My story
The thread runs through all of it
The long version lives in a book I am still writing. This is the shape of it.
Kingsgrove, Sydney
The kid who froze
Primary school. A speech in front of the class that did not survive contact with my nerves. I remember the heat in my face more than the words I forgot. Nobody in that room, least of all me, would have picked public speaking as the thing my life would be built on. Remember that detail. It matters later.
South Lebanon
Two worlds
My family moved between Australia and Lebanon, and so did I. Three years in the south as a kid gave me the language, the land and the long Thursday nights of du'a with my father above a furniture shop in Arncliffe when we returned. I grew up translating between two worlds. It turns out that is a skill.
Sydney, high school
Finding my voice
A mentor pushed me to recite in front of three people at a Thursday gathering. Then a community play cast me as the messenger from Medina to Karbala, and the shy kid found out an audience is just people you have not served yet. By Year 12 I was quietly certain about something I had told almost no one: I was not going to be a dentist.
Karbala, Iraq
The sign
Seventeen, accepted into medical science, standing between the shrine of Imam Hussein and the shrine of Abbas. I asked for a sign. That night a scholar in our group put his arm around my shoulder, unprompted, and said: you would make an amazing talab al-ilm. A seeker of knowledge. I broke down on the spot. The debate was over.
The seminary, Lebanon
The making
I announced it to my whole extended family and it went about as well as you would expect: an Australian kid trading a degree for a seminary that paid fifty dollars a month. I told them I would sell my phone, my bed and my clothes before I asked anyone to carry me. Five years of twelve-hour days followed. Arabic until I was the one teaching it to the Western students. Theology, jurisprudence, ethics. Brotherhood measured in sixty-hour conversations. And summers back in Sydney labouring on job sites to fund it all. The seminary did not just teach me, it shaped who I am as a character.
Back in Australia
The coach
Life brought me home with heavier bags than I left with, and rebuilding was slower than any highlight reel would show. Coaching found me before I found it: NLP, personal development, a decade of sitting across from people at their crossroads. Alongside it, years of NDIS support work, showing up for people on their hardest ordinary days, and mentoring young people who reminded me of the kid who froze.
Sydney, 2024
A movement for the young
In 2024 I started Miraj Scouts Academy, a program to give young people what the community rooms of my own childhood gave me: structure, brotherhood, standards, and something real to belong to. It grew into something bigger than scouting, and in 2026 it became MSA Youth Academy, where I lead the Scouts initiative today. This is the work closest to my heart. I am building for the kid who froze giving a speech, because I know what one mentor and one room can do for him.
MSA Youth Academy →Sydney, the builder era
The builder
When AI arrived properly, I did not come at it as an engineer. I came at it as a coach who could suddenly build. I founded Intelligent Solutions Agency and started shipping real systems for real Sydney businesses: surveyors, brokers, clinics, builders, law practices. The pitch has never changed: I am not a developer who learned sales. I am a coach who learned to build.
Today
The thread
A wife I am building a life with, three kids by September insha'Allah, a business, a youth movement, a minbar in Muharram, and a book taking shape called The Thread. Different rooms, one job: build people, then build what they need. The kid who froze gives lectures now. That is not my achievement. That is what a sign, a family, and twenty years of mentors do to a person.
If any part of this story is one you want told in your community or your company,
book me to speak