“I don’t really care about this industry,” a friend recently told me. “What matters is helping people do the right thing.”
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to build a career that honours knowledge of something and practice for something.
For many of us, both matter. Subject expertise gives depth and context; it grounds us in a field of knowledge.
“What’s the last business book you’ve read?”
Someone asked me this recently. After a beat, I realised I couldn’t name one.
It’s not because I’ve stopped reading (the librarians in the NYC libraries of my childhood would still be proud) but because the work I do doesn’t often start with traditional business books.
A few days ago, I came across a post that said:
“These times will keep reminding you over and over again that no one out there is your saviour… especially people in positions of authority. If you keep putting people on pedestals, the universe will keep engineering situations where they disappoint you so that you can reclaim your disowned power.” Xavier Dagba
I’ve been reflecting on what my research on religious learning in American Muslim communities can teach us about narratives, leadership, and organisational learning.
Here are seven key insights drawn from my latest book, insights that apply far beyond religious spaces and speak directly to…
The mainstream leadership development sector continues to praise and elevate systems thinking as the indispensable leadership skill for navigating the complexities of our time.
While understanding complexity is important, the uncritical centring of systems thinking risks becoming a dangerous distraction. Here’s why — and what we need instead:
I look down at the Arabic script and stare. I can no longer read it. It’s a strange fear that I have, that I’ll open the Qur’an one day and be unable to read. When I pick up the book after some time away, despite my daily prayer, my tongue carries this fear, heavy and cautious stumbling over the first few words, until …
The sun is setting behind Rumi’s tomb, scorching the clouds on its descent, giving them fired coloured edges. The students exit the museum housing Rumi’s tomb and make their way to the side of the building, where a mini colosseum is constructed.
As midday approached, my roommate and I boarded a ferry to Büyükada, one of the nine Princes’ Islands in Turkey. She called me ‘sister’ given our shared African heritage, but only when she was happy with me; otherwise, it was ‘cousin’.
I don’t recall the age at which I started working but a picture of me and my two older brothers, horsing around in a large brown box makes me want to believe that I was perhaps seven or eight years old. It wasn’t considered working at the time.
Muslim education in the public domain is on a slippery slope. In the age of information satire with the popularity of Jon Stewart, Colbert, and other media projects aimed to point out the absurdity in public opinions or long held racist stances, much humor also permeates Muslim education. The need to provide some levity to dense topics isn’t new.
I took travel for granted. My focus was always on the end of the trip. What I would do when I met a friend, what sights I would see when I arrived, what meetings did I have to make. Being in transit was literally a means to an end. And for work I had to travel quite a lot, back and forth between New York and different countries in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
