Osama is the founder of Mocha7 – a product innovation design and launch studio based in Seattle, USA.
He is also a mentor at Founder Academy among other things.
In this episode, we discussed how he pivoted in his career towards being a purpose-driven path.
He recently started a campaign to support the orphans with other Muslim photographers. Their charity campaign – http://ForYatim.com – is in its last week. Check it out if you haven’t yet.
Show Notes
For Yatim Charity Campaign
https://foryatim.com
Interview transcript
Maruf: Hey, Assalamu alaikum! Before we jump into the show, I would like to make a small amount as you know in every episode, we interview Muslims are doing amazing things and recently, I’ve been getting quite a lot of questions from listeners and asking okay, that’s good.
They’re doing great things. But what about us? How do we get there? The answer, actually, depends where you are, what you would do. I have decided to offer 30 minutes free strategy sessions, especially for our listeners. If you would like to get this offer, all you need to do is go to Muslims On Fire.com slash free. I’ll see you there. Now back to the show.
Hey, Assalamu alaikum! This is Maruf. Welcome to the show Muslims On Fire. Today, I have a brother, Osama and he’s joining us from Washington. Is this correct? Assalamu alaikum! Welcome to the show, bro.
Osama: Assalamu alaikum! I’m coming to you from Istanbul today.
Maruf: Okay.
Osama: I used to live in Seattle, but I’ve
been in Istanbul for the past year. So, just trying to spend some time here.
Maruf: Sounds good. Welcome to the show.
Osama: Thank you for having me. It’s a great honor to be here. I’ve been following some of these episodes and I really like, you know, the types of guess you’ve had in the format and everything else. So it’s just great to be here.
Maruf: Yeah. Thank you for being on the show. I think we know each other only through digital space, right? We have never met in person. So for me, it’s also for the show is gonna be a discovery that good to know you, who you are. Let’s start with a note. So, I mean, before we even started just like into three sentences. Can you tell the audience who you are and what you do?
Osama: Sure. Inshallah. So my background has been in engineering and specifically Product Innovation Strategy. That’s basically, my day job. So I have a studio in Seattle and we’ve helped a lot of product companies launch and sort of figure out their product strategy and stuff.
Both hardware and software apps all sorts of platforms. But more recently, we pivoted towards like working on the social impact space and also trying to help more solve some of the challenges within Muslim context and you know liking you been examples later on but that’s mostly what I do for work for work is a consultant on social impact innovation strategy.
But recently, you know because I’ve been involved like, saying, you know, how can we be more of service or whatever we can do. So we’ve been doing some interesting side projects here and there and one like, you know, the other one started very recently.
Maruf: Okay, welcome back to that. So I think that’s who you are, what you do right now, but usually is a traditional show is what we do is that we go back and I say, okay. So tell me this. What do you remember from your childhood? And what do you think like we look back? What are the memories you remember and might contribute to our today. What would that be?
Osama: I think I remember being like a very inquisitive artsy type of person, philosophical writer type. So I used to read a lot of stories.
Maruf: Wait. So what you are like, you are very young age, philosophical about you.
Osama: So yeah, there’s a lot of family jokes about how like, I would answer everything in philosophical questions at the end of the stick is everything. But yeah, I was getting my teens, a lot of my focus was like writing stories and doing our see things like I was really into 3D animation and 3D modeling and stuff like that.
We’re just going to cool my but what I really wanted to do career-wise was actually that I wanted to get into like CGI animation because like I don’t know Jurassic Park came out and I was like, this is the best thing ever. But you know, I came from like, traditional sort of family, you know where we get a few choices of career.
So we got our choices for our career. I picked the engineering route and eventually they can initially it was like it wasn’t adjustment period going from like an artsy background to like engineering but eventually I realized that there’s a lot of value and blending these two things especially when I thought hey with engineering you can sort of create new types of special effects or new types of systems for seizure or something.
So I think that’s been like influential throughout my career in a way because you know, what out of all of the things that I’ve been involved in, is idea of telling a story becomes very fundamental to everything that we do, it’s designing a product or launching a product or making a feature ux designer whatever it is like it has to start from telling a very deep story that connects the thing we’re making with what the user is going to expand.
So I think that’s been very useful like being able to do fiction story telling not only helps for that, but also helps me sit with anyone from any sort of background of talent like, you know, I can sit with designers. I can sit with artists and hear their story and understand it from their point of view.
And it’s I think it’s just like the small things when we’re growing up just in my case like storytelling this fiction story telling and getting into different characters is one of the things that’s really helped me in my life.
Maryf: So I mean I figured that you are originally from Pakistan, right?
Osama: Yeah, I was born in Gilgit which technically, it used to be part of Pakistan where I think technically is independent. It’s like a complicated Porto Rico type of situation. But I grew up in Pakistan, but I’m a UK Citizen and I’ve lived mostly in America since college pretty much. So it’s been an interesting sort of hopping around the world.
Maruf: I see. Even though you were born in Pakistan, your childhood was in the US. Is that what you’re saying?
Osama: No, I was grown up in Pakistan. Okay, I went to the US for college and then after that it’s been mostly in the US a little bit back and forth. I went back to Pakistan to set up a company and then moved the company to the US and in the US it is mostly been in Texas and California and Seattle recently.
And it’s been an interesting sort of life because when you get to see both sides of the world in a way like you can be very flexible. You can like manage your way around many different types of environments and situations, right?
Maruf: So, I want to go back to one thing you said earlier. You said from my background. You said like a couple of choices. You talk about this like Paris Alicia and generally, you want their kids to be either a doctor, lawyer or engineer this what you were talking about before.
Osama: The four choices like doctor, lawyer, engineer failures.
Maruf: Okay. I thought that failure was the option right in this the options.
Osama: Just kidding. But now, I do have any come from like a family of doctors for the most part. We were one of the few like early-stage engineers in our family and then I was the first one to start a company and so it’s been an interesting journey, but I am sort of really inspired.
I guess but the next generation because I keep meeting especially in Istanbul, like people who are doing amazing different things, you know, like really Niche subjects to the history of science, Islamic science or something. I’m glad that that sort of stereotype is kind of changing but at least, you know growing up that was having difficulties.
Maruf: Like we’ll come back to this one is that I think actually It’s a much bigger issue than what we normally think it is this expectations, right? I think if they can affect you or many of us, you know, especially coming from Muslims from Asia. Let’s put it this way.
So let’s say I want to go down there. So look this is said they had four options. I said there were three in the for any way so that I think the method of the day the source of happiness comes at the one of the things is like stations, right?
Imagine your Parents want you to do best. But you feel like you’re not even want to be what⁰ they do. I don’t you know what I mean, like you want something but your parents don’t want something else that’s like but again at Islam that we are encouraged to respect our parents to do you know to please everything but at the same time this is like struggle, you know, the one that they want this out of the three choices, but you feel like you heard.
So are you the failure or you something else right, but I believe every person there, in the deep level. They had their own story, right? I mean if a person’s life does his best to struggle to find the cause of this, they’ll eventually well, but the question is that the society of the expectations.
The question is will there be enough, will not be enough time than being vicious to get that right? So the Listen, I’m gonna ask that right now, you know, you don’t call yourself each day. I mean, let’s put it this way. Do you think you are doing right now to join what you need to do right? Are you happy working right now?
Osama: Okay. So, let me answer it in broader sort of context from what you mentioned. I mean, obviously yeah. This is a important sort of challenge within our traditional sort of Muslim environments, I guess but You know, like my parents were very v open today, whatever we wanted to do.
But all the same time, we’re sort of convincing that’s a say in their advice that you know certain career paths would be like, you know better for us but beyond that, I mean they’ve been very supportive of a lot of the things that I’ve been able to do like for example, you know branching off into my own company and then the company sort of went off and into its, you know, defining its own sort of Niche and saying this is what we want to do. This is what is exciting.
And I mean, obviously we even though you know, we’re doing that as adults on our own sort of choice, but at the same time it is good to see you know that our parents are migrants, have been very sort of morally supportive of a lot of these directions in life.
But at the same time I feel broadly speaking that now like, you know after experiencing all of these things, I feel like people can achieve anything the want as long as hey set out to do it with ihsan and to do it for good, you know, and then within those two restrictions what I’m experiencing nowadays in life especially is that there is a just it opens up a lot of what we traditionally define a career to be.
Because a career defined as either engineering or this or this is actually quite restrictive and if you actually say no, we are setting out to do good in the world and we’re going to solve certain problems and along the way of solving this has problems, we’re gonna learn whatever it needs to be learned in order to solve it. Then I see leads to a more fulfilling type of quote unquote career if you will because you learn a much broader set of expertise from a much broader set of disciplines, but also, you know, your approach to whatever you doing in life is very practical right and I’ll cover like a couple examples of that.
It’s not just something that I’ve been experiencing in my career right now, but also, you know the recently I came across his charity foundation called the Current Foundation and we’re supporting that right now, but the Current Foundation is doing the same sort of idea for for Syrian refugee teenagers who you know often miss a lot of like their educational years and they lose a lot of confidence.
So to build confidence they have this program in. In what they call the current houses are in Istanbul, which is the same idea that instead of a traditional like let’s teach you physics, chemistry, math. There are given challenges to solve like let’s build a prosthetic limb. So let’s build a new type of wheelchair and along the way of doing that they the kids basically end up teaching themselves.
And I think this the reason I use our example is I feel this is such a powerful way of teaching that this should be extrapolated into how we think about our careers in general which is to say like here’s
I want to do here’s how I want to you know, put my footprint in the world in terms of the good and want to create and then let’s go and learn whatever needs to be learned in order to do that, right?
But anyway coming back to your question though. Yes, like right now, I’m very blessed and happy to be doing that stuff that I’m doing because of that reason is, I was focusing on a very traditional like product Innovation career, which is very restrictive because you are making devices and apps and stuff.
Well, we brought it up and said now I want to work it on social impact. So I want to solve for you know, poverty, climate change, refugees, homelessness, whatever it is and those are uncertain areas, which is really driven like my own internal learning as well as like the ideation and problem-solving and everything else.
So I’m gonna like we’ve been I’m particularly like at a point where very sort of focused and happy with having found the type of thing that I think really resonated and it brings together everything that I feel I am internally and in the process, you know, like now I’m happy to like also mentor and coach other people to help them find that have a center.
Maruf: I mean, that’s the best way to solve, if you go back to the questions, I guess that look I mean we do the parents they want the best right they want to of course do I mean whenever they say that book be dr. be a lawyer, be this level safety failure, right what he wants to be there.
Isn’t that what you want to beat is that like they believe right? They sincerely believe, this is really legit with the career path that this way you can make money so amid the intention is good, right? The intention is good. Let’s put it this way.
It’s not because they want us to fail. They want us to be something or someone. At the same time what I think at the same time look, being somewhere you have to own your systems, right? They don’t because I think they don’t want us to be sent the signal.
I want to be able to do this and that but end up doing nothing, don’t want that. Of course, right? That’s why they say look this is a chosen path. This is a safe path, this and that’s the intention. So once we don’t get intention right a corkage, okay, I got it. I agree with it. Right, of course instead of the day.
I want to be someone that does something good. It also made my own living right by doing so that’s a very noble thing to do. But I think here comes the bad is that we read that this is not the only three should often, doing that right? That is a thing. I think we have to understand the consultant beach at octopuses it DOC. I really love you because I know you love me, do this. So instead of only three but what you’re saying is that this is what I see is a good thing this only path a path b path c, but I’m just saying that it’s impossible. There’s pasty. Is it possible? There are more letters in the alphabet, you know, maybe there are more All numbers.
But to be honest this way look at the world. You see only lawyers and Engineers or the doctors or do you see much more different diversity, right? I mean which is obvious right? So I think it’s one of the day, if they mean most of the others as if they were sincere, right if they really are sincere that he said, okay, son or daughter you understood you think I don’t have a good heart. I believe in you, go for it like, it was the case.
Okay, so I think that they think the reason I think we had mentioned this we need to just detail is that as I said again. Yeah, this is good we can did you know each other but I think there are people I think they are in that situation right now the situation right now and my hope and I think our hope is that they can communicate that you know, because I think they need but they expecting learned expectation their parents so they can ensure to find that place where you are.
Osama: And this is bringing an important point or something as important or near and dear to my heart is this hope that I have they’re all of us, especially our new generation should be especially Muslims. We need to think about becoming the solution for the world right, under solution for our own communities, but you know the world as you know, as is going through a lot of trouble, let’s just say climate change or something.
You need a lot of great Muslim philosophers artists innovators, geniuses to show up and say let’s you know become like the Avengers and Tackle these problems for everybody. And if you do that that inspires not just our new generations, but also inspires everyone in the world to say, hey these you know, we can all sort of come together and solve something big.
And in order to do that because I mean this is I’m just mentioning this because this has been like one of my kind of thesis that I go around talking about a lot. But what I find is that because of the good intentions in our communities. We’ve been sort of pushed into certain career trajectories to say with you just an engineer or you’re just this or just that it actually limits the ability for us to solve these big problems, you know, because we have to think outside of our boxer or outside of a disciplines and work with many other disciplines to tackle some of these challenges which actually seems simple but they’re really complex.
And so in that conversation that you’re saying is not just a conversation with. Let’s see your parents but it’s a conversation to have with yourself to say is it enough for me at this point, just to say I’m just going to be an engineer and go to and go through these motions or should I look at my sort of self develop and in a broader sense to say, what is my thesis, what’s the thing that I’m so passionate about solving for that.
Then I’m going to start to move my career and move my learning towards solving for that, right? I’ll give you a real quick example that based on, its a project we finished recently, but I’m it’s still unannounced but in general, we get to announce it soon enough but this involved architecture and art as well as engineering, as well as artificial intelligence, as well as essentially art or design and this is a really interesting become project.
But the output of this was relating to solving climate change or building sustainable environments and things like that. But in this project was interesting is whenever I would talk about this the first reaction people would have, is but your urine engineer, how can you do something which involves architecture and we said obviously we’re involving architects to work with us, but it was this interesting to see that reaction that people would say mission was engineering and architecture.
Maruf: This box about it. Why are you jumping boxes, right?
Osama: Exactly. So, that’s why they get it interesting to say. Well what if you flip this model and say no, I’m just trying to solve for climate change no matter what happens and if it requires me to learn about architecture, I’m going to go and do that, right if it requires me to learn about aesthetic design or color theory or whatever. I’ll do that in order to solve the problem.
And these are problems that you know in my work recently have been running into like last year. I got a chance to work with the deaf Muslim Community in the US and so when we work with people who are hard of hearing and maybe even visually impaired but mostly hard of hearing people like when you tackle when you start to look at the world from their point of view, you have to learn a lot of new disciplines, right?
You have to learn about sound Theory which you might say, well, I’m just an engineer. I’m not a musician. I’m not learning about music theory sounds serious like that, why am I learning about biology, but you have to in order to solve these problems, right?
So, I mean, I guess what I’m trying to do hopefully is they can encourage people to say, in this like, conversation on which career trajectory to go for eventually very soon. It should evolve into this type of conversation on what is the thesis that I’m really passionate about and how about some specialty for that, right?
No matter where we start, we could start from like, a medical background. It is still towards bioinformatics or something involving technology if needed to solve particular types of problems.
Maruf: It makes us as I think like, this is said one of the things I think is that right here. You are an engineer. But, some points you mentioned that you take a decision. Look I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to be more inclined towards projects, more like to see what we call social entrepreneurship, right?
But I think you also mentioned that at one point. I think there were two pivots to develop one thing was that it’s just interested profit organizations, whatever more socially responsible positions. I think the other thing it was also you mentioned that you were into like, inclined to do projects with some communities, more forms to Muslim communities. Is it right?
Osama: Right. Yeah.
Maruf: So, what happened?
Osama: So did you look at that and say this is going to be like my big sort of Journey, I guess so, you know out of college like starting from engineering and I focus really heavily on product design and product innovation eventually like, set up my own studio for that.
And I was doing pretty well. We helped over 350 products over 10 years both in, product innovation side and also launching and these are all consumer electronics types of gig. So we worked actively with Silicon Valley and everything else. So they were gadgets basically and we would help them, you know, like products ever end up in see as the globe Arts holographic displays. We had some flying cars clients and stuff like that.
But you know, my big sort of shift from the data was like a few years ago. We had like a number of like that’s in the family there were four deaths in our family and it had like a wake-up call them effect on me, you know because I said what do you know, you sort of take stock of what you’re doing next year and I said like a lot of the stuff that I’m doing. It sounds cool.
You know, it’s the type of stuff that entrepreneurs look up to and they’re Techcrunch and they say wow, you know making gadgets but it’s not giving me anywhere close to Ankara, right? None of these projects are for anything more than just making a gadget or accessory for a phone or something like that.
So we need to do something or I need to do something personally which is more ocular oriented. So that’s kind of like the start of the journey. So I pivoted my company so we would only take in social impact related clients initially or clients within Muslim context given that you know, like I mentioned the deaf Muslim Community or we worked on solutions for widows like after if their husband passes away like how fast can they get their inheritance because you know, this is a real problem in certain areas where the woman is in her in the period.
So, she can’t leave the house. But within that time he needs the money, right? So, this required, you know, technological sort of innovation solutions to work around the bottlenecks and stuff like that. So it’s still like using the core skill set of Technology Innovation, but now applying it to problems actually touch human beings a lot more directly.
And it’s just personally much more satisfying and also, like knowing that it is, you know within the context of our communities like because of being a Muslim I can then understand these nuances of why a woman wouldn’t be able to leave the house in or eat that beard, you know, like these are things that in a typical like Silicon Valley sort of apps to do may not be able to understand right.
So I think you know this this type of Journey has been what’s been transforming transformative in many ways both professionally and personally because I’ve
much better understanding I mean, those are deeper conversations like but much better understanding of what it means to be successful, what it means to have valid or not have wells when to you know, just do projects for free.
Because you’re still getting something out of it. You are still making some impact stuff like that. I think but yeah that’s been kind of like that’s been my journey like trying to do whatever I can is how it sort of defined it now as we just do whatever we can with the gifts that Allah has given us to do good in the world.
Maruf: I see. So what you are saying is that you were just engineering cool gadgets, but somehow you are not fulfilled right in a way. So then that happened I was like a wake-up call say look. What am I doing, actually? I’m doing some pain like long-lasting. I guess that’s the question right in the not today like not only like a long-term thing.
Yeah, you can make a gadget which is fine. It’s you get many as for some people needs difference whether you question was likeI actually doing something that actually beyond like time and space like that. Actually what I mean is that like there are things you impacted people in the way that there’s a much more long-term be back with something like legacy. This is what you’re looking for. Is this correct?
Osama: Not so much your legacy with you know, just being more accurate focus is they, you know, is this thing really what Allah wants me to do right now or is this something which is, you know, helping to make someone else’s life better in a very ceiling full actionable specific way, right?
You know, like legacy is like a conversation that I think I haven’t even started thinking about really but more about say when this is more about you know this waking up and focusing on how can we make a difference through you know, whatever Allah has given us like it could be through the company or through my specific any skills or talents or any knowledge that he’s giving me.
But also it could be like through something else. I could be doing photography because of anything else really but specifically on the company side, it is channelizing like all of the sort of engine of innovation that we have which is very good and important engine and then focusing in on some of the which most challenging problems there are because they separately to this like the challenge in the Social Development and social impact space is that the nonprofit.
We are not thinking, innovative doing the same thing again and again and it’s not really making much of a difference, right? People determines of the very few rare charities that have come across who are trying to rethink education or not try something new.
So I just think you know, I feel that I’m not doing anything special. I just feel like we should have a hundred more people doing what I’m doing or you know, we need a lot more people basically in this space to be able to make the difference if you need to. But you know, we just have to start some.
Maruf: Absolutely, speaking of this coalition I think. Tell me the project you guys are doing for the orphans for your team. Like how did it start how you came to be? What is bad? You tell us more about this?
Osama: Sure. Yeah. It’s been such a fascinating sort of while, right? We’ve only lost like a little over a week ago, but basically in my because of my work, you know, into some that travel around the world quite a bit and one of my sort of hobbies is photography and what am I, you know fascinations from photography became about photographing like massage it or photographing Islamic history and things like that, you know.
So whenever I was in any country, like my first sort of go-to thing was this could check that the local mosque and you know, take photos of it . I like over a few years if they’re of mass my own sort of Collection of photographs. This year, I thought okay, well, I should do something with that, you know again like do something for good or for head through that.
So my first thought was, you know, just a small scale. I just sort of put my photography as prints and then, you know, raise some funds through that by offering it to friends and family. So I did a small campaign reserved for that. It was very very diminishing quiet, but then you know at the end that it would put this up as a website to say. Well if someone wants to like, buy it from anywhere in the world, I could potentially write, ship a print to them as well and then I forgot about it.
So when Ramadan came around I had a few people email me and say well you still have that website up you want to buy some gifts for heat? Okay, and I was like, that’s interesting. So I said, okay if we’re gonna do this again, why don’t we like, involve other photographers?
So I asked a bunch of photographers and artists if they wanted to also be a part of this campaign with us. And hundred another came, so blessed and honored that so many people were just immediately, very quickly, came together and said this is great. Let’s do this and they’re offering like, incredible photography.
So basically what this project is is we have some really renowned photographers who’re coming together to raise funds for Orphans. And the reason, the way they’re doing it is, they’re offering really rare and beautiful pieces of their art for sale so you can buy a print and you don’t get it in your home as wall art, but a hundred percent of the profits from that sale goes towards helping orphans.
And particularly, we’ve partnered with the current foundation that I mentioned earlier because they have a very specifically interesting educational program for and there, you know taking care of some orphans families in Istanbul and in Rihanly and Turkey, but that’s the idea.
So we have a network of printers all over the world. So we can actually do worldwide free shipping and we just launched a little over a week ago and it’s been overwhelming to see this response. Like we were getting orders from the US, Canada, UK, Scotland, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, Australia all over the world really.
And it’s been interesting because they are trying to really figure out like, how did they do it strikes people are telling me that is making them happy. I don’t know why they did. They’re saying this is making him happy because the art is really good art from the Islamic World. It speaks to our context and it is for a good cause.
So when you’re buying something from the side, it really makes you feel good that you’re helping orphans in the process and it’s a symbiosis. The artist is giving or donating for the sake of Orphans and the person buying it is donating physical for Orphans and all of them are coming together in this way, you know.
And so I’m just really blessed to be like in the midst of all these amazing people trying to sort of be a witness, I guess so to everything going on. But yeah, that’s basically what the campaign is. So we’ve launched at the end and the last week of Ramadan we’re going to continue this at least until the end of June but yeah the idea is to help the theme through there. So that’s why the website is for Yetim.
Maruf: It’s for Orphan, right? I think of that Arabic word, right? You can also envision as well. I remember seeing its orphan, isn’t it?
Orphan: Yeah. Yetim in Arabic and Persian is means orphan also in Turkish. But yeah, so for Orphans, I mean that’s.
Maruf: We do this for so, I mean, I guess this is what we do is like, usually recharge life, but if you have a video, right? Well things we can offer you by the end of you can pay with you we can offer from the advertised, see our side shall of your charge. We can offer our services to help you to post, in further, you know, but the reason I’m saying is that so if you have the video because we know from our experience videos convert better. Yeah. Beautiful images, which is cool.
But I think if you have the video it will be even further back. We see like a couple of times x what’s called the conversion rate this is something we get, I don’t want to discuss here but I would like to discuss with you like be clear.
But that’s something I think you know offer but I think as I said the reason when you do something you know what I noticed that when you do something for others, might not only benefit especially for old friends and Islam as you mentioned, they have a very special place that I think many people have community come together. Do you really want to help right and because they know that it’s not for your own organ, but everything you’re saying is coming from a very noble cause and I think that’s what happens that people see that and say wow this amazing leadership.
I want to enjoy it. I want to be out of this. You know, that’s so good. It feels like, so I think that’s what you’re asking. Don’t know why I think that’s why you know, you feel good because they are getting value, right? They are buying something this beautiful, beautifies their home. They might be of the same time. They are helping someone out there that offer and I think yeah, I mean, that’s amazing.
I mean like there’s something we cannot explain, right? I think I dropped the day like you’ve been missing from the beginning as humans, like part of our journey is to groans. I do too. We want to grow as a human being but it’ll some point we reach a point that we want to start contributing right, we have gotten so much from other people.
If you look at your childhood behind up, I got some really good changes, Prophets, Allah through people, right? Some people give you food. Some people give education. I’m so grateful. But now I’m in a state. Now you’re in a state. So we all love the big one of us in this state that we say. I got so much, you know more than enough.
Alhamdulillah. The question is, how can you pay back? No, and I think that’s what we are trying to do. I guess, you know where you’re trying to contribute because Allah blessed you so much. We have to give back. I think our goal is to help Umma. How can we get them from EDD position to are being self-sufficient position so we can help the needy among ourselves, not only them but also the and that’s what you are trying to enhance right at the moment.
This is where we want to be or not to be is Prophet (S) said that I think that the upper hand the giving hand is better than the law right to getting, so, they’re like the elephants are making most of us which level you’re like solid increase what you do because I think that’s very normal thing is I’m truly touched that I’m really touched me on the shoulder.
Osama: Thank you so much for your generous offer and like all of these nice comments. I mean, I’m truly humbled and I’m humbled by everyone coming together and I’m humbled by so many people like yourself like you said hey, this is the noble cause how can we help, you know, how can we take it forward and and support you guys.
And so I’m really blessed to be in the midst of all of this and Insha’Allah like our goal again, I am getting the thing that resonance even to us individually as the photographers and to me, personally is the fact that we are in it entirely a hundred percent for Orphans Like Our intention is that right. We’re not really trying to gain anything for ourselves even like, the point that to some degree.
We have to talk about the project. But at the same time there’s a desire for me to not talk about this at all, in case it comes back to benefit me in any way, you know, like it has to be about the cause about the foundation about what we’re trying to do. And yeah, I love you know, and for anyone listening if you’d like to support us in any way that would be great as well. But rather my room, thank you so much.
Maruf: We also share the link as well as notes. That’s a great cause is there whether some it is you would like to mention like is there any question I should have asked but I haven’t asked.
Osama: No, I think it’s wonderful. Thank you again for having me on this show and getting a chance to talk about what we’re doing and just you know, I always say like, you know, you keep us in advance of more importantly keep the Yetim Minyard was one of the reasons what motivated me to like do this is I heard from the current condition that.
Because of the covid shutdowns actually, I guess I can elaborate on this a little bit because the covid shutdowns the orphan families, especially in Istanbul have been affected fairly intensely because normally what happens is there’s a, you know, orphan families like a single parent, you know, we’ve come to I’m glad that you know, so many people have mobilized around it from within our campaign and I hope the people continue to support that.
Because you know, at least in Turkey, the lockdowns are starting to ease up. But at the same time these families who are the most vulnerable, they still need our support as much as we can provide for them. And you said this absolutely, correctly that it was found that Allah has given us so much that at some point. We just have to say whatever we can do to give back is the best thing we can do.
Maruf: Absolutely. Osama, thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your story.
May Allah bless you in knowledge and the deeds which will benefit you and also the humanity hereafter. It doesn’t matter right for the greater cause especially for Orphans for other courses as well, you see this is what happens, right?
When you look back like if you said yourself, I’m going to be an engineer in one box. You may not necessarily. We’d be in this position with them since you said look the box doesn’t define me at that one. What did you do? Actually when I look at the world, I see what this problem is. I want to be the solution. I want to see. The attitude that makes a huge difference right and mobilizes people and inspires people to take action. So it’s all a bit more of us like that. I think that’s it and I guess having said that I am going to say Assalamu alaikum. Thank you for being hare
Osama: Walaikumassalam. Thank you so much.
