Big promise, right?
But that's what I am working towards. This, is my dawah.
But I can’t do it alone. To achieve this, I am working towards training 5,000 young Muslims who care about the future of Islam.
Now, I know there are many trainings Muslims have been conducting that have led us to, well, exactly where we were before the training.
We are full of brilliant ideas in words and on paper. But never in action. It's not this kind of dawah I am talking about.
I am talking about a silent kind of dawah—one that transforms without noise, one that is based on a solid theory of change, moral leadership, and empathy that leads to problem-solving, one that requires continuous learning, a business model, and design thinking.
In short, I want to raise a generation of RGMs, Revenue-Generating Muslims, through dawahpreneurship, with the capacity to turn ideas into business solutions to solve social problems with Islamic values a la social entrepreneurship, just for the sake of Allah.
Young Muslim dawahpreneurs who can use digital transformation to solve social problems for Allah's sake without depending on fundraising, donations, or external aid.
Again, a big promise, right?
Every time I go to the bank, I try to gauge the age of the bank staff. I see young people in all the various departments running the engines of the country’s economy through their own platforms. The exciting thing is that someone or a group brought these young people together to start a sustainable venture.
These young people can do their jobs because they have the requisite training and skills.
A critical job of Islam is to transform a person or even a community into a better person or community. Transformation requires change—changing minds and hearts. But do our du’at have the skills to quote source texts?
Changing minds and hearts to protect, preserve and perpetuate Islamic civilisation and value system requires a combination of solid infrastructure, institutions, systems, tools, frameworks and human capacity. The capacity to translate Islamic values and teachings into tangible products and services that promote the values and teachings of Islam without preaching.
We need to upskill the Muslim youth to build the foundation that will help the Ummah thrive in the next frontier of human evolution - the AI era.
But the thing is, you do not have to solve the whole world's problem. Just solve that of your space or environment. Because you can’t roof the world.
At the heart of this is dawah. And dawah needs people, the agent that will carry it.
If 5000 Muslims, in the next five years, create successful businesses run by the values of Islam across the world. And each employs at least a hundred people, with good pay and promising treatment. Do you think this is a more powerful dawah than preaching? Of course, it is.
While many Muslim organisations worldwide are spending most of their energies begging for money in the name of fundraising, many young non-Muslims are building startups using design thinking strategies to generate revenues that keep them afloat on the internet without raising funds but earning funds. This makes Muslim kids admire them more than they admire the Muslim fundraiser superstars.