Ramadan Kareem to all of you! May Allah accept all our good deeds and ibadah (worship)! A couple of weeks ago, two sisters who’d been attending our New Muslim Project for a while said that they wanted to take their Shahadahs (say the Testimony of Faith to become a Muslim). They said that they wanted to make it a formal occasion with a bit of a ceremony, so we organized a small celebration for them and we were surprised by ...

Sha`aban, this month of preparation for Ramadan, has been a sobering month for me personally, but brilliant in coaching terms. Allah has been sending me plenty of reminders of the Akhirat. Not only did I attend the Al-Kawthar course: The Final Rites, during which I had the chance to look again at the Islamic rulings related to the last days of life, Ghusl (ritual bathing), burial and inheritance, but my mother’s neighbour of 40 years ...

If you’re someone who prefers to read a self-help book than to have a personal coach or perhaps the time isn’t right for you to have a coach at the moment, but you want to work on some areas of your life, this is a book I would highly recommend. Not just because it’s written by Heba Alshareef, a friend of mine, but because...

And here it is, the third and last of the three articles that Dr. Omer El-Hamdoon wrote for the CoachAmal website, based on the series of khutbahs that he gave in Sheffield last year. All those of us who have ambition are striving for success in a variety of different areas of our lives, and this is highly encouraged by Islam. However, as Muslims we have certain standards that we have to maintain when we are working towards our goals. These standards are guided by Islamic ethics or Akhlaq...

Have you come across the Lifewheel yet? It’s a really useful tool that many coaches use with their clients to help them to get a clearer picture of their life. (If you haven’t seen one yet, request a copy of my eBooklet: Can Coaching Help Me? From the sidebar of my website.) One of the areas that it looks at is how satisfied people are with their contribution to society. It’s an area that stumps many people, and they really have to dig deep to find something that they do for others...

When people ask me who I am, I usually just answer: Amal Stapley. Well I do nowadays; in the past I’ve answered with a variety of names in different contexts that told people that I was single, married, Christian, or a nursing sister. Some people have addressed me formally using a title, others have shortened my name, and one of my teachers used to call me by my middle name, as he said that was the custom in Macedonia. Over the years I’ve had to get used to a variety of different labels, and when I accepted Islam I decided that I wanted to change my name again to reflect my new life and my coming closer to my fitrah (natural disposition)...