About InshaYalla

Karachi born, Montreal based. I have spent most of my life in motion, living across five continents, more than half a dozen countries, and some of the world's most consequential capital cities. Fourteen years across investment banking, Islamic finance, wealth management, public relations, policy, real estate, startups, and nonprofits. I built a real estate fund out of the opportunities created by the pandemic market and spent years working land arbitrage on the US East Coast. I have rarely stayed still long enough to ask whether any of it was actually what I wanted to be doing.

A recent period of reflection changed that.

I studied political science, international security, economics, philosophy, and finance at Georgetown University and the Australian National University. I am proficient in five languages and currently adding Spanish and German to that list. I have lived inside the institutions and systems I now write about, across multiple cultures and sides of the table. That is not a credential. It is a vantage point, and it is the only honest basis from which I know how to write.

InshaYalla exists because I reached a point where remaining silent felt more costly than speaking plainly. The world is not short of analysis. It is short of honest, uncomfortable analysis written by people with genuine skin in the game. I am a Pakistani Muslim with a Western education, a complicated relationship with several of the world's most consequential regions, and no interest in conclusions that make anyone, including myself, feel too comfortable.

The name is a play on inshallah, the Arabic phrase meaning God willing, and yalla, the everyday call to action meaning let's go, come on, hurry. Together they hold the two sentiments this publication is built on: the hope that a more just world is possible, and the urgency of insisting it cannot wait.

InshaYalla features essays on governance, ideology, and political power, including the Just Democracy series, a framework examining what legitimate democratic governance actually requires and why so much of what passes for it currently falls short. It will expand over time to include writing on faith, culture, and the ideas shaping political life globally, always from the same starting point: honesty over comfort, and substance over performance.

I do not have all the answers. I am not sure anyone does. But I believe the questions are worth asking seriously, and that asking them honestly is itself a form of contribution at a time when honest public discourse feels increasingly rare.

— KHA