1. Dual Role: Imam & Shariah Finance Advisor
How do you personally manage moving between a pastoral, community-facing role and technical, commercial advisory work at the government level? Does one inform the other, or do you keep them deliberately separate?
I don’t experience them as two separate jobs so much as distinct responsibilities that draw on many of the same disciplines: judgment, integrity, careful listening, and the ability to communicate complex issues clearly.
At the Masjid, people often come to you with deeply personal matters that require trust, discretion, and a sound understanding of Islamic principles. On a Friday, I may be counselling a family through a difficult decision or answering a fiqh question after prayer; on a Monday, I may be in a room with government officials discussing the legal or disclosure requirements of a capital markets instrument. The subject matter is very different, but in both settings the first responsibility is to listen carefully and understand the issue before offering guidance.
That same discipline carries into my advisory work. A government official, investor, or executive may be weighing a decision with significant financial, legal, or reputational consequences. My responsibility is to understand the issue clearly, recognize the limits of my own expertise, and provide guidance that is both principled and practical.
Where the two roles inform each other most is in judgment rather than content. Years of pastoral work teach you how to read a room, explain complex issues to people with different levels of technical understanding, and maintain a principled position without unnecessarily damaging the relationship. Those skills have proven extremely valuable in government and institutional settings.
That became particularly important when I began leading discussions on Sukuk and Islamic finance with Canadian policymakers, many of whom were encountering these structures for the first time. The challenge was not simply to understand the technical subject matter, but to translate it into language relevant to the people responsible for making the decision.
At the same time, I maintain a clear boundary between the two roles. Commercial objectives cannot determine a Shariah conclusion, and community expectations cannot substitute for rigorous professional analysis. Preserving that independence is fundamental to maintaining credibility in both environments.
2. Pioneering Sukuk in Canada
You led the introduction of Sukuk to the Government of Alberta in 2023 and the Government of Canada in 2024 — a first for a G7, common-law jurisdiction with no pre-existing Islamic finance regulatory framework. Walk us through how that mandate came about. What was the single hardest objection to overcome — from either the Shariah side or the government side — in getting a secular sovereign to issue an Islamic capital-market instrument?
The initiative began with a broader strategic question: how could Alberta diversify its access to global capital and build stronger financial relationships with the Gulf and the wider Islamic investment market?
In 2023, our effort to introduce Sukuk and the broader Islamic-finance proposition to the Government of Alberta. At that stage, the first objective was not to structure an issuance. It was to establish institutional understanding of what Sukuk is, why a jurisdiction such as Alberta should consider it, and what economic value access to Islamic capital markets could create.
I structured the narrative and framed the discussion around issues government already understands: diversification of funding sources, access to new institutional investors, infrastructure financing, international investment and deeper economic engagement with the GCC.
Over time, we were able to move that discussion to senior levels of the Alberta government, including Premier Danielle Smith. The significant achievement was that Sukuk moved from being an unfamiliar concept to something senior policymakers understood, appreciated and regarded as a legitimate financial option worthy of further consideration.
There are still legislative and structural hurdles to resolve, and Alberta has not yet completed a Sukuk issuance. I think that distinction is important. What we achieved was the institutional breakthrough necessary before a transaction can realistically be contemplated.
In 2024, my team and I expanded our effort to the federal level in Ottawa. We engaged Cabinet ministers and staff connected to the office of the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Subsequent political changes interrupted some of that momentum, but the work established relationships and introduced the opportunity at a very senior level of the Canadian government.
The hardest objection was not fundamentally a Shariah issue. It was overcoming the perception that accommodating Sukuk would require Canada to create a parallel Islamic legal system.
It does not. The challenge is to determine how a genuinely Shariah-compliant structure can operate within existing Canadian securities, trust, tax and commercial law, and then identify the specific legislative or regulatory adjustments that may be necessary.
Once the discussion moved from the abstract question of “Why Islamic finance?” to the practical question of “How could Canada participate in this market within its existing legal framework?”, the conversation became much more constructive.
3. From Madinah to Edmonton: Bridging Two Legal Worlds
You hold a Bachelor’s degree in Islamic Law from the Islamic University of Madinah and a Master of Laws (LLM) in Business Law from the International Islamic University Malaysia, later adding Harvard Business School’s Sustainable Business Strategy programme. How did combining classical Shariah training with Western business-law and strategy education change the way you structure and pitch Islamic finance products to non-Muslim policymakers?
Each stage of my education trained me to examine the same transaction from a different perspective.
Madinah provided the classical Shariah foundation: understanding how rulings are derived, the principles governing commercial transactions and the maqasid, or objectives, that those principles are intended to preserve.
My LLM in business law required me to translate those concepts into the language of contemporary commercial systems: contracts, corporations, securities, ownership, governance and regulatory structures.
Business strategy added another dimension. A technically sound financial product will not move forward simply because it is technically sound. The institution considering it has to understand how that product advances its objectives.
That became particularly important during the Alberta and federal initiatives I led.
When I speak with a non-Muslim policymaker, I do not begin by presenting Islamic finance as a religious accommodation. I begin with the economic proposition: diversification of investors, access to capital, infrastructure financing, competitive capital structures and stronger relationships with major financial markets in the GCC and elsewhere.
Shariah compliance then becomes part of the architecture that makes participation by Islamic investors possible.
My role is often to translate between those two worlds without compromising either one. The commercial proposition has to make sense independently, and the Shariah structure has to withstand serious scrutiny independently. When both are achieved, Islamic finance becomes much easier for institutions outside traditional Islamic-finance markets to understand.
4. Mobilizing Gulf Capital into the Canadian Prairies
Through your consulting work at Prairies Crossing, you focus on attracting foreign direct investment to Alberta, while maintaining an extensive network across Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. What is the biggest mismatch in expectations — regulatory, cultural, or structural — that you see between Gulf investors and Canadian provincial governments once Sukuk or other Shariah-compliant instruments are on the table?
The biggest mismatch is pace and process. Gulf institutions, particularly the larger sovereign-linked ones, are used to decisions moving quickly once a relationship and a Shariah board are satisfied. Canadian provincial governments move through committee, legal review, and public-accountability processes that were never designed with a Gulf timeline in mind. Neither side is wrong; they’re operating inside different institutional cultures.
The structural mismatch that matters more, though, is around governance. Gulf investors expect a named, credentialed Shariah board with a clear ruling on the instrument before capital moves. Canadian institutions, having never built that muscle, sometimes treat that step as a formality to be handled late, when it actually needs to shape the structure from day one. Managing expectations on both sides — patience from the Gulf side, early Shariah governance from the Canadian side — is most of the job.
The most significant mismatch is usually institutional process and pace.
Gulf investors often place considerable emphasis on relationships, confidence in the counterparties, clarity of decision-making and the ability to move decisively once the commercial and governance requirements have been satisfied.
Canadian governments operate through a more layered public process involving departmental review, legal analysis, political oversight and public-accountability requirements. A proposal can therefore have genuine institutional interest and still require considerable time to progress.
Neither system is inherently right or wrong. They operate according to different institutional cultures.
Having spent years working on the Canadian side and now being based in Saudi Arabia, I increasingly see an opportunity to help each side understand how the other actually makes decisions.
Canadian institutions need to understand that engaging GCC investors requires more than circulating an investment memorandum. Credibility, relationships, governance, cultural fluency and, where relevant, proper Shariah structuring all matter.
GCC investors, conversely, need to understand that the pace of a Canadian governmental process should not automatically be interpreted as a lack of seriousness.
My relocation to Saudi Arabia is an important part of that longer-term strategy. I want to deepen my relationships with financial institutions, investors, family offices, businesses, advisers and government-linked entities throughout the GCC while maintaining and strengthening the networks I developed in Canada and North America.
Ultimately, I see the opportunity as broader than Sukuk alone. It is about building a durable two-way corridor for investment, capital, projects and strategic relationships between the GCC and North America.
5. A Horn of Africa Angle
Beyond North America and the Gulf, you maintain senior-level relationships across Mogadishu, Hargeisa, Jigjiga and Djibouti, supporting investment facilitation and government-to-government dialogue. Where do you see the most realistic near-term opportunity for Sukuk or other Islamic capital-market instruments in the Horn of Africa, and what is the single biggest structural barrier — political, legal, or institutional — standing in the way?
I would separate the opportunity from the market infrastructure, because the Horn is not one homogeneous financial market. The most realistic near-term opportunity, in my view, is a project-level infrastructure or green Sukuk tied to an identifiable revenue-producing asset—particularly in energy, ports, logistics or one of the major regional trade corridors, rather than beginning with a broad sovereign issuance.
There are several reasons I say that. Djibouti is continuing to attract major investment into the Addis–Djibouti corridor and is now working with the Islamic Development Bank on a national Islamic-finance strategy. Ethiopia has moved very quickly as it now has an operating securities exchange, a central securities depository, a regulatory category specifically for Shariah securities advisers, and it is developing both an interest-free-finance strategy and a sustainable-securities framework. Somalia, meanwhile, has made significant progress in debt relief, payments infrastructure and Islamic financial regulation, while continuing to invest in energy and transport. Berbera already demonstrates that major Gulf and international operators can build commercially significant infrastructure in the region.
So I don’t think the constraint is a lack of assets, a lack of interest in Shariah-compliant finance, or even necessarily a lack of capital. The single biggest barrier is institutional bankability: turning an important project into something an institutional investor in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dubai, Doha or elsewhere can actually underwrite.
That means you need much more than a Sukuk structure. You need clear and enforceable asset or concession rights, reliable cash flows, credible governance, the right SPV and legal framework, clarity around foreign exchange and repatriation, appropriate Shariah governance and, in many cases, credit enhancement or political-risk protection. Ethiopia has already begun building some of that capital-market infrastructure; Djibouti is deliberately developing its Islamic-finance architecture; and Somalia is strengthening its financial institutions. So I would not characterize the region simply as lacking clearing and custody. The picture is more advanced—and more nuanced—than that.
The real opportunity now is to originate one or two credible flagship transactions and build the institutional architecture around them. That is where government relationships matter. You need the relevant ministry, regulator, project sponsor, Shariah advisers, GCC arrangers and investors, and ideally a multilateral institution capable of providing credit enhancement or risk mitigation sitting around the same table. We are already seeing Islamic-development institutions deploy that model in Africa: IsDB has committed substantial capital to African energy access, and ICIEC has recently used Shariah-compliant credit insurance to help mobilize private financing for infrastructure and energy, including in Djibouti.
If we can take a strategic port, power or corridor asset, make the revenues transparent and ring-fenced, structure the investor protections properly and bring Gulf capital into it on Shariah-compliant terms, that transaction does more than finance one project. It establishes a reference point for the market.
That, to me, is the near-term opportunity in the Horn: not trying to replicate a mature GCC Sukuk market overnight, but using a well-structured first transaction to connect the region’s infrastructure needs with the depth of Islamic capital and institutional expertise available across the Gulf.
6. The Technical Reality of Structuring Sukuk
You hold a specialised certification in Intermediate Sukuk from the Brunei Institute of Leadership & Islamic Finance (BILIF). For a government with no existing Islamic-finance legal architecture — like Alberta or Canada — what is the single most difficult technical or legal hurdle in structuring a Sukuk that is both genuinely Shariah-compliant and workable inside a common-law securities framework?
One of the most difficult issues is reconciling the ownership and economic-rights requirements of a genuine Sukuk structure with the legal restrictions governments place on public assets.
A Sukuk cannot simply reproduce an interest-bearing debt instrument under different terminology. Depending on the structure, investors need meaningful economic rights connected to an underlying asset, usufruct or productive activity.
At the same time, governments are understandably cautious about transferring title to public infrastructure or creating arrangements that could be interpreted as compromising control over public assets.
That creates the technical challenge, because the solution may involve beneficial ownership, trust structures, Ijara arrangements, special-purpose vehicles or other mechanisms that provide investors with the required economic exposure while remaining compatible with the jurisdiction’s property, securities and public-finance laws.
There can also be tax and regulatory consequences that have to be addressed. A structure should not be unintentionally penalized simply because achieving Shariah compliance requires additional transfers or contractual relationships.
This is why the Shariah component cannot be introduced at the end of the process as a certification exercise. The key point here is that shariah advisers, securities lawyers, tax specialists, government counsel and financial advisers need to engage early enough to design one coherent structure.
That was also one of the important lessons from our work in Canada: the central challenge is not whether Islamic finance and common-law systems can coexist. They can. The challenge is designing the legal and financial architecture carefully enough that the requirements of both systems are respected.
7. Community Building Alongside High Finance
Alongside your advisory work, you founded Academy 4.0 to help students overcome learning loss and math anxiety, and have taught at Al Mustafa Academy. What draws you to grassroots education work even as your advisory career moves toward sovereign-level finance — and do you see a real connection between the two?
Math anxiety is a strange thing to spend time on when you’re also structuring sovereign debt instruments, but I think they come from the same instinct: a lot of people are locked out of systems — financial or academic — not because the underlying material is beyond them, but because no one has taken the time to translate it into something they can hold onto. A student who freezes at a word problem and a policymaker who’s uneasy about an unfamiliar financial structure are, in a real sense, facing the same kind of barrier.
So yes, I see a direct connection. Academy 4.0 keeps me honest about explanation — if I can’t get a twelve-year-old past a fear of fractions, I have no business assuming a government official will simply take my word for how a Sukuk works. The grassroots work also keeps the advisory work grounded in something other than institutions and capital markets; it’s a reminder of who these instruments are ultimately meant to serve.
8. Risk & Regulatory Alignment
As a Shariah advisor operating inside jurisdictions with no dedicated Islamic-finance regulator, what is the most common compliance or reputational risk you see institutions run into when they introduce Shariah-compliant products in a market like Canada? How do you advise them to manage that risk without diluting genuine Shariah compliance or stalling the deal?
The most common risk is ‘Shariah-compliant’ being used loosely — a product labelled as compliant on the basis of a single opinion, with no ongoing oversight, documentation trail, or audit mechanism behind it. In a market with no dedicated regulator, that gap doesn’t get caught by a supervisor; it gets caught by investors or the community, often after the deal has already closed, and the reputational damage from a perceived mislabelling is disproportionate to the size of the transaction.
My advice is to treat Shariah governance the way you’d treat any other compliance function that doesn’t yet have a statutory backstop: build the rigour in voluntarily. That means a properly constituted Shariah board, a documented fatwa tied to the specific structure and not a generic template, and a post-issuance audit process to confirm the proceeds and cash flows are actually being used the way the structure promised. It takes more time up front, but it’s far cheaper than the alternative, and it doesn’t have to stall a deal if it’s built into the timeline from the start rather than added at the end.
9. What Comes After Alberta and Canada?
With the Alberta (2023) and federal Canadian (2024) Sukuk now precedent-setting, what is the next frontier you are pursuing — another province, a new asset class, or a move toward Islamic personal finance products for individual Canadian Muslims? What would success look like five years from now?
The next frontier, honestly, is the individual level. Sovereign Sukuk proves the concept and builds credibility, but it doesn’t put a halal mortgage or a halal retirement product in front of an ordinary Canadian Muslim family, and that gap is still enormous. I’m increasingly focused on Islamic personal finance — home financing structures in particular — because that’s where the sovereign-level work is supposed to lead if it’s going to mean anything for the community it’s named after.
In five years, success looks like this: at least one more province with its own Sukuk issuance, a functioning retail market for Shariah-compliant home financing in Canada that doesn’t depend on a single institution, and a Horn of Africa transaction that shows the model travels beyond wealthy, stable jurisdictions. If Islamic finance in Canada is still only a sovereign-level curiosity in five years, I’ll consider that a missed opportunity, not a success.
10. Advice for a New Graduate Entering a Non-Traditional Market
Imagine a fresh graduate with a Shariah Law or Islamic finance background who wants to build a career like yours — advising governments and institutions in markets like Canada or the Horn of Africa, rather than the GCC or Malaysia. What is the first non-religious skill (e.g., securities law, government relations, cross-cultural negotiation) they must master, and why has it proven indispensable in your own career?
Government relations, before anything else. In the GCC or Malaysia, Islamic finance sits inside an established regulatory and institutional context; in Canada or the Horn of Africa, you’re often the one explaining the concept for the first time to someone who has never encountered it and has no obligation to take your word for it. Knowing the fiqh cold doesn’t help if you can’t get a meeting, build trust with a skeptical official, or understand how a government actually makes decisions.
In my own career, every deal that moved forward did so because a relationship existed before the technical conversation started, and every one that stalled did so at least partly because of a gap in that relationship, not a gap in the Shariah structuring. My advice to a new graduate is to treat government relations and cross-cultural negotiation as core professional skills to study deliberately — read, seek mentorship, do internships in public policy — rather than something you’ll simply pick up along the way. The religious and technical training gets you in the room prepared; the government-relations skill is what gets you in the room at all.