Episode 25

full
Published on:

11th Jul 2025

Naazish Yarkhan: Overcoming Fear Through Storytelling, Faith, and Community

Naazish Yarkhan: Overcoming Fear Through Storytelling, Faith, and Community

In this episode of the American Muslim Podcast, Imam Tariq El-Amin talks with Naazish YarKhan, founder of the Writer Studio Us. Naazish shares her journey from a supportive family background where trying new things was encouraged, to becoming a successful writer, educator, and branding consultant. She discusses the influence of formative experiences and mentors, the importance of community and overcoming fears, and insights into branding and volunteerism. Additionally, she emphasizes the significance of continuous learning in a rapidly changing technological landscape and the essence of human connection in both personal and professional realms.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

01:11 Formative Experiences and Early Influences

03:45 Career Beginnings and Breakthroughs

05:55 Overcoming Fears and Embracing Challenges

11:28 The Importance of Community and Support

13:54 Lessons from Hajj and Community Responsibility

19:49 Family Influence and Social Justice

24:36 Helping Students Find Their Voice

29:24 From Niche to Global Leader

30:27 Rebranding for Broader Appeal

31:59 Expanding Halal Beyond Food

36:02 Innovative Distribution Strategies

37:19 Building Community Engagement

47:47 Balancing Work and Personal Boundaries

52:11 The Importance of Continuous Learning

55:56 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Cover Art & Intro Music - Tariq I. El-Amin @ImamTariqElamin

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Transcript

Naazish Yarkhan

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[00:00:06] Imam Tariq: May the peace that only God can give be upon you. Welcome to the American Muslim Podcast. I'm your host. Imam Tariq El-Amin. And today I am fortunate enough to have joining me, sister Naazish YarKhan. She is the founder of the Writer Studio Us. , She runs a high touch coaching practice where students build both writing skills and confidence.

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[00:00:55] Imam Tariq: Her writing has been translated into six languages. [00:01:00] Wow. That's a lot. That is a lot. My dear sister. Thank you for joining us

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[00:01:09] Imam Tariq: Yes, indeed. Indeed. Before we get into the work that you do, can you tell me. Is there a formative event? Is there an experience, a mentor, something that you read at any point in your life that has contributed to where you are today?

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[00:01:51] Naazish YarKhan: My, there was no pressure that, oh, you don't have to, you have to make more money or you have to sort follow a certain pathway. And then even my family [00:02:00] itself, my extended family, my aunts were my aunt at that time. She was living in Palestine, although we're Indian. And um, her whole goal was to work with the children and do drama therapy.

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[00:02:39] Naazish YarKhan: And at a different point in her life, she was working on a documentary about bonded laborers in India where year, generation after generation, she'd work on someone else's farm to pay off debts and get nothing for it. Right? Because you're now a bonded laborer because your father [00:03:00] owned. Some owed someone a debt, the landlord, obviously.

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[00:03:04] Imam Tariq: So I think it was their mix of social justice and put your first foot forward and keep going. That really influenced me without me recognizing it. So when I did journalism and began, I began, I was published first at 14. And I was writing columns for the team scene column. And then that expanded by the time I was in college to quarter page ads, or not ads, sorry, articles, and it was one foot in front of the other and doing what I was good at and the steps, just the more steps I took, the more things fell in place.

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[00:04:06] Imam Tariq: If you don't like it, then you send a reporter out. And that included an interview with the FBI and Sotheby's because it was a local NIU professor who'd found a. Statue, which was on sale at Sotheby's, which he knew was from an Asian country. And he'd seen it in the original temple. And years later, when he went there, again, it wasn't there.

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[00:05:01] Imam Tariq: I never had any fear of rejection or disappointment because I didn't know better. Mm-hmm. I didn't know that this was the most premier paper in the area. And yes, sometimes was also, that was one of the most. Premier Papers at that time. And same thing with NPR. When I did a interview, uh, I used to intern at uh, WBEZ, which is Chicago Public Radio, and all these things were one step in front of the other.

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[00:05:55] Imam Tariq: And when I look at that now, I feel [00:06:00] so many of my steps. I'm held back by so many fears now, so many years later. And I have to remind myself I was that person I. I didn't know and I just did it. So even as adults now, I hesitate so much more. And I don't just do it, you know, just to steal Nike's slogan, right.

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[00:06:47] Imam Tariq: Mm. You said you didn't have parents who felt like you had to be in a particular career path that they were accepting of, I guess, whatever was in you to come out and for and for you to pursue that.[00:07:00]

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[00:07:05] Naazish YarKhan: I think because I work with children on their college essays, and so much of it is aha moments. And I wrote about it recently on LinkedIn where I was working with a student who had applied to the Quest Bridge Scholarship and their family income had gone just a little bit above the cutoff, and his mom had said, apply anyway, right?

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[00:07:48] Naazish YarKhan: Those are constant reminders. And then you have to, I think, also surround yourself with people doing things that are difficult or. [00:08:00] Even if they're not doing things that are difficult, they're doing things right because you feed off of each other's energy and you are in constant conversation with those people.

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[00:08:36] Naazish YarKhan: I think that helps you hear how other people are doing things. You know, it's not like I am because I'm a small business owner, and so much is changing now, especially with ai. You're constantly having to hustle and you're constantly having to try new things. As opposed to if you are a physician, maybe you are always on a track, you have a secure track and you [00:09:00] have a secure vision that you're working towards.

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[00:09:31] Naazish YarKhan: Mm. I think you learn so much more by that and you feel like, well, you know, some such and such as doing it, I can do it too. And I'll give you a very, you know, example, which is not a big aha moment, but I was recently setting mouse traps. With a friend's mom, she'd been recently widowed. Mm-hmm. I have never set a mouse trap before, and this was the one with the, you know, the little prong that goes in and I was [00:10:00] so afraid it was snap on my finger and she and I were holding it down and we are being so careful because we didn't want to snap on our finger.

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[00:10:31] Naazish YarKhan: So by doing, we become better. And in the beginning it's going to be difficult. So I'm taking a class in Google Analytics now and Google AdWords. And yes, it doesn't make sense, but the more I do it, of course. But of course it's going to become easy and I think being able to look at the ahas in the very prosaic stuff in life is where we're going to get the [00:11:00] inspiration to move on,

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[00:11:01] Naazish YarKhan: that makes sense.

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[00:11:25] Imam Tariq: So I think those a great way that, that you put that.

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[00:11:47] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. Because a lot of the inhibitions, the fears, the worries, they're in our head. And when you are pounding the pavement, when you are out with people, you're just [00:12:00] listening to different people's stories. For example, even last weekend we went with the Northwestern alumni had a like a at a top gulf, like a reunion of sorts.

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[00:12:36] Naazish YarKhan: So I, I, I think that component as a business owner, actually being with other people makes a very big difference. People who are striving or. Even youngsters now. It took somebody a year. She's a recent college grad computer science degree, and her mother said, you know, it took my daughter a year to get hired.

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[00:13:11] Imam Tariq: to have the conversation so that you don't feel. Like it's just happening to you, like you are the only person who is struggling or feeling a particular kind of way? Is that what you're saying?

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[00:13:44] Naazish YarKhan: It's the idea of having those conversations. Right. And per chance there'll be something that you really need to hear that day. Mm. You know, I think that's what it is, and I often relate it to my experience with Hudge. [00:14:00] Mm-hmm. I learned so many things that I really, really needed to learn. Yeah. And I felt that the Hudge is very much a microcosm of our real big picture world.

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[00:14:21] Imam Tariq: Hmm hmm. Since you brought that up, this is probably something I would've asked you later on, but what was the lesson that you learned? From Hutch

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[00:14:35] Naazish YarKhan: I went when I turned 45, which meant that I could go without my husband. Mm-hmm. You know, at 45 you can get a visa. I went with a group and the hutch is difficult, but there was someone, and you know, there I'm just five feet tall, so my pace of walking is not as much as somebody else with who's a bit taller.

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[00:15:16] Naazish YarKhan: And then when I wanted to go and touch the kaba. And anything in HUDs that you wished for seemed to be coming true. It was in my mind, I was thinking, oh, I wanna touch the kaba and my roommate. You know, they, we stay with the four set of women. That's how I had stayed that day. She was, and her husband were gonna make the, and this was after the hj, I think, or some portion of it.

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[00:16:05] Naazish YarKhan: We don't have to fear, we don't have to fear that we're in this alone, even though it feels like it. And you know, there's a say in the Quran, there's a verse that Allah does not put on a soul more than it can bear. That's right. The big, but is the community cannot think that everyone's just gonna figure it out and manage it.

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[00:16:52] Naazish YarKhan: They leave out the aspect of the communal obligation. Mm-hmm. To each other, which is very much a [00:17:00] facet of our religion as supposed to be your brother's keeper. And I think that's been a philosophy that's guided most of my life. And, um, you know, it fits into this whole idea of community. Whether as a small business owner, I'm just going out and talking to people, and it doesn't have to be a networking event.

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[00:17:42] Naazish YarKhan: Easily picked up last year or whatever the situation is, whatever you need to be listening to and hearing. And I think the awareness comes from just being attuned to, oh, what is Allah showing me in this moment? Like that mouse trap thing. Mm-hmm. I didn't [00:18:00] go into it thinking I'm gonna come out of it listening to learning something, right?

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[00:18:24] Naazish YarKhan: And when you're working with kids, you come across this over and over because you're helping them distill their learning moments. And the prompts are such that what's one obstacle you, you know, that defined you? Or what's one realization that sparked a period of growth? And because I'm in the business of uncovering those aha moments, I think I've just become attuned to that.

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[00:19:00] Imam Tariq: Hmm. I always consider myself to be extremely blessed, to be able to have conversations with so many different people with, with just different insights and uh, I'm absolutely loving what I'm hearing.

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[00:19:37] Imam Tariq: Mm-hmm. Uh, and in the very same conditions existed here, and your aunt being able to shed light on it, and then you mm-hmm. As a journalist. Mm-hmm. How formative was that? Not just that she was able to do it, but the fact that there's a justice element there, is that something that stays with you?

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[00:20:00] Imam Tariq: Yeah.

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[00:20:28] Naazish YarKhan: When you take the go and register a police case and people will shy away from that. So they might just leave the guy there because they're like, we don't wanna be involved. We're gonna be implicated of hitting him, and so on. But we were driving down, I don't, I think it was a highway where it was very dark.

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[00:21:09] Naazish YarKhan: And it was just us girls, my cousin and my mom. My dad wasn't with us, and she did that. And I remember being scared because I was just like, we don't know this guy. He's smelling so bad, he's injured, and my mother was helping him, and that's my mother. She will do what needs to be done. Right. So if you are growing up with these instances, you just, and you hear the conversations about not just, oh, the situation is so rotten, but you see the action, right?

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[00:22:08] Naazish YarKhan: So when you're surrounded by people who just do it and who don't have these inhibitions about, oh, you're just an average Joe, but they just make choices repeatedly, which talk about. Doing what needs to be done, right. You see that and you just think that's normal. So you just do those things because you think that's what you have to do.

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[00:22:40] Imam Tariq: Sister? Now, so

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[00:22:43] Imam Tariq: sorry. Your dad just met the president of India as a regular citizen.

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[00:22:52] Imam Tariq: That's really impressive. So I

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[00:23:00] Imam Tariq: That's really impressive.

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[00:23:06] Naazish YarKhan: Like who says, I'm coming to meet you and these are the issues and meeting him.

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[00:23:18] Imam Tariq: Wow. Wow. Well,

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[00:23:41] Naazish YarKhan: Chose the contractor. The contractor went bankrupt in the middle. So then they had to find every other bit of it together on their own. And they're in their sixties, seventies, at the time. I can't renovate a bathroom, you know? And here are two people who, they moved back to India. They [00:24:00] used to live in Muscat.

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[00:24:29] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. That I have to just say, well, you know what, Mr. Chatter just, you're just chatter.

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[00:24:40] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm.

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[00:25:06] Naazish YarKhan: I think so because so much that they're doing, uh, they might gloss over. Like I said, you know, these small things that we do, which we think, oh, we are just doing. Mm-hmm. Sometimes it takes a lot of muscle to do that, and a lot of my kids write about anxiety. A lot of my kids write about not having a great freshman year, sophomore year and then pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

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[00:25:57] Naazish YarKhan: And I think that's why we have anxiety is because [00:26:00] we don't recognize just all the rahs and the ahas and the, oh my, I really did something. Mm-hmm. Especially my students who have anxiety or depression and that might not have been diagnosed. The fact that you need an appointment. And saw a therapist, even when everyone around you was like, oh, it's a passing phase.

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[00:26:46] Naazish YarKhan: So, you know it's okay to say, well, in my time I also struggle. This is nothing you'll pass. It'll pass. But today the therapist is available for you, right? To help you. Right? So why not use the [00:27:00] tools like we saw readily use the internet, which was not available some years ago. We saw readily use our phones, which was smart phones, which are not part and parcel of our life 20 years ago.

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[00:27:35] Naazish YarKhan: And we'll talk about things. And even something like learning to drive. It's, it's getting out of your comfort zone. Mm-hmm. You know, it's learning a few new things. It's being afraid of, uh, being hit while you are merging. So it really is a gamut of conversations. And then we distill what would be the strongest essay and what things can merge from different things we've talked about [00:28:00] to present who you are.

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[00:28:18] Imam Tariq: Okay. Which

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[00:28:21] Imam Tariq: Now, how did you get into teaching?

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[00:28:26] Naazish YarKhan: I started teaching writing workshops when my children were young and um, you know, as a journalist. Everything I would've earned would've gone to be the babysitter. So there was no point in. And that's when I started consulting. And, uh, I worked with Ivanka as, and, you know, helped rebrand Halal Consumer Magazine and now it's a leading publication in its niche.

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[00:29:18] Naazish YarKhan: You know?

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[00:29:33] Naazish YarKhan: just with Halal. I think there was, you know, it was leading in its niche. Mm-hmm. It still is. The work it does, it's phenomenal because it's global.

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[00:30:16] Naazish YarKhan: And you also want your local companies to know that there's a Muslim market. Please cater to them. Don't just. Focus on exporting everything. So we rebranded what they had. Halal consumer used to be completely B2B, and we used to have on the cover of vitamin bottles and US factory making vitamins or what have you.

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[00:31:02] Naazish YarKhan: So I laid out trade magazines and had everyone take sticky notes and vote for the most alluring covers and these, and he was, he said, we're a trade, we're B2B. And. I said, okay, if we trade, put these trade magazines, maybe 20 trade magazines out there and had people choose the best covers and people, the top three were all food, like good looking food.

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[00:31:54] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. It was anonymous voting, top three trade. But because you [00:32:00] want to get the consumers aware, it had to become a B two, B2C magazine, not just a B2B. Right. So then the articles shifted from just talking about food science to also expanding the Halal brand, to showcase that it was finance, it was pharmaceuticals, it was ingredients.

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[00:32:42] Naazish YarKhan: And what is the difference? So we did feature style articles, but we also showcased what their clients had to say on the topic. So it became a landscape article. I remember one of the clients was Halal Healthy and the owner was Med Diet and they produced whey [00:33:00] protein. So then we did an article on whey protein, which included a comment by Med Diet, which was an I Panka client.

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[00:33:30] Naazish YarKhan: Right, right, right. And that's how it really became a niche and a leader in its niche. So Kamara, we talked about going to the farm and slaughtering your own goat, which was becoming more of a trend, which wasn't the case maybe some years ago. And then other things we talked about was in the th you know, in the 1960s when immigrant Muslims started coming, how hard it was for them to find halal.

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[00:34:32] Naazish YarKhan: They have Fortune 100 companies, you know. Who are their clients? So that's just, um, my journey with Ivanka. Hmm.

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[00:34:55] Imam Tariq: But figured I would say it, there's something that you [00:35:00] did in there that, uh, I guess is a reflection of what seems to be part of the mission, which is this idea of human connection. So getting the average everyday person to feel a sense of connection. What are some of the things that. Get in the way of that connection that you've seen.

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[00:35:24] Naazish YarKhan: You know, what made it easy is what I'll say first is that the mission of how ICA was about connecting with consumers. Mm-hmm. Right. So once you sold what you, I had the what I, I had the original buy-in because I was doing what the company's mission was.

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[00:36:11] Naazish YarKhan: At the ji, that was their distribution model, and we built the data of the DA a database of just having people sign up for it and subscribe for it instead, it's a free publication. Mm-hmm. But one of the ways I proposed we did it is there used to be a meet vendor called, and they used to do home delivery of meat.

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[00:36:59] Naazish YarKhan: You just brought [00:37:00] it to their homes. So we grew the subscriptions by, you know, multifold by. Doing it completely differently. And even in the magazine we. Had a section, which still is there all these years later, where you subscribe to it, you know, so that's just one. But when I look at Icra Relief, the, that was another company, my organization where I helped with the branding and you know, helping grow into the top three revenue generators out of 56 offices.

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[00:38:05] Naazish YarKhan: I did it for 10 years and I folded some of the programs into relief because. My husband had had enough of me doing 10 years worth of work when I'm just disappearing all hours, hours of the day and all hours of the night. And he just was like, please just stop now. So we folded it into e can relief, but they, they hired me to work with them.

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[00:38:48] Naazish YarKhan: Parents feel really good about having their children learn about helping their neighbors. And you make that family part and parcel of the organization. So we did [00:39:00] a, then we did a e toy drive. You know, you wrap the toys, you come and sort the toys. Again, the more you're engaged with the brand, the more ownership you feel with it.

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[00:39:36] Naazish YarKhan: Because in America, you don't see it all around you, depending on where you live. It's not like India and Pakistan, and I'm from India, where you see it everywhere. So you innately feel empathy because you see it. And that's what we did. Where you are involving people, where you're involving volunteers. 80% of our work at Economic Relief was through volunteers.

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[00:40:36] Naazish YarKhan: There is such a disconnect, at least in suburban America, between. Recognizing the deep need in the Muslim community, such a deep need. Majid will get a call once a day on average. Can you imagine that in your wildest dreams? Oh yeah. No, you not gonna know [00:41:00] that, right? Yeah. So and then the whole idea was storytelling, like you said, the human connection.

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[00:41:26] Naazish YarKhan: Right. This woman for three days was just boiling onions and feeding it to her children because she had no food. Hmm. You need to hear those stories to realize while you are having your parties and you are going on your vacations, somebody can't feed their child food. Right? And then she went door to door.

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[00:42:17] Naazish YarKhan: But you know what? At their house, things are very different. I've delivered meals to a pregnant mother, a wife of a physician, and they were not giving her food. She was eight months pregnant. They were giving her tomatoes and onions, and that was the state, and she's married to a physician, so the abuse is in every single socioeconomic group.

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[00:43:00] Imam Tariq: Absolutely.

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[00:43:13] Naazish YarKhan: It really established icna relief as something, not a, not something that is far removed behind the sky. Yes. Good. Cut your check. Send it off. But no, no, no. These you feel like you own it. Once you start volunteering, once you start. Participating in their events. Mm-hmm. You really, that moves the needle a lot.

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[00:43:40] Imam Tariq: a wonderful story and I'm shaking my head. You, you, you're saying, well, you know, can you imagine that kind of need? Unfortunately, I can. I serve as the Ma of Es. There's a, a certain awareness that you get that other folks might not. Might not get because you get people coming in, can I give ACA for this?

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[00:44:13] Naazish YarKhan: with the organizations? You mean as a donor?

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[00:44:26] Naazish YarKhan: I would say with the staff, you know, um, to some extent yes. With some of the families, but you are also in a service provider role. Mm-hmm. You are, you also need to have boundaries. Everyone doesn't become your friend. Yeah. And I think sometimes it's hard for them to, all the families to recognize that. And when I ran refugee assistance programs, that was what I didn't have.

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[00:45:14] Naazish YarKhan: I did learn more boundaries because I was in a marketing communications role. I was not intake. I was not working as a case manager. Later on when I began working with, and of course I had the relationships with the leadership and people I worked with, but not with the clients. It was not part and parcel of my role.

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[00:46:17] Naazish YarKhan: I wasn't the politest, and that's when I knew that I need to get outta this because yes, I haven't collected the money, but it's not like I'm sitting on orders of money. I'm still grassroots. Fundra fundraising. We didn't have grants and you know, you might say, oh, why didn't you apply for grants? But that's just not how we ran.

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[00:46:59] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. [00:47:00] And I wasn't about that. I was about getting the job done, helping as many people as possible. So just to answer your question, that. When you know, you just have to have a understanding that for your sanity, you can't just be on call all the time.

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[00:47:40] Imam Tariq: Absolutely. And really I think in any position, like some people are just yes, married to their work and there's no separating the line. But as a business owner, as a small business owner, what do boundaries mean for you in this role where your success is contingent upon your vision, your effort, [00:48:00] your networks?

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[00:48:07] Naazish YarKhan: You know, you just have to be very intentional. Um,

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[00:48:35] Naazish YarKhan: I was not an employee. It didn't stop me from working around the clock because that's just their culture, you know? Yeah. Their culture is very much around the clock. I think the difference is being older now, I also recognize that there are things like my health that have to be a priority. You know, if I'm not gonna take [00:49:00] care of my health now, I'm gonna pay a very big price.

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[00:49:40] Naazish YarKhan: Like, if you don't do this for yourself, you are gonna be in such bad shape and you're not going to be able to do anything that you really want. You know? And I love traveling. For example, if I don't take care of my knees and I don't take care of my health, I'm not gonna be able to travel much. Right?

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[00:50:23] Naazish YarKhan: Yes, you do that, you have to do that. There's no other way around it. Mm-hmm. But you also recognize that, you know what, this is not going to. Come in handy if you just don't have the health.

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[00:50:48] Imam Tariq: I love the work that I do, and so it's very easy to have a 14 hour day. It's really easy for that to happen. And I'm now thinking about [00:51:00] myself in my sixties, my seventies in Shaah, into my eighties. And I'm thinking, well, if I'm gonna go hard, I need to go hard now. Right? I need to do it while I still have the energy to do it.

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[00:51:28] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. Because it's catching up. Right. It's um, and I think those who have, who've had the opportunity to care for our elders.

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[00:52:04] Imam Tariq: Let me ask you this open-ended question, not really open-ended. It's a finish the prompt. And that is, uh, the one lesson I keep learning is,

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[00:52:33] Naazish YarKhan: So I, I, I work with perplexity, I work with gr, I use charge GBT fairly regularly. For example, my students write stories. Mm-hmm. So I do a little animation that goes with each of the, uh. The stories that they write, which I wasn't able to do before. Now I use, you know, AI to help create that, but it [00:53:00] takes prompts that have to be very specific.

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[00:53:25] Imam Tariq: Hmm.

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[00:53:48] Naazish YarKhan: Uh, content. I do a lot of content development. Now, someone's gonna say, well, you know, we can get content development done when half the time using chat, GPT. What else do you bring to the table? So I better [00:54:00] know Google Analytics, you know, I better know a little bit more about digital marketing, and that's what I did.

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[00:54:28] Naazish YarKhan: But I actually did know something. I just thought I didn't know enough. But that was also not true. I knew fairly from what I had done with it, so. I would say that is, that one thing is always be learning and then secondly, don't underestimate how much you already know. Hmm hmm. Even if you think you don't know that much, you probably know a little bit more.

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[00:55:18] Naazish YarKhan: No, we're not a blank slate. Give yourself credit. You know, give yourself credit for, it's just like the students, they think, oh, I didn't do enough, or I don't have. You know, anything to write about. No. You have a lot that you can write about. Mm-hmm. So also us just by being in the field, being in marketing, communications, I have that exposure.

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[00:55:55] Imam Tariq: Wonderful. Sister Naazish, it has been a pleasure. Talking [00:56:00] with you, please tell folks where they can find you, , whether it's at the website or social media.

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[00:56:27] Naazish YarKhan: So I think what you're doing is amazing because we learn from each other

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[00:56:31] Naazish YarKhan: And we get that shot of courage from each other. I, I can't underestimate that. You know, like I said in the beginning,

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[00:56:39] Imam Tariq: That's right.

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[00:56:58] Imam Tariq: Keep up with us [00:57:00] every week. , Make sure that you're subscribing if you are enjoying this content. you can find us on social media. , You can find me Imam Tariq El-Amin on Facebook and on, Instagram. So make sure you're subscribed to the American Muslim Podcast.

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About the Podcast

The American Muslim Podcast
The voices, stories, and perspectives shaping the American Muslim Experience
The American Muslim Podcast is your gateway to exploring the diverse and dynamic stories shaping the American Muslim experience. Hosted by Imam Tariq I. El-Amin, this podcast shines a spotlight on the voices of leaders who are making a profound impact in their communities, and in the public square.

From imams and chaplains to Islamic school leaders, teachers, scholars, and non-profit pioneers, we celebrate those who dedicate themselves to serving others. These inspiring individuals include masjid leaders, community activists, and youth mentors who exemplify the values of faith, compassion, and resilience in their work.

Through insightful conversations and authentic narratives, we explore how these leaders navigate faith, identity, and service, offering a unique perspective on the evolving role of American Muslims in shaping society.

About your host

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Tariq El-Amin

Imam Tariq I. El-Amin serves as the Resident Imam of Masjid Al-Taqwa in Chicago, IL. He is the founder of the Chicago Black Muslim History Tour and the former host of Sound Vision's Radio Islam, a nightly talk radio program that aired in the Chicago market. Tariq is a recipient of the Muhammad Ali Scholarship and earned a Master of Divinity in Islamic Chaplaincy from Bayan Islamic Graduate School in 2022. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Ministry in Islamic Community Leadership at Bayan, with expected completion in 2026. Tariq is also a producer of the award-winning UIC Black Excellence podcast, hosted by Dr. Aisha El-Amin, and lends his voice to narrating audiobooks.