Muslim Money Talk
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Muslim Money Talk
Mortgage Expert: A New Framework for Islamic FINANCE | Ep 57 - Sheikh Salman Hassan
The episode follows Sheikh Salman Hassan’s personal shift from a transactional view of Islam and Islamic finance to a theology-first ethic of reflecting Allah’s attributes in life and business, prioritising real societal benefit over box-ticking legality. He urges collaboration across the industry—even pragmatically working within conventional frameworks when necessary—to tackle poverty and widen access to finance, while sharing candid stories about mentorship, ego, and spiritual transformation.
This podcast is hosted by Areeb Siddiqui, the founder and CEO of Kestrl, the app that helps people to grow their wealth without compromise
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Show Notes:
00:00 - Opening
05:03 — Spiritual crisis: knowledge without purification
09:52 — From transactional deeds to ma‘rifah (reflecting Divine attributes)
15:44 — Debt ethics via sabr/halim; theology-first approach to finance
34:41 — Collaboration over competition; “rizq is written”
49:32 — What’s missing in today’s Islamic finance
56:46 — Prioritizing poverty & access; serve all society
01:06:33 — Advice to fintechs: do everything with ihsan (even tidy bathrooms!)
01:09:05 — Start with istighfar; the “empty pipe” ego metaphor
01:12:52 — Boundaries; jamali vs jalali mercy/strength; Ali (r.a.) anecdote
01:16:17 — Being mentored by someone younger; humility lessons
01:17:19 — Dream of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani; signs of guidance
01:20:18 — “Sacred Compass” talk aligns; offer to mentor; wrap-up
Not having access to finance is so damaging to any community that it will actually lead to kufr eventually, Because one of the things that the Prophet feared for us was poverty. I have to tell you the truth. The truth is we have to solve those fundamental problems. So Islamic finance for me now is what resources do we have? How can we channel those resources to solve the fundamental problems of society? And that might not be setting up Islamic home finance company. That might not be setting up an Islamic home finance company. That might not be setting up an Islamic bank. It might be working within the Ribaobi framework for a while to solve those fundamental problems.
Speaker 3:I never thought I'd hear you say that, yeah, this is a very different Sheikh Salman.
Speaker 1:I used to be much more strident in my criticism of Islamic banks and the whole debt-based Islamic finance model, and I'm tired of it, and I'm sure other people are tired of my complaining, and it, and I'm sure other people are tired of my complaining, and we're all hitting our heads on the wall right and I've just decided to stop doing that where we've got a type of jealousy within even islamic finance and fintechs, where you know you said it to me. You met somebody who said I'm going to kill the competition capture or kill. The capture or kill, all right now.
Speaker 1:Is that a real person saying? Is that a real?
Speaker 3:yeah, that's a real, that's a real person in the uk, right, so we don't have to name names, but it's important
Speaker 4:to bring this out, because but you, obviously in your background, went from sharia to the law, I suppose in having studied sharia for many years at uh in syria and then coming back and becoming an islamic finance lawyer I think it all came out of a big trauma.
Speaker 1:It was my trauma response and I I'm going to be open about it she burst into tears and left. She left. I never saw her again. I saw her again a few times on the street and she crossed the road and avoided me and I've never been able to say sorry to that person. Well, now's your chance.
Speaker 3:She's here today, no.
Speaker 1:I'm joking, if you're listening.
Speaker 3:I'm really sorry, because Before we begin, we notice only about 20% of you are subscribed to the podcast, so if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us, then please consider subscribing, liking, sharing or leaving us a comment or a review wherever you are listening to this, because it really does help people to find us. Thank you, and back to the show. In today's episode, we are honoured to be joined by Sheikh Salman Hassan, sharia scholar, islamic finance lawyer and, of course, the co-founder of FIDA, a fellow Islamic fintech that is revolutionizing Islamic home ownership in the UK. We'll talk about his journey through scholarship, law and entrepreneurship and how Islamic mortgages work, and what FIDA is doing to build something truly unique, as well as what the future holds for this industry as a whole. As always, I'm your host, arif Siddiqui, but you might notice, for those of you who are watching, that I am rejoined by a relatively familiar face, my brother Ali Siddiqui.
Speaker 4:Thank you everybody for having me again yes, honoured to be here in the presence of Sheikh Salman. I have been on the podcast before, but I felt this one was a particularly apt episode in which to make my reappearance, not least because I'm also a lawyer and have studied to some extent Sharia, as well as Arabic, of course, which Sheikh Salman has been quite foundational in implementing. So we can get on to that, but without further ado.
Speaker 3:That intro is probably a little bit too long, but it's okay. We're your hosts and this is Muslim Money Talk, Sheikh Salman. As-salamu alaykum. Welcome to the show As-salam. It's been a very long time coming.
Speaker 1:It has. I've wondered why you haven't invited me. We have I'm joking.
Speaker 3:We had your co-founder Raza on you have. It's one of our most popular episodes. It was episode number 14.
Speaker 1:The truth is, I've actually been hiding so, so I like to just keep my head down and out of the way, out of the way, but alhamdulillah, we managed to get you.
Speaker 3:We managed to get you. We had a fantastic conversation with your co-founder about 10 or so months ago where we talked about his perspective coming from actuarial sciences, how inspiration struck him and, of course, how he met you and then formed FIDA. But we'd love to hear your perspective as the Sharia scholar, the head of legal, and your own journey towards things as well. But I think the reason we managed to alhamdulillah get you onto this is that you and I were actually hosting a roundtable a couple of weeks ago for a newly formed student-led organization called Etik, which is all about helping students to build careers and seek out entrepreneurial opportunities in ethical and Islamic finance.
Speaker 3:So shout out to Laiba and to Omar Khalil for that fantastic organization, and Sheikh Salman and I were placed together to hold a round table and you said something to me which really struck a chord with me and I just thought immediately we have to get you onto the podcast. And you said despite studying Sharia for decades, it was only a few months ago that you felt that your understanding of the framework for Sharia had been fundamentally transformed through an experience that you had had. So I'd love to open with just asking you what was that experience and what is your framework for thinking about Sharia?
Speaker 1:Around last year, I was really thinking deeply about myself and where my life had led me. I'm in my mid-40s now and probably lived half of my life, so I was really thinking about whether all of this study and knowledge that I'd sought to acquire over my life had transformed me. Because that's what we're all really seeking. We're searching for transformation, searching for God, really.
Speaker 4:In everything we do.
Speaker 1:we're looking for our creator, and I actually felt that I hadn't, that it hadn't transformed me. It in some ways probably made me more proud and arrogant. Really.
Speaker 1:I think so. I think so because I and this is the risk and danger of seeking knowledge without purification. So if you do ta'allum learning without tezkiyah, without purification, it's a bit like living life without showering After a day you're going to start smelling and after a few days you'll smell like a grave. And we often do this with knowledge. We just keep pursuing knowledge and keep pursuing knowledge and lots of activity and sweat from that knowledge, and we smell, but we don't realize because we don't have a parallel path of desk gear or purification.
Speaker 1:Um, and so I had this sort of personal you might call it a crisis or just a deep search and deep thought late last year. There were other events that happened in my life that precipitated that and I was looking and one day somebody said to me why don't you go to this place? You'll find what you're looking for there. It sounds a bit like sort of a line from the Alchemist, from the book or a Hollywood movie. So it was slightly dramatic and so that event was happening the next day and so I went to that event and then things cascaded and precipitated from there. But really what I wanted to talk about was how this shifted my framework and actually, I feel, created a very deep spiritual shift inside me, uh, which I've felt ever since. I don't. I feel like my life has completely transformed and it's, it's, it's changed, uh, um, like never before just so the viewers are clear you're someone who's been studying Sharia since university days.
Speaker 3:Is that right? That's right. Yeah, you traveled to Damascus to learn Arabic and, despite all of that, you ended up in this place where you felt unfulfilled and you even felt that you were being led down the wrong path. I just want to understand. Can I dig into that a little bit?
Speaker 1:This is the case with many people who've pursued knowledge, and there are many people out there who are scholars and who are sheikhs who suffer in silence because the next day, when I went to this event, the chef who was presenting uh, every single word he said struck my heart and I was just completely in tears because I just felt this is exactly what I need.
Speaker 1:This is what I've been looking for all my life and I went over to him afterwards and it transpired that 25 years earlier he'd studied at my Arabic institute with one of my students and not I didn't teach him directly, but I introduced the first class. So we we'd met uh and he's quite a well-known person. We can talk about him later, but the point I want to make is uh, he had the same experience two years prior to that, which led him to come to the same place, and then I later found out that a lot of my friends from university some of them a year before, some of them 10 years before had had the same crisis and they'd all been led through uh guidance, sometimes direct guidance, through dream or through meanings implanted in their heart through experience to the same place, um, and there's one particular person who's a good sort of 10-15 years younger than me went to the same university.
Speaker 1:He, um, he was, he did um, and a lot of us go to um, thinking umra will transform us a lot of us think uh, if I read more islamic literature, if I watch more islamic youtube videos, I'm going to be transformed.
Speaker 1:What often happens is you get euphoria, you get an emotional uplift and then, like any emotional uplift, there's a down and then you go, and sometimes it can be depressive and often addictive. Some of us use religion as a medication for whatever problems we're going through through you, through religious dopamine. We've all been there right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:And so you get a high and then you get a low, and that actually doesn't transform you. In fact, that can be dangerous and cause you to actually commit more sins, because when you're in a low, you're vulnerable and shaitan can give you waswasa and your nafs gives you waswasa, and so you need something to medicate your feelings. You a swiss, and so you need something to medicate your feelings, and so I'd felt that my religious journey had been surface level and I hadn't had a deep internal spiritual transformation.
Speaker 1:What really transformed me was a reframing of how I think about the universe and I think before I had a what I'd call a transactional way of thinking about things and I thought that if during my life I build up my portfolio, of good deeds. It's like a portfolio attitude, and then on the Day of Judgment I'm going to exchange that portfolio with God for paradise.
Speaker 1:It's very transactional and that sort of vocabulary and way of thinking. It laces everything we talk about in religion. People talk about oh, do that, there is reward for it. So we're constantly we're reward seeking, like we're rent seeking. Yeah, in terms of spiritual rent yeah, we want to get some rent for for our energy and our time, and uh, that is fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 1:That's not how allah is and how he expects us to be so the way this is reframed is that in the beginning you go back to the beginning of the journey of man. Before even creation was created, there was just allah, and allah existed with that which is his essence and his sifat, which is his attributes, his names and attributes, and allah so loved himself. So allah is al-wadood, he loved himself, and so, out of that love, he created creation out of wood, and, and then the most loving thing he he could give to creation was himself, because he is so immense and perfect and eternal. And so, out of his love, he shared himself with us in two ways, two key ways, in many, many ways, but in two key ways. The first key way is that he enabled us to have a relationship with him and that's amazing, because how can something finite have a relationship with something that's infinite?
Speaker 1:You'd think that chasm can't be bridged. But Allah, out of his love and his mercy, enabled us to have a relationship with him and to know him.
Speaker 1:And that's called ma'rifah and ma'rifah is. I didn't used to understand what ma'rifah meant. I thought that it's sort of spiritual enlightenment or awakening, like if you do zikr and meditate for 10 years, 20 years, in a cave somewhere, one day a bolt of lightning will hit you and wow, now, now you are enlightened and you know it's sort of like the zen movies yeah, it's like a buddhist concept.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just think that, you know, if I keep doing this and, and it was unreachable, because I just thought I just can't do that, I just can't do that kind of rigor. And so those were the legends of the past. Who had ma'rifah? You know, I'm just going to be, I'm going to coast through my life at a surface level and I sort of resigned to my fate in my 40s, thinking this is it? How am I ever going to become a friend of Allah? How am I going to have ma'rifah?
Speaker 1:And what I've realized is actually ma'rifah is a relational thing. It's knowing someone through interaction and relationship. And Allah, out of His love, has taught us how to know Him by teaching us how to know each other. And so if I want to love my parents, the easiest thing to do is to think about what they've done for me. So I can imagine now when I was five, my father picked me up or my mom picked me up and they gave me a sweetie and they hugged me and I had that memory and that fills me with love. We all have this right and in that interaction, that relationship, allah is teaching us how to love Him, because otherwise we wouldn't know. It would be too abstract. So the first thing is he's enabled us to love Him and know Him. The second thing he's done is he has enabled us and this is amazing he's enabled us to reflect His own attributes. So Allah is loving. We're also loving, we can love.
Speaker 1:Allah is merciful. We're also. We can love. Allah is merciful. We're also. We have the capacity to be merciful, so much so that everything that we do should really be a reflection of one of allah's attributes. And so now our akhlaq for me now, before akhlaq for me was right, I need to scrape around the quran and hadith and islamic literature and find all the things that tell me to be good. And that's a framework for ethics and it's very volitional, it's almost self-reliant, because it relies on the human being to frame together what Islamic ethics are from the primary sources, whereas actually this totally overleaps that. And what we say is each of Allah's attributes is His nature, but when it cascades down and we are unable to reflect it, even in simple things like when we fast, we withhold ourselves from food Allah doesn't eat.
Speaker 1:And so we are reflecting Allah's attribute of not eating, and so when we do that, allah loves it. Allah is beautiful. He loves beauty, and so when we embody beauty and ihsan, allah loves us because we are like him. Allah loves it when we Act like him, and the person who most acted like him Was the Prophet Muhammad.
Speaker 1:He was that example of divine attributes reflected in human behavior, and that's why the prophet said I've only been sent. Remember, I've not been sent for halal and haram and law and sharia and all of this edifice that we create and we think is so important. All of those things are actually secondary. The primary reason and the only reason I've been sent is to perfect human behavior, how we interact with each other. That's amazing and this is embodied in many, many parts of it. So I was familiar and exposed to this, but in fragments. And this sheikh, he gave me an integrated framework, a theological framework, and then the moral, ethical framework of behavior, and how those two connect directly and don't require me to scrape around and be self-reliant and try to discover what they are. So now, every moment of my life, I simply think which attribute of Allah am I witnessing now?
Speaker 1:And that points to him, and which attribute of Allah can I witnessing now and that points to him? And which attribute of Allah can I reflect now so that it points to him? So, for example, allah is I'm going to bring this back to finance because it's relevant Every single thing fits into this framework, so we know that if a person is in debt and they're finding it difficult to pay, the Islamic ethic is that you give them more time. Right, and I used to see this in a sterilized way. This is a rule of fiqh. Right, it's a legal principle, and I'm really good at fiqh. I'm quite proud and arrogant about myself. I think I'm right often, most of the time right, and so my wife knows this.
Speaker 1:All of our wives know that about us right, and we're all blessed that we have people in our lives who hold up a mirror to us so we can see ourselves and that's also part of Allah's mercy that we can see where we are, who we are, so we can then fix ourselves and ask Allah to correct ourselves.
Speaker 1:So the ethic is to give them more time. But where does that come from? That doesn't exist in a vacuum, Because Allah is al-halim and al-sabur. Those are two really important attributes. So Allah is so forbearing, and we use the word forbearance in the context of debt and finance in human language.
Speaker 1:Allah is so forbearing, he's so sabur that he's even forbearing to shaitan Iblis. He gave him time and iblis knew that when he asks Allah, when he disobeyed him, he knew that when he asks him, forbear with me until the day that they are raised on the day of judgment, he knew that Allah would give because he had ma'rifah. He knew Allah, he had a relationship with him.
Speaker 1:He didn't have ikhlas, he didn't have sincerity but he had a relationship with Allah and he knew if I ask him now, he'll give. And that's the meaning of relation when the child knows. When I ask my dad or my mum, I know how to ask so that they give, like my nine-year-old a few years ago she was teaching her older to go up to him. Look up at him like this, daddy you know, the voice, she did the voice, and so she has marifa of her father. That's what I mean by marifa.
Speaker 1:It's totally relational yes, and in that experience of seeing her knowing how to melt my heart and get what she wants out of me, I can learn how to ask Allah. Of course, not in the same way, but in reality we're all children before God, so we're all impoverished. We have nothing to offer to Allah. So it's really Allah? Who's giving to us? We're not giving Allah anything. So, going back to the framework, very, very quickly.
Speaker 1:So here the principle that we give people more time comes straight down as an ethic, comes straight down from Allah's attribute as-sabur right, and so I don't need any other intermediary framework to understand that and that way. That connects me directly to Allah in every moment of my life.
Speaker 3:Wow, and this has helped you get away from the transactional aspect, because I think so many of us see our deen as transactional, something I've thought about, I've discussed with other people as well. I think the way I've reasoned with that is that human beings are inherently transactional to an extent. I think deep down we're always looking at okay, how do I benefit, how do I meet doing this? Perhaps there are some relationships where that is not the case, like that between a mother and a child, right, or like why would a mother undergo childbirth one of the most painful experiences for the sake of a child? That then is a huge burden to them. Like psychologically it doesn't make sense. But in general, most cases people are transactional. But your response to that is that this is, rather than just seeking out reward for the reward itself, it should be you trying to emulate godlike qualities?
Speaker 1:yes, exactly, and that's the meaning of Rabbani, lordly, godly. So our object when Allah says I will create a Khalifa upon the earth the word Khalifa comes from Khalf. Ali will know about this, so Khalifa is really someone you leave behind to represent you when you're absent.
Speaker 4:So you're a representative.
Speaker 1:So obviously, allah doesn't leave anything behind. In relation to Allah, what it means is he's going to send a representative upon the earth. What does a representative do? So if I'm, suppose, a generous person and framing it within ethics, again, does a representative do so? If I'm, suppose, a generous person and framing it within ethics again I'm a generous person, suppose, and I want someone to take my money, go to the next town and represent me there, ie distribute that money to the people in need and reflect my generosity that's the meaning of khalifa all right.
Speaker 1:So then our responsibility upon that. We often translate khalifa as steward I don't think the word steward really explains it whereas really, here, what we're doing is representing allah by embodying or we can't embody by reflecting his attributes in our interactions with each other. That's really our purpose. So it's really important to understand that purpose. That's the purpose. There are other things called motivations.
Speaker 1:Allah gives us incentives and motivations, because that's how he created us in our nature right, and we are reward-driven. Allah has created us like that and he does have reward, but it's really important to separate purpose and objective from motivation.
Speaker 1:So for example, ibrahim alayhi salam. In the Quran, he says رَبِّ أَرِنِي, كَيَمْ تُؤْمِنْ. Don't you believe? Am I not your objective, your purpose? Aren't you already with me? Why do you need to see this, don't you believe it? And he says بَلَا? Of course, وَلَكِنْ, لِيَطْمَئِن. They just want to see it, like the disciples of Israel. Can your Lord bring a table down of food from the sky? Of course he can they know that they just want to feast. They said we want to eat Because we're motivated by human needs.
Speaker 3:It's their own personal curiosity, that's right, so as long as we separate that, make those secondary.
Speaker 1:those motivations are fine, but the moment we bring them and make them the primary motivation, that leads to a subtle form of shirk, because our objective is something else other than Allah. You see, suppose you had a friend and you had two friends, and one friend comes and visits you and loves you and they just want you. They want you. And there's another friend. You know they're just after your money, right? They don't really want you. They pay lip service to the friendship. They say I love you and I want to be in this club and spend time with you. But every meeting they come to you they're like oh, can you lend me 100 quid Right Now out of your generosity? You might just give them the 100 quid, all right, but you know they're not your real friend. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Whereas the other person, he might actually be in need and he comes and he loves you and spends time with you. That's his primary motivation. But then, when he's in need, he might ask you for 100 quid and you'll give it, and you'll give it with love.
Speaker 1:But those are two very, very different relationships internally, Externally, they may look identical, so it's really important for us to understand, as creatures of God, how we need to frame or reframe our attitude towards god and then, that will then cascade back into everything in life, including finance, and we can then frame everything we discussed today within that framework do you find your, your business journey, your entrepreneurial journey, what you're doing with father as building?
Speaker 3:that was it, marifa, that that relationship with god. That's that's what you're trying to do now. Is that how, like how? Basically, my question is has this framework changed the way you've approached business?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. Now again, it might not change what I do, because I could have been doing the right thing for slightly the wrong reason. Now I'm going to carry on doing the right thing, but with a different framework and for the right reason.
Speaker 4:Yeah well, it reminds me of something that Iqbal Nassim said, once actually, which is in the context of reciting Quran. He said that the point of revelation is not to recite for reward, even though in its recitation there is reward, but that's not the point of it, and, and it's distinguishing between those two things, between incentive and objective, I think, is what you're getting at, which I resonate with a lot, and that totally changed how you approached the Qur'an.
Speaker 1:And I was with Iqbal last week and he asked me how has that changed your relationship with the Qur'an? And then that caused me to reflect afterwards and again, before I was collecting points, I was saying I'm going to read a juz, I'm going to tick a box, and it was almost perfunctory right, whereas now I know that even a single word or letter or verse of the quran is more than enough to transform not just me but the whole of mankind, because it's the kalam of allah and so really what the quran is is just an ability for me to interface with allah himself and have a conversation with him.
Speaker 1:And that can even be because the quran is his speaking to us, it's his kalam, and we have this other concept of munajat, where we speak to Allah and then that becomes a conversation, a muhadatha, and Allah in the Quran himself says that فَاسْتَجَابَ لَهُمْ, رَبُّهُمْ. When we call upon Allah, allah answers. We need to take that literally, because the first port of call in interpretation is literal, so we're all literalists, that first instance, and then, where the literal interpretation doesn't work, we then look for non-literal interpretations that make more sense.
Speaker 3:But the literal meaning of this is Allah answers us, and if we believe that when we ask Allah we get those answers in our heart and in our minds, we should not underestimate our thoughts and the feelings in our hearts and our minds we should not underestimate our thoughts and the feelings in our hearts here, absolutely and I I guess this comes back to a question that I think we discussed with the nisba guys a couple of weeks ago, which was a couple of episodes ago is this why it's so important that people are reading the quran in the language they understand, as opposed to, a lot of us can read arabic, but we don't fully understand that so that you can build that relationship first, and then, of course, there's a reward in reading it in its original language and I guess that also touches upon what you do as well, secondary, which is your arabic school, and why you know you're so passionate about people learning arabic itself. But would you recommend people who maybe don't understand the quran don't understand arabic they should read it in their, their own language first?
Speaker 1:absolutely. I mean. The example I give is if, if I? Uh were far away from my mother, suppose I'd never met my mother. One day I receive a letter from her first letter from my mom and open it up and it's in mandarin or russian. I don't speak that language. Now I could get a translation of it and that's my first uh, sort of uh first port of call, and so I can start interacting with what my mother's trying to say to me through translation. But my heart's going to yearn to know what is she saying in her native tongue.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize my mother was Chinese or Russian, right? What is she really saying in her own language, you see? And so that yearning is a good thing, because really every yearning we have, whether that yearning is for something good or bad, even bad yearnings, are actually a manifestation of our search for God.
Speaker 3:Even bad yearnings yeah.
Speaker 1:So this is a reframe, because everything is every beauty, for example is a reflection ofing Everything is. Every beauty, for example, is a reflection of God. Where did it come from? It doesn't come from nowhere. Allah is Jamil, so everything beautiful in the earth, that beauty, emanates from him. It's a reflection of his beauty. Now, allah has made certain beautiful things Haram for us to look at Because of his restrictions. It's not good for us. Allah is Al-Nafi' he benefits us, so out of his restrictions, it's not good for us. Allah is النافع he benefits us, so out of his benefit for us. He is also مانع, المانع, the one who withholds things because they're not good for us.
Speaker 1:Everything Allah does for us is for our benefit and therefore everything the sharia should do and this goes back to finance should be for benefit If it's not benefiting people, if it's causing hardship, it's not fulfilling the purpose, the ethical and the moral or the theological purpose, and so we have to reframe everything in the Sharia into that framework. But going back to this, and I said this to Iqbal last week if a young man looks at a woman, who's?
Speaker 1:beautiful. He finds beautiful and objectifies her. That's haram. It's also against the law. You can get arrested for that. So you don't do that either ethically, morally or legally right. But what is he really looking for? He's looking for god. He doesn't realize it. He's looking for divine beauty, and so with that person you don't fight the yearning for beauty, because that's what allah created instinctively in a person. You redirect it in a way that's halal, that has made halal. And so what you say to those young people Look, is there something else that's beautiful you could redirect your attention to and use that to remember Allah, you see, and so Allah has given us the ability to appreciate the beauty in nature and creation, because that points us to him.
Speaker 3:It's not a bad thing. I think that's something a lot of us struggle, struggle with because when you feel those feelings whether it's, you know, lust or greed, the, what the christians call the, you know the, the deadly sins I think it's hard for us to associate that there might be something divine within that feeling you know so, okay, say the example that you you mentioned. You see someone you feel lust towards. Okay, say the example that you mentioned you see someone, you feel lust towards them.
Speaker 3:You might just think that's just a bodily function, that's like a weakness of mind, mentally or physically. Could you explain that a little bit more Like?
Speaker 1:what is that? Look what is the worst creature in the universe the devil Shaitan, Shaitan, right. Amazingly, invoking his name for us is an act of worship, and you're shocked, right?
Speaker 4:We say أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ, we say shaitan right? Yes, of course.
Speaker 1:So, you can take the worst, most disgusting thing on earth and you turn it back to allah and it becomes an act of worship, an act of surrender. Right why? Because everything points to allah. Even shaitan points to allah, you see. So then, if I, if a person sees something they shouldn't be looking at and we can look at with lust at anything, so if I look at someone else's car with lust, yeah, true I think and I have a bit of jealousy that's haram.
Speaker 1:In fact, in some ways that's worse Than objectifying a woman, because jealousy is A misdirection, or me being dissatisfied with Allah's rizq to another person. I'm contending with God's decision, you see, whereas if a person objectifies a woman, that's just pure gratification. You see, whereas if a person objectifies a woman, that's just pure gratification. You see, I'm not undermining the authority of God.
Speaker 3:I'm just gratifying myself and you're going about it the wrong way. You're not making sincere prayer to God, to you know. Grant me that's right. I'm self-serving, Exactly.
Speaker 1:So just pursuing carnal desire is self-serving is self-serving, but being jealous of another human being who's been given by something by Allah is actually subversive to God's authority. You see, it's more like a capital crime as opposed to just a normal crime. It's more serious. We don't realise this. It's much, much more serious Theologically and ethically. It's much more serious, and so it's an obnoxious disease of the heart. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you know I'm dissatisfied, firstly that God's given him that thing. I want him to have less and I want something more. But even worse than that is, I don't want him to have it, nor do I want it. I mean, that's the worst kind of jealousy, you see.
Speaker 2:So and we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago when we met where we've got a type of jealousy within even islamic finance and fintechs, where you know you said it to me you met somebody who said I'm going to kill the competition capture or kill.
Speaker 1:The capture or kill all right now. Is that a real person?
Speaker 4:saying is that real?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's a real, that's a real person in the uk right so we don't have to name names, but it's important to bring this out because, you see, that is a misdirection of our moral ethical framework, which comes down from misunderstanding our relationship with allah yeah not knowing who allah is, not knowing what my purpose is. If I don't know those two things, I'm going to engage in industry, in politics, in finance I'm going to engage in those things in a devilish way.
Speaker 1:I'm going to reflect the attributes of the devil, and so Islamic finance might jump through hoops and tick boxes, but it's not going to be very Islamic, because my ethics are going to drive people away and land me in the dissatisfaction of God. What's the point?
Speaker 3:Hey, as-salamu alaykum, before we continue, I really wanted to share a little bit about what Kestrel is and what we're doing. Kestrel is a fintech on a mission to help over a billion people to grow their wealth without compromising on their beliefs, and we're doing that by launching our very own digital bank later this year here in the UK. So if you'd like to sign up and become one of our first 1000 customers who get free access to all of our services for life, please sign up through the link wherever you're listening to this podcast. Free access for life means access to features such as our Sharia compliant current account savings products, investing into the likes of gold, crypto stocks and shares. All of these features and more, but we're only making it available to the first thousand customers, so please check this out.
Speaker 3:It's not just about avoiding interest. It's about ensuring that our money is being used to do good in the world and not for all the things that banks are putting it towards, whether it's funding wars in the Middle East, pollution, housing crisis, what have you? So please sign up to Kestrel today. Thank you. Now back to the show. So please sign up to Kestrel today. Thank you. Now back to the show. The spirit of the law is not being fulfilled, whereas the letter of it may seem to be, but spiritually it's not really there.
Speaker 4:Exactly.
Speaker 3:I think that's so dangerous because, as an entrepreneur people who are pursuing careers or looking for productivity tips there's a wealth of information and knowledge out there, but from non-Muslim sources. So, like you know, we've been through accelerator schemes and we consume things like Y Combinators, startup school content, which is all out there and it gives you like a framework, a blueprint for how to pursue business and how you should approach competition and how to reach out to the market. But I always sometimes stop myself because sometimes you get into it and you're like, yeah, this is how I need to be compared to my competitors, this is how I need to act, this is how I need to to be as a ceo, and then I almost feel like there's an absent voice there as to, okay, but as a muslim owner and trying to reframe how we are and our relationship with god, that's kind of missing at the moment.
Speaker 1:that's right yeah, it's just right. So really we're adopting what you might call secular and Islamic framework of ethics. And so when we say we're Islamic, what do we mean by that?
Speaker 3:How are? We actually Islamic fundamentally, it's like you're holding a boardroom meeting. You just step out of the room to go pray and then you come back.
Speaker 1:That's it, we're actually secular and this will inform everything we do. So if I, for example, own a shop and my brother or sister beside me has another shop, a stall, and this can happen because we have stalls and fairs and conferences- and conventions. So you might have another competitor, fintech next door to you.
Speaker 3:We've been in that position many times, exactly.
Speaker 1:And the reality is we're not in competition.
Speaker 1:Our risk is written, if you truly believe that when we were born, our risk is written you will not fear. And so if somebody, a customer, comes to the next door, stall, and they're off praying or gone to the bathroom, what should I do? I should step over, sell their product and then come back and not try to poach the customer. Because that customer turned up there right. I shouldn't say, hey, come over here, right. You see. So why? Because I have itlmikna, I have satisfaction, I'm settled, because I know that everything is from Allah.
Speaker 4:And my business is written. Yeah, you go ahead. No, I was going to say I suppose that, in a nutshell, is what prophetic business is or should be going back to the sources, as you say, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. I guess what you've been touching on is this relationship between theology and law, or the interaction between the two.
Speaker 1:I would say even before that theology and ethics, which I'll translate as akhlaq behaviour which come straight down. There's no interpolation Right. So Allah's attributes, his sifat, reflect in our akhlaq. Right, and then the law I would say is below that as a kind of safety net. So it's the boundary which sets the ballpark. You can do whatever you like. You can play ball within the boundary, but don't go outside the stadium. That's the law, right? And the thing is, you don can play ball within the boundary, but don't go outside the stadium.
Speaker 2:That's the law right, and the thing is, you don't play sports on the line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly if you're a tightrope walker. You don't walk on the safety net, you walk on the rope. Yeah, and that rope is the rope of ethics yeah many of us think we need to walk on the safety net and that's where we've got the fun we've got it's fundamentally wrong that's just the margins. Yeah, those are the margins where if you fall, it holds you and you come back.
Speaker 4:But the reason that's interesting, I guess, for your story. So that's your current now reframing of things and how you conceive things. But you obviously in your background, went from Sharia to the law, I suppose, in having studied Sharia for many years in Syria and then coming back and becoming an Islamic finance lawyer. Do you want to? If we have time, should we?
Speaker 1:touch on that kind of story like, yeah, how, how and why you did that, what that was? Yeah, look, I think it all came out of a big trauma. It was my trauma response and I I'm going to be open about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when I was a kid I was not that smart and I have an older sister who's about a year older than me and she was super. She was a genius, like born genius, she was beautiful and she was athletic and I was none of those three things like I'm like, I'm just after her and I'm like the runt of the litter right, and so you know, and I I'd overhear my, my parents, my siblings, talking about how I'm such a simpleton. They just call me sida or shida in bangladesh, and you always say Shida, and in Urdu we say Sida.
Speaker 4:Sida is a good thing, sida is like, sida is a proper. He's a straight.
Speaker 1:It can be, but when you're a child and you're not understanding the adult conversations, they're laughing at you.
Speaker 3:I got called that a lot. Now I'm reframing.
Speaker 1:I'm reframing my whole life here right, sorry to trigger your draw all right, should we stop now, right, okay, so so I, at a very young age, and my dad was super smart and he became a maulana at the age of 17, people used to come for miles to visit the maulana with no beard, because at 17 he had no beard. He's got a wispy beard like me, so at 17 I had no beard, uh. And he then, uh, went into secular education, went to university, did a master's in islamic studies, so he sort of, and he spoke english.
Speaker 1:He's a polyglot, speaks five languages fluently including arabic, farsi, urdu, english, bangla and, of course, hindi. So it makes it six, but anyway. So, uh, and my dad had very high expectations of us and he made that very well known and he made made that very well known and he made his disappointment very well known, like a typical Asian dad. So I don't hold it against him. He just did what he thought would be good for us. But I think I had a bit of a childhood chip on my shoulder about this and I thought I have to prove to the world I'm as smart as my sister and I'm going to achieve that probation of my dad at that young age. And so I graft it. I work really hard, but for the wrong reason, you see, and that's the trauma.
Speaker 1:You work that hard for the wrong reason. It traumatizes you, and we see so many traumatized people around the world who are successful and they've grafted and they've built businesses, institutions, but they're harming themselves and the people around them. They're not leading godly lives, they're not fulfilling their purpose and they don't feel fulfilled. If you meet them on their own, if they're open and able to be vulnerable, they'll tell you how hollow they feel. And so that hollowed me out, because I built a shell around me to keep myself safe. And I can remember as a teenager, young teenager, thinking, uh, I'm not going to let people hurt me because I'm not, I don't care what they say and I don't care how I feel.
Speaker 1:I shut out my feelings as a teenager, yeah, deliberately, and I saw that as a strength, and so people saw me as a really strong person on the outside. Yeah, but it comes from a deep weakness, the inability to deal with my own feelings. So I stopped learning how to process my feelings. So that led me to academic and professional success quote, unquote and even success in studying sharia, because when I was studying out in syria, um, again, I, I, you know, I I wanted to turn myself into a lean, mean learning machine. That's how machine. I saw myself as a machine and I can remember when I went to Syria I would do two days of work in one, so I'd wake up early in the morning and then study from Fajr until Dhuhr.
Speaker 1:I can get a good six hours of study, that's a solid day of work, and then I'd take a nap, and then I'd do another sort of, sometimes, you know, nine hours. And at 9 pm, I'd be like this, thinking I wish I didn't need to sleep. I wish I didn't need to. I'm literally treating my body like a machine. And this is wrong because it's not part of the sunnah.
Speaker 4:It's not how we're supposed to live, you see.
Speaker 1:So that's how I drove myself. This is drive, and you know, when I first started teaching Arabic, I would drive my students and they used to see me as a slave driver, and some of them. It led to a lot of outward success in the Arabic, but I also traumatized some people. There was one young lady in one of my classes who just didn't understand something quite simple, and I kept explaining to her and I thought I need to be patient with this person, right, because that's that's the islamic ethic but, I didn't see that as a way.
Speaker 1:I didn't connect that with god. I saw that as something I should do. This is what my parents taught me, um, and so I try to be patient with this girl, but I'm not a patient person because I don't embody the, the rabbani attribute of sober. Actually, I'm trying to be patient but I'm not patient.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to act patiently, but I'm not patient internally and so after like an hour or so it was clear that she wasn't getting it and I was getting frustrated. That showed in the tone of my voice and she burst into tears and left. She left. I never saw her again. I saw her again a few times on the street and she crossed the road and avoided me and I've never been able to say sorry to that person.
Speaker 3:Well, now's your chance. She's here today.
Speaker 1:If you're listening. I'm really sorry, because that's not why I set out to teach Arabic and I felt gutted, and so you know lots of events through my life where and these are sort of mini crises that eventually led to that big crisis nine months ago, where everything seemed to be falling apart and if you lead a life like the devil. One day you'll crash. That's how I felt.
Speaker 4:No-transcript the intention, the essence, the spirit is not there I'm not really doing it for allah.
Speaker 1:I'm doing it to serve my ego, so it's where it's self-worship, isn't it?
Speaker 3:you're saying some, Sheikh Salman, because I think a lot of us can really relate to what you're talking about, especially those of us from Asian backgrounds. A lot of our self-worth growing up was linked to our parents' approval and what they thought was and outward achievement yeah, measurable achievements. Absolutely, and I think, was there a moment, was it only a couple of years ago, that you decided to decouple that, that you know what your parents thought of you versus how you thought? Yeah, I think yeah around 2018.
Speaker 1:I had a bit. I had a. That's when I had my big sort of. I have several crises over the last few years, right, and I had a big crisis and I started thinking but you see, I was trying to DIY it. That's the other thing I was.
Speaker 1:I was again self-reliant. I was thinking, oh, I studied, I studied Sharia, I'm a professional, I've everything, everything else in my life that I've succeeded with, I've done with my intellect, my energy, and I'm self-attributing. This is called istighna in Arabic إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَيَطْغَىٰ أَرَّآهُ اسْتَغْنَىٰ. This is in the Quran. Allah says man goes astray when he considers himself to be self-reliant, self trying to fix myself, and that doesn't work. So this is this I call the diy process. I try to diy with getting bits of help, but but again, when I was accessing help, it's on my terms.
Speaker 1:I wasn't surrendering to a process or to a teacher. That's really what I needed and that's really the story of iblis and adam. As allah was, allah didn't set up iblis to fail. He wanted to elevate him even further by giving him a teacher saying, right in the next part of your journey, he's going to be under the guidance of Adam, alayhi salam, I've given him Nubuwa, he will elevate you even more. That was what he was set up for, but his pride didn't allow him to do that. He wanted to do it his way, you see, and so whenever we want to do it our way, that's a satanic characteristic. It's not a godly characteristic. The godly characteristic is to surrender to a teacher, which is in Surah Al-Fatihah, actually, by the way.
Speaker 1:You don't realise this so we ask. To the straight path. That's the purpose of Surah Fatihah. It's a prayer for guidance, and then you'd expect the answer to be Sirat Al-Qur'an and Sunnah yourself, and that's where you'll find the straight path. That's what we think.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't say that it says the path of those, the humans, who you have previously guided You've done in'am Of the prophets and the Siddiqeen, and the Shuhada and the Salihin. So in our time, we need to search out the Salihin, the righteous people who have been guided by their teachers, who have been guided by their teachers, who've been guided by their teachers all the way back to the prophet through a chain of isnad, and the isnad is part of our deen.
Speaker 1:This is undisputed, and that's how we receive that ethic and how we receive that behavioral transformation, through guidance from another individual who's just further along the journey than us. We do this in everything else in life. You've probably got a mentor for something that you think is important to you. Yeah, right. If you want to be like, if you want to just sort of be relatively healthy and flexible, you can just do a bit of stretching at home on youtube, right. But if you really want to do it, well, right. If you want to be an athlete and spiritually we should all aspire to be athletes you. Why are we so ambitious in everything else? You guys are clearly ambitious because you've achieved what you've achieved in the dunya and inshallah for the akhira too there's ambition.
Speaker 1:But often we interpret ambition to be about career. What about spiritual ambition? That's the reality, that's the real life. Allah says the akhira is the real life. هي الحيوان, حيوان. Here doesn't mean animal, that's the real life. Allah says the Akhira is the real life. He al hayawan, hayawan. He doesn't mean animal, he means life right so what about our mentorship for the real life?
Speaker 3:I think so many of us feel that spiritual ambition culminates in one day I'll go to heaven. But is it anything more than that? I suppose is it more granular than that?
Speaker 1:spiritual ambition is someone who can hold my hand and take me on the journey to the love and knowledge and pleasure of Allah. Knowledge meaning knowing Allah relationally, so that ambition exists in real time, day to day in every moment.
Speaker 1:It's not an outcome, it's a process. Yeah, isn't it? Yeah, so, um, and now an outcome can be motivation, like if somebody wants a six-pack or they want to do, they want to do, uh, olympic weightlifting right, that's an ambition, that's a sort of motivation, but but where does it actually happen? It happens each day in the gym your lifestyle with a trainer. Yeah, yeah, right. If you don't have that trainer, you're you're fooling yourself, sure yeah, and you're going to injure yourself, you're going to harm yourself.
Speaker 3:So the ambition is actually the entire lifestyle shift that would enable you to end up at that, that end point destination, that destination that's it and then you'll experience it, the the spiritual experiences I've had.
Speaker 1:Again, spiritual experiences are not the purpose. We don't chase them. Yeah they, they come to you as, as forms of guidance and motivation. So sometimes Allah guides us directly through a dream or through a vision, in wakefulness, or through a person who comes along and say something good or say something bad. Somebody come along and shout at me and abuse me, but that person was sent by allah to elevate me, right it's hard in the moment to see it that way.
Speaker 3:Yes, for a lot of people and that's the meaning of.
Speaker 1:Uh see, there's a difference between allah's attribute as sab and al-halim, because both of them feel like people who persevere. Sorry forbear, but as-sabur is, allah is patient with us in the sense that he gives us time. And that goes back to the finance. How we reflect that when someone owes us something we owe Allah so many debts, but he doesn't come down hard on us immediately. He gives us the span of our life to pay that debt. Yeah, so he gives us time, and so that's where the ethic of giving people time who owe us some money they can't pay. You can have some more time. That's where the ethic comes from. It's theological right. So that's sabr. The other one is what was the other one? Halim, al-halim. And al-Halim, for a human being, is someone who regulates their emotion. So I'm angry, but even though I'm angry with that person, I'm not going to externalize that in my behavior.
Speaker 3:I'm going to use that as an opportunity to direct this situation to Allah. What alarmed you about Islamic finance and home financing? That's a good question that made you think I want to come up with something pretty radical and something entirely new, yeah.
Speaker 1:So again, I'm going to frame it in this new framework, which is I get the feeling that the science finance industry overall is not framed theologically, okay, okay. So the purpose for it is not for us to reflect God's attributes in creation. I don't think that's at the forefront of many people within the industry. Some of them it is, and some of the founding fathers it probably was. I think we all know Martin's scholars. It was yes.
Speaker 1:But like anything, there's mission creep. There's been a huge mission creep and I don't think that's really where most people in the industry are, and that was the case with myself, so I don't blame people, but it's something we need to start rethinking and reframing and going back to the source.
Speaker 3:When you say that was the case with yourself. How so.
Speaker 1:Because I guess I had this framework in fragments but I didn't have it as an integrated system, and so now I feel I can put anything that comes my way into my framework and think about it spiritually. But even in the past I guess I wanted to solve a problem because I think I'm a good problem solver. That's how I can contribute and build my portfolio. It's going back to the transactional way of thinking.
Speaker 1:So that transactionality actually without that spiritual connection and framework can actually lead me and anyone astray, and then it can also lead to utilitarian ways of thinking In order to achieve that. Maybe we can cut a few corners here to get there. Because, we want to achieve that as a social purpose or as a political objective In my mind.
Speaker 3:I've always thought about it and I think Raza's, from his conversation, reflected on it the same way, in that Allah had given you a skill set which you didn't really understand why you were led in that direction. In my case, it was working with a lot of fintechs through my career in management consulting. In Raza's case, he was an actuary working at the Bank of England. In Ali's case, he was studying law. In your case as well. And then there's, like a lightning strike inspiration moment, which is I could use this to better serve people, to better serve the ummah. That we see that in this country, 50 of muslims are living in poverty yeah right, that's the famous statistic that came out from muslim census a couple of years ago. And then you think how can I use these skills that I didn't understand why allah had led me down this path? How can I use that to better the ummah? Is that the right framing?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely it is. What I'm saying is see, and again here I'm going to bring us back to the prophetic method, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, aisha radiallahu anhu. She has a famous statement where she says that khamr, which is wine, alcohol, and I think it's zina, those two things were forbidden further down. They weren't forbidden at the beginning. They've always been wrong, but in the early days, but zina as well, I believe so.
Speaker 3:In fact you know what I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I was looking at it when I Wine.
Speaker 3:We know that there's like three different occasions. I'm just going to double check. Yeah sure.
Speaker 1:So it says. I'll read the translation the first of what was revealed was a surah from the Mufassal mentioning paradise and hell. So in the beginning, our purpose and our framing was given in the Meccan period, right Until the people returned to Islam as it had Iman and Islam in the practice and they had the right framework. That's what it's saying. Then the lawful and unlawful was revealed.
Speaker 4:Then only then right.
Speaker 1:Had the first thing to be revealed do not drink wine they would have said we'll never give up wine. And had it been revealed, do not fornicate. So it is, you know. They would have said we'll never give it up, right.
Speaker 3:So Allah with us, out of his mercy and love. He doesn't start with the hardest thing. He helped us to understand the context first, that's right, and then the methodology came exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:So this week someone's reached out to me. Their brother has a very serious addiction which has destroyed his job. He's lost his job. He's about to lose his wife and kids people like that can lose their life because people commit suicide in those situations. So in that situation, the last thing I should go and say to him is stop drinking mate.
Speaker 1:That's not. You, don't start with the hardest thing. I need to reframe his purpose, because when a person's purpose is reframed they can do those things anyway. I've got a friend who Rupal my co-founder at Arabica from a very young age, mashallah. He had a neighbour, a non-Muslim chap whose name is Omar now, who was his martial arts trainer. A big black guy.
Speaker 1:Specialist in four black belt, in four styles of martial arts, tough guy, and he used to teach him martial arts as a kid, as a teenager, and so he just sort of threw his. He arts as a kid, as a teenager, and so he just sort of threw his. He observed that Rupon has good akhlaq, that's it. He liked him Good boy, and he was attracted to this and eventually he became Muslim. Before he became Muslim, rupon said what's holding you back? He said I don't think I can give up the beer and the women. That's what he said. And Rupon said Allah inspired him with a. If you believe in God, just focus on that, take the step. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So he did. He took his shahada and he went home and he emptied his own fridge out. Wow, himself Didn't drink a single time. After that, gave up. The women got married. You see, so when you reframe the purpose of a person, then they will serve God. Anyway, they will serve the sharia Right.
Speaker 1:So what I and this is why I'm really emphasizing this because we could have lots of conversations about Islamic finance today. A lot of those conversations have been had. You've had a conversation with Raza. You're going to have lots of those conversations with other people who either agree with me or disagree with me. Yeah, that's not particularly interesting. It's all been sort of it's been done.
Speaker 1:You've been there, you know let's really think, and you'll be there in a few weeks' time. We've got an Islamic finance retreat where key people in the industry are going to get together over the weekend. We're going to spend the whole weekend together in brotherhood, in collaboration, and that is such an important first step, and may Allah bless the people who brought that together the. Ribah. Free Foundation and the others, because that is so, so important.
Speaker 1:But what I want to do there, what I'd like us to do there, is actually reframe our purpose as well, because you know, I say, I used to be much more strident in my criticism of Islamic banks and sort of the whole debt-based Islamic finance model and I'm tired of it and I'm really I'm tired of it, and I'm sure other people are tired of my complaining, and we're all hitting our heads on the wall Right and I've just decided to stop doing that because that's not because Allah is a nafiyah. He is, he benefits and the whole purpose of sharia is to benefit people. All right. And the fatwa on Islamic finance, whether it's the European Fatwa Council's fatwa from 40, 50 years ago, allowing a conventional mortgage at that time where there was no alternative for a first home that was to get people out of poverty and to ensure that the Muslim community.
Speaker 1:So they're looking at the societal trend right. If you project forward 50 years, 100 years, people who have access to home finance and people who don access to home finance and people who don't. And you can see this in longitudinal studies. In the usa there's a study where you know working class communities one's white, one's black. White people at that time, 100 years ago, had access to finance. Black people didn't right project forward those. This community has progressed through home ownership and have become wealthier and therefore have better health, better life expectancy, better outcomes in general, better able to lobby for their needs, whereas this community is still left in the ghetto. You see, when you look at it longitudinally, you see that actually not having access to finance is so damaging to any community that it will actually lead to kufr eventually, because one of the things that the Prophet feared for us was poverty.
Speaker 4:Because it leads to kufr.
Speaker 1:So, fundamentally, islamic finance and in terms of purpose, we should be focusing on benefit, not on solving specific individual technical problems or issues. That's not where we should be. We're at the long layer of discussion to go above or below. Whichever way, you think about it right and really think fundamentally, you know what are the needs. And now, again, we need to reframe this and and we've got a problem here we make a dichotomy between muslim and non-muslim. So the islamic finance industry is here to serve muslims.
Speaker 1:What the heck no is that why Islam came?
Speaker 1:It's for all of mankind, it's for all of mankind. But at the moment it's self-serving right and we aren't really. We're quite insular, we aren't thinking about benefit overall. So how can we channel the resources we have, including our financial resources, to bring benefit? And that's it. That's the key right and that that might lead us into thinking well, if we're going to establish an islamic bank and this is the question I asked islamic banks okay, you've got a banking license, right. I'm not interested in how you structured your products, what boxes you've ticked to make them sharia compliant. I'm sorry, I'm not interested in that anymore. I'm interested in okay, what difference, what impact are you having on society? How are you making people's lives better?
Speaker 1:how are you taking people out of poverty? How are you taking people out of hardship? Because poverty leads to breakdown of health, mental health, breakdown of marriage, children growing up in damp, unhealthy conditions, lifelong health conditions. Overall, it's a disaster, right, how are you? Are you simply and I ask this to myself and to Fayda and to Raza and Salman, you know are we just serving people who've got, who are wealthy enough to get to, to pull together a deposit? And we ask this question in our board and exec meetings regularly how are we helping people who are on universal credit? And I'd actually say alhamdulillah. You know we're small so we can't help everybody, but we have people who are on universal credit.
Speaker 1:And we knew that at the beginning it's not something that happened. Later we underwrote them, knowing that they're going to be on universal credit and those are, you know, in a small way. That's how we're reflecting Allah's attribute of the benefactor, because we're benefiting humanity, but we're one player, and this is where that retreat is so important. The whole industry needs to collaborate. We need to pull together our resources to ensure that we're all doing this, but also we're doing things that require collaboration. We can't solve this mammoth issue alone.
Speaker 3:Nobody can. If you had to give one message to the industry right now about the biggest societal problem that we should be solving, muslim or otherwise, what do you think that is? Because you said something so interesting, which is that we often think very insolently we need to help our community, we need to reclaim our narratives, we need to build wealth within our communities, but it sounds like you think that's the completely wrong way, absolutely absolutely, because, um, when islam came, remember islam came and the prophets came to people who are non-muslim.
Speaker 1:They didn't preach to muslims that's very true. Yeah, the sahaba were you. That first generation Sahaba were all converts. None of them were born Muslim right, and so that's one thing I say to converts that you have something in common with the.
Speaker 1:Sahaba that I don't. I'm jealous of you in a good way. So we need to really think about okay. So how was that message delivered? See, our core message is a message that we're here to give and not take to benefit. Okay, how can we benefit the whole of society in the whole world and be sincere about that? Not because we want something back, and that's what the prophet said. We only feed you for the sake of allah. And the word food has a very broad meaning.
Speaker 1:It's not just physical food it is but it's also any form of benefit and in the spiritual world, like if you have a dream of food, the meaning is often something of benefit. If you see your teacher feeding you, they're giving you spiritual nourishment, you see or knowledge food is knowledge. Okay, so the best thing we can give to them is allah. That's the best thing that allah shared with us. So how can we give allah to humanity through our akhlaq? How we behave and I'm going to say something that may feel like a spanner in the works for the Islamic finance industry the big problem for people is poverty, being able to feed themselves.
Speaker 1:A lot of people are in food poverty, in this kind of Muslim, non-muslim, regardless and we shouldn't think of them as Muslim non-Muslim. Even that bifurcation pulled me up on this last week. We shouldn't have this, this framework. So in that situation, if somebody's dying, you can't really tell them much about God, or you can't tell them about the evils of Riba and the Riba financial system. It's not relevant. They don't know where the next meal is going to come from, or their suffering, or their children are malnourished. We have to solve those basic, fundamental problems. So I want to reframe what Islamic finance is about. Islamic finance isn't about Islamic banking or Islamic home finance, even though that's what we set up.
Speaker 1:It's a small even though that's what we set up. It's a small contribution, but that's not the overall big picture.
Speaker 1:And people might be thinking why am I shooting myself in the foot? Because I have to. I have to tell you the truth. The Quran says dead, literally dead. Be those who are dishonest, who hide the truth. I have to tell you the truth. The truth is we have to solve those fundamental problems. So Islamic finance for me now is what resources do we have? How can we channel those resources to solve the fundamental problems of society? And that might not be setting up Islamic home finance company. That might not be setting up an Islamic bank.
Speaker 1:It might be working within the Ribawe framework for a while to solve those fundamental problems, because when you get people out of that and that goes back to the hadith of Aisha, that we're trying to solve the hardest thing first, Whereas actually maybe we've got it upside down. I never thought.
Speaker 4:I'd hear you say that yeah, this is a very different Sheikh Salman to the one that I spoke about two years ago. But I think it just goes to that point of the reframing and it seems that you have had quite an awakening one that I think we can all benefit from, far more than we can benefit from the age-old debates about whether home purchase plans are halal or not. I think, as you say, we've kind of been there and done that and we need to focus on coming together and actually making a difference now and, you know, put our differences aside and just make this work once and for all, exactly exactly, and we spoke to Sultan Bey, the former CEO of Arayan Bank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now running off Exactly yeah, and again, we don't see them as competition. We refer people to them.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 1:I might disagree with the way they've technically structured their product and, as I said, that's a boring conversation. I didn't come here to have that. I will not have that conversation anymore because there's more important things. So what we really need to get together is right. So each of our projects Kestrel, fida, ofar, strideup, arian Bank, whoever if I've missed anybody, that's not.
Speaker 4:Nesta Wahid IFG Everybody else. Nesta.
Speaker 1:Wahid, IFG. I'm going to mention all of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1:If I've missed anybody, I'm sorry. It's just because I can't think of it right now. But every single player right. What we need to do is really think about right how can we collaborate and solve those fundamental problems and channel resources towards those issues? And we need our community to hold us to account, because our community is supporting us as an institution. They're putting their money with us, right, so they're voting. We want them to put more money with us, not because we want to make more money ourselves to enrich ourselves, but because we want to distribute the wealth allah's given us, because allah serves his creation. He distributes right. Everything that we have is given by allah and so when allah appoints us as his representatives, we are here to distribute, not to just arrogate it to ourselves right so as distributors of the community's wealth, are we pursuing those higher objectives?
Speaker 1:the community needs to hold us to account and they need to say right, if you want us to take money out of our bank accounts and give it to you, what are you doing? How are you doing? How are you doing those things? Have you just found a gap in the market that you're exploiting and you're solving a problem for the Muslim community? Yes, but it's a very small bit and maybe that's not really the first place where the resources should be allocated, because you don't have an overall community societal strategy. That accountability for all of us together needs to be had with the community.
Speaker 3:What advice would you give to us at Kestrel Given. I think you know what we're doing. We're looking to launch this digital bank in a few weeks' time, inshallah. People are signing up for that in the wait list. You can go and check out the link now and do that as well as check out Fyther as well. What advice do you have for us?
Speaker 1:My advice to you is do what you do with ihsan. That's the first thing, because when you do with ihsan, allah is al-muhsin, right? So when you do it with ihsan, when you do it well, then you're reflecting Allah's attribute and he'll love you. That's the first thing. Right? So you do it well and that means you do everything well. So in your office you have a good setup. That's Ihsan. When you go to the toilet, you leave it in a better state than you found it.
Speaker 1:So the prophetic akhlaq is when you meet a person, you go to a place you leave it better than you found it, and so you know what good is it if I'm an Islamic finance founder and I'm solving the problems of the world. Look at me. But when I go to the toilet, I leave it filthy and I leave my mess. Leave somebody else to clean it up. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You see. So it has to trickle down into the very basics of akhlaq. Or I'll throw something on the ground and expect oh, there's cleaners, yeah, but there's cleaners. But that's not the point. The point is you've just messed a piece of the earth up. That's not ihsan.
Speaker 3:So do what you do well, and may Allah increase your rizq and give you more so that you can distribute it and do those better things with it sounds similar to the to the prayer of sulamana, where I think is his dua was oh allah, forgive me, but also grant me a kingdom, which is. It would be inappropriate for anyone else who comes after me to have that and nobody else after me will have that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly which seems a little bit odd, but when you think about it, the idea was that he knew that his gift was governance and leading, and he knew how to distribute um, and that's why he was asking for something which seems so material and, and you know, dunya, versus, that's right. He found his calling and each of the prophets had a different calling.
Speaker 1:The prophet was offered, wasallam was offered a kingdom. If you want to be a king, you can be a king. He refused and in each of those prophets we see a calling. And so each of us has a calling. We're searching for our calling, but because it's spiritually connected. It's not because I want it, it's because I want to fulfill my calling.
Speaker 4:And in that calling, I will reflect allah's attributes. I mean, his initial request, of course, was spiritual. It was for forgiveness first, and then he goes on to do the innate, the material request, which I always found quite, you know, quite compelling. That's it, that's it.
Speaker 1:And so when my teacher has taught me, whenever I'm speaking or giving dawah or teaching, you start with yourself. So you first give da'wah to yourself and the first da'wah is istighfar. You do istighfar. If you can, you do salat tawbah or you do the dua of salat tawbah. La ilaha illallah, alhalim, al kareem, subhanallahil arsh, al azim, alhamdulillah, rabbil alamin, asaluka mujibati rahmatin. So you do that. You empty yourself. I'd just like to tell you about an experience I had recently where I felt I was very generous with a person and they snubbed my generosity and told me I don't want anything to do with you and I reacted. It was a human reaction. I was emotional about it. I was really angry. I don't express anger by lashing out and shouting and swearing. My anger expresses itself through thought and sometimes passive aggression. I'm a professionally angry person. We're lawyers.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:We do it differently, right, but we can still be angry, we shouldn't deny it. So those raw emotions came out, yeah, and I felt, I guess, resentful. I thought how dare he respond to my generosity with that behavior, right. And then I messaged my wife, and in my message to my wife I thought I can't be so crass, I've got to be a bit more spiritual now. So I messaged her something a bit more spiritual.
Speaker 3:And I thought I've got to be a bit more spiritual now.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to do something a bit more spiritual and I thought I'm just lying To make yourself feel better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just plastering over my raw feelings. And so then I just started thinking and connecting it to my framework and made me realize that actually that generosity I thought I showed wasn't mine. It's Allah's generosity that Allah honored me. This is called karama. Allah honored me to channel through me and so I'm just a pipe. So this analogy Allah gave me. And again, this is how Allah speaks to us. You know, when earlier I said there's a munajat and a muhadatha, a conversation sometimes we have with Allah. Allah speaks to the prophets directly, but to us he just gives us ilham.
Speaker 1:Fa alhamaha, fujuraha wa taqwaha. Right, it's in the Quran. So Allah imprints a meaning in our mind or in our heart, and I just this meaning of a pipe. And actually there's also a hadith about how the heart of a believer is an aniya, a vessel which contains Allah. Right, Not physically, of course, but when we have a relationship with him and we achieve his rida, we contain him in our hearts. Again, I'm not making it theologically, I'm talking about morally right. So this thought of a pipe came into my mind and I realized that a pipe is only useful or valuable if it's empty. If there's something in the pipe, that's a problem.
Speaker 3:It's blocking.
Speaker 1:It's blocking if there's something in the pipe, that's a problem. It's blocking, it's blocking it's a blockage and so if my ego is in the pipe, it's blocked. Yeah, I have to get my ego out, and so I, I just focused on emptying my pipe and it was such a relief, it was so amazing. I just I had.
Speaker 3:All my emotions were gone, no negative feeling I had, I just had positivity how did you deal with that then, that snubbing, how did you feel about it? How that snubbing? How did you feel about it? How do you feel about it now?
Speaker 1:I have no problem with it because, uh I I was honored by allah to deliver his generosity to another person.
Speaker 4:That's all that matters how do you prevent that from becoming what some might call a pushover? Or you know, somebody can get taken advantage of, because I think this characteristic you know. There have been instances in my life, for example, where you know I might have been seen to have demonstrated something similar. But then the response is well, you, you know you didn't push hard enough or you know you should have. That was not a good situation. Like you can't just be walked over like that. So how do you? It's a fine line. How do you distinguish between the two?
Speaker 1:yeah. So what I'm talking about is an internal attitude, not necessarily outward behavior, because I might. So we need to draw boundaries. Without boundaries, we'd all die. Even our skin is a boundary. Without our skin, we'd die. Right, our homes are boundaries and we have privacy in the home. If people violate that boundary, there needs to be consequences. We need to defend. If a man is mistreating my wife, I will have gira. I will stand up for her right. I shouldn't be. I shouldn't say right, okay, um, I'm just a pipe and I'm not gonna do anything about this. I'm just a pipe.
Speaker 1:No, that's not how it works, right so what you're talking about is an internal attitude right but so so I might have an outward behavior that to another person might look aggressive, but because I know I'm a pipe and I'm fulfilling the will of because allah has attributes that are jelali there are jamali beauty, attributes of beauty and jelali attributes of majesty and might and power. Right, and sometimes we have to reflect those in the circumstances that require them, so long as we don't do those in a self-serving or selfish way or a negatistic way. So the famous example of Ali, you know the example where he was in a battle. In the battle people tried to kill each other and so he'd floored. His opponent was about to strike and the man spat on his face and then he pulled away.
Speaker 1:And the man came and said why have you pulled away? He said because before I was fighting you to reflect Allah's actually not his very words, I'm just framing it. I was fighting you for Allah as in, to reflect in my behavior the attributes of God. But the moment you spat on me, there's now a risk and a danger. Of course Ali, allah knows, was a wali and a sahabi. He probably wouldn't have killed him egotistically, but he saw now a conflict and killed him egotistically but he saw now a conflict and so, in order not to risk, the possibility that it might happen.
Speaker 1:He pulled away. You see the warat. This is called scrupulousness. His warat he pulled away, which amazed the man, and so here he's now reframing. He's saying I need to recalibrate before I do this action.
Speaker 3:If I were to do this, it's not for my own ego, exactly for the very reason some vengeance, exactly now it's possible in that situation.
Speaker 1:He lets the man go, make sure he's framed correctly theologically, morally, and meets the guy in battle again and the same incident would happen. He spits at him again, but now there's no risk. It'll happen. He could still strike yeah do you see?
Speaker 1:so that's what that illustrates how we need to constantly be, um, taking moral inventory of ourselves. And this is where that spiritual path I was talking about, where I started nine months ago I don't know how long we have, but, um, that has totally changed my life, in my behavior, because now, every day, I'm keeping that spiritual moral inventory under the guidance of a mentor, and I'm checking these incidents in. And even that checking in is such relief, because now I'm no longer self-reliant, because I could say, well, I'm a sheikh, or I'm not a sheikh, but people call me sheikh for whatever reason. I've got knowledge. I could do a bit of research and find out the right answer. I know the right answer.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna, self-reliantly, do this, but there's a beauty and a humility in surrendering to another person yeah and that my mentor is actually good sort of 15 years younger than me wow, a young guy who's been doing this for 10 years with this chef. And somebody asked me recently how do you find it to have a mentor who's younger than you?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, that's my immediate thought, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'd already been thinking about this because it's hard. I mean, I'm sort of I'm almost 50. I'm 47.
Speaker 3:I'll show you, wouldn't tell.
Speaker 1:And I've got a mentor who's like early 30s.
Speaker 4:My age, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, but I learned so much knowledge and wisdom from him. Yeah. And I think that's a beautiful thing, because that's just what I need. Allah gives you what you need. Allah sent me to a younger mentor because I need to learn humility. Wow. And I could take that as an affront, in which case I'm reflecting a devilish attribute, or I can embrace that, and then the opportunity for me to rise is so much more.
Speaker 3:Subhan Allah, I think we are completely out of time.
Speaker 4:I think we can all agree that this has been a profound and enlightening transformative conversation, and not one that I think either of us expected to have.
Speaker 3:No, not at all. Thank you for being so candid with us and with the audience, because we've never had an episode like this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's been genuinely unlike anything that I expected. I don't know how long we have.
Speaker 1:But back then, that first week when I had this transformation, I had a dream. It's like literally four days after I spoke to that person went to that event on a Wednesday evening, met Sheikh Mohammed he's a student of my Sheikh and he mentored me in the beginning and then I've now been handed over to Shaykh Harun, who's more experienced, so that Friday morning I have a dream and I wake up like wow, never had a dream like this. And the dream was I saw myself at the grave of Shaykh Abdul Qadir al-Jilani and in my family tradition we're not sort of of that sort of denomination.
Speaker 4:We don't visit graves generally.
Speaker 1:It's not in my psyche. I don't think of myself as sort of visiting graves generally, although it's a good thing. It's part of the sunnah. The Prophet said visit graves because it reminds you of death.
Speaker 1:So I see myself at his grave and my wife is with me and she sits down and starts doing some adhkar. And then I know that I have to go and do something. I've got a job with an errand to run. She says go and do your errand and come back. And that's the end of the dream. And I thought okay. So I checked and at the time I didn't know my sheikh. I'd just gone to one event, um. And so I had a friend who's got a sheikh in america, sheikh ismail. So I sent it to him, because he interprets dreams and he said the dream is beautiful. It's telling you To emulate the akhlaq Of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Al Jilani, who was one of the great. Legends.
Speaker 1:Masters of spiritual and the outward sciences. He was the master Of all the scholars Of Baghdad, uncontroversial. So he said Read up on his life. So I started reading Up on his life. So I started reading about up on his life a bit, seeing his behavior and this great story of how, when he was a young man I think maybe 18, 19 he traveled and his mother had had his inheritance, I think 40 gold pieces which she, she, sewed under his armpit, um, and then they were robbed in the desert. And then a robber and she, his mother, made him promise, you will always tell the truth. And so a robber came up to him, said do you have anything of value? He said, yeah, I've got 40 gold piece under my armpit. And that he laughed and went off. And then another guy came and said do you have anything about it? I've got 40 gold piece under my armpit. He laughed and went off.
Speaker 1:And then later the head robber, he, they told him about it. He was like what's this? So he calls him and says do you have anything of value? So yeah, I've got 40 gold piece under myit. So he tore it open and he finds it. He goes you could have escaped with your money? Why did you tell me? He said because I've committed to truth. And then he starts crying.
Speaker 3:The robber.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the robber starts crying and he makes tawbah. And then all of his robbers came and said to him you've been our leader in robbery, in theft and crime. Now be our leader in the path to Allah. And Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani said those were the first people who held my hand and swore to return to Allah, did tawbah in his life and he was just a boy.
Speaker 1:He was a young man, yeah, and thousands, if not millions, of people through his life found Allah through him. And so what happened to me was I see this dream on a Friday morning. Next Wednesday, I go to this gathering again. It's called Sacred Compass. It's on Commercial Road, wapping High School. Every Wednesday we're there, so I'll be there tonight. Okay, welcome to come, okay.
Speaker 1:So, 7.30 pm. So next Wednesday I go to the same gathering my second event and Sheikh Mohammed. Guess what he's talking about? I had no conversation with him. The story, no, I can't remember. If he gives the story, but the whole talk beginning to end is about the akhlaq of Sheikh Abdul Qadir al-Jibreel. And so again, these are bishara. These are good news. You're in the right place. What you're looking for is here, subhanallah, and that idea that you need to go do your errand and come back.
Speaker 4:That's me working on myself, which I think has been demonstrable in this very conversation. So, allah Mubarak.
Speaker 1:I'm a beginner, I'm a novice on the path. Nine months old, would you mentor us? You're welcome. I started mentoring so I can give you the initial tasks to do wow, incredible.
Speaker 3:We're completely out of time, so we're going to have to wrap up there but Sheikh Salman, it has been an incredible conversation. Thank you so much and Asalaamu alaykum, I've learned a lot.
Speaker 4:Wa-alaykum, as-salamu alaykum.
Speaker 3: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've 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.