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Hasnat Ali & Tamim Sookoor

The Wird

A Islam , Religion & Spirituality and Religion podcast

#124 in Islam · 🇳🇿
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About the show

What does success look like when faith leads the way? Every visible achievement rests on something invisible; a practice repeated daily, long before anyone was watching. Wird is an ancient word for a well or watering hole on a desert route: the place a caravan returned to for water they couldn't cross without. It came to mean the daily devotion a person returns to: spiritual sustenance drawn from the same kind of well. And wārid, from the same root, is what comes to meet you there. The Wird is a conversation series about that exchange. We sit with people from all walks of life, surgeons and scholars, filmmakers and artists, teachers and builders, and we look past the income and the accolades to the practice underneath. Each episode moves through three things: The Journey — the turning points that actually changed the trajectory. The Practice — the daily habits, systems, and wird that hold it all together. The Future — the challenges facing the Ummah, and concrete ways forward. Thoughtful, hopeful, and oriented around ihsan. Man laysa lahu wird, laysa lahu wārid. …whoever has no wird, has no wārid.

Newest episodes

Running Towards Something - Ahmad Fahmy

1 hr 10 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Ahmad Fahmy got his first job at an investment bank at eighteen, as a second-year engineering student, before anyone used the word engineer for it. He didn’t balance it with school. He worked all day, taught himself at night out of books, and dropped semesters when the two collided. He describes the method as jumping into the lake and then buying a book on how to swim. By twenty-three he had all of it: married, a son, a house, two cars, a career inside a firm he’d grown up in. He says he felt like his life was over, not beginning. What followed was twelve years in London, a climb toward managing director, and a definition of success he now calls a pie-eating contest where the reward is more pie. Then nine days running across the deep Sahara with no signal and nothing to do but think. He describes the order his thoughts arrived in: work, for the first two days. Then life. Then his parents. Then his children, and a question he couldn’t answer. Provide them with what? He left, eventually. A mentor wouldn’t let him quit until he could say whether he was running towards something or running away from something. He couldn’t, so he stayed until he could. Today he coaches organizations through change and tells most of them not to hire him. He lives in Istanbul, homeschools four children, and runs his home on systems instead of willpower. And he built 114, a challenge that asks you to run a distance and memorize a portion of the Quran, on the theory that memorizing is to an adult what the open-water swim is to an Ironman: the part that sounds impossible, filters nearly everyone out, and turns out to be the easiest leg of the race. When one community asked him to make it easier, he made it harder. His own wird is small. Surah al-Kahf on Fridays with friends at Şemsi Paşa, read out loud rather than listened to, and then a run. Man laysa lahu wird, laysa lahu wārid. CHAPTER...

Centered - Asma Waheed

1 hr 6 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Asma Waheed tried to go to art school three times. The first time, at fourteen, her father talked her out of it. He told her that if he sent her to art school, he would lose her, so she studied home economics instead and carried on like that for years. The second time, at West Virginia University, she was one semester in when she became pregnant with her first child and had to withdraw. The third time, a master's at Hood College, she made it three weeks before learning she was pregnant with her fourth. Five years went by. This is a conversation about what she did with the waiting. Asma is a multidisciplinary artist from Ellicott City, Maryland, working in clay, metal, fiber, wood and mirrors, with an MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA. She came to the United States from a small town outside Faisalabad, too nervous at first to answer the telephone in English. She learned the language in a year, raised four children, and found her way back to the studio one class at a time. She came to clay in 2011, the year her mother died, through a workshop called Healing Through Clay. The first time she touched it, she describes a state of khushu: her brain quiet, nothing else in the room. She has worked with it ever since, and she calls it her fifth child. Much of this episode is her reading her own faith through the material. Centering a ball of clay on the wheel, which took her a year to learn, as the foundation underneath everything built on top of it. Firing as the trial that either breaks you or makes you stronger. Compression as the squeeze that strengthens. Unfired clay, which can be rehydrated and reclaimed, against fired clay, which is changed forever. And clay as a record: it remembers how it was handled, down to the fingerprints of whoever shaped it. She closes on the dua (prayer) she has made for years: Ya Allah, don't let me waste me. Follow her work o...

Every Line Ends in Water: A Life Held by Practice - Dr. Salih Sayilgan

58 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Dr. Sayılgan's day starts before most people's. Fajr (morning prayer), then writing while his mind is fresh, then coffee, then ten pages of Quran, three hadiths, a few pages of the Risale-i Nur, and some lines of poetry. He calls it the thing that sets up the day. He grew up herding cows in a village in eastern Turkey, named by a Naqshbandi shaykh who came to visit when he was born. He went to boarding school in Konya, the city of Rumi. Then Istanbul, Estonia, a Christian seminary in Virginia, and eventually a Jesuit university in Washington, where he teaches a course called The Problem of God. He teaches that course because of a question he has spent a decade on: why is there suffering? In 2022 the question stopped being academic. His daughter Maryam was killed in a car accident weeks before her fourth birthday, while he was finishing a book on evil and suffering in Islam. He will tell you plainly that he has no answer. What he has is taslim, submission, and a practice that did not stop. We talk about Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, who wrote his life's work in exile and in prison, sometimes on matchboxes, and produced hope out of it. About what jihad actually means, and why Nursi called for the jihad of the pen. About why he says there is no word in any language for a parent who has lost a child. And about an Ottoman poem in which every single line ends with the word for water, and the water is the Prophet ﷺ. Man laysa lahu wird, laysa lahu wārid. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 01:05 Ten pages, three hadiths, and a few lines of poetry 03:19 Why he reads Nursi every day 05:58 A village in eastern Turkey 06:51 Boarding school in Konya, the city of Rumi 07:44 Named by a shaykh 09:47 Istanbul, Estonia, and a Christian seminary 11:33 Why he chose religion 13:37 Said Nursi: writing on matchboxes in prison 15:59 Weakness as a starting point 19:31 What jihad actually means 21:35...

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All episodes

Running Towards Something - Ahmad Fahmy

1 hr 10 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Ahmad Fahmy got his first job at an investment bank at eighteen, as a second-year engineering student, before anyone used the word engineer for it. He didn’t balance it with school. He worked all day, taught himself at night out of books, and dropped semesters when the two collided. He describes the method as jumping into the lake and then buying a book on how to swim. By twenty-three he had all of it: married, a son, a house, two cars, a career inside a firm he’d grown up in. He says he felt like his life was over, not beginning. What followed was twelve years in London, a climb toward managing director, and a definition of success he now calls a pie-eating contest where the reward is more pie. Then nine days running across the deep Sahara with no signal and nothing to do but think. He describes the order his thoughts arrived in: work, for the first two days. Then life. Then his parents. Then his children, and a question he couldn’t answer. Provide them with what? He left, eventually. A mentor wouldn’t let him quit until he could say whether he was running towards something or running away from something. He couldn’t, so he stayed until he could. Today he coaches organizations through change and tells most of them not to hire him. He lives in Istanbul, homeschools four children, and runs his home on systems instead of willpower. And he built 114, a challenge that asks you to run a distance and memorize a portion of the Quran, on the theory that memorizing is to an adult what the open-water swim is to an Ironman: the part that sounds impossible, filters nearly everyone out, and turns out to be the easiest leg of the race. When one community asked him to make it easier, he made it harder. His own wird is small. Surah al-Kahf on Fridays with friends at Şemsi Paşa, read out loud rather than listened to, and then a run. Man laysa lahu wird, laysa lahu wārid. CHAPTER...

Centered - Asma Waheed

1 hr 6 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Asma Waheed tried to go to art school three times. The first time, at fourteen, her father talked her out of it. He told her that if he sent her to art school, he would lose her, so she studied home economics instead and carried on like that for years. The second time, at West Virginia University, she was one semester in when she became pregnant with her first child and had to withdraw. The third time, a master's at Hood College, she made it three weeks before learning she was pregnant with her fourth. Five years went by. This is a conversation about what she did with the waiting. Asma is a multidisciplinary artist from Ellicott City, Maryland, working in clay, metal, fiber, wood and mirrors, with an MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA. She came to the United States from a small town outside Faisalabad, too nervous at first to answer the telephone in English. She learned the language in a year, raised four children, and found her way back to the studio one class at a time. She came to clay in 2011, the year her mother died, through a workshop called Healing Through Clay. The first time she touched it, she describes a state of khushu: her brain quiet, nothing else in the room. She has worked with it ever since, and she calls it her fifth child. Much of this episode is her reading her own faith through the material. Centering a ball of clay on the wheel, which took her a year to learn, as the foundation underneath everything built on top of it. Firing as the trial that either breaks you or makes you stronger. Compression as the squeeze that strengthens. Unfired clay, which can be rehydrated and reclaimed, against fired clay, which is changed forever. And clay as a record: it remembers how it was handled, down to the fingerprints of whoever shaped it. She closes on the dua (prayer) she has made for years: Ya Allah, don't let me waste me. Follow her work o...

Every Line Ends in Water: A Life Held by Practice - Dr. Salih Sayilgan

58 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Dr. Sayılgan's day starts before most people's. Fajr (morning prayer), then writing while his mind is fresh, then coffee, then ten pages of Quran, three hadiths, a few pages of the Risale-i Nur, and some lines of poetry. He calls it the thing that sets up the day. He grew up herding cows in a village in eastern Turkey, named by a Naqshbandi shaykh who came to visit when he was born. He went to boarding school in Konya, the city of Rumi. Then Istanbul, Estonia, a Christian seminary in Virginia, and eventually a Jesuit university in Washington, where he teaches a course called The Problem of God. He teaches that course because of a question he has spent a decade on: why is there suffering? In 2022 the question stopped being academic. His daughter Maryam was killed in a car accident weeks before her fourth birthday, while he was finishing a book on evil and suffering in Islam. He will tell you plainly that he has no answer. What he has is taslim, submission, and a practice that did not stop. We talk about Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, who wrote his life's work in exile and in prison, sometimes on matchboxes, and produced hope out of it. About what jihad actually means, and why Nursi called for the jihad of the pen. About why he says there is no word in any language for a parent who has lost a child. And about an Ottoman poem in which every single line ends with the word for water, and the water is the Prophet ﷺ. Man laysa lahu wird, laysa lahu wārid. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 01:05 Ten pages, three hadiths, and a few lines of poetry 03:19 Why he reads Nursi every day 05:58 A village in eastern Turkey 06:51 Boarding school in Konya, the city of Rumi 07:44 Named by a shaykh 09:47 Istanbul, Estonia, and a Christian seminary 11:33 Why he chose religion 13:37 Said Nursi: writing on matchboxes in prison 15:59 Weakness as a starting point 19:31 What jihad actually means 21:35...

Beyond the Page: Knowledge Lived — Professor Hernán Guadalupe

56 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Hernán Guadalupe became Muslim on the morning of September 11th, 2001, in a dorm room, minutes after the towers came down across the water. That's the part people know about him. This conversation is about the twenty-five years since. He's an engineer who'll tell you he isn't a technical person; what he actually does is find what people are capable of and get them there. He runs a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school. He co-founded Hablamos Islam, building Islamic resources in Spanish. He went to Egypt intending to study at al-Azhar and came home before he started. What makes this episode unusual is that he doesn't present a practice that worked. He describes a plateau; a stretch where he did the minimum and told himself it was enough, and only in the last two or three years has he started climbing back. Through dhikr. Through a set of prayer beads he'd avoided on principle. Through al-Ghazali, at an age when it finally landed. An imam told him something that undid him: that he'd learned a little knowledge, but he was actually living it. Chapters 00:00 What the wird is 01:59 How he defines success 04:40 Ecuador, Jersey City, and his parents' definition 07:52 The zeal of a new convert 10:33 His father's question: "Why now?" 13:13 Why he waited, and what changed that morning 16:26 Altar boy: faith and logic in conflict 20:11 Losing a community 22:51 "I didn't convert for a community" 25:00 Starting Hablamos Islam 28:45 Latino Muslims since the 1930s 30:53 You don't have to change your name 33:01 An imam from Ecuador, and a turning-point Ramadan 36:46 Egypt: what he learned without the language 40:31 Dar Al-Salam, and finding jiu-jitsu 44:16 Roll Star, and a father crying on the phone 46:56 "Whatever you're meant to make, you're gonna make" 4 9:05 Hitting a plateau 50:41 Dhikr, and the beads he avoided 52:49 The sky looks different now 54:26 Al-Ghazali clea...

From Restrictions to Openings - Khaled Helmi

46 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Khalid Helmi spent 23 years in Tech at the Social Security Administration. Finance was the thing he actually loved, but every path into it ran through something he wasn't comfortable with. So he kept narrowing: out of most stocks, into gold, into real estate, and eventually into a corner of the energy market almost nobody knows exists. What he found is that the narrowing was the opening. "That restriction on myself made me open up my mind to other opportunities." In 2025 he took a one-time federal resignation offer, walked away from a stable job in his mid-forties, and went full-time on Date Palm Resources. But the part we came for is smaller. Every morning: a short du'a, and about five minutes of Quran. He's clear that he can't tell you what it's produced; only that he trusts it has. We talk about: — Monopoly money, muscle men, and what childhood play predicts — Tripling his mother's IRA in the dot-com bubble, then losing all of it — Why he left traditional finance before he ever entered it — Mineral rights: how owning what's under the ground pays you when someone drills — Cold-calling a stranger from a decade-old newspaper article, and where that call led — The first year of losses, and the one deal that turned it — Taking the leap at 45, against nearly everyone's advice — Five minutes of Quran, and calendar reminders for du'a he doesn't want to forget — Success measured against a Galaga high score — Why Allah's generosity means you don't have to knock down anyone else's tower Man laysa lahu wird, laysa lahu wārid.

What is the wird?

1 min

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Wird Intro Whoever has no 'wird' has no 'waarid'... مَنْ لَيْسَ لَهُ وِرْدٌ لَيْسَ لَهُ وَارِد

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