This is so disheartening to hear. I've spent nearly 2 years studying online with them and have contributed financially. I'm quite shocked to be honest and don't know what to do at this point. It's such a shame as the religious content is great and so accessible but at the same time the moment you hear of such corruption it's human nature to want to immediately dissociate with such people and organisations.
I wanted seekers guidance to succeed. From around 2015-2020 I would respond to most of their appeals and donated much sadaqa and zakaat, enrolled in online classes, and even volunteered as a TA in a shafii course. They were times when: 1) they would have appeals for electronic equipment like cameras, mics and stuff and that appeal would linger on after I contributed and I would say I'm just gonna fund it all and after I would do that they would continue appealing to that cause. 2) the same thing would happen with raising money for different shaykhs on different occassions ( at first I was gullible thinking it might have been people forgetting to take it down and some sort of automatic reach occurred requesting funds of an initiative that has been met. however, onetime i asked why are you asking for a cause already met and i got a response saying it is for him and others similar 3) They would repurpose videos, usually converted sisters, who was used to raise funds for initiatives already met sometimes even year(s) later. 4) they reached out to me privately to raise funds using individuals saying not to say anything (I'm convinced it was shenanigans). 5) they would use people who know how to raise money and take advantage of Muslims who want to do khair. You should talk to people who use to work or volunteer and get them to sing like canaries such as I might butcher the spelling: saddia queshi, Yasmin Tahir and her husband, Anton kuratnik and his wife, Erin Rutherford, Zafar, Ahmad Munawarra, fareen alam, and others. some might cooperate and some might not. They started off transparent and would raise money in a visible way (like those donate bombs if you remeber) but once they tried the marketing of a needy shaykh and showed sad pictures the response was apparent this brings results and took advantage of their donors. I benefited religiously from faraz online classes and I made relations with teachers on the platform that allowed me to participate in classes outside the platform but once this practice become apparent and the bad counseling answers on their website I shredded every last note I ever took and even ended all participation of those classes outside of seekers platform because I didn't know who was who anymore. I hope this information helps your research even further.
Who are you? Are you the Amir that I knew who used to work at Seekers as a frontline assistant a few years ago? I just find it a bit strange that there is no other activity on your Substack account except this comment and a couple of other likes of the same author's stuff. If you created an account just to reply to this article, I understand, but I'd like to point out that this comment is evidence from an essentially anonymous account.
I knew we’d end up like the megachurch pastors in the US one day. Except the pastors are at least up front about their schemes. Potentially taking from zakat money is mind boggling. How many ayats of Qur’an talk about the severe punishment of unjustly consuming others’ rights!?
As a newish (2+ years) Muslim, I've found Seeker's Guidance to be one of the only balanced sources of knowledge I can find. I'm enrolled in some of their classes and have benefited much. I often recommend them to others.
I had no idea about any of this.
What I do know (and maybe you knew/accounted for this) is that the form 990 is an estimate only. Some nonprofits don't have to provide actual records to back it up, especially depending on the type of formation the nonprofit has. There's more than one 501, 503, and 508 type of nonprofits. Now, many smaller places leave it at that, just the form 990 when they are eligible. But larger places who have payroll and other sources of income outside of straight qualified donations must then file regular tax filings, which must reflect the correct info for the year (not just an estimate). That could account for some of the differences in some of the places.
I'm not a tax professional, just sharing what I learned when I looked into forming more than one nonprofit. I never did form one.
I really appreciate that you feel you have benefited from Seekers Guidance. I also understand that information like this may be unexpected and a little troubling.
I don't know where you received information about nonprofits or 990s, but it is incorrect. Sections 503 and 508 do not describe separate kinds of nonprofits, but are rules concerning nonprofits, (disqualified transactions and private foundation rules). It is true there may be a variety of tax forms involved. However, the 990 is the principle filing by a nonprofit organization. You should review the form 990 as well as the instructions provided by the IRS if you are interested. They are on the IRS website. While there is a provision for estimates where the information was requested from a third party but not obtained, or for situations where you are not sure, like the number of volunteers, estimates need to be identified as such and explained.
The 990 is filed under penalty of perjury. You can't just freely fudge the numbers and call them "estimates"- that is not a thing. There are actually several instances of people being prosecuted and going to prison for providing inaccurate numbers on form 990s. Even honest mistakes can get people a civil fine.
If you do ever go the route of actually forming and running a nonprofit, I would urge you to get significantly better advice than what you have apparently been getting.
So I first posted this in June 2019, but took it down after a couple of years. Reposting recently updated the date to 2025. Wasn't able to give you a screenshot here but it's dated on my facebook. https://islamandstuff.wordpress.com/2025/03/04/10/
I've worked in an audit role at a non-profit humanitarian aid organization in Ukraine. I also run an accounting software platform and my work is helping people analyze financial statements. I also used to be a regular attendee at Seekers. I see NO EVIDENCE of wrongdoing in this article.
As for the discrepancy between claimed disbursements and 990 tax forms - this is completely normal. I have never seen an organization, ever, whose internal financial understanding matched their tax form. It is completely normal for an organization to have a different understanding of certain transactions which do not match the accounting tax definition. I build financial software for hundreds of small business owners that maintain separate financial analyses from their tax accountant. This is not evidence of fraud, this simply reflects the fact that tax filings do not reflect how founders think about their cashflow. The marketing materials are meant to capture all sorts of transactions which may not appear on the tax form under that category. Also, maintaining strict financial records is hard, really hard. I wouldn't expect an Islamic scholar to be good at financial management, but this is not evidence of wrongdoing. And even if their records looked squeaky clean, that is still not sufficient to prove anything. Cooking the books is easier than simply trusting the founder. Being a messy ideological founder who can't maintain clear books is pretty common, it's not evidence of wrongdoing.
Anyway, in this particular case, and I took a look at the 990 for 2023, and there is a simpler explanation: it is possible that funds disbursed under ISF were actually part of "independent contractors" reported in Schedule O. Although this appears suspicious, there's a simple reason why it might be done that way: a lot of the ISF recipients may have been teachers at Seekers. So, for tax purposes it may be counted as a payment to an independent contractor for teaching services, yet for all intents and purposes it was an ISF disbursement. Again, boils down to whether you trust the founder to make the right call, but I can totally see why an accountant would play it safe in the federal tax filing and include it under "independent contractor" instead of ISF disbursement if there was insufficient documentation at the time.
As for being technically insolvent and taking unsecured loans - totally expected from an Islamic organization that takes "qardh hasanah" or private interest free loans to finance Islamic projects. Slowly growing liabilities is exactly what you would expect to see in any healthy, growing organization. Again, NO EVIDENCE of wrongdoing.
No salaries or board members? Everyone who donates or participates in Seekers knows this is Faraz Rabbani's show, and are donating based on trust in him. I see no problem with that - if you don't trust him, don't donate. People donate based on trust in him, so if you trust him to make the right call, there is nothing to see here.
Yes, he does have his personality quirks, but so does everybody.
The most credible piece of evidence you have in this article is the scandal involving Hamza Karamali's name. But here, also, there is a simpler explanation. Organizations regularly fail to proceed with initiatives as planned, especially during messy initial planning stages. Perhaps there was an idea in the Slack group to start an ISF committee that never actually materialized. Perhaps the marketing person who wrote that slide asked for a committee list in a rush, and the founder provided a list of names he thought should be appropriate, but then failed to followup afterwards. Happens all the time in large organizations: the leaders says X,Y,Z will be involved in a certain initiative, but things get forgetting and fizzle out. This is evidence of messy organization, but not wrongdoing. The fact that Seekers removed those list of names in later publications means that they fixed their mistake - good on them.
I do not see enough evidence here to write a hit piece taking down an Islamic organization doing a lot of good. I would give the benefit of the doubt here. Although I agree this is not a well-managed organization, I did not go to Seekers because I thought Faraz Rabbani was an expert accountant and financial record-keeper. I simply trusted him to make the right call, even if it's not all able to captured perfectly on a tax form.
Thanks for engaging. It would be good if an explanation with non-fantasy facts came from Rabbani or his accountant.
This newsletter is a waste of time for people who just trust their beloved Shuyukh with their hard earned cash and don’t care about honesty, integrity and accountability.
All Muslim non-profits should be investigated/inspected especially those in the Bay Area, California. Why are Directors & Lead of the Marketing Departments making over 100K a year salary & majority of funds going to administrative fees but claim to help others with giving away $5.00-$10.00 books to prisoner's. Sounds like a true hustle and shady business dealings. "Brother we help those in need" "We give money away" . We give brother jobs at minimum wage but use them to advertise and use them to get more donations. Folks this is pimpin' 101...
Can Zakat be used for educational purposes? Isn’t Zakat meant to be for absolute necessities? I’ve seen more and more scholarships operating using Zakat- is this even fair wealth distribution, especially as there’s literally millions of Muslims experiencing famines, poor sanitation and no housing???? Why is Zakat being used to fund education?
I did not get into this issue much because it is a fiqh issue I did not want to get into the weeds on. However, as portrayed it is a zakat program for Islamic scholars and students of knowledge in need. Both of these groups can have challenges with food, sanitation, housing and other needs and can be Zakat eligible. Historically, zakat has been used to fund education for the poor as well. There are some issues with how Sh. Faraz Rabbani has been using Zakat, including using it to make payroll and potentially using it as a kind of slush fund he can borrow from, according to his former board members. I don't believe any formal fiqh opinion justification has come about justifying this kind of thing, however.
So I was curious about this too I once looked it up for charities in general, and I was curious if this falls under “Al Ameleen Alayha” - the ones who do the work of charity also get a portion of it. And then I looked up something like islamic relief and this is what I got (below). So I’m wondering do all charities allocate charity funds for internal/staff means and not just the cause they are going to? Otherwise how do they run .. ?
“Islamic Relief, like other charities, uses a portion of its donations to pay its employees, including those in administrative and operational roles, as well as for fundraising and other core functions.
Charities, including Islamic Relief, need to allocate funds for administrative and operational costs, including salaries, to ensure their programs can run effectively
Zakat Policy: Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA) is eligible to use a percentage of donations made to Zakat-specific funds for core work, including administrative and operational functions”
Local Masajid. I think international relief is a challenge right now, especially for Zakat since nobody accounts for it yet and few have published standards at all. UNHCR has the best international zakat program I have seen
Not sure that is relevant. If it is true, folks with ASD can be quite successful at running nonprofits or Islamic scholarship, and I am sure some won't be. Thanks for your comment!
This is so disheartening to hear. I've spent nearly 2 years studying online with them and have contributed financially. I'm quite shocked to be honest and don't know what to do at this point. It's such a shame as the religious content is great and so accessible but at the same time the moment you hear of such corruption it's human nature to want to immediately dissociate with such people and organisations.
I wanted seekers guidance to succeed. From around 2015-2020 I would respond to most of their appeals and donated much sadaqa and zakaat, enrolled in online classes, and even volunteered as a TA in a shafii course. They were times when: 1) they would have appeals for electronic equipment like cameras, mics and stuff and that appeal would linger on after I contributed and I would say I'm just gonna fund it all and after I would do that they would continue appealing to that cause. 2) the same thing would happen with raising money for different shaykhs on different occassions ( at first I was gullible thinking it might have been people forgetting to take it down and some sort of automatic reach occurred requesting funds of an initiative that has been met. however, onetime i asked why are you asking for a cause already met and i got a response saying it is for him and others similar 3) They would repurpose videos, usually converted sisters, who was used to raise funds for initiatives already met sometimes even year(s) later. 4) they reached out to me privately to raise funds using individuals saying not to say anything (I'm convinced it was shenanigans). 5) they would use people who know how to raise money and take advantage of Muslims who want to do khair. You should talk to people who use to work or volunteer and get them to sing like canaries such as I might butcher the spelling: saddia queshi, Yasmin Tahir and her husband, Anton kuratnik and his wife, Erin Rutherford, Zafar, Ahmad Munawarra, fareen alam, and others. some might cooperate and some might not. They started off transparent and would raise money in a visible way (like those donate bombs if you remeber) but once they tried the marketing of a needy shaykh and showed sad pictures the response was apparent this brings results and took advantage of their donors. I benefited religiously from faraz online classes and I made relations with teachers on the platform that allowed me to participate in classes outside the platform but once this practice become apparent and the bad counseling answers on their website I shredded every last note I ever took and even ended all participation of those classes outside of seekers platform because I didn't know who was who anymore. I hope this information helps your research even further.
Who are you? Are you the Amir that I knew who used to work at Seekers as a frontline assistant a few years ago? I just find it a bit strange that there is no other activity on your Substack account except this comment and a couple of other likes of the same author's stuff. If you created an account just to reply to this article, I understand, but I'd like to point out that this comment is evidence from an essentially anonymous account.
1) I'm not that Amir. I don't know who he is. Seekersguidance has had a lot of churn with volunteers and workers I don't keep up with them anymore.
2)yes I created my account to respond and I hardly use substance.
3)Everything I said can be fact check anyone who knows how to cross examine or use the provided can do so.
4)you seem more interested in verifying for gossip reasons and not for benefit.
Best regards
I knew we’d end up like the megachurch pastors in the US one day. Except the pastors are at least up front about their schemes. Potentially taking from zakat money is mind boggling. How many ayats of Qur’an talk about the severe punishment of unjustly consuming others’ rights!?
As a newish (2+ years) Muslim, I've found Seeker's Guidance to be one of the only balanced sources of knowledge I can find. I'm enrolled in some of their classes and have benefited much. I often recommend them to others.
I had no idea about any of this.
What I do know (and maybe you knew/accounted for this) is that the form 990 is an estimate only. Some nonprofits don't have to provide actual records to back it up, especially depending on the type of formation the nonprofit has. There's more than one 501, 503, and 508 type of nonprofits. Now, many smaller places leave it at that, just the form 990 when they are eligible. But larger places who have payroll and other sources of income outside of straight qualified donations must then file regular tax filings, which must reflect the correct info for the year (not just an estimate). That could account for some of the differences in some of the places.
I'm not a tax professional, just sharing what I learned when I looked into forming more than one nonprofit. I never did form one.
I really appreciate that you feel you have benefited from Seekers Guidance. I also understand that information like this may be unexpected and a little troubling.
I don't know where you received information about nonprofits or 990s, but it is incorrect. Sections 503 and 508 do not describe separate kinds of nonprofits, but are rules concerning nonprofits, (disqualified transactions and private foundation rules). It is true there may be a variety of tax forms involved. However, the 990 is the principle filing by a nonprofit organization. You should review the form 990 as well as the instructions provided by the IRS if you are interested. They are on the IRS website. While there is a provision for estimates where the information was requested from a third party but not obtained, or for situations where you are not sure, like the number of volunteers, estimates need to be identified as such and explained.
The 990 is filed under penalty of perjury. You can't just freely fudge the numbers and call them "estimates"- that is not a thing. There are actually several instances of people being prosecuted and going to prison for providing inaccurate numbers on form 990s. Even honest mistakes can get people a civil fine.
If you do ever go the route of actually forming and running a nonprofit, I would urge you to get significantly better advice than what you have apparently been getting.
Thanks for the mention. I will say though, I've actually been warning against Faraz since 2019, so that's 6 years, but who's counting
Wait you have an article from 2019?
So I first posted this in June 2019, but took it down after a couple of years. Reposting recently updated the date to 2025. Wasn't able to give you a screenshot here but it's dated on my facebook. https://islamandstuff.wordpress.com/2025/03/04/10/
https://www.facebook.com/adilkhan23/posts/pfbid02T4EesVjo94WjKN2jPABT5PbCCqYCKWSSDBYQXfxzPXGJAnfyXhEKDWjRrxUuhDnul
Salaams !
Have you officially taken this up with him before going public?
Assalamu Alaikum. Indeed, I have. This in addressed in the article itself. Virtually all the information here is public already, however.
I've worked in an audit role at a non-profit humanitarian aid organization in Ukraine. I also run an accounting software platform and my work is helping people analyze financial statements. I also used to be a regular attendee at Seekers. I see NO EVIDENCE of wrongdoing in this article.
As for the discrepancy between claimed disbursements and 990 tax forms - this is completely normal. I have never seen an organization, ever, whose internal financial understanding matched their tax form. It is completely normal for an organization to have a different understanding of certain transactions which do not match the accounting tax definition. I build financial software for hundreds of small business owners that maintain separate financial analyses from their tax accountant. This is not evidence of fraud, this simply reflects the fact that tax filings do not reflect how founders think about their cashflow. The marketing materials are meant to capture all sorts of transactions which may not appear on the tax form under that category. Also, maintaining strict financial records is hard, really hard. I wouldn't expect an Islamic scholar to be good at financial management, but this is not evidence of wrongdoing. And even if their records looked squeaky clean, that is still not sufficient to prove anything. Cooking the books is easier than simply trusting the founder. Being a messy ideological founder who can't maintain clear books is pretty common, it's not evidence of wrongdoing.
Anyway, in this particular case, and I took a look at the 990 for 2023, and there is a simpler explanation: it is possible that funds disbursed under ISF were actually part of "independent contractors" reported in Schedule O. Although this appears suspicious, there's a simple reason why it might be done that way: a lot of the ISF recipients may have been teachers at Seekers. So, for tax purposes it may be counted as a payment to an independent contractor for teaching services, yet for all intents and purposes it was an ISF disbursement. Again, boils down to whether you trust the founder to make the right call, but I can totally see why an accountant would play it safe in the federal tax filing and include it under "independent contractor" instead of ISF disbursement if there was insufficient documentation at the time.
As for being technically insolvent and taking unsecured loans - totally expected from an Islamic organization that takes "qardh hasanah" or private interest free loans to finance Islamic projects. Slowly growing liabilities is exactly what you would expect to see in any healthy, growing organization. Again, NO EVIDENCE of wrongdoing.
No salaries or board members? Everyone who donates or participates in Seekers knows this is Faraz Rabbani's show, and are donating based on trust in him. I see no problem with that - if you don't trust him, don't donate. People donate based on trust in him, so if you trust him to make the right call, there is nothing to see here.
Yes, he does have his personality quirks, but so does everybody.
The most credible piece of evidence you have in this article is the scandal involving Hamza Karamali's name. But here, also, there is a simpler explanation. Organizations regularly fail to proceed with initiatives as planned, especially during messy initial planning stages. Perhaps there was an idea in the Slack group to start an ISF committee that never actually materialized. Perhaps the marketing person who wrote that slide asked for a committee list in a rush, and the founder provided a list of names he thought should be appropriate, but then failed to followup afterwards. Happens all the time in large organizations: the leaders says X,Y,Z will be involved in a certain initiative, but things get forgetting and fizzle out. This is evidence of messy organization, but not wrongdoing. The fact that Seekers removed those list of names in later publications means that they fixed their mistake - good on them.
I do not see enough evidence here to write a hit piece taking down an Islamic organization doing a lot of good. I would give the benefit of the doubt here. Although I agree this is not a well-managed organization, I did not go to Seekers because I thought Faraz Rabbani was an expert accountant and financial record-keeper. I simply trusted him to make the right call, even if it's not all able to captured perfectly on a tax form.
Thanks for engaging. It would be good if an explanation with non-fantasy facts came from Rabbani or his accountant.
This newsletter is a waste of time for people who just trust their beloved Shuyukh with their hard earned cash and don’t care about honesty, integrity and accountability.
All Muslim non-profits should be investigated/inspected especially those in the Bay Area, California. Why are Directors & Lead of the Marketing Departments making over 100K a year salary & majority of funds going to administrative fees but claim to help others with giving away $5.00-$10.00 books to prisoner's. Sounds like a true hustle and shady business dealings. "Brother we help those in need" "We give money away" . We give brother jobs at minimum wage but use them to advertise and use them to get more donations. Folks this is pimpin' 101...
Can Zakat be used for educational purposes? Isn’t Zakat meant to be for absolute necessities? I’ve seen more and more scholarships operating using Zakat- is this even fair wealth distribution, especially as there’s literally millions of Muslims experiencing famines, poor sanitation and no housing???? Why is Zakat being used to fund education?
I did not get into this issue much because it is a fiqh issue I did not want to get into the weeds on. However, as portrayed it is a zakat program for Islamic scholars and students of knowledge in need. Both of these groups can have challenges with food, sanitation, housing and other needs and can be Zakat eligible. Historically, zakat has been used to fund education for the poor as well. There are some issues with how Sh. Faraz Rabbani has been using Zakat, including using it to make payroll and potentially using it as a kind of slush fund he can borrow from, according to his former board members. I don't believe any formal fiqh opinion justification has come about justifying this kind of thing, however.
So I was curious about this too I once looked it up for charities in general, and I was curious if this falls under “Al Ameleen Alayha” - the ones who do the work of charity also get a portion of it. And then I looked up something like islamic relief and this is what I got (below). So I’m wondering do all charities allocate charity funds for internal/staff means and not just the cause they are going to? Otherwise how do they run .. ?
“Islamic Relief, like other charities, uses a portion of its donations to pay its employees, including those in administrative and operational roles, as well as for fundraising and other core functions.
Charities, including Islamic Relief, need to allocate funds for administrative and operational costs, including salaries, to ensure their programs can run effectively
Zakat Policy: Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA) is eligible to use a percentage of donations made to Zakat-specific funds for core work, including administrative and operational functions”
I have written about Islamic Relief several times on this newsletter. I wrote about Islamic Relief USA's zakat policy (which is distinct from the UK Islamic Relief's zakat policy here https://ehsan.substack.com/p/islamic-relief-usas-new-zakat-policy
JazakAllah Khair for this, I’m curious - do you have any charities you have assessed where you feel confident donating?
Local Masajid. I think international relief is a challenge right now, especially for Zakat since nobody accounts for it yet and few have published standards at all. UNHCR has the best international zakat program I have seen
Anyone who has spent a few minutes with Faraz Rabbani can tell he has some form of ASD. Especially those who knew him before he became "shaykh"
Not sure that is relevant. If it is true, folks with ASD can be quite successful at running nonprofits or Islamic scholarship, and I am sure some won't be. Thanks for your comment!