u/IhsanHub

Assalam alaykum

I've spent a couple of years researching hijrah and talking to a lot of people about it, and something kept coming up that I don't see discussed much.

Born Muslims usually have a default... the family is from Pakistan or Morocco or Turkey, they've been there, they speak some of the language, there are relatives who help them as soon as they land.

If you came to Islam later you often have none of that, and what fills the gap is other people's defaults. Ask five brothers where you should go and you get five answers that correlate almost perfectly with where those five brothers are from. It's sincere advice, but it's not advice about you.

A few things I'd wish someone had told me earlier:

1. Language matters more than people admit. Not for daily survival, for whether you can attend a halaqah, understand a khutbah, or make friends past small talk. If you've been learning Arabic, that pushes some countries up considerably.
2. Your passport changes the answer more than your preferences do. Some countries are genuinely accessible on certain nationalities and effectively closed on others. It's worth checking before you get emotionally attached to somewhere.
3. And the thing nobody warns reverts about: being a visible foreigner in a Muslim country is a different experience from being a Muslim in the West, and it's not automatically easier. Some places you'll be welcomed and never quite integrated. That's not a reason not to go, but it's better known in advance.

Anyone here made hijrah as a revert? What caught you off guard?

Assalam alaykum,
Sharing something hijrah-related in case it's useful to anyone here.

My partner and I kept having the same hijrah conversation: Saudi, Malaysia, Egypt, round and round, no progress. What I eventually realised is that we weren't disagreeing about countries at all... she was weighting proximity to her family while I was weighting cost of living. We were arguing about the output while never comparing the inputs!

The fix was simple: we each wrote down our top priorities separately, like deen, freedom, safety, being able to make a living, schooling for the kids, distance from family, cost, etc. and then ranked them without seeing the other's list, then we swapped. One evening, and we knew exactly what the real disagreement was - okay maybe not one evening but you get my point.

You can do this on paper and it works, but I ended up building an app (sorry, once a software engineer always a software engineer lol) around it because I wanted the country data attached. It's called Amān, it ranks around 40 to 50 Muslim countries against whatever weighting you set, and it has a spouse mode where you both score independently and it shows you the gaps. I released it recently on the Google Play Store and I'm happy to give away a week for free to anyone who's interested in trying it out in sha Allah.

Two things I'd say to anyone in the middle of this:

1. Don't let one spouse do all the research and present conclusions, as that's how it becomes a negotiation instead of a decision.
2. Be specific about what you're each optimising for, because "I don't feel good about it" is impossible to work with, whereas "I need to be able to reach my mother within a day" is something you can actually plan around.

Feel free to leave a comment or get in touch, happy to answer questions if anyone's going through it!

Assalam alaykum,
Sharing something hijrah-related in case it's useful to anyone here.

My partner and I kept having the same hijrah conversation: Saudi, Malaysia, Egypt, round and round, no progress. What I eventually realised is that we weren't disagreeing about countries at all... she was weighting proximity to her family while I was weighting cost of living. We were arguing about the output while never comparing the inputs!

The fix was simple: we each wrote down our top priorities separately, like deen, freedom, safety, being able to make a living, schooling for the kids, distance from family, cost, etc. and then ranked them without seeing the other's list, then we swapped. One evening, and we knew exactly what the real disagreement was - okay maybe not one evening but you get my point.

You can do this on paper and it works, but I ended up building an app (sorry, once a software engineer always a software engineer lol) around it because I wanted the country data attached. It's called Amān, it ranks around 40 to 50 Muslim countries against whatever weighting you set, and it has a spouse mode where you both score independently and it shows you the gaps. I released it recently on the Google Play Store and I'm happy to give away a week for free to anyone who's interested in trying it out in sha Allah.

Two things I'd say to anyone in the middle of this:

1. Don't let one spouse do all the research and present conclusions, as that's how it becomes a negotiation instead of a decision.
2. Be specific about what you're each optimising for, because "I don't feel good about it" is impossible to work with, whereas "I need to be able to reach my mother within a day" is something you can actually plan around.

Feel free to leave a comment or get in touch, happy to answer questions if anyone's going through it!

Assalam alaykum,
Sharing something hijrah-related in case it's useful to anyone here.

My partner and I kept having the same hijrah conversation: Saudi, Malaysia, Egypt, round and round, no progress. What I eventually realised is that we weren't disagreeing about countries at all... she was weighting proximity to her family while I was weighting cost of living. We were arguing about the output while never comparing the inputs!

The fix was simple: we each wrote down our top priorities separately, like deen, freedom, safety, being able to make a living, schooling for the kids, distance from family, cost, etc. and then ranked them without seeing the other's list, then we swapped. One evening, and we knew exactly what the real disagreement was - okay maybe not one evening but you get my point.

You can do this on paper and it works, but I ended up building an app (sorry, once a software engineer always a software engineer lol) around it because I wanted the country data attached. It's called Amān, it ranks around 40 to 50 Muslim countries against whatever weighting you set, and it has a spouse mode where you both score independently and it shows you the gaps. I released it recently on the Google Play Store and I'm happy to give away a week for free to anyone who's interested in trying it out in sha Allah.

Two things I'd say to anyone in the middle of this:

1. Don't let one spouse do all the research and present conclusions, as that's how it becomes a negotiation instead of a decision.
2. Be specific about what you're each optimising for, because "I don't feel good about it" is impossible to work with, whereas "I need to be able to reach my mother within a day" is something you can actually plan around.

Feel free to leave a comment or get in touch, happy to answer questions if anyone's going through it!