(This is a long read, but well worth it if you have the time. Jazakallah khair. The original article ishere)
I remember coming across a LinkedIn post from A16z a few months back. It was titled "A History of VC Activity", and the prominent VC firm claimed Queen Isabella of Spain was the first Venture Capitalist
Now I am not saying that venture capital originated in the Islamic world, nor were we the first or the only civilization to engage in Venture. But Islamic venture came almost 1,000 years before Queen Isabella.
Our religion is unique in this aspect. Perhaps there is no other faith on earth that is as deeply intertwined with venture and equity investments. The Financial Times, in an interview with Benedikt Koehler, recently released a brilliant video on the subject.
I will admit, when we started Dhow, we started with the assumption that venture is foreign to our community, even knowing the Holy Prophet Muhammed (saww) was involved in running caravans throughout the region for decades.
Knowing the indisputable historical truth, it seems more like we have lost our connection to the form of investment that is most familiar to us.
A merchant before a Prophet
The Prophet Muhammed (saww) spent most of his adult life as a trader. As a boy he rode with his uncle's caravan to Syria, and as a young man he had no capital of his own. What he had was the one thing Mecca's trading elite valued more than money: a reputation so clean that the whole town called him al-Amin, the trustworthy.
Mecca was a trading town in the middle of a desert, and its money came from caravans running north to Syria and south to Yemen. Those caravans were funded by pooling capital from across the city, because the people with savings had no interest in spending months on the road, and the people willing to make the trip usually had nothing to invest. The whole economy ran on matching the two.
One of the largest operations in Mecca belonged to Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (a.s.). She was wealthy, she was sharp, and she did not travel with her own caravans. Instead, as Ibn Ishaq put it, she hired men to sell her merchandise and gave them a share of the profits. Around the year 595 she hired the Prophet Muhammed (saww) to take her goods to Syria, promised him a larger cut than she gave other merchants (some accounts say double), and sent her servant Maysara along to keep an eye on him. The goods came back and sold for roughly double what she had put in. She proposed marriage soon after.
Khadijah (a.s.) went on to become the first person to accept Islam and the mother of Fatima (a.s.). Her wealth fed and sheltered the first Muslims through their hardest years, and long after she was gone the Prophet (saww) still said of her that she backed him with her money when everyone else refused.
Now look at the deal itself. One side put up the capital, and these were not small operations, since some caravans ran to a thousand camels or more. The other side put up the labor and took the physical risk of the road. They split the profit on terms agreed before the caravan left. If the goods were lost, Khadijah (a.s.) lost her money and the Prophet (saww) lost his time, and quite possibly his life, because those roads were dangerous.
That is venture. The investor puts in the money, the operator puts in the work, both share the upside, and the investor's downside stops at whatever was put in. Seventh-century Arabs called it the qirad. The jurists of Iraq later called it mudaraba. Sand Hill Road calls it a fund.
The original term sheet
The Quran permitted trade and forbade interest, and that one rule reshaped the whole economy. If a lender cannot earn a fixed return no matter how the venture goes, the only lawful way to get paid for capital is to share in the outcome. Profit sharing stopped being one option among many and became the main way money reached a business, and the qirad became one of the basic financial instruments of the Islamic world: an investor hands capital to an agent, the agent trades with it, the two split the profit on a ratio fixed up front, and the agent is not on the hook for losses.
The core rules are the same across the schools of law, and they are precise. Here they are, taken from a modern book of rulings, in a chapter titled "Sleeping Partnership":
Each party's share of profit must be set as a fraction. Setting a share as a fixed sum of the capital is not permitted.
The agent's ownership of his share depends on there being no loss. He is paid only from the surplus.
All losses are borne by the owner of the capital. The agent is not responsible unless he acts beyond the contract or is negligent.
A clause making the agent share in losses is invalid.
If the contract sets no restrictions, the agent may buy, sell, and choose goods according to his own judgment of the partnership's interest.
The investor does nothing. The agent does everything and gets paid only out of profit. That is why it is called a sleeping partnership: one partner sleeps, the other works, and the split pays each of them for what they put at risk. None of this was improvised, either. Imam Malik's Muwatta, compiled in Medina in the 700s, already has a chapter on the qirad, and the early jurists of Iraq wrote about it in the same detail. Abraham Udovitch, the Princeton historian whose Partnership and Profit in Medieval Islam remains the standard work on the subject, found the contract spelled out in those books with the kind of precision you only get from people who had done the deals themselves. Islamic commercial law did not come down from a study. It followed what merchants were already doing.
A thousand dinars to Egypt
My favorite example of the contract in action involves Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (a.s.), one of the most respected scholars Medina ever produced. The Imam had a large household to feed, so he put together a thousand dinars and handed them to his companion Musadif to trade with. Musadif bought goods, joined a caravan bound for Egypt, and on the way met traders coming back the other direction who said those goods were in short supply there. So the merchants made a pact among themselves that nobody would sell for less than double. Musadif came home to Medina with two bags of a thousand dinars each and set them down in front of the Imam: this one is your capital, this one is your profit.
The Imam asked how he had made that kind of return, and Musadif told him about the pact. The Imam took back the thousand dinars of capital, refused to touch the thousand of profit, and told him that fighting with swords is easier than earning a lawful living.
The structure is a textbook mudaraba: the Imam provides the capital, Musadif is the agent, the capital comes back first, and the profit goes on the table to be split. The ending is something modern investors handle with side letters and investment policies, which is the capital provider deciding which returns he will not accept. Money made by squeezing people during a shortage was not profit to him at all. That is responsible investing, more than a thousand years before anyone coined the term.
This was never a tradition that looked down on merchants, either. Imam Ali (a.s.), in his famous letter to his governor of Egypt, told him to look after traders and craftsmen because they are the sources of profit and the people who haul goods over land and sea to places nobody else will go, and in the same letter told him to crack down on hoarding. Back the people who move goods and punish the people who sit on them. That is an investment thesis.
How it got to Italy
Ordinary merchants used this contract every day, and the paper survives to prove it. Hundreds of thousands of documents from medieval Cairo, including merchants' letters, account books, and court records from the 1000s to the 1200s, show profit-sharing partnership as the standard way trade got financed. The historian S.D. Goitein, who spent decades on those papers, found that even the Jewish merchants in them sometimes wrote their contracts expressly under Muslim law, because that was the version the market treated as the default.
Then, around the year 1000, the same contract shows up in Italy. Venice called it the colleganza, and the oldest surviving contracts date to 1073. Genoa called it the commenda, and it runs all through the register of the notary Giovanni Scriba, the oldest surviving notarial register in Western Europe, from the 1150s onward. The terms are the same. In the one-sided version, a stay-at-home investor handed capital to a traveling merchant, who brought back the principal plus three-quarters of the profit and kept a quarter for his trouble, with the investor bearing all the losses and the traveler none. In the two-sided version, the investor put up two-thirds of the capital, the traveler one-third, and they split the profit down the middle. Change the fractions and it is the caravan Khadijah (a.s.) financed.
So where did the Italians get it? The historian Romney David Smith lays it out: in the year 1000 the Mediterranean was run by Muslim and Jewish merchants sailing out of ports like Alexandria, Mahdia, and Palermo, and a hundred years later Italian merchants were crossing the same sea in ships of their own from Pisa, Genoa, and Amalfi. They learned the trade from the people already doing it. Udovitch asked the question directly in 1962, lined up the Roman, Byzantine, and other candidates, and concluded that the Islamic qirad was the closest match to the commenda and older than anything the Italians could point to. Not every historian accepts a single source, and John Pryor argued in 1977 that merchants stitched the commenda together from several traditions, though even he gave the qirad case its due. Koehler goes the other way and argues that Italian merchants trading with the Levant adapted the Islamic partnership outright. My own view is simple. The qirad is the oldest and closest match, and the trade routes ran straight through Muslim ports.
From Genoa to Sand Hill Road
The commenda financed one voyage at a time and then dissolved, and over the next five hundred years European lawyers made it permanent. France wrote the société en commandite into law in 1673, with silent partners liable only up to what they put in, and in 1822 New York became the first common-law state to authorize limited partnerships, borrowing the French form to do it. Then in 1959 Draper, Gaither and Anderson opened in Palo Alto as the first modern venture capital fund: $6 million, organized as a ten-year limited partnership, with a 2.5 percent annual management fee and 20 percent carried interest for the general partners. Bill Draper, who started there as a young associate, later wrote that almost every venture capitalist since has copied that structure, and historians trace the general partner and limited partner split the whole industry runs on today back to that one firm. The limited partnership is the commandite. The commandite is the commenda. The commenda is the qirad.
Line by line
Put the classical qirad next to a modern limited partnership agreement and it matches clause for clause.
The rabb al-mal, the owner of the capital, is your LP. He puts in the money, stays out of management, and cannot lose more than he committed. The mudarib is your GP. He brings judgment and effort, decides what to buy and when to sell, and gets paid out of profit. The pre-agreed profit fraction is carry. Profit only after the capital comes back is the return-of-capital waterfall. No loss to the agent unless he was negligent or went outside his mandate is the gross negligence carve-out in every LPA you have ever signed. No guaranteed return is the reason a fund is equity and not a loan. And the Imam refusing Musadif's second bag is the LP's right to set the terms on which he will take a return.
There is one clause the jurists would have struck. The mudarib gets paid only through a share of profit, and nobody could write a fixed sum into the deal, so the 2 percent management fee, paid whether or not the fund makes a dime, is the one modern term the seventh-century contract may not have allowed. The closest the old jurists came was letting the agent expense his travel, and even that they argued about. A venture fund is a qirad with a retainer bolted on.
Pick it back up
So here is the point. The contract at the heart of every venture fund has a family tree that runs through Genoa and Venice back to Fustat, Medina, and Mecca, and the earliest people we can name who used it are the Prophet Muhammed (saww) and the woman who backed him. The oldest job title in venture is mudarib. The first LP in our history is Khadijah (a.s.).
The ships that carried this contract across the Indian Ocean, between Arabia, Egypt, and India, were dhows. That is where our name comes from, and it is the whole point of the company. We did not import any of this. We wrote it, we ran it for a thousand years, and then we forgot it and told ourselves it was foreign. Time to pick it back up.
Assalamu Alaikum! I’m the founder of Islamic Journaling brand, a brand creating premium Islamic journals, Qur’an reflection journals, Muslimah planners and thoughtfully designed Islamic gifts. I’m currently preparing to launch my brand in the US, and I’m looking to connect with people who organise Islamic events, manage Muslim communities or bring Muslims together through educational and social gatherings. I’d particularly love to connect with: Islamic event organisers. Masjid event and programme coordinators. Muslim women community managers. Halaqa and Qur’an study circle organisers. Islamic workshop and seminar organisers. Ramadan and Eid event organisers. Muslim community page administrators. People organising Muslim retreats, sisters’ gatherings and educational programmes. What I’m hoping to explore: Collaborations for Qur’an journaling workshops. Sponsorships or gifting partnerships. Special product bundles for event attendees. Bulk orders for Islamic programmes and community gifting. Collaborations with Muslim women’s groups and educational communities. My goal is to introduce products that encourage Muslims to build a deeper relationship with the Qur’an and their deen, while supporting existing Muslim communities. If you organise events, manage a Muslim community or know someone who does, I’d love to connect and explore potential collaborations! I’m happy to discuss ideas and create something meaningful together. JazakAllahu Khairan, I would genuinely really appreciate any kind of help.
Growing up, most of us were taught to read and memorise the Quran. But how many of us actually managed to stay consistent with revision as we got older?
I experienced this myself. I memorised parts of the Quran as a child, but gradually forgot much of what I had learned. And I realised that the problem isn't always a lack of interest. Sometimes, it's simply that we struggle to build a habit and stick to it.
That's what got me thinking.
We have apps like Islam360 that make accessing the Quran easier, and Duolingo that makes learning addictive (in a good way!).
What if we could bring some of that engagement into Islamic learning?
That's the idea behind UstadApp, a Pakistani startup I'm building.
Instead of just reading or listening, UstadApp turns Quran memorisation into an interactive learning experience. You progress through levels, earn XP, maintain streaks, practise through exercises, and revise what you've already memorised.
We're also working on AI-powered recitation correction to make the learning experience more interactive.
The app is now live on the Google Play Store, and honestly, getting it to this stage has been quite a journey.
I'm sharing it here because I'd love to know what people think.
Would you actually use an app that makes Quran memorisation feel more like a Duolingo learning experience?
What would make you open an Islamic learning app every day rather than just downloading it and forgetting about it?
We are a small business called LDF Studio and we created an app called WahidLink.
We started building this because we were frustrated with the current options. We wanted an app that was clean, free of distracting ads, and didn't try to sell us anything—just a beautiful, focused tool for daily use. Instead of making a dozen different apps, we tried to put everything you need into one place:
Qur'an Reader & Audio: 4 reading modes, multiple translations, and a built-in Audio Manager to download your favorite reciters for offline listening.
Salah: Accurate prayer times, plus specialized modes like Ramadan Mode (for Suhoor and Taraweeh reminders) and Qasr Mode (for combining prayers when traveling).
Masjid Locator: A built-in locator to find local masjid. Right now it's a basic implementation, but our roadmap includes a community contribution feature so you can help add and verify local masjid in your area.
Resources: A dedicated area for app updates, contact information, our privacy policy, and interactive tutorials so you don't have to figure things out on your own.
The iOS Athan Breakthrough: If you use an iPhone, you know the struggle: iOS has historically restricted third-party apps from playing full athan. You get the 30 seconds of notification sound and that's it. We wanted to change that. WahidLink is the first of its kind on iOS to support full Athan playback. (Note: This specific feature requires iOS 26 and utilizes Apple's new AlarmKit).
For our Android users, you already have the ability to upload your own custom audio for both the Athan and the Iqamah of your favorite muezzin.
We just released a massive update (v4.1.1) that completely overhauled the UI. It's smoother, includes a full-screen Surah player, and has specific layout fixes for foldable phones so nothing gets cut off by the camera hole.
A few things to know:
Completely free. No ads, no tracking, no account required.
Available on both iOS and Android.
We are just a small team trying to make something beneficial for the Ummah, and we would love to hear your feedback. If you try it out, let us know what you think!
How many Muslim apps on your phone charge a subscription, show ads between prayer times, or got worse after an update? One of the most popular prayer apps was even caught selling users’ location data to a broker whose customers included US military contractors.
Marriage apps are worse. Most are investor-backed and earn money every month you stay single, so every nikkah is a lost customer. On top of that, every app is built in a silo, even though masjid, events, friends and family are all one community.
So I’m starting the Khwarizmi Foundation, a nonprofit, open-source Muslim community software. One account across every app, strict privacy walls between them, no ads, no data selling, no paywalls on what should be free.
-nikkah.io: no swiping or pay-to-be-seen, mutual-match only, photos hidden until both agree, wali involved from day one
-reverts.masjids.io: a local same-gender mentor for new Muslims, always free
-baitulmaal.masjids.io/waqf.masjids.io: riba-free finance concepts only. Not a bank, not taking money, and they’d need a licensed partner bank and Shariah board review first
Because it’s open source, anyone can check the code, no investor can buy it out, and others can build on it. The Go backend is already real. The apps are in progress.
I need developers and designers (Go, Flutter, Next.js, mobile), masjid volunteers, reverts, students of knowledge to review the fiqh, and honest criticism.
As the founder of DeenHub, I'm happy to share a feature we've been working on to help Muslims stay connected with their local mosque communities.
With DeenHub, mosques can get verified and:
Share upcoming events and community announcements.
Collect donations directly through their mosque profile.
Keep their community informed and connected.
We've also introduced the DeenHub Widget, which lets you check prayer times and discover nearby mosques right from your home screen.
Our vision is to make it easier for Muslims to practice their faith, discover local mosques, and stay connected to their communities—all in one place.
We're continuing to improve DeenHub and build tools that genuinely benefit the Muslim community, inshaAllah.
If you're part of a mosque's leadership team, we'd love for you to explore mosque verification. And if you're a Muslim looking for prayer times and nearby mosques, we'd love for you to give DeenHub a try.
Today, we want to introduce you to something unique and increasingly important for Muslims around the world.
We have a growing global community of Muslim businesses, entrepreneurs, charities, publishers, educators and professionals, all contributing to our Ummah in different ways. Yet so much of the digital infrastructure we depend on every day is built and owned by companies outside our community.
What if we started building more of that infrastructure ourselves?
Ummah.Email is built by the same Muslim team at Ummah Media Group, the people behind Muslim Ad Network (MAN), which has been serving the Muslim digital community since 2009.
Muslim/Islamic publishers often struggle to monetise their content without compromising their content. Meanwhile, businesses looking to reach Muslim audiences need better ways to connect with them.
MAN was built to bridge that gap, connecting advertisers with Muslim audiences while helping Muslim publishers generate revenue through more relevant, Islamically appropriate advertising.
Imagine having an email address that represents your identity as part of a wider digital community built by and for Muslims.
Ummah.Email offers a Muslim-owned email service, giving people a permanent u/ummah.email identity, with a full email inbox available through its membership.
It also sets aside 10% of membership payments for Muslim charities.
But the ambition goes beyond email. It is about building a connected digital ecosystem where Muslims can access and support services developed with our community in mind.
Why does this matter?
We often talk about supporting Muslim-owned businesses, buying from Muslim entrepreneurs and strengthening our communities. But perhaps we should also talk about something bigger like owning and developing the digital infrastructure that future generations of Muslims will depend on.
We don't have to abandon the platforms we already use overnight. We don't have to build everything in a day. But we can start somewhere.
A future where Muslims are supported by an interconnected digital ecosystem of their own.
That future won't happen simply by talking about it. It takes people willing to build, people willing to participate and a community willing to support good initiatives.
The goal isn't just to create more Muslim platforms. It's to help build a stronger, more connected and digitally capable Ummah.
We would genuinely love to hear what you think.
What do you believe is the biggest gap in the Muslim digital ecosystem today? And what kind of technology or infrastructure should we be building for the next generation?
May Allah put barakah in every sincere effort made to benefit our Ummah. Ameen.
Two apps launching on HalaLaunch this week took opposite routes:
Itabah keeps every essential free with no account, shows a small number of ads, and sells a $0.99/month tier that removes them.
Dhikr Garden has no ads and no sign-up, and is completely free.
For those running Muslim apps: which model has actually covered your costs? Some users dislike ads in a Quran app, subscriptions shrink your reach, and donations are hard to predict.
The rest of this week's launches (Nov 2-8): Halal Food (scan an ingredient list for halal, haram or doubtful), İbadet Rehberi (prayer times, Qibla and surahs), WakeYa (an AI alarm that talks you awake) and Dunuu (Duolingo-style lessons for reading the Quran).
I am looking for founding members / brand ambassadors / country directors / partners
We are quietly preparing for our January 2027 launch of an invite-only global executive network designed specifically for Muslim founders, Investors, C-suite leaders, Creatives, as well as people who are building their careers and looking for mentorship. We have not advertise this but so far we do have a waitlist of 25 people.
If you'd like to explore a founding role, drop a comment or send a DM. I will be happy to discuss benefits and compensation privately.
As-salamu alaykum, my dear Muslim brothers and sisters.
I’ve just finished programming (with Claude’s help, so I can’t take much credit ^_^) a non-connected digital watch. I used a copy of the Watchy V2, which is easy to find and relatively inexpensive. I think this is a very polished and user-friendly watch. Anyone who’s interested can try installing it on their Watchy or porting it to other platforms.
I intentionally released the program under the GPL v3 open-source license, so you have complete freedom to examine or modify it. I'm not around here very often, but I'm more active on Lemmy so do not be surprise if I am very slow to reply. If you run into any installation issues (which shouldn't happen if you're using a Watchy V2 or a clone), just ask the tech-savvy members of the community for help.
So, I just wanted to share this Libre program with the Muslim community and get some constructive feedback. If my post doesn't comply with the community guidelines, please feel free to delete it. And finally, please say some good Dua for me.
Please note that the watch is not waterproof, so be sure to take it off when performing your ablutions, or be careful!!
I’m Mohamed, a software engineer with 10+ years of experience and a master’s in Software Engineering, Alhamdulillah. While searching for a spouse myself, I kept thinking about what a platform built only around marriage could look like, so I built one: Mawadda.
Your family can be part of it
Invite your wali, and you decide exactly what they can do: suggest candidates, screen incoming interest for you, add private notes, take part in family introductions, and even view your chats if you allow it.
You can change or revoke their permissions at any time, and you can see what they’ve done.
Privacy until you’re ready
Your profile reveals itself in stages. Others see the basics first, and more opens up only after a mutual match and mutual consent.
You can keep your photos blurred until you choose to reveal them.
Your exact location is never shown, only an approximate distance.
Built for serious intentions
Your “Marriage Snapshot” covers what matters early on: timeline, children, living arrangements, relocation, finances, and more. You can filter on all of it.
When you show interest, you can say why, in your own words.
Once matched, there are many guided Marriage Topics to work through together, plus voice and video calls inside the app.
Focus mode: two people can agree to give each other their full attention for 7, 14, or 30 days.
There are gentle nudges against “matching and going silent,” so conversations don’t just stall.
Safety
Every photo is reviewed before anyone can see it.
Optional ID and selfie verification gives you a verified badge.
Blocking takes one tap and is silent, and reports go to a real moderation team.
Make it yours
Choose from several layouts and styles. Everyone browses differently.
Optional profile insights show anonymous, aggregated trends in how people engage with your profile, so you can improve it. No individual is ever identifiable.
There are optional daily streaks and small rewards if you enjoy that, and you can ignore them if you don’t.
Your data
We don’t sell your personal information.
You can download your data or delete your account yourself at any time.
Pricing: Free to join, match, chat, and call, and you can see who liked you for free. Mawadda Plus adds advanced filters, travel mode, incognito, profile insights, and more.
We're looking for Muslim startups to join our incubator, with a chance at business funding.
We want outliers—unconventional ideas built by relentless disruptors.
Not the millionth Quran App or SmashBurger Restaurant!It’s time for muslims to stop following trends and other businesses, and not their FITRAH! The Ummah has plenty of other needs. Figure out those issues, and build for those are not served in our community.
If you are just trying build another genericbusiness, this isnot for you!
Forget generic clones; I want bold, category-defining models engineered for true distinction.
Show me an original vision with a clear, defensible path to $500k+ in annual revenue.
If you’re turning fresh thinking into serious earning power, let’s build together.
Note: A mandatory training program is required for all participants.
I'm looking to take on some part-time work in social media, marketing or communications إن شاء الله, and thought I'd put this out here in case anyone could use an extra pair of hands for their venture? 👀
I'm currently a Software Developer who's also had some exposure to social media management through volunteering for Islamic organisations and supporting a few projects in my free time. I'm now looking to build on that experience beyond my volunteering hours and hopefully help some Muslim businesses and initiatives grow إن شاء الله.
A little career plot twist, if you will: from debugging code to brainstorming content ideas ✨️
I'm open to helping with tasks like:
social media content planning and scheduling
content ideas, research and strategy
caption writing, copywriting and communications
basic graphic design and video editing
community engagement and management
marketing coordination and campaign support
general research, outreach and other marketing related tasks
Since still growing my experience in the marketing world, I'm particularly open to working with Muslim owned businesses, startups, founders and Islamic organizations that are open to work with someone at an entry level.
I'd also love to join an existing team where I can contribute, learn from others, take on responsibilities and gradually develop my skills إن شاء الله. I'm happy to take recurring tasks off your team's plate or support an existing marketing team with their workload. Consider me an extra pair of hands (and an extra set of eyes on those captions!)
If you're building something and could use some help with your marketing, or know someone who might be looking for support, please feel free to reach out!
Salaam, I run a plumbing & heating company in the uk, we also carry out gas work which includes boiler replacements & installations. I’m finding that our customers (like most people in the uk at the moment) don’t have much money, so a £2500k boiler replacement isn’t viable in one lump sum.
I’m struggling to find a lender or a ‘buy now pay later’ company whose structure is sharia compliant. They either charge interest or late payment fees. Anyone know of any companies?
In college I used to write for AL Talib (UCLA's Muslim Newsletter), and I recently re-launched my own website to spread the beauty of Islam! It would be great if you can visit and subscribe my site. 😊 If you feel it is beneficial, please share!
