I am a proud first-generation Nigerian-American, born in Chicago and raised in King, North Carolina. I came to Islam as a student at North Carolina State University after years of restless searching — and I have been studying, teaching, and trying to live it ever since.
The work that occupies me now is not the work I once imagined. It is the quiet, demanding work of tarbiyah — the cultivation of human beings. Of helping young Muslims become anchored, awakened, and advancing in a world that prefers them distracted.
What follows is the long way through.
Chicago by birth. King, North Carolina by upbringing. South Stokes for high school. Electrical engineering at N.C. State. The places that shaped a way of seeing — quiet, attentive, restless for meaning.
I was raised in a Jehovah's Witness household by way of my mother. My father left doctrinal matters to her and made sure religion stayed practical — applied to lived life, not abstracted from it.
I was always intrigued by religion. I was a devout student of the Watchtower's teachings, and yet, quietly, I held my reservations. The questions came early. The answers would take longer.
Born in Chicago. The discipline of an immigrant household and the quiet ambition of being first in a new country.
King, North Carolina by upbringing. South Stokes for high school. The rhythms of the rural South never leave you.
Raised in a Jehovah's Witness household. A devout student of the Watchtower — and yet, quietly, I held my reservations.
Electrical engineering at N.C. State. Long evenings of reading, listening, and learning to think before answering.
The questions of childhood became the work of a lifetime.
At university the inward questioning broke the surface. I battled the campus churches. I read on many religions — some I took seriously, others I did not. Each one taught me what I was looking for and what I was not.
The faith of my childhood, taken seriously, then quietly questioned.
Late evenings on campus — the Triangle Church, Gary the Preacher, my first arguments.
Books, lectures, conversations. Everything became a question.
Through Wu-Tang and the words of a generation hungry for cosmology.
A pull toward something older, rooted, defiant of modernity.
The one that, after everything, made sense.
What followed conversion was not a degree. It was a decade of travel, sacrifice, and time at the feet of teachers who shaped me quietly, in ways I am still discovering.
Upon taking my shahadah I gave myself to Arabic and the basics of Islam. After graduation, I packed up my small family and we made for Bahrain — a sacrifice my wife and I have never forgotten.
In Bahrain the language became the doorway. I perfected my spoken Arabic and sat with Sheikh Fawzi al-Athari and the students who orbited him, working through the fundamentals of the religion as if I were beginning everything for the first time.
From Bahrain we travelled to Egypt. I deepened my Arabic at Markaz al-Ibaanah and Markaz al-Nile, but the mosque became both classroom and refuge — a place where one could be still long enough to learn.
There I sat for three years with scholars and their students — Sheikh Hasan Abd al-Wahhab al-Banna, Sheikh Osama al-Qoosi, Sheikh Muhammad Ibrahim, Sheikh Khalid Abu Abd al-A'la, Sheikh Majdi Sultan and others — each one teaching not only knowledge but the manners with which knowledge must be carried.
After three years in Egypt we moved to the UAE. My focus turned toward the Hanbali fiqh tradition — Akhsar al-Mukhtasaraat, Daleel al-Taalib, Manaar al-Sabeel, Rawd al-Murbi' — with Sheikh Aziz bin Farhan, whose character taught me as much as his texts.
Sheikh Bashir al-Saadani walked me through al-Aajaroomiyah and Alfiyah al-Suyooti. Sheikh Ahmed Abdulkareem opened Sahih Muslim and Tirmidhi. And then there was Sheikh Abdul-Basit al-Arkaani — rahimahullah — who, if I ever had a spiritual guide, was him. He showed me a softer face of the religion, taught me tolerance, taught me how to love the Muslims. He introduced me to the deeper currents of the Hanbali madhhab and pointed me toward al-Madkhal. May Allah make his grave spacious and restful.
In the UAE I joined a faith-based school that quietly rearranged everything. I met some of the most remarkable people I have ever known — teachers, parents, and students who insisted that education had a soul.
There I had the gift of working alongside a mentor of my own youth: Mumtaz Johny Nobles. He showed us — the other teachers and I — what it actually means to mentor. Not to deliver content, but to be a murabbi — one who fosters the building of Islamic character in another human being.
From that point forward, the question was no longer what to teach. The question was who to become.
You are shaping futures — not just minds, but hearts.
Not a creed in miniature. A short statement of the commitments that shape how I teach, how I write, and how I hold company with the rest of the ummah.
North Carolina State University
Al-Madina International University · incomplete
The Hanbali College / Islamic University of Minnesota · in progress
Year One
International Open University
Al-Murtaqaa Academy · Year Two
The mission now is plain: to take the murabbi tradition beyond the walls of any one school and into the communities that need it. Mentorship, formation, and a generation of young Muslims raised anchored, awakened, and advancing.
Made with Emergent