The ReImagine Islamic Education Design Lab emerges from a long-standing commitment to understanding how education can more fully reflect the depth, purpose, and lived reality of our faith.

This work did not begin as a program. It began as a question, one that has continued to evolve over time:

What would it mean to design educational spaces that truly reflect who we are, what we believe, and how we are meant to live and serve?

That question became more defined through years of teaching, homeschooling, curriculum design, and community-based work. It was further shaped through the founding principles of D.E.E.D.S. Inc., an initiative rooted in creating family-centered, multi-generational learning experiences that connected faith, daily life, and service. Through that work, education was never treated as isolated subjects, but as a living process, one that is experienced, practiced, and continuously developed within community.

Over time, the work expanded from creating learning experiences to examining the structures that hold those experiences.

The vision for the Abdul-Haqq CommUNITY Innovation Lab was once under the guise of a k-12 school framework and has transformed into a learning hub for practitioners, leaders who are ready to go beyond the traditional limited scope training that has filtered out the nutrients and guidance of our faith and humanity and… that will build better schools, brought this into sharper focus. In the process of designing and presenting this idea of innovation, it became clear that the challenge was not simply about curriculum or programming it was about how to articulate and organize models of education-sharing ideas that could hold both vision and detail, both purpose and consistent-development-practicality.

That process required engaging with mentors, educators, and community members across generations and educator roles to reach those who helped build earlier models of Islamic education, and those now responsible for shaping what comes next. It also required navigating deeply personal moments of reflection, loss, and responsibility, reinforcing the understanding that this work is not done in isolation.

The ReImagine Education Think Tank is now ReImagine Islamic Education Think Tank and this Design Lab grew out of that space.

It is a response to the need for educators and leaders to move beyond maintaining systems and toward designing with intention. It creates a space for asking difficult questions, exploring “what if” possibilities, and developing ideas into structured, sustainable models that can exist within real educational ecosystems.

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Why This Work Matters

As a Muslim, born and raised in America, I am fortunate as an African American taught through the lens of Qur’anic Study, and having matriculated through a Community-grounded Clara Mohammed School System, with the conscious armor of Freedom Justice and Equality as a pathway to my own education and development, I know the beauty and richness of what Islamic education brings, and the responsibility we have to move beyond fragmented approaches that separate faith from structure, and inspiration from implementation.

Our faith is not static. It calls for reflection, action, and responsibility.

Educational models, therefore, must:

• Reflect clarity of purpose
• Demonstrate coherence in design
• Create meaningful pathways for learning, growth, and service

This requires more than content knowledge.
It requires intentional design, organizational thinking, and collective engagement.

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Looking Forward

The ReImagine Islamic Education Design Lab is one component of a broader vision:

The development of the Abdul-Haqq CommUNITY Innovation Lab as a global hub for education leadership, design, and collaboration.

This work will continue to:

• Support the development of new educational models
• Convene educators, founders, and thinkers across contexts
• Bridge faith, pedagogy, and organizational design
• Create pathways for ideas to move from concept into reality

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A Collective Responsibility

At its core, this work is rooted in a simple but necessary understanding:

We are not only participants in education—we are responsible for shaping it.

The models we build today will determine what is possible for the generations that follow.

This Design Lab exists to support that responsibility—by creating space for clarity, collaboration, and the disciplined work of bringing ideas into form.

EDUCATION and the responsibility of providing expanding opportunities for LEARNING is a lifestyle that requires Agility, Creativity, Intentional Design with the resourcefulness of Collaborative Community Connection.

This is your chance to dig deeper and CREATE the better education you envision.