فاستقم — Fastaqim

Uprightness as a working discipline — and a refusal to live, as the book puts it, with two scales or two hearts.

The idea

One principle, applied to a whole life

The book states its aim in a sentence: to return the reader to a single principle governing everything — that you belong to God in the mosque and in the marketplace, in prayer and in work, at home and at the job.

Its diagnosis is not ignorance but disconnection. A person believes a principle and cannot apply it; or knows it in theory and forgets it in the moment it is needed.

ومقصد هذا الكتاب في جملةٍ واحدة أن يردّك إلى أصلٍ يضبط حياتك كلها: أن تكون لله في مسجدك وسوقك، في صلاتك وسعيك، في بيتك وعملك؛ فلا تعيش بميزانين ولا بقلبين.

From the introduction

What is in it

Twenty-three chapters that each end in something to do

The spine is the closing verses of Surat al-Anam, treated as the servant’s contract. Twenty-three chapters follow — truthfulness, promises, time, priority, anger, speech, working with people, and work itself as something one is asked about.

Every chapter closes with a pause, and all but one add a single action for the week. Not a reading list — a practice.

It is also unusually contemporary in places. There are chapters on working from home, on freelancing, on part-time work and divided obligations, and a charter for the Muslim who has an audience — including how to tell paid promotion from sincere advice.

Who it is for

Working people, addressed directly and informally throughout. The applied passages name employees, managers, teachers, students, remote workers and freelancers. It assumes no formal training and real professional exposure.

Status

An advanced manuscript in Arabic — around thirty-one thousand words, five parts, twenty-three chapters, with a short bibliography. Written under the Upward imprint. A final editorial pass remains. Not published, and nothing here is for sale.