Guests · season one
Somebody handed it to you. We would like that recorded.
This show is one long conversation with one person about the deen they were given, how they carry it now, and what they intend to leave behind. You do not have to be well known. You do not have to be a scholar. You have to have been handed something and be willing to say how.
Who we are looking for
People whose names nobody outside their community knows.
There is no shortage of shows interviewing the same twenty speakers. This is not that. The inheritance mostly moves through people who were never on a stage.
- An elder who held a community together through a decade nobody wrote down
- A revert twenty years in — long enough that the story is not about the shahādah any more
- An imam who has married and buried three generations of the same families
- A mother who taught six children to read before anyone thought to call it teaching
- Anyone who was handed something and has thought about what happens to it next
The questions, in advance
You will know everything you are going to be asked.
These are the three, and they do not change from episode to episode. Read them a week beforehand and think. Ambush is not a value of ours — there is no fourth question waiting at the end.
- 01
What was handed to you
Who taught you. What house you came up in. What you were given before you were old enough to choose any of it — and what you only understood later.
- 02
How you carry it now
The ordinary week, not the highlights. What it costs you. What you have had to work out for yourself because nobody had done it in your situation before.
- 03
What you are handing forward
To your children, your students, your community. What you are deliberately trying to pass on, what you are afraid will not survive you, and what you would say to somebody starting where you started.
How long, and what you need
One conversation, remote, in one sitting — usually somewhere between an hour and two, with no rush and no producer counting minutes. If it needs a break, we take one.
You need nothing but a quiet room and a link we send you. No app to install, no account to make, no microphone to buy. It opens in whatever browser you already use, and if it does not work we will get on the phone and sort it out before we start.
What we will not do
We will not edit you into saying something you did not say. We will not publish an episode you are unhappy with. We will not ask you to comment on anything happening in the news, or on anybody else.
You get the recording, and you get to say no after the fact. If you sit down, talk for two hours and then decide you would rather it did not go out, that is the end of it and there will be no argument about it.
What you get back
A record of it, that belongs to you too.
Every conversation gets its own page here with the whole thing written out — not a summary and not a highlight reel. Most people read rather than listen, and a transcript is what can be searched, quoted, and found by somebody's grandchild in thirty years.
You get the audio and the video files. Use them however you like. We are not asking for exclusivity over your own words.
Why we record video, even at the start
Season one publishes as audio. We record video anyway, and keep it.
The reason is not marketing. This show exists because a conversation gets recorded before the person who lived it is gone — and you can always take audio out of a video file, but nobody has ever recovered a face afterwards.
If your community should hear it
The people most likely to listen to your episode are the people who already know you. Every episode page is built to be forwarded — your name, your masjid if you want it named, and one line worth sending on its own.
More often, it is somebody else
The person who should be on this will not put themselves forward.
In our experience the people worth an hour are exactly the people who will tell you they have nothing to say. Elders especially. So most of the time it is a son, a student, or an imam who says: you should be talking to him.
If that is you, tell us who. We will write to them ourselves, and you can say whether to mention that you sent us. If they say no, that is completely fine and nobody will be pestered.
What helps most in a recommendation
Their name, roughly where they are, and — the important part — one thing you have heard them say that made you think of this. One sentence is enough. It is the difference between a cold email and one that opens with something true about them.
Write to us
Yourself, or somebody you think we should be asking.
It opens your own email app so you can see exactly what is being sent — nothing is submitted to anyone else, and there is no list you are being added to.
Season one is being recorded now
We are banking the whole season before publishing any of it, so there is time. If you write today you are early rather than late.
If you are not sure you have a story
Almost nobody thinks they do. The conversation is not about achievements — it is about what you were given and what you are trying to pass on, and everybody who was handed this deen has an answer to that.
Write anyway and we will work out on a call whether it is a fit. There is no obligation either way.
Or reach us directly
- Email hamza@inheritingislam.com
- Phone (470) 404-0648