Hi, I’m Hashem.
I was raised Muslim in a Muslim country, and from a young age it was instilled in me that I should try to make the world better, serve Islam in some way, and leave something behind before I am gone.
But my path was not clean or simple.
The first language I learned was English, not Arabic, so I struggled with Arabic growing up. For a long time, that made the Qur’an feel close to me in one way, but distant in another. I loved it, respected it, believed in it, but I knew there was a depth I had not fully reached.
I did not learn tajweed properly until I was around sixteen years old. Even now, I still take Arabic and recitation refinement seriously. I am still learning. Still correcting. Still trying to make the words of Allah sit better on my tongue and deeper in my heart.
As I grew older, I went through years of being lost. Almost a decade of trying to figure things out, chasing things that did not fill me, and drifting in ways I did not fully understand at the time.
Then Allah guided me back.
I do not say that lightly.
I woke up. Slowly, painfully, mercifully. I found light again. I found the Qur’an again. I found duaa again. I found the need to return to Allah not as an idea, but as a lifeline.
Read Alfurqan came from that place.
It is not a perfect project. It is not a performance. It is not me presenting myself as someone who has arrived.
It is the opposite.
It is me trying to return, and inviting whoever feels lost, tired, distracted, guilty, numb, or far away from Allah to return with me.
I do this for myself. I do it for my children. I do it for my people. I do it for the ones who are lost and quietly looking for guidance, even if they do not know how to say it yet.
When I look around, I see so much confusion. So much corruption. So much misguidance. So many souls being pulled in every direction except toward Allah. And I know I am not above that. I know how easy it is to be pulled. I know how easy it is to scroll past suffering, excuse weakness, delay repentance, and call distraction “normal life.”
I also work in the addiction field, and that has changed how I see the world.
I see people at rock bottom. I see what happens when desire becomes a master, when temptation becomes a prison, when a person loses family, health, dignity, peace, and sometimes even hope. I see people who are not evil, but wounded. Not hopeless, but buried. Not beyond saving, but in desperate need of mercy, guidance, and a way back.
And when you sit with people at rock bottom long enough, you stop seeing temptation as something small.
You see how slowly it can take a person apart.
You see how a heart can know the truth and still run from it. You see how a person can want to stop, promise to stop, cry about stopping, and still feel chained to something that is destroying them.
And honestly, I see pieces of that struggle in all of us.
Maybe not always with drugs or alcohol, but with desire, ego, distraction, anger, screens, pride, comfort, laziness, and forgetting Allah.
So this project is my small attempt to call myself first, and then whoever wants to walk with me, back toward Allah.
Not because I have figured it all out.
Because I know what being lost looks like.
And I know that without Allah, none of us really makes it home.
So this is my small attempt to do my part. To recite. To write. To call. To remind. To make duaa for the oppressed, the imprisoned, the grieving, the addicted, the distracted, the spiritually lost, and the hearts still trying to find their way home.
If you are here, welcome.
Read. Listen. Reflect. Return.
And if you want to connect, ask a question, share feedback, or just say hi, please feel free to send me an email.
Email: read.alfurqan@gmail.com
May Allah guide us, forgive us, protect our children, heal our hearts, free the oppressed, return the lost, and make the Qur’an the light of our lives before we leave this world.