One Foot In The Sink | Muslim Lifestyle Podcast

Shahed Amanullah is a serial entrepreneur and a Silicon Valley veteran. In 1998, he founded Zabihah.com, the world’s first Halal restaurant guide.

He is the co-founder of Zakatify, a social initiative in partnership with PayPal which turns your annual Zakat giving into social experience for Muslim communities and beyond.

Shahed has also co-founded Affinis Labs, an award-winning social innovation firm that helps clients tackle global challenges through entrepreneurship.

Shahed served as a Senior Advisor for Technology for the US State Department and has also briefed President Barack Obama several times on efforts to bring together Americans and the global Muslim communities.

In this episode, we talk about Shahed’s entrepreneurial journey, his passion for creating companies with a social impact, inspiring global Muslim tech communities under the Obama administration, pros and cons of current trends within global Muslim businesses and exploring the concept of the ‘by us, for them’ business model.

We enjoyed our conversation with the Silicon Valley veteran, gaining great insight in to business trends within the Muslim communities and his genuine passion for social impact via technology.

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Muhammad Aurangzeb is a Data Scientist, an associate professor at University of Washington and the founder of ‘Islam & Science Fiction’, a website dedicated to sci-fi stories, novels, movies with Islamic themes

Aurangzeb is a Data Scientist at KenSci, a US based, artificial intelligence healthcare start-up dedicated to predict your future health.

Aurangzeb is one of the few Muslims in tech that is committed to determine the impact of artificial intelligence on Islamic principles and how these principles and ethics can be coded in to future technologies such as the autonomous vehicle.

We talk to Aurangzeb about what is artificial intelligence, the influence of AI in our daily lives, why the application of Islamic principles (Fiqh) and ethics should be applied to AI technologies and how Muslims can contribute towards a future with Muslim lifestyle compliant technology

We had an insightful and fun conversation with Aurangzeb using the autonomous vehicle, AI Hajj and the hand-slaughtered vs. machine-slaughtered conundrum as examples.

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Yassmin Abdel-Magied is an engineer, award winning social advocate, author and broadcaster. Yassmin advocates for the empowerment of youth, women and those from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Yassmin started her working career as an engineer on oil rigs in Australia where she was a rare sight on the rigs – a hijab-wearing Muslim woman!

At age 16, she founded the non-for-profit Youth Without Borders and by 24, she had released her memoir, Yassmin’s Story. She also appeared as a presenter for Australia’s ABC TV channel.

In 2015, Yassmin gave a popular Ted Talk about the unconscious bias which has led her to now build a career around challenging the unconscious bias.

Yassmin's work and leadership have been recognised with many honours including Young Australian Muslim of the Year in 2007.

In this episode, we discuss Yassmin’s unique experiences of working on remote oil rigs, her fallout with the Australian media, finding strength to deal with a very public backlash, what is the unconscious bias and so much more!

We really enjoyed speaking to Yassmin and hearing her incredible story, learning from mistakes and having faith in Allah

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Mohammed Faris is an international coach, author, speaker and the founder of Productive Muslim. Productive Muslim is a popular lifestyle blog which Mohammed started in 2007 to explore the question, “Can Islam teach us productivity?”

Today, Mohammed dedicates himself to deliver productivity resources and training aligned with Islamic ethics. He has also published a book, ‘The ProductiveMuslim Book: Where Faith Meets Productivity’ which is a culmination of things he has learnt along the way.

In this episode, Mohammed talks about how Islam teaches us productivity, the importance of Barakah and offers some tips that can be implemented in your daily life to boost your own productivity.

We really enjoyed our chat with Mohammed. He is very knowledgeable, and we can see why he helps executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs re-balance their lives spiritually, physically and socially to achieve peak performance in their personal and professional lives.

There are many take away from this episode, so have you pen and paper ready!

Original Broadcast Date: 6th August 2018

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Mohammed Ali is an award winning artist, curator and creative producer. He is regarded as a pioneer in the Islamic street-art movement, fusing street art with Islamic script and patterns. He has been awarded an MBE for services to Art.

Mohammed began as a graffiti artist, painting Islamic inspired street art. He has since evolved his work towards combining street art with live performances, installations, digital projections and moving soundscapes. He has created truly immersive experiences for audiences throughout the world, from street canvases in New York,  Amsterdam, London and Melbourne, to intimate performances in the Vatican.

His work serves as a bridge, bringing together communities divided by culture, faith and ethnicity.

In 2008, Mohammed founded ‘Soul City Arts’, a global arts movement bringing together artists, activists and communities with the goal of transforming society.

In 2013, Mohammed was invited to the Vatican to present at a TedX entitled “Religious Freedom Today” where he painted a street art mural live on stage.

On the show today, we discuss his journey as a graffiti artist and becoming a role model to future Islam-inspired artists, the state of the Islamic arts scene today and learning from past experiences, the future of the Islamic Arts and the inspiration behind his Vatican performance.

We had an insightful conversation with the pioneer, exploring an area which does not get much media coverage and learning more about the Islamic Arts space.

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Shazad Younas is the founder and CEO of Muzmatch.

In 2014, Shahzad quit his job in banking to pursue Muzmatch full time after seeing friends struggling to find a partner. Today, Muzmatch helps Muslims around the world find their perfect marriage partner.

The Muzmatch app operates in 190 countries, has over 500,000 members and has had 15,000 successful matches. They have disrupted the Muslim matchmaking market place with their playful approach, high quality offering and engaging content.

Today on the show we discuss Shazad’s inspiration behind starting Muzmatch, how it has helped thousands overcome common issues in Muslim communities, the importance of using the service with good intentions and how easy it is for people to use the app to find their perfect partner

We had a great time speaking to Shazad, hearing his story and understanding his desire to make a difference whilst helping people.

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Tez Ilyas is an award winning British comedian and actor who started comedy in 2010 as a hobby. He is regarded as one of most celebrated rising stars in British comedy.

After studying biochemistry at university, Tez went on to work as a civil servant for a decade. He was told by his friends that he was quite funny, so he started to speak at open mic events in London and soon discovered that he was quite good at stand-up comedy!

In 2015, Tez left his job to pursue show business full time and achieved phenomenal success with his debut tour, Tez Talks, followed by his own series on BBC based on his show.

In 2016, his highly anticipated follow up show, Made in Britain, debuted at the infamous Edinburgh Festival Fringe and went on to sell out every performances.

In 2018, Tez toured with his latest show, Teztify, which he also performed at the prestigious venue, Live at the Apollo. Tez also appears on the hit BBC show, Man Like Mobeen, where he plays the character ‘Eight’.

On the show today, we talk about how Tez stumbled into comedy, dealing with nerves on the stage, transitioning from stand-up to acting, and so much more!

Please excuse our giggles and laughter but it was too hard to resist laughing at Tez’s jokes throughout this episode.

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Mikhail Melvin Goh is the founder of Have Halal, Will Travel (HHWT), a media & technology company offering resources and tools to help Muslim travellers plan their perfect trip.

In 2016, Mikhail discovered Islam and in turn, experienced the extra precautions required and lack of services a Muslim traveller faces when travelling the world. The Singaporean native was motivated to provide a solution for the struggle, so he teamed up with his wife and friend and founded HHWT.

Today, HHWT content reaches over 8.6 million Muslims a month. They are redefining the Muslim travel market with highly shareable social content and technology products to recommend the best things to do, eat and places to pray.

On the show today, we discuss Mikhail’s journey to Islam, spreading peace via travelling, holiday trends and often overlooked Muslim-friendly destinations!

We really enjoyed speaking to Mikhail and his genuine desire to spread peace via travelling.

Our LaunchGood collaboration for this episode is with the ‘Middle Path’, a game created by Binaye Games. Show your support to help them achieve their crowd funding goal!

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Amal Kassir is a Syrian-American, international spoken word poet. If you asked Amal to describe herself in 3 words, she would say ‘Story-Telling Activist’

Amal has spoken in 10 countries and over 70 cities in venues ranging from youth prisons to orphanages, universities to refugee camps. She is widely known for her famous Ted Talk, ‘The Muslim on the airplane’, which has over 3 million views on Youtube alone!

The Denver-born poet has lost countless members of her family to the violence in Syria in the last eight years. Amal feels that it is pertinent to write about the injustices to her people in the form of spoken word.

In this episode, Amal shares with us her story, where her passion to speak about injustice stems from and why she channelled her energy towards poetry, to speak about the ones who are not spoken for.

We also talk about the art of storytelling and how you can become a better storyteller. Amal shares an experience of failure and what she learnt from it and also provides some useful tips on engaging with your community.

We hope you like this powerful episode.

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Peter Gould returns to share his reflections from his recent journey to Hajj in 2018 (1439).

Peter provides a powerful reflection based on his experiences , encounters with diverse pilgrims, looking at Hajj from a designer’s perspective and talking about some of the gadgets he came across. 

He also shares his views on the importance of creating a community, how he created a community of global creative Muslims, and the power of creativity within the youth and what we can do to empower it.

We had a great time hearing Peter’s Hajj stories. We think this episode will inspire you to start thinking about planning your own journey to perform the Hajj Insh’Allah!

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