib Ali Al-Jiffri at Guidance Media and Tahbah Foundation. After returning to the U.S. in 2008 he started his own production agency called Mustafa Davis Studios, which he hopes to use to tell stories that would otherwise go untold.
Today he is in Turkey studying with Shaykh Mokhtar Maghraoui, running his production studio and teaching a full-time film training program.
In this episode, he takes us on a journey around the world, sharing advice from his experience as a student and an artist and how his work has become a means for him to seek nearness to Allah.

He’s met many beautiful teachers and befriended many familiar names along his journey: Shaykh Murabit al-Hajj and his son Shaykh Abdur-Rahman, Shaykh Murabit Ahmad Fal and his son Shaykh Abdullah, Shaykh Khatri, Habib Omar, Habib Ali al-Jifri, Shaykh Mokhtar Maghraoui, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Shaykh Yahya Rhodus, Shaykh Ibrahim Osi-Efa, Shaykh AbdulKarim Yahya, Shaykh Jamal Ud-deen Hysaw, Hassan Siddqui, Khalil Moore, Shaykh Jihad Hashim Brown, Shaykh Walead Mosaad, Shaykh Musa Furber, Imam Dawood Yasin, Tariq Suwaidan and Dr. Jonathan Brown.

Photos courtesy of Sidi Mustafa: https://www.facebook.com/hebahpotamus88/videos/10208380184459931

Ustadha Zaynab Mansour Ansari is the daughter of converts — an African American mother and a Lebanese American father. Her parents converted to Islam in the 1970s and met Imam Zaid Shakir during the latter part of the decade. The impact of Imam Zaid’s friendship with her parents was profound and their spiritual journeys became deeply intertwined.
When Ustadha Zaynab was in her late teens, her parents wanted her to study Islam so the family moved to Iran for a few years, and later, at the advice of Imam Zaid and his wife, Umm Hassan, Ustadha Zaynab and her sister were enrolled at Abu Noor College in Damascus, Syria.
She returned to the United States after over 4 years of study in Syria and enrolled at Georgia State University, where she earned degrees in history and Middle Eastern Studies. During this time, she started a family and was invited to volunteer for the pioneering SunniPath Answers Service.
Ustadha Zaynab describes herself as a late bloomer. She felt intellectually and academically stimulated as a student in Damascus, but it wasn’t until her late 30s that she had a spiritual awakening — what she refers to as a Ghazalian moment of realization that what she was teaching was not necessarily being translated into her own life.
Today Ustadha Zaynab is the women’s scholar-in-residence at Tayseer Seminary where she teaches and mentors students under the guidance of Shaykh Hassan Lachheb. She also offers presentations, workshops, and classes for a number of other organizations, including for the Ribaat program founded by her teacher, Anse Dr. Tamara Gray.
In this episode, she opens up about and reflects on the tragic death of her husband over five years ago. She also discusses the benefits of having female-only learning spaces and the importance of female role models and spiritual guides.
Her story intersects with many familiar names: Imam Zaid Shakir and his wife Umm Hassan, Zaheer (Sunni Path), Anse Dr. Tamara Gray, Shaykh Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Muhammad Sukkar, Shaykha Houda al-Habash, Ustadh Dr. Nadeem Siddiqi, Shaykh Hassan Lachheb

Imam Dawud Walid grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line in Chesterfield County, Virginia. It was commonplace to see Confederate flags and signs like “The South will rise again.” Like others of his generation, listening to hip hop, watching Spike Lee’s “X,” and the protests following the brutal beating of Rodney King and murder of Amadou Diallo played a huge role. They awakened in him not only an interest in social justice but also Islam. He wanted to learn Classical Arabic to better understand the Quran. At that time, the best place to learn Arabic in the U.S. was in Detroit, Michigan, and so he moved to the Midwest.

His spiritual journey would take him from learning in Detroit to eventually traveling to Ghana, Mali and Senegal. Today, Dawud Walid heads Cair-Michigan. He has authored four books. Two titled “Centering Black Narratives,” a third titled "Towards Sacred Activism," and a fourth, coming out this February InshaAllah titled “Blackness in Islam.”
In this episode, he sheds light on the importance of learning Black Muslim history and the relationship of tasawwuf with sacred activism and anti-racism work within our communities.
His story intersects with many familiar names: Shaykh Ali Suleiman Ali, Imam Salim Abdulrahman, Dr. Sherman Jackson, Shaykh Abdullah Bin Hamid Ali, Shaykh AbdulKarim Yahya, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Sidi Ahmad Mubarak, Chris Abdur-Rahman Blauvelt.

***Pre-order his new book "Blackness in Islam" here: https://shop.ihrc.org/blackness-and-islam-dawud-walid***

Shaykh Zane Abdo was born and raised in Liverpool, UK. From a young age, he was inspired by lectures from scholars like Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Shaykh Abdul-Hakim Murad and Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller to study abroad and bring back scholarship to the UK.
After studying in Tarim, Yemen, for just under a decade, Shaykh Zane returned to the UK in 2010 as the imam of the South Wales Islamic Centre in Cardiff, a port city which has its own unique history of Muslim migrants from Yemen and Somalia.

He is now a Muslim advisor and university chaplain at the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. His course for university students, “Simplifying the Chaos,” is linked below. You can also find him at Spiritual Corner with Sheikh Zane.

In this episode, he talks about Islam in the UK, the challenges with working with different Muslims groups and his experiences in dealing with extremists and radicalized Muslims throughout his life - both in Cardiff and then as a prison chaplain in Liverpool. He opens up about the importance of not just “copying and pasting” what he’s learned in Tarim, but adapting it in a way the suits the needs of the people he’s serving in the UK.
And finally Shaykh Zane shares a touching story from his youth about an emotional moment with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf that brought Shaykh Hamza to tears. Habib Ali al-Jifri who was also present remarked that the young man had stirred something in Shaykh Hamza’s heart. That story has stuck with him all these years, leading him to inspire others the way Shaykh Hamza inspired him.

His story intersects with many familiar names: الحبيب عمر بن حفيظ - Habib Omar, the late Mufti of Tarim Habib `Ali al-Mashhur bin Hafiz, Habib Abdullah Bilfaqih, Habib Salim al-Shatiri, Habib Ali al-Jifri English, Habib Abdur Rahman bin Ali Mashur bin Hafiz, Shaykh Umar Husayn Al-Khatib, Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Shaykh Mohsen Al-Najjar, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad / Timothy J. Winter, Shaykh Ibrahim Osi-Efa, Shaykh Haroon Hanif, Shaykh Adeyinka Mendes, Shaykh Yahya Rhodus, Imam Zaid Shakir, Sheikh Sa'id Hassan.

Simplifying the Chaos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQMcTFuzeWCnpnOModFwxfDTi3W7MIOGi
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQMcTFuzeWCkHryYoAxm9wRgeGevvsP_P