This is a passage from my upcoming book From Rags to Barakah, where I share timeless lessons from my grandfather’s journey of faith, resilience, and success. He started with nothing and, through hard work and trust in Allah’s plan, built a life of both wealth and barakah.

These are not just stories, they’re lessons I believe every ambitious muslim who dreams of building generational wealth with purpose needs to hear.

Dedication

I am writing this book in honor of my mentor, the most God fearing, successful, and kindhearted man I have ever known.

His presence in my life shaped the very core of who I am today and continues to illuminate the path of who I strive to become. In truth, he embodies everything I aspire to be.

He was also the dearest person to the one I love most, my mother, and because of that, he became even dearer to me. My grandfather (may Allah have mercy on his soul).Throughout this book, I will simply call him Jido, taken from the Arabic word جد, meaning grandfather.

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The Man Who Defined Wealth for Me

I have read countless books on personal development and wealth building: The Millionaire Mindset, The Millionaire Fastlane, Million Dollar Weekend, Think and Grow Rich, and many more. Yet, despite the wisdom contained in their pages, my grandfather always comes to mind far more vividly than the gurus behind those works.

To me, he was the wealthiest man I have ever known. His wealth was not only in provision but, more importantly, in faith, character, and dignity. With the grace of Allah, he lived a true rags to riches story. But his riches extended beyond material gain; they were found in his wisdom, his discipline, and his unwavering devotion to Allah.

This book is my attempt to preserve his legacy, to share the lessons he lived and the values he instilled. Within these pages, I will reflect on five powerful lessons I learned from Jido, lessons I believe every Muslim striving for success in this world and for the pleasure of Allah should embrace. These are not abstract ideas or borrowed philosophies; they are lived truths, tested and proven by a man who carried them with him until his final days.

Memories of him return to me often. Some fill me with awe, others with laughter, but all of them leave me with a trace of his wisdom. I still see him in the quiet hours of dawn, rising after fajr (morning prayer) and preparing for work.

In a society where women working outside the home was not the norm, he defied convention and proudly took his daughters with him. That simple act, repeated day after day, empowered me, my sisters, and my cousin sisters in ways that shaped the very course of our lives. They say empowering a woman is empowering a nation, and he embodied that truth without ever needing to declare it.

It saddens me deeply to know that the new generation, and those yet to come, will never truly know him. And yet, their lives are undeniably touched by his sacrifices, even if they cannot see it. In my case, and in that of my siblings, it was his hard work and his defiance of societal norms that gave us the gift of education. And through that education, he gave us something even greater: the courage to dream.

Not all of my memories are solemn. Some make us laugh even now when we gather to reminisce. Jido was strict about never wasting food, and he meant it. I remember sitting with him eating pawpaws. He would insist we eat the skin, assuring us it was medicinal. My teenage cousins and I would nod and pretend to chew it, hiding our laughter, because there was no way we could bring ourselves to swallow it.

Behind that strictness, though, was a man who had known hunger, who had seen poverty up close and carried its lessons with him always. By Allah’s mercy and his relentless effort, we lived in comfort, but he never allowed us to forget the importance of gratitude and restraint.

This is the man I knew as Jido, the man whose lessons I now wish to pass on to you. His story is not just the story of one man, but of resilience, faith, and vision. My hope is that in reading these lessons, you will not only come to know him as I did, but also find in his example a guide for your own journey.

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This is just one of many lessons from From Rags to Barakah.

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