Subtraction is addition.

As a Math major, that never made sense to me at first glance.

There was a time I had everything I prayed for: a hedge-fund salary, unlimited Seamless accounts, gym memberships, wardrobe stipends, billion dollar New York skyline views, and a life most people my age would’ve traded anything for.

On paper, I was winning.

Inside, I was losing.

I was upgrading everything except my soul. I mean, how many of you guys upgraded to the new iPhone 17 Pro Max? I told myself I didn't need it but then my phone program offered me a free trade-in… :(

You can have the world at your fingertips and still feel poor.

And you can own nothing and still feel rich.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

That paradox unfolded into six subtractions that changed my life.

I call them the 6 hijrahs (migrations).

I went from working at a hedge-fund to being $50,000 in debt to running two islāmic businesses that have generated over $1M combined to date.

When I wanted to change my life I thought I had to add.

Add one more habit, one more app, one more stream of income.

Instead, I started deleting…

In math class, subtraction looked like loss. But the deeper you go, the more you realize subtraction increases what matters.

Subtracting a negative increases the value: 10−(−3)=13
Removing a weight that pulls you down doesn't shrink your life, it makes it better.

Solving for a variable requires subtraction: 5x=2x+3
You subtract 2x from both sides to reveal the truth.

Life works the same. You remove what doesn't belong so the essential variable (your servanthood) stands alone.

I'm gonna stop here before this turns into a math lecture.

The heart is a mirror. You don't polish it by adding shine, you purify it by removing the rust. The Qur'ān calls this tazkiyah (purification).

When you do istighfār (seeking forgiveness), you don't add light.

You erase the darkness.

I didn't need more. I needed to subtract.

Most people aren't suffering from lack of time, they're suffering from lack of purpose. True progress is returning to the axis. Remembering who your Lord is, and who you are. When your time, energy, and income all orbit around the axis of servanthood, life starts doing strange things to give you the dunyā even if you don't want it.

The paradox of modern life is that everyone wants freedom but no one wants to surrender.

But surrender is freedom.

When you submit to Allāh, you stop being enslaved by everything else: money, people, dopamine, validation, etc.

The 6 subtractions that changed everything.

What came next wasn't pretty. It was raw, lonely, and sometimes terrifying. But each subtraction removed something until what remained finally made sense.

Each step brought me closer to a life that finally made sense.

Here's how I changed my life in six steps:

The barakah hour.

The bridge between dreams and reality.

The secret between you and Allāh.

The antidote to modern distraction.

The Qur'ān calls it "a station of praise" (17:79). The Prophet ﷺ said it was the most beloved prayer after the obligatory ones (Muslim 1163)

Tahajjud comes from the root ه ج د (hā–jīm–dāl).

The base verb hajada means to stay awake at night.

When you add the "ta" at the start, it becomes a form that often means "to do something to yourself" or "to put effort into it".

So tahajjada is to struggle against sleep. Tahajjud is derived from this verb. It's not simply "waking up" but rather it is to fight your own nafs and your sleep to pray. It's like the difference between "I woke up" and "I made myself get up even though my body didn't want to."

It is a deliberate interruption. A break in the pattern of ghaflah (heedlessness). The prayer is defined not by its time but by the resistance it requires.

You're literally wrestling your body's inertia to stand before Allāh.

Fatahajjada bihi nafilatan.

The Qur'ān calls it nāfilah, which doesn't mean "optional." It means a surplus offering, the worship of those who seek nearness, not mere sufficiency. Ibn Kathīr explains that this was a command specifically to the Prophet ﷺ as an honor and a gift of elevation.

A student of hadith once visited Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal. The Imam wanted to host the student and allow him to spend the evening. Imam Ahmad welcomed him and left him a jug of water for the night prayer. In the morning, he found the water untouched and realized the student didn't pray at night. Imam Ahmad said something to the effect of: "Subhanallah! I've never seen this before. A student of hadith without a portion of night prayer?"

The same could be said today:

You can't hope for the states of the righteous while skipping the habits that made them righteous.

The day belongs to creation, the night belongs to the Creator. The night is the environment of sincerity with no audience and no performance. The last third of the night is the time of divine attention, when mercy descends not in droplets but in waves.

Between 2am and 4am: cortisol is lowest and melatonin highest. The brain files memories, repairs cells, and resets the nervous system.

Spiritually, it's when your body is most surrendered.

Biologically, it's when your mind is most rewritable.

I talk more about the science of Tahajjud in this newsletter.

But like any bridge, it only holds if its foundation is strong and that foundation is the 5 daily prayers. If that base is shaky, start there first.

Tahajjud begins with niyyah (intention). You can perform public prayers to be seen but this one exposes you because no one sees you except the One who called you.

Sincerity is what separates a habit from worship.

1) The ideal method: Pray 'Isha, sleep, wake up in middle of night, pray Tahajjud, sleep, and wake up again for Fajr.

2) Right before Fajr method: Pray 'Ishā, sleep, wake 20 min before Fajr to pray Tahajjud, then pray Fajr.

3) The beginner method: Pray Tahajjud right after 'Ishā if you fear you won't wake (Note: some scholars counted this as qiyām al-layl and not Tahajjud The highest form is to pray after sleep as the Prophet ﷺ did it).

Don't think you need to stand for hours.

Start with 2 rak'āt. Wake 20 min before Fajr. If that's too hard, pray after 'Isha until you get into the flow and train that muscle. Notice how in Ramadan it feels easy, right? Everyone wakes for suhūr (pre-dawn meal). Try to channel in that same energy by fasting on The White Moon days or on Mondays and Thursdays. It keeps the soul in training even after the month has passed. We are less than 135 days away…

50% of praying Tahajjud is setting the intention before you sleep i.e. "O Allāh, help me wake up for Your sake."

So if you sincerely intend to wake up but sleep through it, Allāh still records reward for you.

When I first began, I only prayed for outcomes. I wanted more money, I wanted to travel more, I wanted to be more pretty, I wanted to get married, I wanted to have beautiful children… anything to make my dunyā better. It was selfish of me but that's what got me up. I was tired of my current life and needed to change my reality.

I begged and cried for a long time and nothing changed.

Then one night it happened.

I didn't even make du'ā for what got me to wake up at what some would call absurd hours in the night.

I just sat there in the moment. Complete silence. Have you ever heard silence? In New York City, you rarely do. There's always a hum, sirens, this vibration of dunyā… it sounds like a constant buzz. The first time I heard real silence was in Iceland. If you have not been, I highly recommend. It felt like a different planet. One of my top 5 moments in life was seeing the Northern lights. Coincidence that it happens in the pitch-black of night? It was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. The colors dancing in blue, green, yellow, red, orange, purple… I just couldn't believe my eyes.

My forehead instantly fell to the ground in awe.

It was eerie but beautiful and Tahajjud time gives that same feeling. Whenever I struggle to get into that zone, I think of my time in Iceland and it works every time.

(Pro-tip: this is a hack to staying happy when you want. Think about memories when you felt one specific emotion and your body will feel it again. The brain doesn't know the difference.)

That night, it felt like my soul was drinking honey.

From that point on, I didn't pray for results. I prayed for Allāh.

Suddenly, the du'ās I'd forgotten started unfolding.

They were answered in ways I couldn't have imagined.

Always better.

Allāh answers in du'as in 3 ways:

Have you ever had a Tahajjud miracle story?

Thabit al-Bunani said: "I forced myself to pray at night for 20 years, then I enjoyed the night prayer for 20 years." I ain't on that level but I got a mini taste of it. And that mini-taste was unreal.

Tahajjud begins as discipline and it ends as paradise on earth.

Glad tidings to the people who illuminate their graves before entering them.

Glad tidings to the people who please their Lord before meeting Him.

Tahajjud is the hijrah of time. You migrate from dunya-time to divine-time. It's not just "praying at night." It is choosing Allāh when no one sees. And when you do that, who can stop His Blessings from reaching you?

May Allāh allow us all to be regular witnesses of the night prayer.

Health is one of the greatest blessings after īmān (faith).

Every successful Muslim I've met treats the body as an amānah (a trust from Allāh). Success doesn't create fitness. Fitness itself is a form of success.

Even the wealthy non-Muslims without purpose are obsessed with staying fit. What else do you do when you have everything of the dunyā but nothing of meaning? You start bio-hacking and wish your 40 or 50-year-old brain could live inside an 18-year-old body. The irony is that all the money in the world can't buy back vitality. Exercise becomes their attempt to reverse time and it's the same act we're rewarded for when done with the right intention.

You cannot carry a big mission in a weak vessel.

The Prophet ﷺ walked miles, fought in battle, raced with his wives, and never let his body atrophy.

Physical discipline bleeds into mental discipline.

Imam al-Ghazali explained it noice:

Both extremes destroy the mission.

Neglecting the body's health or exhausting it with desires prevents the soul from traveling to its spiritual goal. Balance is worship. The stronger your body becomes, the lighter it is for your soul to travel towards Allāh.

Your stage of life:

In 2021, I was diagnosed with depression.

My room looked like a garbage dump. I couldn't get out of bed. Doctors gave me meds I didn't want or take. My worship was now just the 5 prayers done at the very last minute. My Qur'ān memorization came to a stop.

What got me out?

Movement.

My mom kept pushing me: "Let's go on a walk."

She still wakes up before Fajr, recites Qur'ān, takes islāmic classes, walks barefoot in the backyard soil, grounds herself with plants, eats whole food, uses honey and black seed in the morning, and doesn't cook with seed oils. At 50, she is stronger than many in their 20s. She has always reminded me that healing is holistic. May Allāh bless her.

Those walks eventually led me to sign up for an all-women fitness program online. Every day I showed up at 2PM and worked out even when I didn't feel like it. The sunlight, movement and community began healing me in ways those meds could never.

Exercise is the most underrated antidepressant. It regulates dopamine and serotonin. It teaches consistency through your nervous system, not just your mind.

Exercise is the hijrah of the body. Migration from neglect to responsibility. Your body remembers what your mind forgets.

And one day, it will testify either for you… or against you.

I landed in Madinah in 2019 with a college group trip. It was my first time traveling international without family. (Side note: I don't travel alone anymore, I've done it before when I didn't know better)

We reached the Prophet's Mosque around 11PM. It was pretty late so we didn't get to pray in congregation until Fajr. The imam (Shaykh Hameed) was reciting Surah al-Mulk...

The very Surah that I'd been trying to memorize before I came here.

I completely broke down crying. It felt like a sign. The first Surah I heard in Madīnah was the one on my tongue. I felt even more sad because I couldn't understand it. How had I lived 2 decades without trying to understand Allāh's words?

That night birthed my serious hifdh journey.

Ask yourself: when is the last time you opened the Mus'haf? 

Memorization is not just storage, it is a transformation.

On the Day of Judgement, it will be said: "recite and ascend".

For every ayah, a level. And the memorizers of the Qur'ān will recite and ascend and recite and ascend and recite and ascend! Until they reach their final station.

After returning from Madinah, life hit fast. I was thrown into the tornado of full-time college, full time hedge-fund, 1 hour morning commutes. I would wake up, snooze, rush to get out the house, school, work, return home, eat dinner, and knock out.

So where was the time to memorize? I made time wherever I could.

I used my commute. Instead of music, I opened the Quran.com app on the F train from Brooklyn. One ayah would literally take me an hour to get down. I repeated it over and over and over again to myself on the train trying to taste its meaning. It was slow and painful. But after 6 months, it became easier. An ayah that once took an hour became a page that took an hour and now that same page takes 15 minutes. Alhamdulillāh.

The difference wasn't in effort. It was in intention. When my heart wasn't ready, I couldn't memorize even half a page. But when my heart fully turned to Allāh, when I begged Him to open the door to His book, He opened it. That Ramadān in 2019 was a different one. Even to this day. I planned to finish a Juz in a week. I completed it in 3 days.

Allāh grants tawfīq (divine help) when you are sincere.

If you're just beginning:

If you can't get yourself to memorize, know your obstacles: sins block memorization.

I used to be a music connoisseur. When a new Drake or Kanye or Future album dropped, I'd have it downloaded at the second. Every time I was with a group of friends, I knew what kind of music to play to match the energy and I was really good at it. People always handed me the aux. Astagfirullāh.

Music dulled my memory for years. 

Replacing it with Qur'ān was a huuuge detox. 

If you're trying to quit music:

There was a time where I would go on a 1-3 hour walks everyday and just listen to the Qur'ān translation in English. My business and social media thrived the most in that period. I haven't walk as long in a while as I was traveling this whole summer but I started making time for it again. If you're struggling with brain fog either in your heart or your business, try this. Thank me later.

Memorizing is one of the most powerful workouts for the brain.

We are living in a time where no one really has to use their brain anymore. We have phone numbers saved with a button. I still remember the days of memorizing all my best friends numbers by heart. We have Google Maps. Back then my dad would print out directions from those fat PC computers before a road trip. We have password savers for everything. We used to write down passwords in a mini-notebook. And now we have AI where there are literal studies showing that brain function is deteriorating because people feel the need to ask chatGPT things like "should I eat breakfast" and "what should I feel". I might be guilty…

It's more important than ever to actually use our brains.

Over time, your subconscious begins to think in Qur'ānic patterns. You start seeing life with the lens of taqwā (God-consciousness). More on this in the last section of the letter. 

Memorization is hijrah of the mind. Migration from scattered thoughts to divine speech. It is not about having pages in your head but about letting revelation reshape the way you think.

The Qur'ān rewrites its reader.

If you're not memorizing, at least recite until you get to the point where a single Juz takes you 20-30 minutes to read.

If you think provision comes from your employer, you've made your employer your lord.

On paper, I was living the dream. Secured a hedge-fund job while still in college, 6-figure salary, surrounded by luxury. They didn't just pay me. They re-engineered me. 

As someone who grew up in a 1-bedroom apartment with 8 people… this was my initiation into the world of money.

I had a wardrobe stipend at Saks Fifth Ave. I was buying Sandro dresses at $300–$500 a piece. They gave me a $5,000 wellness card every 3 months for massages, laser hair removals, facials, supplements, high-tech gadgets, whatever passed as "self-care". I was eating $40 lobster rolls and had cold-pressed juices everyday for breakfast, all covered with my unlimited Seamless account. We had elite gym memberships + a private gym in the building. We could pretty much access any doctor in the city through our top of the line health insurance. I thought I was staying here for the rest of my life.

But after I came back from Madinah nothing was the same.

Reality isn't witnessed by the mind, it's witnessed through the heart.

Allāh creates reality. We don't. But we perceive it through the state of our hearts. If the heart is sound, perception aligns with truth. If it's diseased, perception is distorted.

When the heart is dirty, even blessings look like burdens. When it's purified, the same world looks different because what changes isn't the world, it's the lens you're seeing it through.

That's exactly what happened.

What looked glamorous at first began to rot in front of me. 

The trading floor wasn't exciting anymore, it was disturbing. I remember one day, one of the principals was boasting, "We just made $4 million off interest." My stomach turned.

It hit me hardest in one-to-ones with my manager. Me in my hijāb, alone with him in his office, trying to talk performance metrics. The more visibly Muslim I became, the stranger the air felt. My body would heat up with discomfort. There were invitations to alcoholic events. Hands extended toward me to touch. Each day, the workplace felt uglier and uglier. 

Cognitive dissonance is what psychologists call the tension of holding two conflicting realities. 

Leon Festinger coined the term in the 1950s: when your actions contradict your beliefs, your psyche suffers. I was visibly Muslim, memorizing Qur'ān on commutes, then sitting at a desk profiting off ribā (interest).

It all felt like an intense LSD trip. Eventually, it cracked me. My heart was screaming: "What are you doing here?" Allāh was showing me the filth and it could no longer be denied.

I finally decided to walk away.

When I resigned, they made me sign paperwork promising not to sue and handed me a verrry generous severance package. Maybe they feared I'd pull the "religious discrimination" card. Idk. I did notice the more practicing I became, the more they treated me like an outsider. They still smiled, still let me leave for Jumu'ah at the masjid near Omar's Mediterranean between Lex and 3rd Ave.

But it wasn't home anymore.

If you want to get out of your job:

Leaving harām income is hijrah of provision. Migration from dunya-dependence to Allāh-dependence.

What you leave for Allāh is never lost.

What He granted me after was something I could have never imagined…

Even while working at the hedge fund, my dream was never corporate ladders. It was to do something islāmic. To live in service to Allāh and still earn my rizq. To make my work my worship. 

I used to look at people who ran islāmic businesses and think: Damn, they hacked life. They earn good deeds and a paycheck at the same time.

The road was failure first. While still in school and working, I kept trying. From 2018–2020 I tried dropshipping abayas from Ali Express. Failed. Tried selling kitchen gadgets. Failed. Tried Etsy calendars. 5 months of work made $100 in revenue. Ok we're getting somewhere. Tried running affiliate ads for Clickbank products. Got to $1000 days. Burnt out and eventually quit.

Over and over: failure.

That's how it's supposed to be.

Stop asking everyone for permission. Stop announcing: "I'm gonna start a clothing line, I'm gonna create this product, I'm gonna launch this thing…" All you're doing is dopamine-talking. You trick your brain into feeling rewarded when in reality you've done nothing. 

Dopamine belongs in the doing, not in the talking.

Almost nobody succeeds on their first try. If you do, it was written for you. May Allāh bless it. But for most of us, the first try is just exposure therapy. Failure is tuition.

Then I asked myself: what do I actually love? Design. Aesthetics. Order. In school, my notes were so neat and color-coded that classmates offered to pay for them. My closet was organized by color. I had an eye for photography and an obsession with beauty.

Pair that with Islām and the answer came: aesthetic journals, planners, and tools for Muslims. I didn't see anything on the market bridging that gap.

If you know my brand Eternah, you know we take design seriously. The other day I had a meeting with my product designer and we spent 10 min talking about 1 millimeter of text placement. 1 millimeter.

My first real product was an islāmic bullet journal in 2020. It sold out in a month. I should probably bring it back. Anyone here remembers it? You are a total OG if you have one. That little journal became the seed that let me leave my last (and hopefully final) 9–5 a few years later.

Business is never neutral. Either it uplifts or it exploits.

The believer is a net benefit to society.

If you want to start your own islāmic business: 

Starting my islāmic business made me better as a person. It was like a cheat code. I couldn't preach Qur'ān and neglect my own hifdh. I couldn't post about barakah and live heedlessly. Slowly… the gap closed.

Speaking the truth forced me to live it.

An islāmic business is hijrah of work. You migrate from working for dunyā to working for Allāh. From serving corporations to serving the ummah.

I think everyone is capable of having a business but that's a story for another day.

You can still be in 'ibādah through your work even without being an entrepreneur,

It all depends on your intention. 

This is the axis. 

Everything else spins around it.

When you make Allāh the foreground of your life, everything begins to orbit differently.

You wake up not for productivity, but for purpose.
You start your morning with His name on your tongue, not your phone in your hand.
You walk to prayer even when you are tired, because obedience is the language of love.
You lower your gaze when it's hard, because surrender beautifies the soul.
You cover yourself when everyone around you is half-naked, because modesty protects what beauty reveals.
You eat with His name, you speak with truth, you restrain your anger, you forgive when you could humiliate.

You move through the world conscious that every act, from how you spend your money to how you treat people, is a test.

When you live with Allāh at the center, your choices stop feeling random. You start seeing every action as a moral weight. Either it brings you closer to Him or pulls you away.

And Islām doesn't leave that to guesswork.

It gives us a framework to navigate life with clarity:

Every act of doing or leaving must be for the sake of Allāh to carry reward.

The Ahnāf (followers of Hanafi madhab) differentiated between fardh (what is decisively proven by Qur'ān or mutawātir hadith) and wājib (what is required but established through a lesser degree of evidence). This shows just how precisely they studied obedience, because to them, every shade of worship mattered.

P.S. This barely scratches the surface and there far deeper nuances in fiqh.

Every moment in life sits somewhere on this scale.

The modern world convinces you to serve yourself. But you were created to serve Allāh. And in serving Allāh, you end up serving others best. 

This is ikhlās (sincerity). Do something only for Allāh, and Allāh Himself becomes your protector [22:38] and your provider [65:3].

Eternah recreated this well-known triangle diagram: husband and wife on the base and Allāh at the apex. As both climb toward Him, they naturally draw closer together. Focusing on "what your spouse owes you" breeds resentment. Focusing on "what Allāh expects of me" transforms marriage. The same applies to parenting: are you raising servants of Allāh or servants of dunyā? The same applies to every sphere of life.

There is guidance for everything you face. The stories of the Prophets, the wisdom of the Salaf, the works of great scholars of the past… their books are over a thousand years old yet every page feels written for now. That is the miracle of knowledge from the Qur'ān.

If dense books overwhelm you, start small. Even children's stories plant seeds of īmān in an adult. And in our time, there are so many ways to learn online.

How to practice servanthood?

Serving Allāh is hijrah of identity. You migrate from 'abd al-dunyā (servant of the world) to 'abd Allāh (servant of Allāh).

The secret is not that these 6 steps work.

The secret is that they break you.

They strip away illusions until all that's left is servanthood.

I thought changing my life meant designing the perfect plan. 

But instead, it meant handing my plans over.

And when you hand your life to Allāh, He hands you back an infinitely better one.

Thank you for reading through this letter.

And thank you for being here.

مع حبي (with love)

Saufiyah ♡

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