A question lands in my inbox:

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"How do I actually think for myself as a Muslim? Everyone online sounds the same. Every 'muslim personal brand' is recycling the same 5 points. I want to have original thoughts but I don't even know the difference between mine or the algorithms."

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Let me tell you a story.

I read the Qur'an only in Arabic for 18 years.

I could recite it. I could write it. I finished reading all 30 Juz before I was a teenager. Multiple times. I memorized the everyday du'as.

I won awards in masjid competitions.

And I had no idea what any of it said.

Not really.

I knew the Sunday school version: the Prophets, heaven and hell, the 5 pillars, the major halal and haram.

But the actual Book? The Book Allah sent down to be wrestled with, sat with, thought with, cried with, happy with, lived with?

The Qur’an was more like a childhood friend that I’d catch up with every 1-3 years.

But once I started actually thinking about what I was reciting I realized I hadn't just been going through the motions with the Qur'an.

But I'd been going through the motions with my whole life.

The real work I needed to do happened naturally.

Now back to the question.

Most Muslims today aren't really thinking…

Someone made a take. Someone else summarized the take. You read the summary. You agreed with it. You called that thinking.

That's not thinking.

Here's what I'd do if I had to relearn how to think as a Muslim, knowing nothing:

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(1) Don't run to Claude or ChatGPT all the time.

The thinking IS the point.

Every time you outsource a thought to AI before you've thought it yourself, you skip the actual work. It's not so much the answer. The friction of sitting with a question, turning it over, getting it wrong, trying again, that's where your mind gets its workout. AI gives you a polished output and robs you of the process that would have made you sharper. Use it after you've thought, not instead of thinking.

(2) Read Qur'an, Tafsir, Seerah, Prophet stories.

You become what you read.

This is the input that changes what your mind is even capable of producing. If you only read business books and X threads, your thinking will sound like business books and X threads. If you read the Qur'an, the Seerah, the lives of the Prophets - your mind starts running on a different operating system. The original thinkers in Islamic history were completely absorbed in this material. They weren't just quoting it… they were thinking THROUGH it.

(3) Question what you inherited from your parents.

Not the religion. The religion is from Allah.

But the version of it you got. The cultural overlays, the fear-based framings, the "because I said so" answers, the things your parents told you were islamic that were actually just their region's customs. All of that is up for examination. This is can be hard for some because it feels disloyal. Sorting what's actually from the Qur'an and Sunnah from what's from your specific upbringing is one of the most important pieces of intellectual work a Muslim does.

(4) Go on walks with no music.

Music is a beautiful drug.

It also drowns out your own thoughts so completely that you can walk for an hour and arrive nowhere mentally. Walks were the original thinking technology. The philosophers walked, the Prophets walked, the early Muslims walked. Try a dhikr walk. The first 10 minutes will feel weird if you're not used to it because your mind will start surfacing everything you've been avoiding. That unbearableness is the muscle waking up after years of atrophy. That's the point. Walk it out.

(5) Write for your past, present, and future self.

The best writing is honest writing and honest writing has three audiences inside you.

Past you: what do you wish someone had told you 5 years ago?
Present you: what are you actually working through right now?
Future you: what do you want to remember when you've forgotten?

(6) Memorize things.

We've outsourced memory to our phones and we've gotten dumber for it.

Your mind needs raw material to think with. You cannot think with something you don't actually carry inside you. Memorize ayat. Memorize hadith. Memorize maps. Memorize phone numbers. The material in your memory is the material your mind can recombine in original ways. A mind with no stored content is a mind with nothing to think with.

(7) Stop being a parrot.

Most of what you call your opinions are someone else's opinions you saw three days ago and forgot the source of.

You read the comments before you even finished reading the post. You let the comment with the most likes shape your take before you'd even finished forming one. Then you shared it. Then you repeated it. And it did not require you to have actually metabolized an idea. You'll be shocked how often your first instinct was sharper than the consensus. If you can't explain why you believe something without quoting the person you got it from, you don't believe it yet.

(8) Read your old writing without cringing or fixing it.

The cringe is information.

It tells you where you've grown. You'll start noticing patterns in how your mind has moved over time and that meta-awareness is itself a form of original thinking.

(9) Write your thinking down.

A thought you don't capture is a thought you didn't really have.

I have multiple “Quran notebooks” where when I am listening to the translation I write down the ayahs that stood out to me. There is a reason they stand out to you.

Keep a small notebook (use Notes for emergencies). When something hits you, write it. When you notice a pattern in your life that maps to an ayah/story/word, write it. This is how you build a record of your own mind meeting the Book. Over a year, you will have something no scholar can give you: your own thinking on your own life through the lens of revelation.

Review all notes at the end of the week to organize and consolidate.

(10) Consume long-form content on topics unrelated to your niche.

The best ideas come from the intersection between fields.

Writer? Read how the Hagia Sophia was built.
Student? Read about how funerals are run.
Nurse? Read how black holes bend time.
Construction worker? Read about the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
SAHM? Read about the octopus and its nine brains.
Content creator? Read about regenerative farming.
Imam? Read about how attention works on social media.
Uber driver? Read about how the pyramids were built.
Accountant? Read about the frequencies of music.

I majored in Mathematics and minored in Philosophy.
I always found paradoxes very very cool.

If you only read in your lane, you'll only ever produce more of the same. The cross-pollination is what makes thinking original because nobody else in your niche has been sitting with the same odd combination of inputs you have.

(11) Talk to people who don't think like you.

If everyone you talk to agrees with you, your mind is getting weaker by the conversation.

Find people who think differently. Different fields. Different generations. Different deen levels. Different politics. Different socio-economic statuses. Different races. Sit with the discomfort of being challenged. Ask questions instead of defending your pov. You don't have to agree with them but you have to be able to hear them. The friction is what sharpens you.

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I have more but will stop here for the sake of writing a shorter email. Fun fact: this email was originally a whole 3,500+ word newsletter but I shaved it down. Wah.

Original thinking is a skill you can learn. It's not reserved for scholars or geniuses or the people with the largest platforms. It's available to anyone willing to sit with their own mind long enough to actually use it.

You were capable of it the entire time.

And Allah commanded you to use it.

2:44 Do you not reason? (afala ta'qilun?)
6:50 Do you not reflect? (afala tatafakkarun?)
47:24 Do you not ponder? (afala yatadabbarun?)

These are instructions for the human intellect.

Anyway.

That 18-years-of-reciting-a-book-I-never-read moment is what led me to create the pocket-sized Everyday Du'as book. Carry it. Read it in English. Actually understand what you're saying to Allah when you're saying it.

It's small enough to fit in your pocket so you have no excuse.

Order it here.

Until next time.

مع حبي (with love)

Saufiyah ♡

P.S. A reader wrote in about Quranic Du'as (currently sold out) the bigger sister of the Everyday Du'as book:

"MashaAllah this book is beautiful not only in the du’as but also in the images. It is laid out in such an easy-to-follow manner and I appreciate the added information for each du’a. This was beautifully done, may Allah SWT reward all those who had a hand in making this book. Ameen."

P.P.S. Testing out shorter letters like this one. Let me know what you think. I write for you guys!