Ustadh Omar Popal

The Journey

Assalamu alaykum,

As I pursue my own spiritual journey, I want to hear from those who have taken this path before me. This podcast focuses on them and listening to their stories — uninterrupted. My name is Hebah Masood and I invite you to reflect on the trajectories of their lives, and the guidance and blessings provided by Allah swt along that journey.

At age 16, Ustadh Omar Popal was an extremely homesick madrasa student in Campertown, South Africa. He was far from home, his family and friends. He was struggling to adjust to life at Madrasa In’aamiyya, so different from his public high school and life as he knew it in Fairfax, Virginia. He found his way to the madrassa library, and there he found a mentor in Maulana Muhammad Abbas Omar, who befriended him and took him under his wing. In the same library he found three books which awoke a thirst for knowledge within him and were his introduction to tasawwuf: Protecting Yourself from Whisperings of the Devil, the Path to Perfection, Ma’arif Al Mathnawi. After completing two years in South Africa, Ustadh Omar returned to Virginia and continued studying the Islamic Sciences and completed high school as one of the first students at Mufti Yusuf bin Yaqub’s school, Madinatul Uloom.

After high school, he was looking for the next opportunity when his father heard about Tarim, Yemen. He had met someone whose daughter was studying at Dar al Zahra, the girls madrassa in Tarim, and so he decided to send Ustadh Omar and his sister to Yemen as well. Ustadh Omar spent two years in Tarim at Dar al-Mustafa, the boys madrassa, including one year at a campus in Ai’nat. The Ai’nat campus was even more remote, academically rigorous and challenging, and he was the only Westerner there at the time. Despite the challenges, he grew fond of his unique time in Ai’nat and refers to it as the best year of his life.

After returning home, he continued his studies at Darul Qasim in Chicago with Shaykh Amin Kholwadia and later with Dr. Recep Senturk in Turkey.

Ustadh Omar is now the founder of the Tanwir Institute in Fairfax, VA. where he is attending to the educational and spiritual needs of Muslims in his hometown as well as the DMV area (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia) at large.

In this episode, he discusses both the struggle of adjusting while studying overseas as well as the many distractions and difficulties that come with seeking knowledge while staying in the West. He gives heartfelt advice to students of knowledge on humility and setting priorities.

His story intersects with many familiar names:

Habib Umar bin Hafiz, Maulana Haroon Abbas Omar, Maulana Muhammad Abbas Omar, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Mufti Yusuf bin Yaqub, Shaykh Yahya Rhodus, Maulana Ibrahim Muhammad, Maulana Ridwaan Desi, Shaykh Amin Kholwadia, Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Shaykh Khaled Al-Kharsa, Dr. Hamza al-Bakri Dr. Mahmoud al-Masri, Shaykh Faisal Matadar, Shaykh Hamzah Wald Maqbul, Shaykha Mariam Sheibani, Dr. Recep Senturk

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