Shahed studied to be an engineer as his father. Yet he ended up pursuing a career as a serial entrepreneur. Among others, he is the founder of Zabihah (www.zabihah.com) – the original and largest halal guide for halal restaurants.
Today he is a managing director at a private equity firm Frost Capital. Today he shares 3 ways to serve your community as a Muslim and the best way to serve others that will benefit everyone.
At the end of the day, people don’t want to see us perfect, but human…
–Shahed Amanullah
Show Notes
Personal Website
http://shahed.com
Zabihah
https://www.zabihah.com
Frost Capital
https://www.frostcap.com
Interview transcript
Maruf: Hey, Assalamu Alaikum. This is Muslims on fire. This is your host maruf. Today, I have a very special guest. I call this person my mentor, very good friend. We have known each other for some years now. He is already featured as one of the top 500 Muslim influencer. He is a serial entrepreneur, Alhamdulillah.
Mashallah, he has done so many things for Muslim community. He is also the founder of very well known Halal restaurant guide called zabihah. It’s just one of his projects but today we are gonna deep dive to his life story. Hopefully, we can get inspired. so, ladies and gentlemen, my friend, mentor, advisor Shahed Amanullah. Welcome, Shahid to the show.
Shahed: Assalamu Alaikum. Thank you so much for having me here.
Maruf: It’s an honour. So, Shahid as we said, we would like to pick your brain, we would like to go through your life story and try to understand how things come about and hopefully to see and learn a couple of things or two. Having said that, lets start and tell us about what you remember about your childhood, like memories.
What do you think have shaped you, what are the things looking back now, like where you are? What do you think have shaped you into who you are, what would it be if you look back?
Shahed: Well, there is a very particular experience that Muslims who were raised in the West have. That is when you are surrounded by people who are not like you, you start to ask yourself questions about who you are and what this thing called Islam is. Unlike a lot of other places where you know, you grow up where people are surrounded by Muslims. When you are not surrounded by Muslims, your identity is kind of multifaceted identity.
It’s based on your neighbours, it’s based on your larger community that you are participating in and it’s based on your parents and how they transmit to you your religious beliefs ,your mass communities. And growing up in Southern California, frankly a lot of people thought I was Mexican. And they would come to me and start speaking in Spanish. And so this idea of being Muslims was a very personal one.
This is the days before 9/11, this is even the days before like you know that Iranian revolution and things that made Muslims front and centre in the news the way they are today. So there was a little bit of anonymity. And so, it provided a little bit of space to try to figure out who I was without the pressure of the external world. And I was lucky enough to grow up in a community that really was focused on what it means to be Muslims in America. There was a saying in the mosque I grew up that, home is not where your grandparents came from, home is where your grandkids are gonna grow up.
And so with that kind of attitude about home is here the question turned into, what it means to be a Muslim here. And even though we didn’t given the answer to that, having that question put in my head meant that I would continually ask that question throughout the course of my life. What does it mean to be Muslim in America or the west and how do I Impact society around me ideally and positive beneficial way.
And so every decision I made whether it’s been political media entrepreneurship whatever, I had that in the back of my head. So, that was kind of like founding kind of Idea behind every direction that I went in.
Maruf: That’s very interesting. I mean, let me ask you a question. Were you born in the US?
Shahed: Yeah. I was born in Hollywood California in a building that is currently the headquarters of the church of scientology. It was a hospital back then. My parents were what I call burn the build immigrants, meaning that when they came here they wanted me to have very little connection to where they came from which is India.
They did not teach me their native tongue. They did not keep me in touch with any relatives that might be there. They purposefully wanted me to be you know, in this space only. I think it’s for a couple reasons. I think they thought that I would adjust better. Secondly, I think they really wanted me to have integrated into the point where I would be successful. I have regrets about that.
I don’t think it’s right to keep people separated from the places of origin. I wish they taught me Urdu. These are the things that I cannot pass down to my kids. But having said that, it did orient me in a certain way. So, I did not look overseas for my guidance to know what it means to be Muslim, I looked to my surroundings and I look to influences that may not even the Muslims.
Because I wanted to figure out how can Islam can be taken in this country in a way that is native to this country, right? So, I looked for example to African American Muslims who have tried that path before for me in terms of being Muslim and American. And try to figure out my identity in those ways.
Maruf: Well, I mean it seems that in a way, so what you’re saying is your parents kind of tried to detach you so you can adjust better. So, what about the Islam? Like, what I am trying to ask you I guess that, how they were practicing in that sense or they were trying to kind of limit you from that sense as well.
Shahed: No, as a matter of fact they didn’t but I will say this, I mean grew up in a single parent household. And much of my religious education came from a mosque that I went to primarily because it was not right next to where my father worked. It wasn’t because my father chose it. But Alhamdulillah, it was a mosque that of every Mosque or any Mosque I could have gone to was that one could have really not nurtured me as a child.
And really it was a Mosque that put youth in charge of their programming. It was a mosque where youth were made to feel like they were part of a Muslim community and not any other community. And so, I feel a lot of my kind of religious development happened at the mosque. And because it had that kind of outlook, I didn’t feel like I was trapped between worlds whether a lot of other people were.
I really didn’t feel like I was you know, I was a Muslim by birthright and I was and American as birthright and nothing was gonna take me away from that. I did not feel like I was growing up in two country or something like that. I wish it wasn’t that way for me because I feel like I have been spending my whole life trying to reconnect with Muslim world in a way that it was prevented from me, you know in my family life, but I think, Alhamdulillah, I think it did set the ground work for all the work that I would do as an adult.
Maruf: That’s amazing. So, you saw your mosque in a way to your connection, I guess to the Islamic world. That’s interesting, very interesting.
Shahed: Absolutely.
Maruf: So, I mean tell us a little bit about your school years, how was school years. How was it like to be in those area in that era to be a Muslim?
Shahed: Because it was still a curiosity to be Muslim, I mean there were only a handful of Muslims in my school, in my high school. I mean, I don’t remember, this seems kinda hard in the days of Trump, I don’t remember a single incident in High School where my being Muslim was held against me. Or, that I was made fun of, I would fast, people would know I was Muslim. As a matter of fact, I remember there was one thing that really I carry with me to this day.
One of my teachers in High School, every school has a point where one or two weeks thay talk about Islam and my teacher said ok for the next week or two we are going to talk about Islam. Islam is covered in pages x to y text in textbook. He said, “I want you to ignore the book because I think it is wrong and I am going to give you my own material and we have Shahid here in the room.” And he said, “Shahid, if anything is wrong, let me know.”
Maruf: I see. That was very brave, right? Isn’t it?
Shahed: It was. I really did again feel included. It wasn’t made to feel kind of weird or I compare that experience to example for my children, when they are learning about Islam in High School and people kind of like, look at them they are like, hey don’t look at me man. This is not my problem, you know. But I don’t wanna say it’s more negative experience for my kids, it’s just the different one.
Maruf: I see.
Shahed: My kids are also growing up in a space where, I grew up almost anonymously Muslim. My kids are growing up in a way where they are very visibly Muslim. But in the age of Trump all my kids friends are like you know, if anyone comes to you, they will defend you, right? So, it’s different but it’s still you know, Alhamdulillah, it’s still a very positive thing now. I don’t want to imply that’s the same way for all the Muslim kids in America. But Alhamdulillah, they happen to be in good schools. They are kind of liberal.
Maruf: That’s good. I mean, it seems that you had easier childhood at school. That’s good. So, tell us more about when you finished school. Like, what were the thoughts going through your head, what would you like to do when you grow up?
Shahed: It is interesting that I felt I had a good foundation of Islamic identity in High School. I think growing up in this mosque was really really good for me. Islamic Centre of the Southern California kind of gave it a shoutout. When I went to college you see, Berkeley in Northern California. And I think, it was there that I really started to ask myself, ok, you haven’t understood what it means to be Muslim personally, what does it mean to be Muslim socially, collectively and in broader environment.
So, I found myself in a position where, I was much more of a public representative of Islam among group of people who were not Muslim. And a group of people who were much more kind of you know in touch with the news and questioning and things like that, right? So, that’s where I had to start navigating, okay, what it means to be a Muslim when you are in a school with the people who are not Muslim.
People who are Christians, people who are LGBT, like you know, name all the different kinds of groups of people and how do I navigate that. And that was really educational process for me. Because you know people were generally kind and understanding but you know, I also had to ask myself really hard questions about what does it mean to be Muslim in this space.
Particularly as I started to get involved in the student government. So, I was a student senator for 3 years, I was Vice-President of the whole school my last year. And such not only I was public representative of Islam and Muslims but I was also given a public trust. So, like I can’t be seen for example to be advocating for Muslims. I have to advocate for everybody because everybody elected me. And so it was really interesting to try to balance those because I also wanted people to feel that I am not there to be an apologist for Islam and not there to be a promoter of Islam.
I am there to be a Muslim and if your life is benefited by my actions then I would like Islam to get that credit, not me. And that kind of fate, how I would be public Muslim after college because that seemed to work best for me. I would try to be kind to people, I would try to serve their needs, I would try to not overly look at my own community but in return what I would do is that, sometimes the best way to defend your community is to defend other communities.
Then what they do is, they defend you. while I was in college, the first Gulf War happened and because I had gone out on a length to support other communities that were not like me, when that time came for Gulf War to mobilize people and get out in the street, I had social capital that I could cash in and people would follow my lead. And that started to turn in from campus leadership to kind of national. Because then, in those days I started getting asked to be like in National TV shows to talk about this kind of stuff and that’s where this whole thing started. Where I really did have to ask myself was kind of bigger questions about what did it mean to be in public as a Muslim.
Maruf: Absolutely, I mean it seems that you kind of took a conscious decision to be, ok, this is who I want to be but not just ordinary people. I just want to be you know, someone in a position of leadership and actually wanted to represent. I would like to represent like show, the positive site of Islam and not just that.
Shahed: There is a way to do it. So, there are three different ways you can engage with the public. This is something that I’ve talked about to media and also about entrepreneurship and we will get to that. One is bias for us. I am gonna do something that serves me and my community. Now other people can tolerate that or they could look at it as something interesting or they could resent me, because all I care about is myself.
But at the end of the day, I am not truly gonna impact people outside of my group doing that. And then there is bias for you, right? Meaning all I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna be in public relations mode and I am going to go in front of the cameras and say Islam is peace and defend Muslims. And whatever, now, i’m not gonna actually making my community a better community.
I am not gonna ask the hard questions, the questions our community needs to ask. Ok, I am simply gonna go up there and just be a defender, right? And we live in an increasingly savvy media consumption where people can see right through public relation hacks. And if you are not in the days after 9/11, we had a lot of people just going out with cameras and saying Islam is space, islam is peace. The average onlookers saying, ok I can reconcile your work with what just happened in New York and I don’t wanna give you the benefit of doubts but you are not even giving me an answer.
Like, I am afraid I am genuinely afraid based on what I see and you are basically dismissing my fear. And I am not crazy, my fear is not irrational fears. Something just happened and it came from that part of the world and unless you are gonna give me an honest answer about that then I’m gonna continue to be afraid. That’s the dangerous of the bias for you model. Now, the third model, which is the model that I have tried to live my life is bias for everybody, meaning that we do things in the public square that serve both us and you.
So, for example in the media space that means having honest conversations about what happens on our community, but letting everyone else into that conversation so we can talk about identity formation communities. These are really important internal conversation to have. Also I think it is more important for people outside of our community to see that we are having these conversations because at the end of the day people don’t just want to see us as perfect.
They want to see us as humans. We don’t have to have the answer, we at least have to asking the question and they could 90% of people out there who aren’t like hardcore anti Muslim people as long as we’re asking those questions. Honestly, I think you know something as long as you are aware that there is an issue and your dealing with that, I will give you some space and at the end of the day we have to act in the public square in the way it benefits everybody.
Because if we don’t then we will just be seen as not a part of the larger community that they will not have invested interest in protecting us. But you have to invest in their life in order to invest in your life. We live in a world now, that you know, is getting increasing tribal. We need to break down those tribal barriers. So, I care about my neighbour, my neighbour will care about me. And so, the bias for everyone model is important in media, it’s important in politics, it’s important in entrepreneurship. And which is why a lot of the company that I try to to support even if they come from within the Muslim circles, they have to have a benefit for rest of society. If they don’t then they for many reasons they are gonna fail.
Maruf: That’s very incredible. This is what you call three modes to engage with community, isn’t it? That’s very interesting, very interesting. So, I mean, what was your major when you were studying at the University of Berkeley?
Shahed: So, my father was a civil structural engineer, which meant that my brother was a civil structural engineer, which meant that I was a civil structural engineer. I mean look, I don’t fault immigrant communities for pushing their kids indirectly or directly into careers that they feel they are gonna be successful. It is part of the immigrant mentality that if you come from a place where you are afraid for financial security, you are gonna do that.
But what happened is that, I found myself working in San Francisco. My first job after college, I was working in San Francisco building Street cars and working on the cable cars in San Francisco. Which was fun but it really wasn’t what I wanted to do. But I was lucky because that was in the mid 1990’s with this thing called the internet was happening just down the road. And it just galvanize my attention, I am like you know, do I want to tell my kids I was there when it happened or do I want to tell my kids that I was a part of that evolution?
Maruf: I see. So, you were a mechanical engineer, right?
Shahed: Civil engineer. I was building buildings and Road and train lines and you know, stuff like that. And immediately, I learned how to code enough so that a startup would hire me and I quit my job. I joined a Startup, my parents freaked out. That startup failed, I did another startup. That startup failed, then I founded my own startup which is my first startup back in 1999 or 2000.
That was the first time where people actually invested you know, 2 million or 1 and a half million dollars in my company. I hired people, we tried to upgrade our technology and we really started to move forward. It was really interesting about at Silicon Valley in those days. The reason I was able to get the Off The Ground is because there was Muslim network in Silicon Valley that has been there since the beginning of Silicon Valley.
And my investment capital came from Muslim investors. My acceletor space was a Muslim owned acceleretor space. I helped my company through my Muslim networks. we started getting business deal through my Muslim networks and even in my company was not majority Muslim, it was still a Muslim network.
Maruf: I am trying to understand, like I’m trying to put myself I guess, in your shoes at the moment. So, you were a mechanical Engineer doing this and then you see and notice things in society, the internet thing, taking on and you just jumped right to it. That’s a big risk, right? isn’t it?
Shahed: It is. But it was so exciting. I mean, you know when you are in Silicon Valley listening, those days you could just go to a coffee shop and just be quiet and listen to the conversations that were happening around you. And everybody was animated about the possibilities of the Internet world. Everybody was talking about, I mean, the sky was the limit. And it was just too hard to be in that kind of environment and not be a participant right?
Maruf: You were right in the middle of it.
Shahed: Yeah, I was right in the middle of it. I can count crunching numbers to figure out how a train navigate a corner or I can do this. And it was a time where there was a lot of silly money around. Like, my first startup, it was literally writing something on a napkin and having people pull out their checkbooks. I mean it just wasn’t something like that would happen today. But back then it was so real, right? And Alhamdulillah, we actually got really far. We actually got, I think if it wasn’t for the recession of 2001, we would have actually made it.
Maruf: There was a.com bubble was around that time, wasn’t it?
Shahed: Yeah, we were part of that.com bubble. So, you know, that ended up being a series of ups and downs. But what was happening on the side of this is that I was also asking myself really fundamental question. What does this called internet mean for this Muslim identity that I have been working on my whole life.
How can this internet thing help make our community better community, how can it serve our community, how could it make us ask the questions we need to ask, how can it make us even out to the discrepancy in our communities. And this question were really foundational at the time for Muslims. We were used to having open interesting conversation about difficult topics with each other. We weren’t used to use technology to enhance our lives. So, that’s why two things I created on the side when I was working for my startup.
One was a Zabihah which is simply creative because a bunch of us were working late at night. So, we wanted to meet in like restaurant since I put a web page with Halal restaurants that we knew of. And I asked people, like hey, if you know any let me know. And I realised looking at the traffic that people were going to it from like it wasn’t just my friends. I was like, oh! well then, there is probably a need for this. So, then I actually set up the website at the time just thinking I was doing a public service and the amount of 200 restaurant that I could find in America at the time. And we have got 200 restaurants from now to 8000-9000 restaurants. So, it was the beginning of a wave that was in 1998.
Maruf: 1998, wow!
Shahed: Yah, 1998, when I started Zabihah and a few years later in 2001 right before 911 actually I started a website called altMuslim to have difficult conversation about what it means to be a Muslim in America, a Muslim in the West actually. And we got kind of contributors from all over the world from Europe to Australia from the UK, Canada.
We tried to have a different conversation and all from place of we love our community we love our faith but we are gonna have some really difficult conversations cause if we don’t have this difficult conversations other people are gonna have those conversations without us. I named it based on the back before the internet for the web, there were these things called usenet newsgroups back in the bulletin boards.
And there were like alt.subject and so I actually model it after that. Back then this was pre-internet digital culture and then there was this spin up called alt.Muslima which is still around now. All muslims are gonna go through a reorganisation. It’s gonna be reinvented the media space is very difficult space but the important thing is that this, the internet broke down a lot of barriers in global Muslim communities where a lot of Muslims around the world grew up in bubbles.
Muslims are like the people around me and what the internet did is it put us face to face with couple things. It put us face to face with Muslims who are Muslims but do not practice like us and we start realising Muslims in Indonesia, Muslims in Africa, they Practice Islam very differently than what I was taught. And I was taught is the way and so not only that it put people in touch with the people in different Schools of thoughts and different arguments about different issues.
And it was destabilizing things at first people, like what is this Islam, I thought was this one thing is now a million things. And I don’t know what and it also put Muslims in touch with who hate them but for a lot of Muslim it was the first time they actually were in touch with the people who hated you and it was very difficult thing for people to take you know. And it took probably 10, 20 years for muslims to go from being shocked by that to understanding that its a reality out there that we have to deal with.
And I think over the last 10, 20 years we have gone from being hyper agitated about all these things, these sensory overload to understanding that you know we have big diversity opinion in Muslim communities in the world. People practice Islam in multiple different ways and most of them legitimate expression of Islam and you know we are not gonna freak out every time someone brings it on.
Guess what, there are people out there that hate you and there is nothing you can do to stop them, right? And so, I mean it taken this adjustment period but this is what I wanted to be a part of I wanted to be a part of that transition from a community from multiple communities that isolate from each other to global communities that were connected to each other and respectful of their differences. And I hope I had a little bit of a part to play in that transition.
Maruf: I see, that’s very insightful for me that, to get this picture from those period of time. It’s something you know, I think you have to be there to explain it.
Shahed: But you would live the good both of those worlds, right? So, you can see the difference between the two.
Maruf: Absolutely. I mean, it was a similar experience for me as well. I am from Uzbekistan coming to Denmark. I exactly, maybe it’s not exactly the same but I kind of follow what you just said. When you are getting out in a foreign environment, you begin to question everything. Your your identity and what you believe.
Shahed: Of course. The minute you landed in Denmark, what does it mean to be Muslim here in Denmark, you know. And it’s especially when the people around you who are like kind of suspicious of you.
Maruf: Especially, I came right in 2003 about two years after 9/11 and on the TV people and trying to blog things. And I just begin to question who am I? Am I a part of this or what? you know.
Shahed: Yeah, like you wanna be a part of the community that you live in but like you know, there is only so much you can push, right? I mean, you have to draw a line somewhere like, I am willing to tolerate your intolerance at me but only to a point. At some point you might threaten my family and I gotta put my walls up.
Maruf: Absolutely, so, Shahid tell us more about that I think around that time you mentioned, you already went for the internet, you went for the startups, you know entrepreneurship. Can you just give us like all that you mentioned Zabihah, altMuslim. What else did you do in that area? Or maybe, if we deep dive into Zabihah.
Shahed: No, I mean, I think, ok, the question I ask myself you know, I started Zabihah six years before Yelp and so the question I mean Zabihah is second kind of oldest restaurant guide in any kind of on the internet. If I was there that early, why didn’t I create something of mass appeal. So, these are the lessons that you learn when you are doing these kinds of things, you know. You can be innovative for our community but you can also be innovative for the world in general. And as much as I want to help my community, also I want to help the world. So, when I want to do something innovative, yes that benefits for our community but that also benefits the society at large. So, the perfect example of this is one of my later startups is Zakatify, right? Now the Zakatify is the zakat management tool for Muslims on the service of it seems like it’s bias for us model. You are building something just service the needs just for Muslims. What’s really interesting about Zakatify is that as a model it doesn’t exist for anybody. We have a partnership with the PayPal that helped us build this app and they actually had to build unique tech for it that did not exist before. Because what we wanted to do wasn’t done for anybody and as you might guess the next step for Zakatify is to do it for the mainstream because it has not done for the mainstream. And so we are gonna you know, turn this thing that benefits the Muslim that’s something benefits the society as whole again. If we do that successfully and people ask question where do this come from, it came from Muslims and their charitable obligations that’s benefiting everybody. Great, now we have shown people that Islam is relevant to them, muslims are relevant to them that this world would be a sadder place if Muslims were not a part of it. That’s the objective you know. It seems hard for people who are used to hearing about all the bad things about Muslims on the news that you have to fundamentally believe that Islam was put here to make humanity a better place wheather or not they are Muslims.
Maruf: Yea, absolutely. I agree 100%.
Shahed: If u fundamentally believe that then you have to act on that. And if you act on it properly then you don’t leave these values behind. And you benefit society around us. We solve a lot of problems. Islamophobia will go and people will feel like, you are making their lives more secure more fruitful. Islamophobia goes away, the hate goes away.
Maruf: Yeah, I mean, what you are trying to say is that well, I mean if someone we understand that there is a very small tiny group of Muslims, they do this horrible things in the name of Islam. And the media focus on them just exaggerating and painting the all blame with single brush. We understand that, on the other hand, as you mentioned, there are people saying, Islam is peace. But I mean what you are trying to say is that, ok, then that’s not enough. We need to show by action and that’s the best way of doing it, isn’t it?
Shahed: Right. One of the things I tell people, for those people who think that Islam inherently holds back humanity, what I tell them is this, you can take a Muslim from war torned place like Somalia or Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever. You translate them into place like the West and they thrive. So, what does that tell you, they did not leave their Islam behind when they came here. What they left behind is a geopolitical environment that held them back.
If it was Islam that held them back then you could translate them to London or Newyork or whatever and they would still be backward. But they are not. Muslims by in large are more upwardly mobile and successful in Eestern America than their counterparts. They just are. Muslims in America, one of the highest per capital income groups in America. And so, Islam is not holding them back, it’s geopolitics. So, we need to be addressing those geopolitical situation around the world so that Muslim can emerge in and thrive. If I didn’t truly believe that Islam had something to benefit humanity, I would not do the work that I do. I would just rather be an ethical person in the mainstream.
Maruf: I see, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s very interesting. So, let me ask you this, like you mentioned from the very beginning. So, for you the Islamic identity was very crucial for you. Like as if today, you know, you had this question usually like what is your work life balance. I am not gonna ask that question, I am gonna ask you is something similar like, what is the Duniya and deen balance? How would you look at it, Does it make sense?
Shahed: Yeah, absolutely. I am a big fan of combining work and play. So, you know, I bring my kids into my startups. You know, I take work calls and vacations. It’s not because I’m trying to let my work life take over my life. If I actually do it the other way around, my home life to infiltrate my work life because I don’t see home and work life as being inherently separated all that much. We see the prophetic example is like, 8 hours sleep, 8 hours family, 8 hours work.
I kind of do all those all mixed with each other and what I’m trying to you now it’s very important for those of us who have kids to model what it means to be a Muslim in a way that they don’t emerge thinking that it’s a burden. And I think right now what we do with our kids is like, ok the sky is falling, everyone hates us, now go into the world and be a muslim. Why would they do it? Or they see fighting within our communities, we go and we tear each other down, we treat each other like crap, everyone hates us. The minute they are free to do what they wanna do, they will just leave Islam and we see this happening. By the way, we see this happening a lot in life and I don’t know if I really blame them. I mean, if I was in an environment where my parents were strict and dogmatic and forced me to pray and complaint about how the world is against them, complain about everything is awful.
You have to show people the beauty of Islam and being Muslim or else they are never gonna embrace it. So, I tried to tell my kids, I want you to study every faith tradition is out there, I want you to ask every difficult question there is about Islam to me. I am gonna show you that I have chosen to be Muslim and express my Islam in my work because I think it is positive in my life and I can’t explain that to you. I can only show it to you. So, I hope when they look at me and they see that I am happy, I am content, I am optimistic. Even I should give talks to a lot to Muslim students on campuses and the thesis of my talk is “there has never been a better time to be a Muslim”. And people were like you are nuts, this is the age of trumps. I’m like you are focusing on the wrong thing.
Maruf: So, tell me. Explain on that. That’s gonna be interesting, isn’t it?
Shahed: So, here is the thing you know, there is nothing I find more distasteful than privileged people wearing the cloak of the oppressed. And there is nothing wrong with the privileged, as long as you own it and you use it to help others. And Muslims in the west by at large I know this discrepancy in our community, we don’t have to address those but by in large Muslims are fairly priviliged class of people in America compared to Muslims in the broader Muslim world.
And if we don’t acknowledge that privilege we can’t use that privilege. By definition if you feel that the world is after you and under assault you are gonna spend all your energy defending yourself. It’s a survival technique by definition you cannot help anyone else. When you are in that mode you are too busy protecting yourself. Now if you acknowledge the privilege you have if you acknowledge, for example here in America that you know in the age of Trump Americans by the tens of thousands went to airports to defend the vulnerable Muslims in the world, everyone from corporate America to Hollywood to whatever are tripping over themselves to at the very least they are supported Muslim being involved in society.
You know putting Muslim women in Hijab in ads and putting Muslim characters on TV allowing Muslims to create their own content on TV and things like that. Doors are opening for us. People wanna hear talk for ourselves people wanna hold us up from the side of what Trump has unleashed. I am confident that if anyone white comes after me, 10 of my fellow Americans who are not muslims will jump in front of me to defend me, I am fully confident. Maybe that’s unique to America, North America but I think generally humanity understands Evil vs good.
And I think with the Rise Of This Evil that’s happening when you look at the Christ Church and things like that, I think people are realising now and once you get of that fence to defend to pose Islamophobia you don’t get back on that fence. And I think that we have gone from people saying, oh, Islamophobia you are a bunch of privileged people you are causing problems overseas.
I should not care about Islamophobia, people saying Islamic phobia is real as any other bigotry. We have to stop it like any other bigotry, that’s a huge shift. That’s one thing I will thank Trump for is getting people off the fence and fight against Islamophobia, right? So, now that we have that, now that we have that asset, the majority of people in our community who will side with us not them. How can I say that this, I had multiple interviews after Trump was elected and people say how does it feel to be muslim in Trumps America and I would say not as bad as bad undocumented immigrants.
Not as the average black man getting pulled over in the age where bigotry in law enforcement has been epic proportion. What’s the worst gonna happen to me? I am a pretty privileged person. The worst can happen to me is that I am late for a flight. I refuse to put myself in the category of oppressed when there are real oppressed people are out there.
Maruf: I say, yes, absolutely. You have a very well point there. I mean, I think in general as Muslims, I think everywhere, not in the US, I think we have to get out from this bubble of playing the victim.
Shahed: There is nothing that we are up against that our previous generation of Muslim didn’t have hundred times over. And there is still they didn’t have a victim attitude like, oh we are 10 people against a hundred, yeah we have God on our side, we will be fine. We lost that attitude. Now, we are like you know everyone is going to come and get us. We are gonna lock our doors shut ourselves in and we need to get back to the place where our community is empowered and brave. When did we become a bunch of cowards, man, seriously?
Like what happened to us? You know, maybe we’re not in the days like you know old kind of warrior battlefield but my God, get out there and be proud of who you are. Assert yourself, don’t be afraid to engage with your neighbours, don’t be afraid to engage with people who hate you, don’t be afraid to try something new that you think will benefit people.
My goal in life is to get Americans to just feel like Muslims and I don’t want to do it by silly PR campaigns. I wanna do it by really improving their lives. So, whatever work I do, I want to try to feel like people are feeling included in that. So, my work right now is basically about entrepreneurship and incorporating Islamic values and to the entrepreneurship benefit of everybody, right? People can benefit from the work that I do and then they could tie it directly or indirectly from the fact that, I’m Muslim and that’s a good thing to do. Then I think I have done my job.
Maruf : I mean, I think this connect a question is, what does success mean to you as a person? I guess, as a Muslim what does it mean to you?
Shahed: So, I think a lot of people are familiar with this kind of Venn diagram. That is like what you are good at, what you are passionate about, what benefits the world, what you can make money from and where does four circles overlap is exactly what you need to be doing. So, Alhamdulillah, I’ve spent my whole life trying to get to that one place and I think for the last 5 years and inshallah, I have arrived there. You know my goal is to economic empowerment through entrepreneurship that brings on board people who have been margin lines and that benefits the communities. In which we invest and doesn’t take advantage of them. That’s the space that I want to be in.
Maruf: Venn diagram you mentioned. I think it’s in Japanese culture called Ikigai. That’s very insightful. So, I mean what you are saying is that broaden your focus not only Muslims but also minority communities. That’s going on.
Shahed: Yeah, people took off the grid. We have you know, look we are entering a very dangerous time in the global economy where haves are getting more have not are getting less. And with automation and with outsourcing and with all these different things we are in danger of having a permanent underclass.
And if we don’t adjust our business models and adjust the way that we invest and adjust the way that we empower we are gonna enable that, you know. I use uber but I am completely cognition of the fact that uber is creating a class of workers that are going to be at subsistence level, right? 20 years ago if a company was sold for one or two billion dollars, you know the people who would actually benefit from that would be in the tens of thousands or more you know.
But like when I still remember when whatsapp was purchased by Facebook, I think it was purchased for something like a billion dollar employee you know, you had very few people benefiting from a purchase like that. These models are increasingly upside. I am not interested in investing in a company creating another uber that where a few people benefited and a lot of people don’t. And you solve the earth for future startups so that nothing can go out of that.
I mean, look at sustainable farming. You plant in a sustainable way so that the soil you would grew is fertile and can support future crops. We are not cultivating startups in the same way. We go in there and we make quick bucks and we leave. Who cares about who left behind and so the work with frost capital, so we started with this lab in 2015 trying to explore some of these challenges, how do we level the playing field, how do we support overload startups and post conflict zones and places that are off the grid.
And now with opposition to frost capital,l we moving headlong into the space where we are trying to unlock more capital to go into this Ecosystems and not just support company that we think that has high growth potential. What we try to build companies and ecosystem that allow all society to thrive so that much more money can we make also society is whole and brought up to that level. Like, I am one of the people who maybe in a Refugee camp right now to actually see the possibility that they could be like start their own company.
Maybe it’s just their own company as long as they feel that’s an option for that we have a world right now. Where people are like I have two choices, I get a job right now or be dependent on somebody and the third choice of being business for yourself. 200 years ago we were all entrepreneurs we didn’t go to business school or whatever it was in our blood. We moved away from that ideal and we needed to move people back to that Idea because now the tools to run your own business are all out there if you have a computer and internet connection. You have access to tools that can really not just help you create a business but help you create a global business, right? So, I think we just need to help bring into the world as much as possible.
Maruf: I see, what you are trying to, I guess explain is that I just heard a little bit of one of your talks I guess about the capitalism in Islam. What is the relationship with right can you like explain?
Shahed: I understand why people feel like capitalism is the problem. But capitalism isn’t a moral system. It is only as moral as it is only as moral as the players are. Now, when you look at you know, Islam did not come to get rid of the idea of capitalism. It came to give it a structure.
Maruf: Yeah.
Shahed: Just like Islam did not outlaw war, it’s simply gave war structure to make more humane. Here are the rules of engagement, right? So, similarly Islam came to give commerce rules of engagement. That’s why we don’t believe as Muslims that just because you have money you make money out of your money.
Like because you are taking advantage of people’s financial situation. That’s a core principle in Islamic finance is that do not take advantage of people’s economic position to enrich yourself. If you are gonna in invest in somebody, do it so in a way that they share the risks. They have risk you have risk. You are in it together as pairs, not masters and servants.
So, there is always different principles that we as Muslims can bring to global economic system that makes the world a better for everybody, right? What we are trying to do with our funds that we are bringing to the market is we are trying to see how many of the values we can put in place and to the ecosystem we invest in so that every single stakeholder from the consumer to the labourer to the subcontractor to the employee to whatever. All feels like they are benefiting from that ecosystem because that is the Islamic ideal.
Maruf: Absolutely, I agree 100%. I agree with you in that one. This is a couple of months, you started frost capital. That’s very inspiring.
Shahed: So, the story about frost capital is really interesting. So, a couple years ago we get announced a 250 million dollar venture fund that would invest in Muslim startups throughout the Muslim world. This was a partnership between alt.Islam my former company (Alexa capital) which was based on Silicon Valley investing Global fund but was anchored around south East Asia.
And (maf cap) which is Malaysia’s largest venture capital fund. And so, what happened is that as we tried to get that fund to the market, the geopolitics of the Muslim world got in the way. And people can do the math, I mean, basically just all of this is stabilisation that happened between 2016 and now got in the way of the fund. But what’s really interesting now is that, so, we actually Frost capital was actually created by the people of the (Alexa) and then they brought us back onboard.
As we were discussing how to get this fund rolling we realised that we just needed to as one company. And we also realised that we couldn’t do it alone. So, big part of our strategy was to partner with Silicon Valley Giants (Frost and Sullivan) who for 50, 60 years has been mapping ecosystems and companies around the world. They have a thousand analysts. They deep dive every sector and every vertical every region in the world and that kind of knowledge was useful for us.
And so once we did that, we emerged from that previous fund. We actually had some funds ready for that. We actually just rolled that whole effort into our new effort. Basically, the fund that it was three years ago is now open but under frost capital. And but now we are in charge. We are not gonna let geopolitical of Muslim world get in our way.
Maruf: Let me ask you this, Shahid this capital fund, is it like you guys, how do you engage? You guys find out and you engage with the potential parties on your own or is it open? How does it work?
Shahed: So, we are in the process of identifying companies that are in the growth stage. So, not seeds stage at. Rightnow we just wanna get ourselves kind of up and running self. We are second growth stage company that abide by these values and that also have high growth potential. And most importantly also that they make it in some way easier for future companies to be built. So, we are looking for companies that actually strengthen economic ecosystems.
Maruf: I mean, so you know most of our listeners, there is a reason why I’m asking this question is to benefit hopefully, Inshallah benefits our listeners that you know these terms like, seeds stage, growth stage. We both know that but do you wanna explain what it means?
Shahed: Oh, sure. Absolutely. So, seeds stage are basically, it’s a time you built enough of the product that you can start charging for it, right? So it’s your minimum viable product. You have got it out there, you’ve got contraction, you started getting revenue and that’s fantastic. By growth stage is what I mean is that companies that are like they perfected their product, they’ve got steady revenue stream.
They look like they kind of handle all the initial problems in the market and now they are just have to amplify it. And they got a path to do it. They just need investment in order to enable that. Whether it is increasing the productivity or going into the market or something like that. But basically that’s the growth stage and that’s the stage we’re investing in. And ideally, we want to go for companies that somehow benefit the ecosystem in which they exist. That is the focus of our first, we got free funds coming out. So, the focus of our first is basically ecosystem plan. We are trying to go for companies that are gonna be a part of building you know, a foundation upon which multiple others companies can be built.
Maruf: Do you know any other investment farms which you see doing something similar like that? I don’t know personally.
Shahed: There are a lot of funds out there that are social impact funds. And we worked with a lot of them. I am in touch with all of them. My circle of contacts in the VC world they tend to be other traditional VC in Silicon Valley they are doing kind of mainstream kind of stuff. Or their social impact funds so they are going to particular regions in the world and they are trying to do something very similar to what we are doing. They don’t have like this value system that we are trying to include in it. But most counts were aligned.
So, people who are working like in Central South America, people working in Africa, people working places like Pakistan. They are trying to support this ecosystem in a very regional perspective. Also Palestinian as well, there is a lot of cool stuff happening in Palestine. So, I feel like we are all on the same page. We just each bring something different to the table. For example, I like a lot of these other funds. We don’t have a particular regional focus.
Our focus is actually flobal and our focus is primarily in Muslim communities. So, we will partner with others, we work with a lot of accelerators around the world, that may be a good source of deal for us. So, like if they kind of graduated their company into this upward trend, that’s a good time for them to fly to us and let us know good growth opportunity that we can jump in on. So, I mean Alhamdulillah it is a pretty cooperative network of people that are out there.
But my biggest chance, I think moving forward is finding this hidden gems that have good growth potential that we value criteria and then see if we can do that. Let me give you a good example of the type of company that meet this criteria. There is a fund that we launched was a fund that was focused in South East Asia by (Elixer Capital). And one the company they invested in was a mum and pop recycling company. And they had a company that were basically recycling.
There was some innovative ways in that way kind of scaling but it was basically recycling plastic and glass and things like that. So, the predesser fund invested four and a half million dollars. This is a husband and wife team that high school level, right? They did not go to business school but with the right guidance they were able to grow that company to 10,000 employees 90% of women begin to second largest waste processing in that province. Now, no one else no traditional fund would have seen any potential in this company but if fever looking for the right thing, if you are looking for those where are your values aligned, where is the potential that people are overlooking.
Because they used to be looking for Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. They are not they are not looking for a husband and wife team where the woman is wearing Hijab and they look like a traditional Indonesian family. They don’t look like you know, so people need to open their eyes a little bit. I believe that talent is equally distributed. I don’t think resources are equally distributed. I think there is a lot of money to be made by people finding the talent and investing in them. So, if you don’t care about the social impact at least care about your pocket book, right? at the end of the day, I invest off the grid talent, then my job is done.
Maruf: I mean, Shahid, I just this is what I would like to ask you, one of the last few questions, I would like to ask you, look I think most of our listeners, right? They will be probably Muslim men and women. They are religious, they probably, as you also mentioned maybe they also finished studies. Maybe they are not happy where they are right now. Maybe, they are looking for purpose or you know. So, for those kind of people like, I know you’re into entrepreneurship as you said, like, you also mentioned, a couple of 100 years ago everybody was entrepreneur. Because everyone had to wake up and have to make an earning, right? There was nothing stable. They had to embrace the risk. So, what would you say? what would your advice would be? In a short way, what would you say?
Shahed: So, my advice for people, I am all for risk taking but I do believe that people need to be stable and make their decisions and not in a pressure way. So, most people approach me are working a traditional job and they wanna get into entrepreneurship. So, my advice to them is generally to start something on a side and my rules generally, if you can make enough money on your side gig like makeup half of your salary, if you put your full time into it you can ramp up your full salary pretty quickly.
Then that’s the time to quit your job either use your savings or invest to get to that point and really sustain yourself. Because once you sustain yourself then you are not in danger of eminent danger of folded. Ok, you can take a deep breathe at that point and figure about ok great, I can support myself doing this and how do I take it to the next level where I can scale up and start hiring people and start really amplifying this. And because I can spend my whole day doing this, I am not under pressure. Because look, I am a big believer in work like that.
I don’t believe in putting your family in jeopardy just because you are chasing your dream of entrepreneurship. You have responsibilities, right? So, get to that point take an educated risk. Because look, most startups are gonna fail and when they fail, you have to be in a position where you can pick yourself up and start over again. What you don’t want to be is in a place where you are in a financial ruin, right? So, this is the same reason people are like, they come to me and they are like the first thing I’m gonna do is go out there and fundraise.
I am like no, you don’t even have a product yet. We are way beyond those times where people are gonna throw money for an idea on a napkin. They want to see that you have got the passion and you got the ability to deliver. So, deliver it as a side gig. I have a side company and it’s making half of my salary and if I have this much investment I can scale it up really quickly. The very least I can support myself then I can start making accommodations to hire the people to grow this even more. That’s the time.
Maruf: I see. So, what you are saying is, don’t destroy your old house until you build a new one. At least halfway through.
And it’s like a transition period. It is not like one or the other one. I really like the advice. Thank you very much. I mean, I asked some questions. Do you think I should ask any other question I should have asked? You want to say like your last words to inspire the young Muslims.
Shahed: Let’s take this up to a higher level. y
You’ve been in this space for a long time so you have seen this. So, that because of the stage of the Muslims in the world, we are very traumatized people. It’s either real trauma or trauma by proxy. But it’s trauma nonetheless. And because of that we are actually fairly competitive with each other. When I was in the Harvard Islam of economy, I asked to this question to the audiences.
How many of you prefer selling to your non-Muslim customers than your Muslim customers? Nearly everyone raised their hands. And the reason being is that we are very harsh with each other. We will complain to Muslim companies in ways that we will not complaint to non-muslim companies.
Maruf: I know that.
Shahed: And we will cheat each other, we will not abide by contract, we will steal from each other, we will go to war with each other instead of cooperating. We are our worst enemies and whether we are in entrepreneurship space or in the social space or whatever. We are in a very dangerous time where we are letting our trauma get the best of us and we are acting like a community without mercy.
When mercy is the number one quality we are lecturee about in terms of being Muslim. We need to re introduce mercy into our spaces. S,o as an entrepreneur that means, letting go of the rains a little bit and cooperating with other people, sharing the success with other people. Don’t think that I want to have a hundred percent of my company. Well guess what, you cannot do it alone.
At some point you gotta work with other people. You have to start building communities of trust where we are not taking advantage of our situation. Which is again completely against Islamic ethics for Muslims in commerce. And we have to be more forgiving of each other in public spaces. We attack each other even without considering whether people’s intentions are good.
Maruf: I mean, so, what you are saying is look I understand, I have been there. I experienced what you are saying. So, I think here is a question, look as you said I agree with you we are like, every time we pray right? We Bismillah ir rahman ir rahim. But in reality what you are saying is that we are deprived of that mercy. What do you think, why do you think that? We are not understanding and embracing the idea. What is going on? Or I mean, let me share my personal opinion, I want to know yours, I guess.
You know I think I read this (Abraham something) So he explains, look, when people are deprived of security, when people are like this, so what they do is that they are not I would say in a way in a survival mode, right? You remember. So, that totally changed how we think when we are afraid, when we are fearful. We just I guess throw out all those values outside we want to see only for us. You said we don’t care about the others etc. etc. Do you think it is because we are some Muslims unfortunately under all these impressions? is it because of that or something else? What’s your take on that?
Shahed: The Muslim world is undergoing serious shift. Probably one of the biggest shifts in our history. There is a technological shift, there is a social shift, there is a religious shift, there is an economic shift, there is a political shift. I mean all the shifts are happening and it is really destabilizing time for Muslim. I mean think about it for generations you know it didn’t really matter, there wasn’t much of a change from one century to the next century.
And then in the last two centuries, it’s been really tremendous and in the last 20 years it’s been crazy. And I think we’re just react to that I think we have all retreated into survival mode. Why do Muslims kill Muslims? If we are part of this one big umma, why do Muslims kill Muslims? Muslims are killing Muslims all over the world because we were treated to these tribal identities out of perceived threat to our lives, right? Now, a hundred years ago, did we do that? No, we tolerated differences hundred years ago in many ways that we don’t tolerate now. It’s weird in places like Iraq where 50 years ago people were marrying in between Sunni and Shia. And now you look at Iraq, those lines are across which people kill. It makes no sense, it’s not natural for us.
But what we will have to do is, we have to use the tools that we have to get ourselves out of this as soon as possible to not let that geopolitics of the world dictate to us who we are. We are not defined by these wars, we are not defined by this instability, we are not defined by poverty, we are not defined by any of this stuff. We are defined by a tradition that is a good tradition, that is an important tradition, that is the tradition has something to contribute to us and the world. And we can’t forget that. Because if we forget that then we will just become animals.
Maruf: Yes. Basic instincts, right.
Shahed: Yeah, we just revert to our basic instincts.You know something? If I have to kill my neighbour for protecting my family then that’s what I’m gonna do. And we have to get beyond that. We have to rise to the level which God expects us to rise.
Maruf: That’s very insightful, Shahed. Thank you very much.
Shahed: You are welcome. I think I am a very optimistic and hopeful person. For not just Muslim community but for humanity. But it’s gonna take us doing a lot of brave work to put ourselves out there to take risks to show people that a better future, Subanallah.
Maruf: I agree 100%. Please tell where people can find you or follow you or more so you know, those who are interested in.
Shahed : Follow me on Twitter @Shahed and my company is frost capital Frostcap.com. And you can see some of my writings at Shahed.com and I hope to be a part of more global conversation.
Maruf: We also leave these things at show notes. Thank you very much, Shahed, Assalamualaikum.
Shahed: Oh, you are welcome. Walaikum Salam.
