Salam, and welcome!
Allah is the best of planners - I know we say it all the time, but from where I am now - sat down, writing this post - truly, I see it, I feel it, and my hope in that statement only grows surer and surer with every step I take further into my journey.
Everything I have done in my life has led to this, and this is probably going to lead to a lot more, and that fills me with so much excitement. Hijri - the way you see it today - was never planned. But it had always been a quiet hope in my heart. A chance to pick back up something I had quietly put down years ago.
Where It All Started: The Armchair
The birthplace of Hijri was my mum’s bedroom. Fourteen-year-old me, sat in my parents’ armchair.
Fun fact: the same armchair that was the birthplace of Hijri also, ironically, kickstarted the birth of my aunt’s first child. And that same aunt became Hijri’s very first customer - the first of many ‘full circle’ moments.
I distinctly remember sitting there at fourteen, thinking: why don’t we give more attention to the Hijri calendar? Why does it only seem to matter in Ramadan and on the two Eids?
So little Masuma, leg propped over the arm of her mum’s chair, produced her first ever design. Looking back, it was awfully cute. But I remember being so proud that the dots of the Arabic and English aligned - it felt like divine alignment!
Baby Hijri didn’t really move past that armchair. A couple of. Years later, during the age of hoodies and tote bags, I finally sent my first design off to print. I saved up, and ordered a couple of tote bags for myself. And I was absolutely chuffed with my little piece of creative happiness.
Side note: I was looking through my crafting storage bins for some old stickers to show you guys the old Hijri logos, and SubhanAllah, I came across the very first tote bag I ever designed. As I mentioned before - it’s awfully cute - emphasis on the awful. But looking at it, I feel another full circle moment. 1438 - that’s when I made the first Hijri product, and Hijri as you now know it was launched ten years later, in 1448. Also, peek the original Hijri logo at the bottom of the bag, and the divinely aligned dots!
Hijri 2.0: The Cricut Era
It wasn’t until five years later that baby Hijri finally grew into something a bit bigger. A toddler, if you will.
While I was studying, a friend of mine, who is now my amazing proofreader Nura (I love you, you wonderful human), ran her own calligraphy-turned-wood-burning business. She encouraged me to take my very random digital Arabic calligraphy skills and actually put them to use. So I bought a Cricut machine, redesigned my logo and started making frames, notebooks, bookmarks - whatever people wanted.
And therein lay my biggest problem. I could not say no to people.
What started as a few last-minute orders here and there became a slew of large, last-minute, poorly communicated orders that catapulted me into burnout. Several times. Did I mention I was studying full-time? The burnout was a problem both mentally, and for my attendance score.
So, I made the difficult decision to close Hijri - and it was a bloody relief.
Here’s a photo of a box that Nura engraved as a gift for me. Although the Hijri logo has since had an upgrade, this version holds a special place in my heart.
The Cocoon Years
For years, little Hijri went into hibernation.
In that time, I built and added to her cocoon: my own skills, my studies, my marriage. I had children, I wrote, I designed. I failed, many times. I returned to Allah, over and over. And I lived. A life of happiness and hopes, of presence and pain, of love and loss, of mistakes and misery, of gratitude and growth.
Then, after the birth of my third child, I made a quiet resolution. This year, I was going to reconnect with my spirituality. Physically.
For months during my pregnancy I had been writing - because that is how I learn and process and absorb. I was working on my relationship with myself, my husband, my children, and so I wrote about all of those things. (Keep an ear out. More to come on that iA!) But all this writing was happening from my sofa. Which is, ironically, exactly where I am sitting writing this.
Writing is just that, though. Writing. Information. That is, until you act on it.
I needed to break out of my comfy little cocoon. So I took a small step. My dear teacher, Ustadha Safiyyah Dhorat, is part of a group called Muhsinat, and they were running a pre-Ramadan event. I planned the weekend with my husband, he had the boys, and I wrapped up my newborn girl, and off we both went to Cann Hall Masjid.
That event was one of the highlights of my fourth trimester. I sat there - baby in my lap - and it felt like another loop closed. My first year of studies at Ebrahim College was a deeply significant period in my journey: it was the time Hijri 2.0 took place, and the year I met Ustadha Safiyyah, this absolute gem of a woman who shaped my life in more ways than I can put into words here, otherwise we will be here forever.
What I will mention is this: Ustadha was expecting her first child the year she taught me. That year, the girl I was feels simultaneously so far from and so deeply attached to the woman I am now. Emotional, ambitious, and a little bit mad, I remember being quietly perplexed by her. How did this soft, gentle woman carry so much power? She was magnetic in the most subtle and beautiful way, the kind of person whose presence settles a room without ever demanding it. I didn’t have the language for it then. I think I do now.
And now, almost ten years later, I was sitting in front of her with my own baby snuggled up and sleeping in my arms. It was so quietly whole. So tenderly circular. The kind of moment that doesn’t need words, and yet, being me, I am trying very hard to find them.
That event pushed me to finish Revelation Revealed - which was, admittedly, a somewhat unhinged feat to take on with a newborn. But I made the intention, set my course, and walked the road one day at a time. And subhanAllah, I did it. I honestly did not think I could. But I held onto my tawakkul, leaned so heavily on du’a, and challenged my view of Allah. I chose to see Him as a God who wants to see me succeed. And it worked.
Hijri 3.0: The Ironing Board Moment
After Revelation Revealed, more things unfolded. I started training as a life coach, after being nudged by multiple people over several years, but I don’t want to veer too far off course. We’ll get to all of that another time.
Back to Hijri. I saw a poster for another Muhsinat event, this time for Muharram. So I dressed my baby, packed her into the car, and arrived buzzing with excitement. These gatherings are truly like a jolt of electricity to a dormant circuit: dhikr, reflections, conversation, community, and - most exciting for me - singing.
Of course, my usually calm, well-behaved baby chose that day to be very unsettled. So I walked, and rocked, and hummed. I spent the whole event standing at the back, behind everyone. But it didn’t feel like that. In my mind, in my heart, I was front and centre, right beside Ustadha. Every part of the gathering carrying me - as I carried my baby - wistfully along the road, on my journey to Him.
I left buzzing. That night, after the kids were in bed, I told my husband everything: what Ustadha had spoken about, the dhikr, the singing. The intention I had set and quietly shared with the room - to be more merciful with myself.
Then, at half eleven, the house was asleep. It was just me, the iron, and the school uniforms.
where my hands were pressing and steaming, my mind was racing off in a million different directions.
I had written a few rushed notes on my phone earlier to remember what Ustadha had mentioned. But then, like that jolt of electricity to the circuit, a thought arrived: I should turn this into a blog post. But would people even want to read that? I’d need to record an audio version for accessibility - mainly for my mum. Ooh, but what if it were a series? One post every Hijri month, a journey through the year. I could send it as a newsletter. But do I really want to put all that effort in and become a forgotten email in someone’s junk folder?
And then it hit me - the lightning bolt. Snail mail. A magazine. Hijri - my brand, my baby, left forgotten in the archives of my iPad. The colour palettes, the design, the layouts, the website, the marketing, all of it hit me at once and altogether.
I unplugged the iron (thank You, Allah, for that), sat down on the floor where I stood, and I sprinted. No stretching, no planning. Full pelt, down a road I had mapped out years before but had long forgotten.
I wrote. And I wrote. And I wrote. Through the night. At one point my back was in such agony that I got into bed, my baby and husband snoozing beside me, turned the brightness on my phone all the way down, and wrote some more.
When the first draft was done, I moved to branding. Within an hour, after some very intense Pinteresting, I had the design spec for the cover and the inspiration for the inside spreads. Then logistics: how much would this cost? That took a few minutes, to be fair. Then the website - that was the scary part. But I was running on adrenaline and the very real fear that I needed to do this quickly so I could sleep for an hour after Fajr and then unveil this whole, unhinged idea to my husband in the morning before he left for work.
Domains bought. Website hastily constructed. Phone down. Fajr prayed. Allah thanked, and very sincerely begged for a quick sleep.
What felt like seconds later, I don’t know what woke me first, the adrenaline or my children. The morning rush hit, and I had to shelve Hijri entirely while I tackled what was in front of me.
It was only once we had all piled into the car for the school run that I came out and told my husband everything. He was incredulous, but excited. I think he could hear it in my voice, feel it somehow. Looking back, it was a bit like waiting until birth to find out the gender of your baby. You knew something was coming, you just didn’t know quite what. (Maybe not the best analogy. Moving on.)
I dropped everyone off, got home, fed the baby, then got out my iPad. You know it’s serious when the big screen comes out. The rest of that day was a blur of me, the baby, the housework, a lot of adrenaline, and a lot of du’a. I cleared my old Hijri posts and relaunched the Instagram. I reworked the website, got quotes from printers, looked into postage logistics, and most importantly, worked on the actual magazine itself.
That first twelve hours was nothing short of hectic. Alhamdulillah, the 17 days since have been somewhat calmer.
And Here We Are
That was my chaotic birth story. The journey before the journey.
Welcome to Hijri! If you have gotten this far, I look forward to traversing the rest of this road with you, whether you walk every step or dip in and out. I am glad you are here either way.
With love and du’as,
Masuma Abdul-Muhit
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