Muslim Money Talk
Introducing the Muslim Money Talk Podcast, a place for all things Muslim and Money related.
Every week we'll be sitting down with Founders, leaders and industry experts from across multiple disciplines to discuss lessons learned, mistakes made and most importantly 'How they did it?'.
Brought to you by Kestrl: The Muslim Money App, software to help Muslims grow their wealth without compromise. Find out more here: https://kestrl.io/
Muslim Money Talk
Children’s TV Expert: Fighting Islamophobia, Becoming A Father, Tackling Zionism | Mohammad Shoaib
Today we’re joined by Mohammed Shoaib, Head of Sales and Marketing at Muslim Kids TV, to discuss the urgent need for high-quality, values-aligned Muslim children’s media.
They explore Shoaib’s personal journey through faith, fatherhood, and media, diving into how Islamic content creation can combat harmful mainstream narratives and influence the next generation positively.
This podcast is hosted by Areeb Siddiqui, the founder and CEO of Kestrl, the app that helps people to grow their wealth without compromise
Find out more about our app here: https://kestrl.io/
And how we help banks here: https://business.kestrl.io/
Show Notes:
00:00 - Opening trailer
02:38 - Intro
03:40 - Early Education & Career In Charity
08:08 - Joining And Rebranding Islam Channel
11:18 - Starting the Dadhood podcast
12:12 - The Truth About Working In Muslim Organisations
17:28 - Becoming A Man: Early Marriage & Fatherhood
21:50 - Marrying A Revert
24:12 - Early fatherhood Baraqa & Financial Struggles
31:14 - Growing Up Without A Father
34:33 - Problems with Mainstream Children's Media
39:45 - Subtle Zionist Messaging
42:05 - The Problem With Aladdin, Zootropolis and more…
45:07 - Muslim Kids TV: Creating Quality Alternatives
53:31 - Is There A Production Quality Gap?
55:49 - Military Brainwashing in the US
00:59:18 - Pitching New Ideas
01:02:18 - The Future Of Muslim Kids TV
Me and my wife. When we got married, she was in her second year of university. When we got married and I had finished, I met her at university. We could even go into that, if you want to. I don't know if you want to turn this into a marriage podcast.
Speaker 1:There's always a good piece I remember listening to Chekhor Saliman and he was saying if I want to break the internet, I'll talk about marriage and gins, or I'll talk about marrying a gin yes, I assume your is not a gen, then. Or being stuffed for dads was one of the biggest motivating factors for me to start dadhood. But the biggest one was that I didn't grow up with my father, but it was like you're about to become a father and you don't have a relationship with your own father.
Speaker 2:I felt something wrong within my soul about that what is the problem with tv movies games for children out there in the mainstream today?
Speaker 1:there are a lot of children's shows being produced that goes against our morals as muslims. If we really want to change the narrative, we really want to protect the fitra, we want to flip the script and we want to make sure that our children are growing up with the right messages. We media is one of the biggest tools here, whether that's online media, whether that's tv movies. That whole media industry is so important for us to pump our time and our energy and our money into.
Speaker 2:That's what muslim kids tv is trying to do in today's episode, I'm joined by education and entertainment expert Muhammad Shoaib. Shoaib is head of sales and marketing for Muslim Kids TV, a platform that wants to be the Netflix for Muslim children's TV shows, games and more. Before that, he's presented and produced shows on channels like Islam Channel, and he also runs his own podcast, dadhood, where he talks about his journey to being a Muslim father, so do go ahead and check that out. We're going to be talking about the crisis that's being experienced in Muslim entertainment today, children's or otherwise, and how we've left our stories and narratives to be told by others for far, far too long, and how damaging this has actually been for the Ummah in general and, crucially, what solutions there are out there.
Speaker 2:As always, I'm your host, arif Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk. Before we begin, we actually noticed only about 10% of you are subscribed to the podcast, so if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us and see more things Muslim and money related, then please consider subscribing and, of course, leaving this episode a like and share it with your friends. Leave us a comment or a review, because it really really does help us out and help more people to find us. Thank you now back to the show shuaib. Assalamu alaikum and welcome to the show, bro. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming all the way from watford. No, that's all right. It wasn't too bad of a journey. I got my steps in when I was coming down from the train station and take notes of future guests.
Speaker 2:There's been a few guests who brought guests. We brought gifts before, but alhamdulillah, this is, for our listeners, a very heavy box of donuts.
Speaker 1:I hope that tops the gift selections that you've had. It's up there, definitely up there, well, yeah thanks so much, man.
Speaker 2:Thanks for making the time today to make it to the show. So there's a lot that I want to get into with you because it's so topical and it's so front of mind for many people, especially post-October 7th, with a lot of people realizing and understanding how much of our entertainment have subliminal, subtle and sometimes not so subtle messaging that's very much anti-Islamic and Islamophobic, and how it's very important for us to start making our own media. So I want to hear all about that, what you guys are doing at Muslim Kids TV. But same question I usually start off with Is this what you imagined you'd be doing as a kid? Did you always want to be in?
Speaker 1:entertainment. No, I didn't. I didn't really imagine that Growing up. I really had no idea what I wanted to do, but the things that I was really interested in were things about the world. So politics, religion, philosophy, economics, these are the kind of things I would read into. These are kind of documentaries I'd watch. Growing up these are the kind of, you know, books I'd buy. Or even when I used to listen to music, the type of music I'd consume would be around this kind of thing. It wouldn't be kind of the you know, the popular tracks. It would be finding these artists who are speaking about social issues and things like that. So, you know, that's that's really what I was interested in.
Speaker 1:But I had no idea what, what would become of that. Like, I had no ambition of there's a particular career I want to go into or, you know, I want to turn this passion into something, um, and that's that's kind of what made me choose my decision of education. So I went to university to study politics, philosophy and economics, ppe, or they say the prime minister's degree, right, but I had no intention of getting into politics in that way. I actually had no intention of what that degree was going to lead me into, but I just knew that these were the topics I was interested in. It's a good degree to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And hopefully something happens from there. Yeah, and hopefully something happens from there. And then, you know, as we go into it, things have kind of steered me towards the direction of media, steered me towards the direction of education in my local community as well as through the media platforms focusing a lot on education as well. So it's kind of things have twisted and turned, so it hasn't necessarily been what you asked, which is, did I imagine this? I didn't't.
Speaker 2:It's kind of just come through because you spent some time in the charity sector.
Speaker 1:I think at the start of your career, you were at MEND yeah, exactly so straight after I graduated, um, you know, actually while I was at university, I met a member of MEND, um, and it kind of really interested me because I was, you know, know, I was struggling to think what could I do with this degree, ppe, what do I do? And when I saw the Brothers Unmanned I thought, wow, they've built this kind of organization that is focused on Muslim rights in the UK, focused on tackling Islamophobia, and clearly somebody like me who has an interest in politics and economics, in understanding world systems, could do something here. I could possibly help them. So I kind of got back in touch with them towards the end of my degree and said, look, if you have any positions open, I'm about to graduate, I'd love to join you guys and see what I could do. And alhamdulillah, they had an opportunity available, went through the interview stages and I was able to work there for about four years after graduating. Okay, and that sort of you know really helped.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you put in quite a lot of time there then yeah, for people who don't know men stands for, is it muslims? Muslim education and development, almost engagement and development. Muslim engagement and development.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, so to kind of go into what it does the company was set up to is a lot of his education, by the way, so you're not kind of wrong there. Uh, it's set up to really educate muslims about politics, about media and how they can uh get involved in those spaces.
Speaker 2:Uh, in order to tell our own stories and to really uh to do Super topical, to this podcast, to this episode, to what you do now. So there is a link, there is a clear link.
Speaker 1:There is a clear link. So it does kind of work. And, to be honest, towards my end the end few maybe you said the last year that I was at MEND for like four years my main role was going out to communities and telling them what the media industry is all about, what our local politics is all about and how Muslims can get involved in that. But towards the last year, what I found the most enjoyable was the kind of education part of it, rather than kind of like anything else in terms of their activism or get recruiting the volunteers or whatever else it was that was involved in my job. The main thing was the education I really enjoyed.
Speaker 1:It's like people coming in, they're getting really inspired. They're like, okay, how do I now make an impact in the media space or in the politics space? And then I'm able to like take that and really push them forward and say this is what you should do. So that, I guess, is what pushed me in the direction of my next stage, which was going over to work in islam channel because that was really interesting, because there you found, you were a presenter and you were also producing your own shows and this was islam channel.
Speaker 1:I want to say like 2019, 2018 yeah, I always get the dates mixed up. It becomes a bit of a blur, but it was.
Speaker 2:I joined within the covid sort of lockdown and islam channel did like a big rebrand at that point.
Speaker 2:Yes, I believe because for the longest time, I think a lot of people saw islam channel as a bit of an older, stale type uh channel that you would only really put on in ramadan, uh, just before iftar time, before you're about to break your fast. And then they did this big rebrand where suddenly they put so much focus on YouTube, on podcasting, on more up-to-date shows, talk show type formats, and were you kind of the brains behind that?
Speaker 1:I wasn't the brains behind it. I've been somebody's asked me that question before, actually, because I kind of coincided with the growth in terms of me joining coincided with all of this growth.
Speaker 1:I'd like to think I was part of that, but it wasn't completely down to me. I mean that growth was already being planned. I think I was part of that plan. It was like, okay, let's try and bring in Shoaib and see what he can do as well. And yeah, I mean that's what happened, what he can do as well. And, um, yeah, I mean that's what happened. There was that transition you know, islam channel.
Speaker 1:Even the logo changed, yeah, you know, to kind of make it look a bit more modern black and gold, the black and gold and the arch and all these different elements behind it. Um, and, yeah, there was a folk, a big focus on social media and now, you know, islam channel is almost a million subscribers on youtube. You know, it's really kind of reaching close to that now. And there was a big focus on, okay, how do we tell our stories online, because that's the whole. The point of Islam Channel was, I think it launched in 2006, I believe, or maybe 2004. I get my dates mixed up, as you can tell. I'm not very good with dates, right, but the point being is that it was post 9-11 and it was like, you know, the founder, muhammad Harath, was like how do we really tell our stories? I mean, you know, he's being invited on BBC's and Sky and all of that kind of stuff to talk about what Muslims have to say because of the whole post 9-11 era that we're in, and he's like OK, I'm going to be interviewed by all these people and they're going to have their own way of asking certain questions. How do we have a permanent platform that we can push news out, we can push our stories out, we can push our own you know guests out, our own people out, and that's where it started from. But now you know how do you continue doing that in 2025? You have to do that in online, online space.
Speaker 1:So during that time when I joined, there was a big push towards there and I really got to be part of it. You know, we experimented with loads of different types of videos, podcasts, um, guests, like you said, show formats and, yeah, I did as much as I could doing that, and you hosted a podcast as well. Yeah, so I launched the Islam channel podcast. Uh, I was approached, you know, while we're around a meeting table like this, I said, okay, what else can we do, shoaib, do you want to do a podcast? And I was like, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2:What made them think that you were the right guy for the job?
Speaker 1:Well, alhamdulillah, I have been running my own podcast for a few years. Oh so dadhood was already going. So dadhood kind of coincided with me joining Islam channel because part of the kind of transitions has meant I was enjoying the education and the media side of things. I wanted to take that further within the media industry, so joined Islam channel and I thought if I join Islam channel as a presenter and producer I can learn a lot, because I have no background in media in terms of camera work, microphones, all this kind of stuff. But going into that space I learned so much and I also had the intention of I did want to start my own podcast. So if I work in Islam Channel I could learn a lot and I could apply that to my own podcast. So at the same time, the same year I joined Islam Channel, I also launched my podcast because it kind of made sense I'm already in that space, I know how everything works within the behind the scenes. I can just apply that to my podcast.
Speaker 2:How did it feel? Because, ever since you graduated, you had the benefit which not a lot of people do in working in fully Muslim organizations.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't think you've ever worked in something that's not a Muslim organization. That's crazy. I have so many questions about that. Please, has it all been good? Or do you find sometimes, as many people often say, the professionalism sometimes lacks in Muslim organizations?
Speaker 1:I regret that you asked this question, not because I'm going to expose anything, but because I don't think it gets talked about enough, anything but because, uh, I don't, I don't think it gets talked about enough. I think, um, people don't fully understand how you can grow and survive within the muslim industry, um, and it's, it's, you know, yeah, I. So I think it's good that we're speaking about it. So I think there's good and bad here. One thing is that, you know, I always felt like I should have done something with my degree that was more in line with what a typical career ladder would look like, and I was advised this very early on. I was told you don't go into men by some older mentors. Don't go into men, don't go into muslim space, go into civil service or go into some think tanks, go into something that's gonna kind of show in your cv that you're kind of growing and you're gonna go up the career ladder. Uh, I didn't listen. I think I was a bit rebellious and, you know, if I'm studying politics and philosophy, I have that kind of personality to be like. You know, I just want to carve my own path and I and I didn't really listen and in some ways I regret that.
Speaker 1:In some ways I'm like you know, maybe I should have done that, because it it took me a long time to get to a stage where I felt comfortable in my career growth, um, whereas for the first few years of my life, of my of not my life, but of of coming out university it was a big struggle, because when you work in the Muslim industry, you don't earn a big salary at all. Yeah, and I got married very early, had children very early, and so it was really difficult for me to set up that life for my family. Um, only, you know, the past few years I would say maybe maybe two to three years is where I felt, okay, I'm at a very decent space now, like I can feel a bit more financially free in a way. Um, so, so in one way I kind of regret that, but in another way, when I speak to brothers who have been in the corporate world for so long, uh, and I hear the kind of problems they're going.
Speaker 1:When I speak to brothers who have been in the corporate world for so long, and I hear the kind of problems they're going through when it comes to trying to, you know, practice, their faith, things that they have to compromise in the workspace, things that they're not allowed to speak about, not having maybe a brotherhood or a sisterhood at the workspace, finding it difficult to pray or to get to Jumu'ah on time All of these things that are kind of problems that clash between the corporate world and your faith. You being Muslim, I've never experienced that.
Speaker 2:I've never had to go through that difficulty.
Speaker 1:Alhamdulillah, I've always been able to pray on time. Alhamdulillah, I've always been able to speak whatever I wanted to say, not feeling afraid that my boss is gonna look at me awkwardly if I speak about Palestine or I mentioned something about God or whatever. It is right. There was always a Allah-centric, faith-centric discussions that took place in wherever I worked, you know, and even to the extent where it's like, oh, I need some time off because of a family matter, it's, there's a lot more understanding because, everybody understands the importance of family when you're working with primarily just Muslims, so things like that is a big pro, I'd say.
Speaker 1:But, like I said, the cons were the salary they don't pay, what the market rate is. And, like you said, the lack of professionalism is definitely there, although things have really changed right. So, like I've spoken to my elder mentors who kind of advised me not to go into it straight away and they're of the mentality that the Muslim spaces are still very unprofessional because they're a little bit older and that's what they experienced then. But I've been able to tell them how it is now because you're finding that you know things are changing, where a lot of the management now are the sort of the next generation down who have experienced the corporate world and then moved over to kind of manage Muslim organizations or Muslim charities, and so there is that level of professionalism that is being brought in from the top down and as well as from the bottom up. You know the those who go into those industries, they're a bit more aware about how things should be yeah, and it's starting to change.
Speaker 2:I think it was very. I think a lot of this and we'll make it clear to the listeners that this isn't islam a lot of this are cultural things coming over from people who are the first or second generation from certain countries where the work standards just weren't as high, and I think some of those bleed into some or bled into some organizations a long time ago. But things have changed and come a long way, alhamdulillah.
Speaker 2:But you know it's so interesting because some of our listeners are from Muslim-majority countries and they may not understand it, but it's hugely mentally taxing when you're working in a career and you're really getting anxiety about I need to pray on time yeah, I need. There's nowhere for me. I can't find a free meeting room. I need to find a staircase yeah, I need to go outside. I need to figure out can I make it to the local masjid on time and then come back for this meeting? It's a huge, huge mental drain for sure um and as the saying goes more money, more problems.
Speaker 1:So that could sometimes be the case.
Speaker 2:Um, okay, so you touched on something there. You got married and became a dad very early on, yeah, and I was really interested because I've seen your podcast. I've seen a few episodes just over the years on dadhood I became a dad two and a half three years ago, but um, so you're gonna be a guest on dadhood now. Yeah, I'll have to, I'll have to be um. But becoming a father that young, yeah, in that industry, how did it change you? How did that make you?
Speaker 1:more of a man like, yeah, so I got. I got married when I was 21, turning 22 within the same sort of month. My wife got pregnant pretty much straight away and same story as me. Yeah we can't.
Speaker 2:Uh, we're not very good those birth rates are high for a reason so.
Speaker 1:So yeah, pretty much 22 years old, and I'm a father 22 years old yeah, oh my god, yeah very.
Speaker 2:How old is your oldest child now?
Speaker 1:so he's six. He's six, yeah, so I am 29 at the moment. Yeah, yeah, so um, and I've got three now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so uh, also it was a question how was it being a father, that early right did it change you? Yeah, you had to grow up so quickly. How to grow up so quick?
Speaker 1:I mean I'll tell you how quick I really had to grow up so quickly. I had to grow up so quickly. I mean I'll tell you how quick I really had to grow up, me and my wife when we got married. So she was still, she was in her second year of university when we got married and I had finished.
Speaker 2:I had already started my career.
Speaker 1:I met her at university. We could even go into that if you want to. I don't know if you want to turn this into a marriage podcast. There's always good, always did get good views, like. I remember listening to um sheikh orman soliman and he was saying if I want to break the internet, I'll talk about marriage and gins. Yes, well, I'll talk about marrying a gin.
Speaker 2:Yes that's the. Yeah, exactly that's the double thing we need to go to. But uh, I assume your wife is not a gin. We can cut that if you want. That'll be a good clip. How did you guys meet?
Speaker 1:um, yeah, so uh, I was in my final year, she was in her first year okay uh, I was the head of the isoc at the time and uh, so she started working within the team, uh, and at that time I wasn't interested in getting married to anyone. To be honest, um, I was, but I was kind of like, uh, in the process of, like, okay, I'm about to graduate soon, yeah, I do want to kind of start looking. So I did start putting stuff out there, like I was, I made a little marriage profile, send out to some aunties. See what was coming around, you know, stuff like this. Um, and there were a few people that were interested in me and, um, you know, but I hadn't paid attention to this who, who I was marrying now, uh, she was just kind of part of the team, uh, and then, and then it wasn't until, uh, I had graduated and then I was starting a master's actually.
Speaker 1:So I started a master's in public policy, um, at Queen Mary's University and, uh, I got a message from one of those aunties that I had sent the thing through to and she was like, how's it going? Have you found anyone? And I was like, no, I haven't found anyone. But what had happened is, um, during that summer period, um, my wife, who I'm married to now. She at the time. So she actually messaged me and she said that I heard that you're looking to get married. Would you be interested?
Speaker 1:basically, so, she kind of reached out to me.
Speaker 1:And then I was like at that time I was like I don't know, I'm about to start a master's. Should I really be thinking about this? I was like I'm kind of in two minds because I put myself out there. I kind of got some things back, some things I like met with one father didn't really work out, et cetera, et cetera. So it was a bit more focused on my masters. So I kind of said no to her at the time. Then, when the auntie told me is anybody interested in you? And I was like there was one sister who kind of messaged and you know she said you know, do you want to set up a meeting between me and my wally and things like this? And I said no to her. She was like what?
Speaker 2:are you doing? Yeah, literally, what are you doing? That's my thoughts exactly. You had an opportunity here. 99% of the problem is finding someone Honestly.
Speaker 1:So it was like. It was like came to my doorstep and I was like no. And so she was like no, you're crazy. She was like at least have the meeting. All she's asking for is a meeting. And she's opened the conversation and said speak to my wali. I said, all right, fine. So I messaged her back and I said, okay, let's do it. Send me your wali's number. So she is english uh, revert muslim oh, no, way, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:So what's your?
Speaker 1:background, so I'm pakistani, okay yeah so.
Speaker 1:so her wali wouldn't have been her father, her father's non-muslim, so wali would have been the been the local Imam near our university who I already knew. So I just spoke to him and he was like I think it might be a good idea for us to have a meeting. We had a few meetings met with her family, she met with my family and it worked out. Basically, she ticked all the boxes, alhamdulillah, and I didn looking to get married. I'm focused on my master's, uh and, and I didn't even think about marrying somebody who's a reaver or an english lady or anything like that across your mind.
Speaker 2:I'd never really crossed my mind.
Speaker 1:I was just thought it was going to be the kind of normal thing. If you're pakistani, you're probably gonna marry a pakistani girl and you know your mom might introduce you to someone or you might find somebody and you know how was that?
Speaker 2:what did your, what did your parents say?
Speaker 1:at first my mom was quite hesitant, um, because completely new. You know, nobody in our um family had married outside the culture, so it's completely new. But she was open to it. You know, she's the kind of mom, um, that always let me and my siblings kind of choose what we wanted to do, like she didn't really force us down a particular degree for university or a particular career, uh, she was just very supportive. Um, so she was just like it's a bit weird, but let's see what this is all about.
Speaker 1:And she was really happy with, with, uh, with my wife and uh, uh, yeah, it worked out in that way and that kind of actually opened the door awful than my sister. So my sister got married after me, um, and she got married to african-american and, if you know, given our cultures, asian cultures, it's like whoa, that's a completely different culture right completely big shift right for us, uh. But I think I kind of broke the ice there. So it was. It was a bit easier for my sister generational impact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so now, like you know, my kids and my, my sister's kids are like all different cultures going on, that's beautiful and so you got married, yeah um, I think the original question was about being a dad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you've found yourself.
Speaker 1:You guys had fallen pregnant earlier than expected I assume earlier than yeah, yeah um, you're very young, you just started working or, yeah, so still studying at that point. So what was interesting is, I was doing my master's part-time whilst working full-time at mend, because when I found out I was becoming a father.
Speaker 2:Kestrel was like in a really tricky period. Okay, as a startup, because, as you know, startups go through ups and downs, especially in those early days. There's a reason why 90 of startups don't make it through their first year yeah and I just got married. My wife would come into the room and it's like, okay, so this is happening.
Speaker 1:Um and is that how she dropped it to you? No, I don't know if I can say exactly okay, sure, sure, a bit more emotional than that, right.
Speaker 2:Because it was quite unexpected. But I remember being really excited. But looking back on it I'm thinking I was so naive about what it actually meant to be a father and the responsibility that I was going to have to take on and it slowly kind of dawned on me over the next nine months what was happening.
Speaker 2:Especially Kestrel was going through this up and down period. Alhamdulillah I saw the benefit of the barakah that comes into your life yeah, becoming a father and that I do believe that Kestrel survived because my son was born when he was. But we found like a whole new revenue stream that we weren't expecting before. B2b catering to Islamic banks was never on the roadmap and then suddenly banks were reaching out to us to do that. Did you find a similar experience?
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. And if you ask you know any father that is working hard at trying to grow their career or their business and they have a child. Like 99% of the time they're like you know, when my child was born, or shortly after, or just before, something happened to my career growth or something happened to my business and Allah just put barakah in it and I found a very similar thing. You know, at first when I found out, I was like I just went straight into survival mode.
Speaker 1:I was like all right, cool, what do I need to do now? And the plan was that my wife was going to finish her degree and I was going to finish my master's, and then we'd move in together with each other. We would live apart until that's all done, and then you know, me as much as she was still living out.
Speaker 2:There she was, you were still living I was even got my parents.
Speaker 1:She was actually living in a university accommodation uh house with some other sisters that were studying uh on the same course as her um, and then you, you know, when she told me she's pregnant, I was like you can't be staying there by yourself, I'm going to have to take care of you because things are going to change dramatically. And very early into the pregnancy it was very stressful for her so she couldn't actually carry on her degree. She had to take a pause. So she told the university you know she's going to take a pause for her until she gives birth and then, if she can go back, she'll go back. She didn't end up going back and for me I was like, well, if we're going to live together. It was hard for her to move into my parents' house because my brother still lived there.
Speaker 1:And so it would be a problem when it comes to hijab.
Speaker 1:And she was like she won a club as well and it was very difficult in that way. And then pregnant, and then you know you don't want all that kind of stuff. So I was like, okay, we're going to have to move in with each other. So then I had to sacrifice something as well. Then she sacrificed her degree because it was too hard with the stress of the baby. And then I had to look am I going to, you know, sacrifice my part-time degree or my full-time income? Obviously, the degree was going to go right. So the degree went because I needed to give time to my wife, and that's when I had to find somewhere to live. So I ended up finding somewhere in Essex which was a bit more affordable than living in London, because I was on, I mean, working at MEND. You're not going to be earning an amazing salary. You know it's a charity at the end of the day. So I was actually On a 20k wage. Nothing, really nothing. I was on a 20k wage and this was what. 2017, 2018.
Speaker 1:This is 2017-18.
Speaker 2:So so for people outside the UK, 20k around London Is that's barely Kind of survivable yeah.
Speaker 1:Barely Barely. You're barely barely, but Allah put some barakah in it because I made the intention of taking care of my wife, of moving out, getting our own space. We moved somewhere in Essex, Chelmsford, where there's a train line that goes straight into East London where men's office was. And you know, the other way, the train is going into the other part of Essex where my wife's family is, and so that was kind of like ideal for us and Allah just made it easy. You know, my wife wasn't working. I was the only one that was working, and ever since we got married up until now she's never had to work. I've always been working and providing for everything, and that kind of taught me a lot. You know the sacrifice I had to make, the hard work I had to do, and you know, just a few months before my son was born I knew I needed extra funds to be able to support the baby coming into the world.
Speaker 1:So you know, I took on a second job in the morning, a coffee shop. So the coffee shop was right next to the Chelmsford train station. That would get on to go uh, to get the train into London. So I'd go there at 5 am, I'd open the shop and make sandwiches, coffees et cetera, serve everyone. 9, 10 am, I'd just jump straight on the train.
Speaker 1:I would go down to Mend, get started at my work in Mend, finish there about usually 7, 8 o'clock, then get on the train and go back home. And I did that for, I think about five months before my son was born, in order to kind of like get a bit more dough in the house. But alhamdulillah, after my son was born, that's when I got a promotion at work, so they were able to pay me a bit more, take on a bit more responsibility, and then things have kind of grown and grown and grown since then.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to Muslim Money Talk. If you like what you've heard so far, you might be interested in checking out what we do at Kestrel, the Muslim money app. Kestrel is a service that helps Muslims who want to grow their wealth without having to compromise, whether it's on their belief or user experience or price. I founded Kestrel because of how fed up I was at how poor Islamic financial services were in this country. Often people didn't use them because of how bad the user experience or customer service and indeed how high in price they were. So Kestrel was the answer to that. If you download the Kestrel app today, it can help you by creating a budgeting plan. Plug in whatever bank account you have and it will create a auto budget just for you. You can then tell us what goals you're saving for, and we'll save towards them automatically into pots and then, crucially, link you towards sharia compliant investment and savings products as well. So download kestrel today and try it out for yourself.
Speaker 1:Now back to the podcast yeah, thank you so much for sharing and getting so personal with that.
Speaker 2:That's okay um, is that what inspired you to make a whole podcast around this journey? Dadhood? Was that the reasoning for it? Is it being a father whilst also being muslim?
Speaker 1:and I guess there aren't too many channels for for father, for muslim, but there's so many like sisters group and, yeah, muslim mothers, sisters groups and all that, but I've not really seen one for dads yes, so then, or being stuff for dads, was one of the biggest motivating factors for me to start dadhood, um, but the biggest one was that I didn't grow up with my father and uh. So my mom and my dad divorced when I was like maybe one years old. So I had never seen him and I only reconnected with him after my son was born.
Speaker 2:So when I was no contact at all no contact.
Speaker 1:So there was, there was a huge kind of court case and there was a. There was a lot of difficulty basically between my mom and my dad and how that kind of had to be resolved. And I've kind of gone into a bit more detail on other podcasts about this so people can listen to it. But point being is that I wasn't able to have contact with my father up until I was about 16. So after about 16 years old is when everything finished and I'm allowed to then go ahead and make my own contact, I can do what I want basically, but I chose not to.
Speaker 1:So there was a lot of like resentment that I had against my father for all the things that had happened over the years, and so I didn't until my son was about to be born. And when my son was about to be born, I kind of questioned I don't know, maybe Allah put this question in my head, but it was like you're about to become a father and you don't have a relationship with your own father. I felt something wrong within my soul about that. So, you know, my wife really encouraged me, uh, to get in touch with my dad and I managed to find his number um from family members. Okay, I kind of got in touch and I said it's your son, shoaib. You know happy to connect with you and he was.
Speaker 1:I was really scared that this was gonna be like he doesn't want anything to do with me yeah but he was genuinely happy that he had heard from me and I was like, wow, like this whole time that I thought, because of the resentment I had, I thought it was going to be like a clash, but it wasn't, um, and that that is what really motivated me to start Dadhood, because I was like I know that there are loads of other Muslims out there that are from single parent households, haven't grown up with their dad and are probably very nervous about becoming a dad the same way I was.
Speaker 1:And if I can do something in this space, as well as there not being enough conversations about Muslim dads anyway, like you mentioned. So if I can do something in this space whether that's YouTube videos, podcasts, articles, whatever it is I think I should do it, because at some point, somebody like me who didn't grow up with their dad is going to be searching online how to be a dad right, and I hope that dadhood pops up for them and they find a space and a community that they can, you know, gravitate towards and they can find some sort of relief. They're like, okay, they're talking about everything. All the questions I had in my head that I didn't know how to answer because I've never had a dad to look up to these guys, these guests. This podcast has kind of answered that for me. So that was the main thing Incredible Mashallah.
Speaker 2:May Allah bless you For those efforts, because I've not seen Anything else like that Out there Incredible, alhamdulillah. So I really want to get into what you're doing At Muslim Kids TV, because I think it's kind of this beautiful Cherry on the top Of this career that you've been building in the muslim space and education, becoming a father, fatherhood and now now your relationship with your own children. Yeah, what is the problem with tv, movies, games for children out there in the mainstream today?
Speaker 1:there's a plethora of problems, unfortunately, um, what we're finding now from the first thing that comes to mind is how shows are being created now versus how they were created when we were growing up, in terms of, first of all, the animations. So there is a big talk right now about screen time and how screen time can be very damaging. Growing up, probably, our parents never heard this term screen time and you know we could just be sat in front of the TV for hours.
Speaker 2:And the closest thing was don't sit too near to the tv. That was it right. Yeah, your eyes will turn square.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and there's something to do with the kind of old style tvs and the kind of rays that they would admit or something like this.
Speaker 1:Right, um, but there was. There was never this idea of like, if you have too much screen time, it's gonna like scramble your brain or something like this. But recently, of course, there's been loads of studies coming out and even the NHS advises that below two years old there should be no screen time at all. And then after two years old, there can be screen time, but it should be only like video calls with family or something live. And then even after that, you know they, they, they say, okay, you can watch cartoons or youtube or whatnot, but should be limited to 30 minutes to an hour a day. So all this research is coming out. Why is all this research coming out? Because it's not necessarily to do with the screen itself, but what content is being shown on the screen. If you look back at the cartoons that we watched growing up, uh, the scene would only change maybe every six to eight seconds. Now the scenes are changing every two to three seconds, sometimes quicker than that on certain shows.
Speaker 2:So it caters to short attention spans yes people getting bored with something, yes, and the thing which is coming to mind the most is, I think um some of the parents out there they'll probably know it cocoa melon, cocoa melon. Yes, thing which is coming to mind the most is I think some of the parents out there will probably know it Coco Melon. Coco Melon, yes, which is this very bright, very vibrant little show for babies on TV. But people are saying it's really overstimulating them and destroying attention spans before they've even had a chance to use them in any meaningful way, way before school age.
Speaker 1:They're already being programmed to want to see different things all the time. You know, for them to be able to just focus on your face, that was what babies and toddlers are supposed to do for their brain development. They are not being programmed to do that because what they're watching for so many hours in the day is always changing. Then, on top of that, like you mentioned, the bright colors. Now, this also wasn't something that existed in the cartoons that we watched when we were younger, because there wasn't HD and it was very hard to produce that kind of color from the.
Speaker 1:TV screen Now you can produce, you know, 4k, 8k. You can make really bright colors and that's really, you know, oversaturated and can very much affect a child's cognitive abilities because of how much information is being fed into their brain. So that's the first part. Is that the way that the shows are being made, the colors and the speed at which everything's being shown is damaging. So that's one problem we're facing, but that's not specifically a Muslim problem?
Speaker 2:That's just a human problem.
Speaker 1:Health, that's just a problem for all of us, right, and we should be careful of that from a health angle. Okay, then there's the problem with the content, which is where Muslims or anybody that is more morally conscious or follows any particular faith would be shocked. Now, because there are a lot of children's shows being produced that goes against our morals as muslims. Um, you have shows which are pushing characters that come from various different sexual backgrounds. You have, um, you have, storylines that are being pushed that, um, you could say, celebrate some of the occupist occupying you know entities in the world at the moment.
Speaker 1:Um, you have movies that are coming out that are very supportive of those kind of storylines. You have actors in those movies that are very supportive of this. Um, and you have lessons that are being drawn which open up a kind of worms of, uh, you know, being very secularist in their uh, in their approach of teaching morals, which very much removes the idea of accountability towards a higher power or god or something like this. And you know, a lot of the shows are very much focused on the self, are very much focused on uh, becoming uh, your own, your own individuality becoming something that's like the main part of the character.
Speaker 2:now it pushes the message whatever that might be at the time, which, as Muslims, we have to be very cognizant of, and everyone has a right to understand what media their children are exposed to and to choose whether or not to say no to it. But I think, as busy parents, sometimes you just think, oh, it's show, it's fine, yeah right, there's nothing explicit in there, they're not swearing, there's no like sexual explicit. You know behavior on there.
Speaker 2:I'll just put it on it's fine, but there's all this like subtle stuff which is coming through. I keep thinking. I'm like thinking of examples. I was trying to rack my brain for them sometimes. I remember growing up there would just be like kid shows on disney or nickelodeon where there'd be some weird reference, like a character would just say oh, stay back, I know krav maga right or something like they're being bullied.
Speaker 2:Yeah, krav maga, people don't know is a martial art that is developed and pretty much only employed by the israeli defense force, the idf, uh when subjugating palestinians right, which is a bizarre thing to put into a children's show like recess or something on on disney. And then I was watching a movie the other day like the latest predator movie. Right, it's a silly movie about all these soldiers get thrown onto a planet and this alien is hard to look down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're all going around right, like, okay, where are you from? It's like, oh yeah. It's like, oh yeah, I was part of Special Forces, the SAS. Oh yeah, I was part of the US Marine. It gets to this woman. It's like, yeah, I was a sniper for the idea.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, Subhanallah.
Speaker 2:It's like a sniper, not just the idea, but a sniper. What do you think they were sniping Of? They were sniping, of course, right, and when it comes to them, all like sharing war stories and stuff, and then it gets to her point part and the american soldiers like don't worry, you don't need to you don't need to share that. Yeah, and it's like that's the normalization, yeah, which is happening and has happened for the longest time. And, to be honest, this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this has happened for a long time. So when working at mend, one of the things that we would do, we had media workshops, uh, to kind of break down how the media industry works, how you can enter into it, whether you're a journalist or whatever it may be. But the first thing in that media workshop is to understand what you're walking into and where we'd have a whole module on orientalism and how orientalism has been, uh kind of inserted within the media industry. So you have, you know, things that we've grown up with, like aladdin, that is portraying, uh, arabs or indians or muslims in a particular light where you know they they've got, you know swords and they're angry and they're stealing things, and you know they're chopping hands off and even the opening song to aladdin the opening song, they'll cut off your nose if they don't like your face there you go right, and I think the only characters that looked like normal people were the main characters aladdin jasmine everyone else just looked like a stereotype yeah exactly in there.
Speaker 2:But yet, as kids, like if someone said, oh yeah, what's your favorite disney? You kind of felt, oh yeah it's the muslim one, right, yeah? Even though, like the princess, basically, is wearing a bikini throughout the movie yeah yeah and and some.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, okay, maybe, uh, we have a certain filter as muslims. To you know, our parents may have uh taught us certain lessons that allows us to filter certain content in a particular way. But what about everybody else? How are they then viewing muslims when they see this kind of stuff? Right same thing when you had, you know, movies like Homelander, um, you know, was that show uh?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah where we know the, the celebrating, the fact that you know he's in a uh part of a military operation that is killing our brothers and sisters, and he's being celebrated, uh, by that and and through that. So this, all of this sort of, already exists. And then it's also feeding into the children's shows as well, and the cartoons, animations that we're watching. I mean, not too long ago, uh, this is something me and my wife do, and I recommend all parents do is that we watch any movies or shows before we let our children watch them. Um, so, we watched a movie called Zootropolis, which I'm not sure if this is Disney or DreamWorks.
Speaker 2:It's Disney, disney, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know, the underlying theme in all of that was how the rabbit escapes from her family to chase her own dreams, because her family is holding her back and she wants to be this individual, free person that can do whatever she wants, even if that means partnering up with a thief, even if that means, of you know, going going through all of these kind of crazy scenarios. Uh, even you know there was a scene where the, the fox and the rabbit go to a place where clearly they're doing the animals are doing drugs. It's basically what they're showing right, oh, the yoga one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, okay, and they're clearly like in this kind of hippie environment where they're doing drugs and all this kind of stuff, and it's like as an adult I can see all of these damaging themes being put into this underlying message of you know what this rabbit wants to do with her life and how she wants to escape from her family, and only a riot at the end is like, oh, I really do love my family, but you know, the main message was go out there and do what you want to do. I can see it as an adult, how my children really get. They're not going to realize it, they're just going to think it's a fun movie with animals. But there is a subliminal message that will come through and the more they engage with those kinds of shows and movies and the more of that kind of content that they take in whether that's novels that they're reading, whether that's the Harry Potters of the world where they're normalizing magic and these kinds of things it's clearly going to create this kind of bedrock of problem and of dissent problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and dissent. So how is muslim kids tv tackling these things? Where you talked about there's a health risk, there's a content risk, there's this kind of subliminal messaging. Was that the basis for muslim kids tv?
Speaker 1:yeah. So muslim kids tv was born out of definitely this need that we need high quality shows for Muslim children and Muslim audiences. Now, growing up, if you watch any Muslim shows, it would have very likely been very low quality stuff. Um, they probably did their job, you know. They probably got the message across that should be, should kind of go across to Muslim children, children but it would have been done in a very low quality way.
Speaker 2:It felt like homework yeah, that's what it was right. It wasn't like you were sitting down to watch spongebob exactly.
Speaker 1:It wasn't like oh, that's a character that I really love and I'm gonna watch that character and I've got toys of that character. You know all that. I'm gonna wear the pajamas, you know. Uh, it wasn't like that. Yeah, exactly, it was like your parents kind of put it on and that's what you were going to watch, and then when you were watching it, it wasn't really meeting the quality of the Disneys and the Nickelodeons and whatnot.
Speaker 1:So it was kind of born out of that, like, how do we make high quality Muslim children shows? So there was there's a production house that precedes Muslim Kids TV called Maido Productions, which kind of owns Muslim Kids TV. They've been creating Muslim shows in Canada for decades and then in 2016 is when they made the decision to take all of those shows and house them on an app that would be similar to Netflix or Disney Plus, and since then there's been loads of iterations of the app and there's been a whole team that has grown behind that. There's a production house in Canada that continues to produce content for Muslim Kids TV. There's an outreach specialist that is reaching out to other media houses across the globe to bring in productions into the Muslim Kids TV app that are halal Muslim friendly. You have a marketing team. You have an in-app development IT team. You've got sales, um, so it's kind of grown since 2016. So it's reaching its 10th year soon, inshallah, and it's the yes, the biggest one out there. How?
Speaker 1:is it funded. It's got some grants from the canadian government. So the canadian government um fund a lot of media, uh, that are from so movies, shows, cartoons, et cetera, and they give grants. So it's not a loan. You get tax relief benefits as well and you know the things that they're looking for is diverse. You know they want shows that they can show. Look, Canada's producing diverse content and as Muslims, we fit the bill. Sometimes we get scared when it comes to, oh, they want diversity and inclusion, but if you can pitch it in the correct way, you can definitely utilize those funds when it comes to diversity and inclusion for the sake of telling your stories as a Muslim, and that's what we've been able to do, and we've never compromised on our values.
Speaker 1:It's very clear that we're not gonna show any characters that are part of any other trend that goes against our values, and we definitely push Muslim content, muslim stories, through the productions we've made, so that's a big help. And then we've got local investors from Canada as well, muslims who, alhamdulillah, have a high net worth individuals, and they've, uh, pumped a lot of money into muslim kids tv so, so they're, they're investors uh, but so far we haven't taken any uh big investment funds from.
Speaker 2:You know bodies like y combinator I think that's important, especially when you look at often who sits at the top of those funds and what their agendas are yeah the freedom to remain independent to an extent is really important, especially in this space. Um so, what are your most popular tv shows?
Speaker 1:out there at the moment. That's very good question. So, uh, we have, uh, not the most popular, but one that's upcoming.
Speaker 1:I'll start with that which is called time hoppers okay which is a 3d animated series as well as a movie that's going to be shown in theaters really yeah we've already got some distribution deals going on in in areas like saudi arabia and in the gulf states, in canada and america and soon in the uk as well. And this is about a group of children in 2050 who have um with it. They go to a private Islamic school in Canada and one of the professors has basically produced a machine that can time travel. Kids are falling into the machine and now they go back to the golden ages or golden ages of.
Speaker 1:Islam, right, I don't always like using that term, but it's just it helps. Some of the viewers are more familiar with that kind of word. So go back to those years and meet all of these scientists and these scholars, men and women of Islam. And they meet these people in order to figure out how to get back to the future again, you know, because they are the most intellectual minds, so they might be able to help them solve, you know, how to, you know read the map or how to get through a particular challenge, um, so they have to do all of that. And there's one evil character, as there always is, that tries to uh, keep those children from going to the future and to try and find the secret of time travel himself. Um, so that's gonna be really cool and that's, you know, uh, you can actually find. I think the trailers of that is already out on our youtube channel.
Speaker 2:We'll put a link to it, yeah, you can find it.
Speaker 1:That is like disney level animation quality, like a lot of money has been pumped into that. I think it's almost a two million pound project so far. Uh, probably more money now is going to go into marketing as well. Um, so it could very easily go all the way up to 10 million pounds, this kind of project or dollars. So that's like a big one. That's going to be like a flagship inshallah, and that's like. The idea is like let's rival the mainstream.
Speaker 2:Let's rival Hollywood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah For sure, but then we've got other things, so we've got original characters like Mango the cat, which the kids really, really love. What's really interesting is that it does take, you know, some time for the kids to give up the Spider-Mans, the Peppa Pigs, the Cocoa Melons, the Harry Potters, whatever else you're showing them, and get them hooked onto our characters. Mango the cat, you've got Zain Abadnaji, you've got Franklin, you've got a bunch of these other characters that we've created or we've sourced from other creators and put them into our app.
Speaker 1:Uh, because obviously they're used to seeing these mainstream characters so you know, like you said, parents sometimes it's hard, right, you just want to put something on and you're. You just want your children to be distracted so you can get along with what you want to get on with. But if the parents just put a little bit of effort of trying to show them these shows every single day, I would say about two to three weeks you'll find the behavior shifts and they do begin to recognize these characters and they do begin to find a love for these characters, because the way the shows are now made are much more high quality. The storylines are much better, the animation quality is much better. Um, you know everything that goes into making a good production. Muslim Kids TV is rivaling the mainstream shows. So my own kids now ask me to watch, you know, shows on Muslim Kids TV rather than watching the Disney's and Netflix, because they now recognize the characters that exist on Muslim Kids TV.
Speaker 2:That's so interesting because I'm just thinking like in terms of what I show my own. Well, I've got a two, almost three year old son. I've got a six month old, so she doesn't watch anything. She's not meant to, but the my boy. He's very interested in, it's very simple right. Animals, dinosaurs, in particular dinosaurs are his number one thing, whatever it is. And then cars and construction diggers.
Speaker 2:So any show that's centered around that he will watch. Most of the time he's focused on documentary style things because it's easy as long as it doesn't get too violent, with a dinosaur ripping apart another one which happens.
Speaker 1:Right, We'll just fast forward that.
Speaker 2:But it's an easy thing and and it's cute, he learns all the names and he learns about, oh, what nocturnal is and carnivore and all that sort of thing so that's in your learning a lot as well.
Speaker 1:Well, no, it's good, it's something I'm very personally interested in. But um.
Speaker 2:beyond that, there are like arabic shows out there on youtube as well. There's like Kalam Kids and Kiki Wanna Douche, where they just very simply go through, like you know what cat is in Arabic? The numbers one to 10, all of that. So it's very educational and there's an Arabic like basis to it, and they sometimes go into like the Islamic aspect as well, where they'll talk in English about that. But the quality is there's always like a drop in quality yeah with that because it's they're independent creators doing it on youtube.
Speaker 2:Do you think there's still a gap in quality? Or with things and potential franchises like time hoppers you just talked about? Yeah is it going to meet the levels of disney or even beyond what we're seeing in animation happening right now with the likes of spider verse and um puss in boots? Even the new shrek has, like new, animated, updated style um yeah is there a gap or do you think we're starting to meet that?
Speaker 1:now. So there is a gap. Right, there is a gap. Um, the problem here is that these industries have millions and millions of dollars being pumped, pushed into them and pumped into them Non-Muslim, the mainstream industry. You find that investors find a lot of value in media, whereas within our own Muslim community, we very rarely find value in media. Things are starting to change, like you know. Years ago you wouldn't have found masjids starting up their own podcasts, and now they are. They're on.
Speaker 2:YouTube now. We filmed a few episodes in our Evington Community Center Masjid in Leicester. Shout out to Evington mashallah.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Right, they're starting to see the value of having media, but for a long time we haven't and, to be honest, we're still very far behind many of our high net worth individuals in the Muslim community that I've had conversations with to pitch to them this idea that we need your investment for these kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Some of them get it, but a lot of them don't understand the value that it can bring. And the problem here is then you know, these are the other mainstream industries are just going to grow and grow and grow and we're not going to be able to catch up to that gap. Yes, we're catching up in a way. Like I said, there are these kinds of IPs, time hoppers, et cetera, but it's never going to reach that level of the Shreks and all the other examples that you gave if we don't have our community investing into it. And even more than that, you find that those lobbies and groups that are trying to push for their own agendas that go against our own values. They are pumping millions into Nickelodeon, into other media houses, in order to show characters that have a certain sexual orientation, for example. They're actually paying for this stuff to happen.
Speaker 2:But beyond the fictional elements as well. They can be hugely damaging in real life as well. Well, they can be hugely damaging in real life as well, because you see um child actors go through disney and nickelodeon and where they end up. Yeah, and today, because there was this, almost like the disney um program or route where you would star in some kind of kid show, you'd end up with some sort of music contract. They inevitably would fall off the rails and then you'd have some sort of a comeback if you did it all.
Speaker 2:Uh, and young people are emulating that. I had a lot of family in america growing up and I remember the weirdest thing, where and this is like post 9-11 we went over there and I think I made some comments about the iraq war and people getting really weird. It's like the muslim community.
Speaker 2:They're getting really weird kids my age I was like 13, 14, yeah and there was this idea that you don't say anything bad about the military, to an extent that there were kids. I mean. It was very different at the time. Sure, yeah, I don't want people writing in from San Francisco and New York saying, what the hell are you talking about? This was like mid-2000s, where people were interested in going to military school. Right, why? Because there was some Disney movie that had come out, I think, called like cadet kelly or something, starring hillary duff, right right, where she was going to go to be a soldier. Wow, right, and that's what kids, a lot of kids, wanted to do muslim kids wanted to do.
Speaker 2:That's incredible and these individuals I've spoken to them about it recently and they look back and they're like, yeah, that was insane but they were kind of brainwashed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true, yeah, it surprises me when you say there are older people in the community who maybe don't understand the power that media holds when, yeah, most of us are glued to our phones or screens, yeah, 18 hours a day yeah, right, I mean I, you know I it's unfortunate because you know, when we're trying to tell them how media really shapes our stories and our narratives, you know they're not really seeing it and and it really does.
Speaker 1:You know and I think this is so important for people to understand is we used to say, growing up, that you are, you are what you eat. Now it's you are what you consume. For sure, whatever you watch on your phone, on your tablets, on your laptops, that is what is defining your narratives, personalities, and that's changing the conversations. I mean, you know, I've, uh, I also work with a um, with an online Islamic school, and we went away for the team and some of the parents and the students went away for a residential and while I was, I was there at that residential.
Speaker 1:Uh, the head teacher he's the head teacher of the online school, but the school also has a physical branch. So I'm asking him okay, in the physical branch, what conversations are you seeing on the playground? And he's saying, shoaib, the conversations are no longer organically created in the playground. The conversations are created online, before they come to school and they're just carrying on those conversations there in the playground and they're just carrying on those conversations there in the playground. So right now, the biggest thing that we're seeing for our children is the media that they're consuming is really creating the conversations that they're having with each other and the friendships that they're making. So if we really wanna change the narrative, we really wanna protect the fitrah, we wanna flip the script and we wanna make sure that our children are growing up with the right messages. Media is one of the biggest tools here. Whether that's online media, whether that's tv movies, that whole media industry is so important for us to pump our time and our energy and our money into.
Speaker 2:That's what muslim kids tv is trying to do wow subhanallah, what a great point to kind of, I was going to say, end this one, but there's so much more that we still have some time. I'm happy to go. I'm happy to keep going. Let's keep on going. If you had to pitch your own show, a Muslim's Kids TV or wherever else have you ever thought about that? I'm sure you have.
Speaker 1:That's a really good question. I haven't given it a lot of thought, given a lot of thought, but I have had my own ideas. Okay, uh, one idea that I really want to do is kind of relevant to a podcast scenario is I wanted to create like a children's podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, um. So I got this idea, um, from something that my kids listen to. So there's like a five minute children's podcast that they listen to every day, where there's this guy called jake and he kind of every day he just has these new facts that he brings up to the children and he talks about something going on in the world. So it might be, you know, a football team has won a championship, or you know, something is something cool has happened, basically, so something upbeat, and he also brings some cool new facts and figures. So it might be five facts about pokemon, or it might be five facts about dinosaurs, or something like that. Is this on youtube or no? This? So this is available on something called Yoto.
Speaker 2:Oh, we have the Yoto player. Oh, amazing, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So Yoto player people who don't know, it's like a great, it has like its own.
Speaker 1:I didn't know if you wanted me to say the brand, but yeah, I like it a lot.
Speaker 2:Yoto, if you want to sponsor us, do, but we use that for my son because he's a big fan of stories, okay story books and we have, like, a lot of muslim specific um stories as well. But it's a great like audio reader.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, young kids, it's amazing so it's got like.
Speaker 2:He loves the story series called the oi oi frog and there's another one called uh, mog mog the cat. So the series of that, and uh, um, elma the elephant, yeah, that kind of thing, but they have their own radio show, yeah, so they've got their own podcast, basically that updates daily on on on the player.
Speaker 1:Uh, so you just like you turn the dial to like the podcast icon or something I don't know, my kids know how to do it. Yeah, uh, sounds so odd uh yeah, so so I found that really cool, like they really enjoy it. I enjoy it, um, and so I wanted to make one that is like more Muslim friendly basically for Muslim children.
Speaker 1:So that's something I'd want to do through Muslim Kids TV maybe. Another idea that I had was because Muslim Kids TV is based in Canada and a lot of the productions are Canadian productions. Although they get productions sent in from loads of different places around the world and they fill to them and then they put them onto the app, they haven't got much uk content.
Speaker 2:They have a little bit.
Speaker 1:There are some producers over here that we've worked with, but I'd love to do more british shows. Uh, on the muslim kids tv app, because I think you know, growing up cartoon ever can, whatever disney, whatever we watch, was all american. Yeah, all the shows are american and I think having some muslim british kids talking about something fun or, you know, a live action maybe like going through british muslim history or something like that in a kid-friendly way.
Speaker 1:I think it would be really cool. So you know I hope these things can happen and you know I'm I want these things to happen, but it's only really gonna happen if we can get more, more people behind muslim kids tv really sure, yeah, so where is muslim kids tv in terms of viewership and and so?
Speaker 2:because it's a subscription-based service, yeah, similar to netflix right now can you? You download the app. You can watch it on your tv.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly so we call it. We always call it the halal disney plus, because it's the easiest way to kind of get the message across of what it is. But yeah, you get that app everywhere. So you just download the app on your smartphone, your TV, your tablet, you can log on on the website on your laptop and you just subscribe. It's £8 per month, so it's not much. It's £7.99.
Speaker 2:It's a lot. It's like what Netflix used to be be.
Speaker 1:yeah, basically yeah um, so it's not much, and you get access to about 15 000 pieces of content. So there's already like loads of episode shows, movies, 15 000, 15 000, yeah, wow, yeah, and it's still counting, because on top of the movie and show library that we have, we also have ebooks. Okay, um, we also have games that we've produced in-house. So the advantage to the games is, uh, it's really good for parents, because a lot of the times the parents download loads of games on the tablets for the kids to play, but these free games usually come with adverts and you have to usually download, like so many, because kids want to play different ones. The games on muslim kids tv are very similar to kind of the games that you'd find on the app store, but it has no adverts and it has no download time either. You just play them straight in the app.
Speaker 2:Nice yeah, so I have two follow-up questions one is about branding and one is about age range, so I guess I start with the age one first, because right now the kids shows. What do you think the upper ages for like viewership is that kind of like 12, 13?
Speaker 2:yeah, so for us it goes up to about 12 do you think there's a real opportunity to go beyond, to do stuff that appeals to teens or even just adults? Yeah, when I think of like Muslim-focused things that I like to watch, that I genuinely enjoyed Earth or All, which was this Turkish show which talked about the rise of the father of the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's about five series long, loads of episodes. Yeah, probably too many episodes, but it was hugely popular because it was about five series long, loads of episodes. Yeah, probably too many episodes, but it was hugely popular because it was about these warriors who, just you know, were muslim and they'd be seen praying and eating halal and all of that. But it told this story of this hugely important thing that happened in islamic history. It took most of turkey, but then also pakistan, by storm as well. My grandparents, watching.
Speaker 1:That's a big deal to get my grandmother to watch. It's not a pakistani drama, but they're also Pakistan by Storm as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah the translator. My grandparents were watching.
Speaker 2:That's a big deal to get my grandmother to watch, because it's not a Pakistani drama. I think we're missing more content like that, because that was good but it wasn't. The quality was still a little bit lacking. Sometimes it would drag, the stories would drag there were too many episodes or all of that, but it was the closest thing we had to like a Muslim Game of Thrones type thing. Is that something you see a real need for? Is Muslim Kids TV becoming just Muslim?
Speaker 1:TV. Yeah, so Muslim Kids TV has its main focus on children and I don't think that's going to change. Maybe in the future, who knows? But that conversation has come up internally within the team before and the focus has always been we're creating children's content. But in my experience of being within the media industry Islam Channel, muslim Kiss TV, et cetera there is a big gap when it comes to the teenagers and when it comes to kind of the 20s and the 30 year olds and that kind of space. There is a big gap there. For the teenagers, what I believe is needed is going to where they are. They're on youtube. They're watching mr beast chunks, for sure, whatever all of those kind of guys, right, and we need to be there. So we need to find people within the muslim community that can create, uh, that kind of content, but it's rooted in our own values. So when they watch those youtube videos, that can be fun, can be creative, but there should be nothing in there that glorifies any anything that goes against our morals against so, unfortunately you do.
Speaker 1:you know you have some awesome creators, but a lot of the time they do fall into situations where they're talking about, maybe, relationships that are not appropriate for our young people. Or even if you're watching things like Mr Beast, there's a big focus on money and richness and Lamborghinis and jets and all that kind of stuff and, again, that's not something we want to pump into the teenagers. So I believe there needs to be somebody who is a fun personality, somebody that the teenagers feel like they can relate to, and they should be creating fun things like challenges and maybe even like pranks that are appropriate pranks and things like this. It's all. You don't even have to mention Islam or Muslim, but it just needs to be rooted in some sort of ethic and goodness.
Speaker 2:That's my question around the branding as well, because I'm just going to use the term Jewish content and stuff that's created out there. It isn't necessarily packaged as.
Speaker 2:Jewish but they'll often have the undertones there, which I think is quite a smart way to do it when you put the Muslim label on something, and we find this in Islamic finance as well. In Islamic finance, we believe that this is genuinely a good financial system for everyone, regardless of your religion. It's not just you're doing this so you have to subscribe to this. It's something that genuinely should be replacing the conventional financial system, which has huge flaws, huge issues and drives wealth inequality. Is there a case to do the same for this drives wealth inequality. Is there a case to do the same for this? Is there a time where muslim kids tv will just become?
Speaker 2:kids tv yeah and it becomes much more mainstream. Just the main character just happens to be muslim and happens to be pushing these values. Yeah, or is that two larger changes?
Speaker 1:that requires like state backing, um, at the moment so I hope, uh, all muslim organizations can get to that stage right, because, because Islam is there for everyone, it's not supposed to be an identity that is particular for a particular group of people, you know. It's supposed to be a value system that everybody is able to ascribe to right. It's supposed to give value to everyone, and so I think, hopefully, the whole kind of halal Muslim industry should be moving towards that direction. I mean, that's why I call it dadhood dadhood. I didn't call it Muslim fathers or something like that. I wanted it to be something that is generic and that any father could access. But at the moment I recognize the need to still have Islam, muslim labels in there for you to be able to create your niche and to grow.
Speaker 2:It's tactical.
Speaker 1:It's tactical, so even me. It's called Dadhood, but straight underneath it says the Muslim fathers podcast. Why? Because I know who it needs to target. I've only bought on Muslim fathers, for example, cause I know who it's going to target. A Muslim kids TV it needs to have that label on it in order to show hey look, we're creating good ethical content for Muslims. We want Muslims to come here, we want Muslims to support it. But I hope that eventually we can all get to a stage, all different organizations. You know, kestrel, you say it's the Muslim money app right. But hopefully you can get to a stage where it's just the good money app or something, right. It doesn't have to be like that, but that we also have to be careful that, as we're on our journey towards that, we're not forgetting that it's still aligned with allah being at the middle, exactly, god being in the middle of it. It's. It's not going to be something that's going to be devoid of that conversation, of that this is all divine right.
Speaker 2:That's important as well it's not that we're hiding this because we're ashamed of it. Yeah, but you know, we don't want to be who we are. It's just more that we don't want to have an unnecessary barrier. Yeah, um, for anyone figuring this out. Yeah, gosh, I think that's a beautiful way to end it. So show. Thank you so much for coming on the show. If people want to find out more about you and what you do, where?
Speaker 1:can they look for that? Uh, they can tap in dadhood on youtube. They could type in shuaib muhammad on instagram. Uh, connect me with linkedin. Uh, just find me somewhere on google.
Speaker 2:Right, I'll be there. I'll definitely be checking out muslim kids tv thank you so much yeah, I look forward to that. All right, assalamu alaikum. Thank you for listening to the muslim money talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to Muslim Money Talk. Wherever you might have been listening to this, give us a like and share it with someone who you think might be interested. It really, really helps us out. Thank you, as-salamu alaykum, and see you next time.