Who am I?
This is a hard question to answer, as our stories are ever-unfolding and developing, but here’s a brief snapshot:
My name is Ahmad Deeb. I have over a decade of experience in community development, serving in multiple capacities, including as an Imam. I am a community psychologist, a pastoral counselor, and a teacher of Islam.
I am also an aspiring writer and social entrepreneur.
I grew up in Orlando, FL, and began serving communities from an early age under the training and mentorship of my father, shaykh Abdallah Deeb. After my bachelors degree in Psychology, my existential angst and desire to seek higher truths paused my pursuit of medicine and led me to Cape Town, South Africa. While there I pursued formal seminary training in Islam.
Upon returning, I worked in different community organizations and Mosques, while continuing my education, earning an M.A. in Islamic Studies and Leadership. At the time, and till now, I was fascinated by legal theory and its intersection with the boundaries of religion and theology. This led to my thesis topic, which was titled “Re-Forming Islamic Reform: Ma’loom min al-Dīn bil Darūrah, the Theology of Law, and the Epistomological Limits of Ijtihad.”
My extensive experience working in religious communities, as well as my academic interests and love of community work, led me to community psychology at NLU in Chicago, where I completed my PhD. My dissertation was titled: “Remoqued: Loneliness, Governance, and Psychological Sense of Community Towards Holistic Wellbeing in the American Masjid.” It is still the first-ever Psychological and academic study on sense of community and governance within American Mosques, as well as the first-ever study on loneliness in the American Muslim community. It was exciting to do groundbreaking work, and I am unbelievably grateful. However, it is also deeply concerning that it has taken so long for this topic to be studied properly. A summary of some of my findings and engagement with the topic of my dissertation can be found in the book The Islamic Social Order: Critical Studies and its Frameworks: Studies and Critical Reflections.
Currently, I am a co-founder and teacher at Pillars Seminary—a part-time institute that seeks to provide formal, balanced, and structured training in Islam to the general public. I am also the co-founder of Shifaa Community, a virtual holistic wellness community for Muslims, still in the making. I had the honor of building both with my dear friend Shaykh Ismail Bowers.
Shifaa was established out of necessity, given that I was consistently hitting roadblocks serving as Imam in the local community. I realized that instead of continuously trying to change structures in Mosques that may be broken from their foundation due to bad governance, I will take what I did successfully at the local level and provide that for a global audience online. I am very happy I made this decision, yet of course, I always dream of making my way back to the local community with the vision I have spent my whole life developing—ideally led by me and my father, God prolong and preserve his life in the most beautiful way
Central to my work now is simulating what a true, loving, and spiritual community is meant to feel like through retreats across the country with my father to combat a severely troubling loneliness epidemic. Most recently, we held the first-ever 30-day Ramadan retreat on a Muslim-owned farm on the coast in California. It was undoubtedly the greatest Ramadan of my life. For the first time, I experienced what life in Madinah may have felt like.
For the last 3 years, I have worked on providing consulting and programming to organizations across the country in hopes of professionalizing community development, particularly in Mosque communities, but also beyond them.
With any free time I have left, I am mostly consumed by continued study of Islam, which is my great love, and dabbling constantly in social entrepreneurship.
In addition to all of this, I played a small role in co-founding Itqaan Institute (www.itqaaninstitute.com), a premier Qur'an learning institute established for and led by my father, whom I should’ve written this entire blurb about instead, for I owe much of my good qualities to him.
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