On the Caravan Podcast in London during Muslim Tech Fest, host interviews Hani Chihabi, 24-year-old co-founder of Thaura AI, an ethical alternative to big tech AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. Hani explains Thaura’s mission to counter “surveillance capitalism,” protect users through encrypted data stored in Europe, and avoid reliance on AWS, Azure, or GCP. Launched with Tech for Palestine, Thaura reached 100,000 users in two months without funding or ads, driven by community support and a Discord of contributors. Hani describes quitting a comfortable tech job after feeling complicit while watching Palestine’s suffering, declining investor offers to preserve mission integrity, and exposing an attempted acquisition by an Israeli company. He frames Thaura as a “revolution” to decentralize technology, decolonize the digital landscape, and prioritize truthfulness, sustainability, and user power.

Join us on this episode of The Caravan Podcast as we sit down with Yusuf Omar, the visionary co-founder of seen.tv. 

From hitchhiking 12,000 km across the African continent to reporting from the front lines of the Syrian Civil War and the Arab Spring, Yusuf shares his incredible journey of becoming a "one-man band" storyteller.

In this deep-dive conversation, we explore:

00:00 Apartheid Everyday Cruelty

01:38 Podcast Intro Yusuf Omar

03:17 Privilege And Career Choices

07:03 South Africa Explains Palestine

10:34 Anger As A Marathon

14:04 Seeing The Wins

15:12 Why America Is Hated

16:43 Detached America And Propaganda

19:33 Muslim American Identity Clash

26:19 Make Your Own Journalism Path

28:30 Durban To Damascus Breakthrough

33:20 Faith Shaken By War

35:04 Gaza Reset And Media Power

40:31 Why Muslims Avoid Media

41:56 Funding Muslim Media

43:15 Storytelling Is Power

44:32 When Narratives Turn Deadly

46:36 Representation Inside Newsrooms

49:26 Empathy Through Awe

52:24 Building Seen.tv Verticals

55:36 Investors Without Control

58:32 Lean Production Playbook

01:04:03 Censorship In Conflict Zones

01:09:01 Live News Future

01:13:48 How To Support Seen.tv

01:16:38 Creator Accelerator Vision

01:19:01 Closing Thanks

Follow Yusuf Omar:

• Instagram: ⁠@yusufomar⁠
• TikTok: ⁠@yusufomarsa⁠
• Company: ⁠seen.tv⁠

In this episode, we sit down with Abubakar Sheriff, founder of Qariyb — a platform reimagining how Muslim organizations discover, manage, and host events. Born in Saudi Arabia, raised in Philly, and shaped by time in the Middle East, Abubakar brings a truly global perspective to entrepreneurship and community building.We dive deep into his journey from instructional designer and online education pioneer to solo founder navigating the highs and lows of building in the Muslim tech space. Abubakar opens up about bootstrapping Qariyb, finding his CTO through Islamic makers networks, and the pivotal decision to shift from a marketplace model to an event operating system — putting brand control and data privacy back in the hands of Muslim organizations.We also get into the bigger conversations around AI and the future of education, the untapped potential of the Islamic economy, why building niche isn't a limitation, and the real challenges of raising capital as a Muslim founder.

On the Caravan podcast, Babar Bhatti (founder of Dallas AI and Chief AI Officer at Prism Skills) discusses why “technology is never neutral,” how AI’s recursive improvement is creating rapid change, and why society and policy are not moving fast enough to address risks like bias, misinformation, erosion of trust, surveillance, and warfare. He recounts building Dallas AI from 2017 with a focus on authentic, vendor-neutral, high-quality events, consistent meetups, and practical learning for both technical and non-technical attendees despite early low support. Bhatti explains Prism Skills as a 15-minutes-a-day microlearning platform that personalizes AI literacy by role and industry and helps companies manage AI adoption and change management. He also shares his background studying and working in Japan, early internet-era experiences, founding a 2010 social media analytics startup, and lessons from selling it for under $2M.00:00 Technology Is Not Neutral02:57 Why Dallas AI Started03:47 Building Meetups That Matter05:41 Early Struggles And Support10:29 Bootstrapping Quality Events13:12 From Deep Learning To ChatGPT16:11 What Prism Skills Does20:10 AI Jobs And Change Management23:03 Risks Misinformation And Power30:15 Policy Education And The Future32:39 Life Abroad Japan Chapter33:25 Studying Japan in 199234:10 Learning Japanese vs Chinese35:43 Work Culture Lessons36:58 Why Move to America38:39 Bilingual Skills Mindset40:52 Culture Shock Comparisons42:29 Internet Era Inspiration47:05 Startup Idea Social Analytics49:30 Social Media Dark Side54:34 Bootstrapping and Early Sales59:06 Exit and Acquisition Lessons01:01:55 Closing Thanks and Wrap

On the Caravan podcast, host Hamza interviews Mohammed Musa, founder of Deepen AI, about moving from the Bay Area to Dallas for stronger Muslim community infrastructure, identity reinforcement for youth, and programs like iThon Robotics, which has grown to 44+ locations and won the Texas state robotics competition. Mohammed shares navigating Muslim identity in post-9/11 Silicon Valley and in Japan’s drinking-centric work culture, then traces his career from elevator software to semiconductor startup Sonics (where stock dilution left him $800 back from a $10K investment), to game tech at Havok and Emergent, and six years at Google during its innovative era. He explains how VR and self-driving “aha” moments led to Deepen AI, which provides sensor-fusion data labeling tools and services, calibration software, and a data “refinery,” including SafetyPool.ai to share crash scenarios for safer ADAS/autonomy. 00:00 Stock Loss Cold Open00:44 Podcast Intro Guest Setup02:14 Texas Move Community05:42 Identity Youth Programs07:09 Ithan Robotics Impact11:34 Post 9 11 Identity15:26 Faith Quran Reflection19:03 Workplace Assimilation Pressures23:29 Japan Startup Detour26:37 Game Tech Startup Shutdown30:49 Early Career Elevator Tech32:07 Sonics Equity Heartbreak38:42 Dilution Horror Story40:22 Regret and Lost Upside42:13 From Startups to Google45:17 Google Culture and Lessons47:33 VR Experiment to Autonomy53:04 Why Mobility Matters56:16 Deepen Explained Simply01:01:16 Calibration and Data Refinery01:03:48 Safety Pool for Edge Cases01:07:12 Twia App and Quran Reflection01:12:45 Closing Thoughts and Farewell

Maryam Ishtiaq didn't take the easy road — she took every road. From pre-med at Georgia Gwinnett to international marketing, from New York influencer to Dallas entrepreneur, her journey is one of the most honest stories of reinvention we've ever heard on The Caravan.In this episode, Maryam opens up about the pregnancy loss that nearly broke her — and how cooking pulled her back from the edge. That moment of healing became the foundation for It's Actually, a halal beef bone broth brand that started with 32 jars a day made in a family kitchen and has since closed a $500K seed round with Friday Ventures.We get into all of it: the immigrant pressure to become a doctor, the burnout of the influencer grind, building a CPG brand with no outside capital, serving cancer patients through chemo recovery, getting their first retail shelf at Greenvine Market, winning an SBA loan when investors wouldn't bite, and why the halal food category is long overdue for a real brand to own it.0:00 Introduction2:24 Early Life & Cooking Origins3:41 Pre-Med to Marketing Pivot6:07 The ICU Moment13:58 Moving to New York & Influencer Life16:23 The Highlight Reel vs. Reality18:26 Navigating Criticism & Depression23:12 Moving to Dallas & Pregnancy Loss33:20 Cooking as Healing43:27 From Kitchen to Business54:51 Raising Capital & Retail Growth1:04:03 Supply Chain & Halal Vision1:05:30 Future Goals1:11:48 Overrated / Underrated1:13:56 Wrap-Up

They told you economics started with Adam Smith in 1776. They left out a lot.

Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali — an 11th century Muslim scholar writing in Persia — described hoarding, currency manipulation, speculation, and institutional corruption with a precision that maps almost perfectly onto the financial crises of the modern world.

In this episode, we break down Al-Ghazali's economic framework and what it means for Muslim entrepreneurs building today:

• Why hoarded money actively harms society
• How speculation destroys the trust that markets run on
• Why currency manipulation is a form of theft against the poor
• And what all of this means for how we build businesses

This is our intellectual heritage. And it's more practical than anything taught in a classroom.

The Caravan is a podcast for Muslim entrepreneurs, builders, and community makers.

🔔 Subscribe for more episodes on Islamic intellectual history, entrepreneurship, and community building.

Building a company is phase one — the real game is learning to sell it, acquire more, and use capital to move the Ummah forward.

Hamza Abdallah is the founder of CATA Leads, a real estate lead generation agency based in Dallas, TX. In this conversation, we trace his path from immigrating at age nine — leaving Bangladesh after his father, a retired Major General, refused to be bought by a corrupt regime — through UT Austin, a pivotal mentorship under entrepreneur CJ Finley, and into building a company he's now preparing to exit.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• How a McKinsey rejection freshman year redirected Hamza toward entrepreneurship — and why he sees it as Allah's plan
• The mentorship model CJ Finley built with Hamza at UT, and why Hamza is now replicating it with a key hire in Egypt
• Why Hamza chose to niche into real estate seller leads and how cold email — with one specific subject line — built his early client base
• The difference between tying your camel tight and trusting the result to Allah, and why Hamza had to learn that distinction the hard way in year three
• What "escape velocity" money means for a Muslim founder — and why an exit isn't about getting rich, it's about Ummah-level impact
• How Hamza thinks about halal income operating adjacent to an interest-based industry

What happens when NIH funding dries up, industry doors close, and your postdoc interviews get canceled — all at once? For Dr. Suhaib Hashem, founder of Luminar, it became the push he needed to bet on himself.In this episode, we sit down with a USC biomedical engineering PhD graduate who turned a crisis moment into a MedTech startup focused on saving lives and cutting costs in the emergency room.

From navigating ADHD in undergrad to getting married before finishing his degree, to landing a spot in the Henry Ford Health Accelerator — Dr. Hashem's story is one of resilience, clarity, and calculated risk.

We get into the real behind-the-scenes of building in the medical device space: why most medical innovation doesn't happen (it's not what you think), the difference between a good and bad PhD advisor, why he turned down bigger checks for a better first customer, and how public research gave us insulin, the MRI, and CRISPR.

If you're a founder, pre-med, engineer, or just someone figuring out their next move — this one's for you.

Morad Bouzidi came to the U.S. from Morocco at 19 with big dreams, limited connections, and a willingness to do whatever work it took to build a life. In this episode of The Caravan Podcast, we sit down with the founder of Moroccan Fusion inside Boston Public Market, where he shares the real story behind going from immigrant hustle (bakery jobs, serving tables, driving Uber) to launching a food truck in 2016 and eventually opening a brick-and-mortar location in 2020.Morad breaks down the hidden realities of the food business: why a food truck is “two businesses in one,” how commissary kitchens and city permits shape everything, and the painful lesson of losing $8,000 to a food truck build scam. We also get into the strategy side: building a fast-casual “build-your-bowl” concept inspired by Chipotle and CAVA, balancing authenticity with accessibility, and how he uses customer repeat-rate data (including a 50% weekly return rate) to measure whether the brand is truly earning trust.If you’ve ever thought about starting a restaurant, a food truck, or any small business—this is the honest version people don’t usually tell.