Over the last three years, I’ve had more than 2000 conversations with Muslims about their finances. From those sessions, I’ve seen first-hand just how transformative the right advice at the right time can be.
I’ve watched people go from being terrified of investing to confidently building halal portfolios. I’ve seen families finally get their Islamic wills in place - lifting a huge weight off their shoulders. And I’ve coached entrepreneurs through the maze of halal funding so they could get their businesses off the ground.
But here’s the challenge: as powerful as these one-to-one calls are, I can only reach a small group at a time. And the struggles are so common that I know many more people could benefit if they could “sit in the room” with us.
That’s why we’ve launched something new: our YouTube Financial Audit series.
In each episode, I sit down with someone from the community, unpack their finances, and help them build a tailored plan.
The beauty of this format is that thousands of you can watch along, learn from real-life scenarios, and apply those lessons to your own journey.
For our first episode, Mohsin and I sit down with our product manager Muhammad and give him such much-needed coaching (and financial therapy) and I’d love for you to watch it. The early feedback has been great and I'd love to hear from more of you.
This is about democratising the coaching process. Instead of just a few people getting guidance, now we can all grow together, God willing.
Watch here: https://youtu.be/2bEkEpiAKIU
40 - 2
Most UK mosques: Prayer hall, shoe rack, donation box.
This Washington DC mosque I visited: Hotel, restaurant, gym, Turkish baths, basketball courts, children's play area.
The Diyanet Centre of America isn't just a mosque - it's an entire ecosystem.
And it might explain why this mosque attracts youth while we're at risk of losing ours.
20% of Muslims are leaving Islam in the USA. That's one in five.
But at least the Americans are fighting back with infrastructure.
When your local mosque is just four walls and a prayer mat, where exactly do Muslim kids build their identity? Where do mothers connect beyond small talk at pickup time? Where do teenagers want to spend their weekends?
A masjid on its own is no longer enough.
You need spaces where 8-year-olds can shoot hoops after Quran class. Where young professionals network over Turkish coffee after Maghrib. Where families can eat together without rushing home.
ADAMs in DC, EPIC, VRIC, Qalam - these mosques are also nailing it.
In the UK, we can and should take inspiration from this model. We fundraise millions for beautiful domes and minarets, then wonder why the building sits empty between prayers.
The future of Muslims in the West doesn't depend on how ornate our mosques are.
It depends on whether our institutions can compete with everything else vying for our children's attention.
If Islam isn't made accessible and appealing - if the community doesn't have the infrastructure to nurture belonging - what exactly do we expect to happen?
Diyanet isn't just a mosque. It's a blueprint.
Time we started following it.
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Financial literacy is a challenge for everyone, but for Muslim women, the barriers can be even higher. Cultural expectations. Limited access to resources. A lack of relatable role models.
And yet our tradition gives us one of the most powerful financial role models in history: Khadija bint Khuwaylid (RA).
She wasn’t just wealthy. She was the wealthiest woman in Makkah - and she used her business acumen to support the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and the early Muslim community. Her integrity and generosity became a foundation for Islam’s survival and spread.
So what can we learn from her wealth-building principles today?
1) Balancing Business and Family
Khadija (RA) proved you can run a successful enterprise while building a home life based on mutual respect and support. For today’s Muslim households, this example is a reminder that financial partnership can be a source of strength, not tension.
2) Risk Management and Diversification
She spread her caravans across routes and markets to reduce risk. Muslim women today often concentrate wealth in gold. But while gold stores value, it doesn’t generate income. Diversification into Islamic savings accounts (4%+), real estate income funds (4–8%), or even longer-horizon investments like private equity and venture capital can provide both growth and cash flow.
With typically longer investment horizons, Muslim women have a unique opportunity: to embrace income-generating assets alongside higher-risk, higher-return opportunities.
At IFG, we see Khadija’s (RA) legacy as a call to empower Muslim women with the knowledge, tools, and opportunities to build wealth with barakah - for themselves, their families, and the community.
97 - 1
There's a kids' tech competition that the Israelis take very seriously and dominate.
Until a Muslim girls' team from Texas beat them. Then beat them again:
Every year, US tech giants pour millions into youth robotics competitions.
Israeli teams excel. Europe also takes it very seriously. Tech recruits directly from these programmes.
This is the pipeline to tomorrow's tech entrepreneurs.
We weren't even in the game.
Until a Muslim girls' team from Texas showed up.
They didn't just participate. They claimed first prize. Then they did it again. And again.
The team was from Itkan - founded by a robotics and maths genius who understood what we were missing.
Today, Itkan runs 36 chapters across the USA and the UK, one of the most high-performing robotics programmes in the country.
These kids are proudly American, proudly Muslim, and yes - proudly pro-Palestine too.
Think about this: While we fundraise for another mosque extension, Silicon Valley is recruiting 16-year-olds from robotics competitions.
We're preparing our children for yesterday's world.
Itkan was one of my best discoveries while visiting the USA. They've cracked the code - literally and figuratively.
Every masjid and madrasah in the UK should be on the phone with them today. Not tomorrow. Today.
Our kids deserve to compete for the future, not watch from the sidelines.
The Texas girls showed us it's possible, God willing.
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This 3,000-year-old Qur'anic story is one of the greatest ever told in human history.
When Yusuf (Joseph) was unjustly imprisoned, it looked like the end of his story.
But God had written something different.
After years behind bars, he’s summoned to interpret the king’s dream:
Seven years of abundance. Then seven years of drought.
Yusuf doesn’t just interpret it — he offers a full economic plan:
"Store grain in its spikes during the good years. Ration carefully. Prepare for what’s coming."
(Surah Yusuf, 12:47–49)
The king is so impressed, he puts Yusuf in charge of the entire treasury.
This was Egypt’s moment of crisis, and Yusuf is handed the keys.
What does he do?
He doesn't enrich himself. He doesn't bask in power.
He builds grain reserves. He rations food. He designs storage systems. He thinks across 14 years.
He quietly protects millions, including his own brothers, who, years later, will unknowingly beg him for grain.
And when they do, he doesn’t boast.
He weeps.
This is a man who went from a falsely accused prisoner to finance minister.
But he never loses his sense of purpose.
This story gives us three powerful financial lessons:
• Think long-term. Yusuf didn’t plan for the next quarter — he planned for the next generation.
• Don’t wait for the crisis to act. His strategy began before the drought.
• Real wealth is measured by how many people your leadership sustains.
In our age of consumption, instant gratification, and short-term planning, Yusuf shows us something better.
Foresight. Restraint. Service.
He saved a nation not just through intellect - but through trust in God and service to others.
True wealth isn't in what you keep.
It’s in what you preserve - for others.
108 - 2
This ancient story from the Qur'an warns us of the dire effects on our wealth of not giving charity.
In Surah Al-Qalam, God recounts the tale of a group of brothers who inherited a garden from their father - a man of righteousness and generosity.
During his life, he would give openly, share with the poor, and ensure his harvest brought barakah not just for himself, but for the wider community.
It was, quite literally, a garden of goodness.
But after his death, the sons had other plans.
They plotted amongst themselves:
"Let us go early in the morning to harvest our crops... to pick them." (68:17)
Their intention wasn’t just to get an early start - it was to avoid the poor, to cut off the share that their father used to give in charity.
So they left at dawn, silently conspiring: "Today, no poor person shall enter upon you." (68:24)
But when they reached their prized estate, they were stunned.
The Qur’an describes it vividly:
"But when they saw it, they said, 'Indeed, we are lost!' No - rather, we have been deprived!" (68:26-27)
The entire garden had been destroyed. A fire had razed it. Its blessings - gone.
God sent His judgment before they could even touch the first fruit. Their wealth was snatched at the point of greed, not the point of giving.
In their moment of realisation, regret overwhelmed them:
"Woe to us! We were indeed transgressors. Perhaps our Lord will give us something better in place of it." (68:31-32)
The Qur’an concludes the story with a moral that cuts deep:
"Such is the punishment [in this world]. But the punishment of the Hereafter is even greater - if only they knew." (68:33)
This story offers profound lessons for our time.
Firstly, barakah does not reside in secrecy or selfishness. The brothers thought they could maximise returns by avoiding disruption from the needy. But wealth that excludes others is already on shaky ground.
Secondly, the story reminds us that the poor have a right over our wealth - as God says "And in their wealth was a known right, for the one who asks and the deprived." (Surah Dhariyat, 51:19)
Thirdly, and perhaps most sobering of all, is this: loss doesn’t always come through inflation, bad markets, or poor strategy. Sometimes, it comes through divine subtraction. An unseen collapse of barakah because we’ve violated the moral architecture Allah placed within our money.
The Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم warned of this very dynamic when he said:
"Charity does not decrease wealth." (Sahih Muslim, 2588)
In other words: what you give, Allah protects. What you hoard, He may take.
Modern Muslims optimise our pensions, diversify our portfolios, and calculate zakat to the decimal.
But this Qur'anic story forces us to ask deeper questions:
* Is my wealth rooted in gratitude?
* Do I give God His share before I claim mine?
197 - 5
Meet Aamir A. Rehman - an inspirational man who has quietly been at the heart of developments in Islamic finance for the last two decades.
He's a shareholder in Islamic Finance Guru and many other Islamic fintechs, wealth managers and funds: A believer in the market opportunity at a time when many other weren't.
Before that he pioneered sharia-compliant private equity for the first time with Fajr, and before that Islamic banking with HSBC Amanah.
When we met at Columbia Business School (where he teaches) what he stressed to me was that as players in the Islamic finance industry - we have an opportunity...but also a responsibility.
The wealth of our community - and its future growth - depends on us executing with ihsan and trust at the heart of our operations.
I pray we can all live up to that challenge.
181 - 6
When I was saving for my first house deposit, I had about £5k to my name. In London, that barely gets you a shoebox – never mind the £80k+ deposit needed. So I did something bold:
I know everyone says diversify, but actually going all-in at some points is the best strategy.
So I put almost all of it into a cryptocurrency I believed in at the time: Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR).
It was high risk. But my thinking was simple:
If it went badly, I was young enough to rebuild.
If it went well, I’d leapfrog years of saving.
It went well. Really well. I 6x’d my money and suddenly was much closer to my deposit goal.
But here’s the important part: I de-risked. I took some money off the table, locked in gains, and only left a portion in.
Contrast that with my friend, Ja’far. He put £5k into a memecoin, watched it explode to £300k... then doubled down instead of cashing out. Within months, he’d lost almost everything and had to go back to his job search – this time in a recession.
The difference wasn’t luck. It was risk management.
It’s tempting to chase maximum upside. But wealth is built by managing downside. Take enough risk to move forward, but don’t risk so much that you reset back to zero.
Have you ever had to make that tough call – cash out early, or hold on longer?
- Ibrahim
66 - 8
Every pound of haram money you earn costs you ten pounds of barakah.
The Qur'an tells us exactly why someone's wealth flourishes while others collapse, despite doing the "same things."
The story of Prophet Shu'aib teaches us a timeless lesson that we see ignored every day in business:
"Give full measure and weigh with justice. Do not defraud people of their property, nor go about spreading corruption in the land." (Qur'an 11:84-86)
His people of Madyan got wiped out by an earthquake after ignoring these warnings.
The same principle hits us today, just packaged differently:
• That employee billing 8 hours while spending 4 on Instagram
• The online course promising transformation but delivering fluff
• The hidden fees that magically appear after you've agreed on a price
• The restaurant advertising "premium" while serving cheap substitutes
We've seen Muslims fall on both sides of this - as the deceiver and the deceived.
Let's be crystal clear: wealth gained through deception has no barakah.
You might see your bank balance grow, but you're actually going backwards:
• Your reputation gets trashed once customers catch on
• The stress of maintaining your lies eats you from the inside
• And let's not even talk about standing before God with this on your record
Quick check: Are you delivering full value in every transaction? Or are there areas where you're giving "short measure"?
Excellence and integrity aren't just good deeds, they're good business.
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The Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم gave us this practical financial wisdom:
"Look at those below you, not those above you, for it is more suitable that you do not belittle Allah's blessings upon you." (Muslim)
When we constantly compare ourselves to wealthier individuals, we never feel financially secure.
When we acknowledge those with less, we recognise our financial privileges.
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We’re Ibrahim and Mohsin – ex-City lawyers turned full-time halal investors.
Through this channel, we help Muslims build wealth the halal way — with practical, no-fluff videos on halal investing, personal finance and Islamic money matters.
We manage Cur8 Capital, a $150M halal investment platform — investing in everything from startups to real estate.
This channel is for Muslims who want to grow their money without compromising their faith.
Subscribe and join the growing movement of Muslims taking control of their financial future.
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Find out more about the team: www.islamicfinanceguru.com/about-us
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28 October 2018