About Mawarid Lifestyle
With Mawārid Lifestyle, the focus will be on the things that make a good quality Islamic lifestyle. You can expect courses and content on strengthening our īmān, dealing with doubts, shaping our values and improving our character, enriching our worship, marriage, parenting, family, Islamic learning and education, well-being, community, etc. Of course, there will inevitably be the odd Shams Muhammad rant here and there.
About me
Assalamu alaikum,
Muslim Community websites and blogs often quietly pop up online without mentioning who is behind them and what they are about. Knowledge and information do not go together with anonymity in the Islāmic tradition. As Muhammad Ibn Sīrīn (ra) said, ‘… consider carefully whom you take your religion from.’ That’s something to think about in the age of the internet and social media.
Many brothers and sisters in the community know that I founded Ebrahim College (EC) in 2002/3 and have been in management there ever since. In March 2019, I took a short sabbatical from the majority of my duties, and in June, I completely stepped down from management after 17 years in various management and leadership roles.
After stepping away from EC, I worked on a project called the Universities and Muslim Seminaries Project (UMSEP) with SOAS University, and at the same time, I setup an online platform called Mawarid Lifestyle.
Mawārid Lifestyle is an Islamic lifestyle website which, for now at least, reflects what I am personally passionate about: teaching about Islam, community and youth development, spiritual orientation and wellbeing, and leadership development. I also do some consultancy work on Islamic education and the Muslim community and the UMSEP project with SOAS was part of that consultancy work. I do this under the company name, Warid Consultancy LTD (WCL). Mawarid Lifestyle also operates as a project of WCL (Mawarid is only coincidentally connected to ‘Warid’ (my grandfather’s name). There’s no real connection.
In Feb 2022, I took on a role as Head Imam of Chelmsford Muslim Society. Since then some of the Mawarid Lifestyle courses and programmes have been running in Chelmsford.
The Mawārid Lifestyle site is my interface with my brothers and sisters in the wider Muslim community. A way to share my views, my work, and provide my services where I can (see the services menu on the site). You can read more about that below.
Please pray that this effort is accepted by Allah (Glorious is He) and it is successful. If you benefit from it, say a prayer for me and those who are helping me and spread the word so others can benefit too.
Your brother,
Shams Adduha Muhammad
About Mawarid Lifestyle
I am passionate about education, community development, spirituality and Islamic lifestyle. Not least because these two things represent my personal journey and personal challenges. I’m sure the same is true for many other Muslims. Yet, these are very broad labels that everyone uses. So what exactly do I mean by them?
Islamic Orientation
I’m referring simply to living life as a Muslim. This involves being oriented in Islam so that Islam informs our personal world view. This then results in being able to think like a Muslim and act in a manner that is underpinned by Islamic values and moral principles. Sometimes people practise Islam but their minds are immersed in an alternative worldview: Western, liberal, secular, eastern cultural, etc., the labels are endless. Cognitive dissonance, and identity crises are then inevitable which I, along with other imams and scholars , then get to witness first hand when we meet people in our counselling sessions. These things have serious implications on our faith, spirituality, mental health; and they make us compartmentalised Muslims. When these compartments clash, there are serious spiritual, mental and social implications. We all know people who pray 5 times but struggle with basic ethics and good social conduct, and those who are honest and decent but do not pray due to a lack of spiritual fortitude.
Living Islam
When our worship and core religious obligations (farāiḍ) are not surrounded by an Islamic lifestyle built on sound faith, strong values, spiritual depth, family and community, and mental, emotional, and physical well-being, our faith and worship inevitably suffer. We become vulnerable to the harām and become attracted to sin and transgression against ourselves and society, especially when our desires and goals align with them. Sin and the harām help fill the void left by the lack of Islamic lifestyle and spirituality. They are like light and darkness, day and night: where one is absent, the other is present. But many of us, with our strong sense of Muslim identity struggle with this, and it causes deep anxiety and conflict.
With Mawārid Lifestyle, the focus will be on the things that make a good quality Islamic lifestyle. You can expect courses and content on strengthening our īmān, dealing with doubts, shaping our values and improving our character, enriching our worship, marriage, parenting, family, Islamic learning and education, well-being, community, etc. Of course, there will inevitably be the odd Shams Muhammad rant here and there.
Sharing My Experience
Mawarid Lifestyle has inevitably been inspired by my own personal journey and struggles on the path of seeking knowledge, my spiritual development and struggles with living an Islamic lifestyle as well as bringing up my children upon it. It was also inspired by my commitment to serve the community in diverse ways and share with them what I’ve experienced over the last 30 or so years such as the books I have read or am reading, the scholars I’ve met and benefited from, the Islamic lifestyle products and services I’ve used, the places I’ve travelled, and the people I’ve met. So in addition to my own posts, expect lots of signposting. There’s some amazing content and resources out there.
Teaching and Mentoring
I will also pursue my passion for teaching and mentoring through Mawārid Lifestyle. In fact this is something of a comfort zone for me so there will be more course related activity in the beginning, before I am able to diversify content. I will gradually launch a small number of courses on topics that are important to me because I feel they are important to the community. As well as a couple of mentoring programmes with youth and young leaders in mind. I’m not interested in filling the site up with every course imaginable, just a few focused courses and programmes that are either hard to find elsewhere or I am, or have been, keen to teach or develop them and haven’t been able to thus far.
Finally, Mawarid is part of my own journey, so please expect it to evolve and develop over time. Please use it, benefit from it, and keep me posted with your feedback and thoughts.
Contact
Please see the services menu for specific services such as Islamic Q&A, counselling, event bookings etc: https://mawaridlifestyle.com/our-services/
You can also find a contact form on the footer menu of the site if you need to just get in touch more generally.
Telegram Community
We’ve recently set up a lively community on Telegram which I am actively engaged with daily. I’m enjoying chatting with people directly. Please feel free to join it using the link. You will need to join Telegram which has excellent apps on Android, Apple IOS, and PC. The link is: https://t.me/mawaridlifestyle
