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HabibiTech Summit 2026

The Future Is Being
Built Here.


Habibi Tech Summit 2025 · In their words

The Response

We asked everyone who came what stayed with them. Their words, unedited.

Greatly impacted my view. I had no idea there are so many Muslims in tech.
Debbie Almontaser
The summit reinforced my belief that Muslim leadership in AI and tech, guided by our Islamic values of integrity, justice, and service to humanity, is rising stronger than ever and it's truly our time to shine.
Hava Jakupi
Making connections with other Muslim professionals — I wouldn't have met these amazing people if I hadn't attended!
Mumtaz Khan
The confidence of speakers and attendees to really elevate ourselves and work smart to build wealth really stuck with me.
Mahin Chowdhury

Attendee surveys · Habibi Tech Summit 2025


September 25–26 · New York City

Habibi Tech Weekend

Three events across two days. They are ticketed separately. One VIP ticket is the only thing that opens all three doors.

02Sat · Sep 26

Habibi Tech

Summit

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Main event

Keynotes worth the flight, hands-on workshops where you build rather than watch, and a floor holding the Muslim world's leading builders, investors, diplomats, and creators.

Length
All day
Charity sponsor

One VIP ticket, all three. Pickleball, the Summit floor, and a seat at the dinner.

Go VIP

Habibi Tech Weekend 2026 · Partners

Powered By

The room. The line-up. The food. The closing night.

Sponsors

Platinum

Gold

Silver

Partners

Summit Charity

VIP Dinner Charity

Pickleball Social Charity

Culinary

Programming


UN General Assembly Week

Habibi Tech Meets
the Diplomatic Superbowl.

The one week world leaders, ministers, and global press all converge on New York. Around the Assembly, a full ecosystem of side events takes shape — hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative, Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Global Business Forum, and Open Society Foundations. These are the rooms where global deals and coalitions get made.

We hold a Muslim-led seat at that table.

Event Type
UN Week Side Event
Date
September 26, 2026
Alongside
Clinton Global Initiative · Gates Foundation · Bloomberg GBF · Open Society Foundations
Focus
AI, technology, and the global challenges that matter most

The Venue

Civic Hall.
Union Square.

One of the most high-tech event spaces in New York City — a dedicated civic technology and democracy hub in the middle of Manhattan. Multi-room layout for simultaneous programming across parallel tracks.

Main Hall
Main Hall
Event Floor
Event Floor
Union Square
Union Square
Auditorium
Auditorium
After Dark
After Dark
Location
Union Square, Manhattan
Layout
Multi-room · parallel tracks
Date
September 26, 2026 · 9 AM EDT
Staying Over
We hold a room block at Hotel Indigo, a few minutes from the venue. Book with group code HAB.
Rooms are booked with and paid to the hotel directly.
Book the block →

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HabibiTech Summit

The Declarations · UN Week 2026

7 Stands That Define
Muslim Leadership on AI.

Last year, 1,000 Muslim leaders gathered to shape the future of AI. This year, we're telling you seven ways how.

These Seven Stands are seven causes that define what the ethical development of AI looks like — built to maximize benefit for humanity and the planet, and minimize its harms. “AI for Good” is too fluffy. This is what it actually means for Muslims to shape AI in our values.

Not aspirations. Commitments.

STAND NO. I · LIBERATION

No Innovation Without Liberation.

No technology built on the surveillance, displacement, or destruction of a people can be called innovation. We refuse to build on that ground.

Stand No. I · LIBERATION

We declare that the freedom of Palestine is not negotiable, and that no technology built on the surveillance, displacement, or destruction of a people can be called innovation.

We extend this declaration to every people the world has been trained to forget, in Sudan, in Kashmir, in Congo, and in every community within every country whose suffering has been made profitable or invisible, including those rendered statistically absent in the very datasets that now govern their access to care, credit, housing, and freedom.

Read the full declaration →

Speakers

Sh. Dr. Yasir QadhiFaith/Ethics

Sh. Dr. Yasir Qadhi

Shaykh, Islamic Scholar

EPIC Masjid

Dallas, TX

One of the most influential Islamic scholars in the West, with a Yale PhD in theology.

Honorable Sahar AlbazarLaw/Policy

Honorable Sahar Albazar

Deputy Chair

Foreign Affairs Committee of the Egyptian Parliament

Cairo, Egypt

Elected by young parliamentarians from 179 countries to lead them. Harvard MPA, Yale World Fellow.

Sourov ZamanCybersecurity

Sourov Zaman

Global Head of Security Response

Cloudflare

New York, NY

Leads the cybersecurity response team that protects millions of websites from attack.

Ibrahim AfzalTech/AI

Ibrahim Afzal

Technical Program Manager

Google DeepMind

Builds factuality into Google DeepMind’s foundational models. Before that, misinformation detection at Meta and on-device ML at Apple.

Humna KhanTech/AI

Humna Khan

CEO & Founder

Astro

Los Angeles, CA

Ex-SpaceX, ex-NASA, ex-U.S. Space Force. Now building the materials that fly to space.

Dr. Abdul ShaikhHealthcare

Dr. Abdul Shaikh

Global Leader, Population Health

Amazon Web Services

Washington, DC

A behavioral scientist who ran health informatics at the National Cancer Institute. Now he leads population health for AWS.

Omar KhawajaCybersecurity

Omar Khawaja

VP, Field CISO

Databricks

Nine years as CISO of a $26B health system. Now Databricks’ Field CISO, and faculty on Carnegie Mellon’s CISO program.

Julie WonLaw/Policy

Julie Won

Councilwoman

New York City Council

New York, NY

Ten years at IBM fixing government tech. Then she stared down developers and doubled affordable housing as NYC Councilwoman

Sh. AbdulNasir JangdaFaith/Ethics

Sh. AbdulNasir Jangda

Founder, President

Qalam Institute

Dallas, TX

Founded Qalam, one of the seminaries American Islamic scholarship is now built on.

Ali Najmi, EsqLaw/Policy

Ali Najmi, Esq

Chairman

NYC Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary

New York, NY

The election lawyer behind Mamdani’s rise, now chairing the committee that vets New York’s judges.

Melissa Westbrook, EsqFinance

Melissa Westbrook, Esq

General Counsel

Techstars

New York, NY

Over $1B in deals structured. Now she’s the one reading the term sheet at Techstars.

Dr. Waleed KadousTech/AI

Dr. Waleed Kadous

Cofounder

Islamic Alliance for Safe, Ethical, and Responsible AI

Mountain View, CA

Founded the Google team behind Android's blue dot. Now builds an Islamic AI assistant.

Chris BlauveltFinance

Chris Blauvelt

Co-Founder

LaunchGood

Detroit, MI

Turned down a six-figure bank job for Detroit. The platform he built there has moved $650M+.

Amany KillawiFinance

Amany Killawi

Co-Founder

LaunchGood

Washington, DC

Inc.’s Female Founders 100. The social worker who turned Muslim giving into a $650M platform.

Sherrine EidHealthcare

Sherrine Eid

Global Head of Real-World Evidence & Epidemiology

SAS

Macungie, PA

Ran SAS's COVID response team with the CDC and Cleveland Clinic. Now she is its data ethics ambassador for AI in health.

Awais SheikhBusiness/Strategy

Awais Sheikh

Co-Founder

Forerunners

Washington, DC

Ran strategy for AWS’s largest public-sector division, a multi-billion-dollar book of business.

Sara YassiLaw/Policy

Sara Yassi

Chair

UK Youth Delegation to COP30

London, UK

Wants climate disinformation fact-checked by machine, and the platforms that spread it liable.

Yasser SalemLaw/Policy

Yasser Salem

Founder

OneNYC

New York, NY

Got 70+ CEOs in a room with New York’s new mayor, then joined his transition team.

Dr. James FaghmousTech/AI

Dr. James Faghmous

ML Lecturer & Author, Spiritual Intelligence

University of Southern California

Taught AI at MIT, Columbia, Stanford and USC. Was CTO of Mount Sinai's global health institute.

Shaykh RasoulFaith/Ethics

Shaykh Rasoul

Imam & Content Creator

Faith and Fun

Canada

Takes the questions young Muslims are too embarrassed to ask, and answers them on TikTok.

Dr. Mona HamdyFaith/Ethics

Dr. Mona Hamdy

Chief Advisor, AI Ethics

Aixplain

Cambridge, MA

Advises the G20, the UN and the World Bank on AI ethics, from a Harvard applied-ethics PhD.

Sh. Mikaeel Ahmed SmithFaith/Ethics

Sh. Mikaeel Ahmed Smith

Co-Founder

Miraj Collective

Dallas, TX

A scholar trained in Damascus, coaching founders on the emotional intelligence nobody teaches them.

Yusuf Abdul-QadirTech/AI

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir

Co-Founder

AI Sustainable Development Group

Washington, DC

Ran an ACLU chapter, then wrote product policy at Meta. Now teaches AI & Justice at Syracuse.

Zaurbek TsoroevTech/AI

Zaurbek Tsoroev

CEO

Codebender

Dubai, UAE

A UCLA engineer building the AI back end for companies scaling past $5M ARR.

Dr. Mehboob AliHealth & Wellness

Dr. Mehboob Ali

Chief People Officer

Qalam Institute

Dallas, TX

Over fifteen years inside a Silicon Valley tech company, and a licensed counselor. His subject is AI and mental wellness.

Othman AltalibFaith/Ethics

Othman Altalib

Co-Founder

Miraj Collective

Washington, DC

Ex-Google strategist, ex-IBM consultant, eight-time triathlete. Now he coaches the founders.

Dr. Tarek AlyHealthcare

Dr. Tarek Aly

Chief Medical Officer

Mosaic Psychiatry

Daytona, FL

Harvard-trained child psychiatrist. He helped write Boston Children’s manual for problematic screen use.

Bakhtawer BalochHealthcare

Bakhtawer Baloch

Founder

Clairdoc

New York, NY

Bootstrapped a billing company to 400+ doctors, then built the AI that catches the denial first.

Fares DahwalTech/AI

Fares Dahwal

Founder

NasTech

New York, NY

Builds the NIST-aligned security programs that banks get audited against.

Raheela Ahsan, Esq.Law/Policy

Raheela Ahsan, Esq.

Founder, Attorney

Ahsan Law Firm

Dallas, TX

Appointed by the governor of Texas to a state regulatory board. Economics, then finance, then law.

Ozair HasanTech/AI

Ozair Hasan

Head of IT

Qalam Institute

Dallas, TX

Graduated Qalam’s seminary, then built AI at Yaqeen Institute. Now he runs Qalam’s technology.

Ashequl HoqueFaith/Ethics

Ashequl Hoque

Co-Founder

Miraj Collective

Dallas, TX

Miraj Collective and served as Executive Director at Qalam. Now he writes the checks as well as the curriculum.

Sami KabirFinance

Sami Kabir

Regional Vice President

Guidance Residential

Twenty years of financing homes for Muslim families without interest. He leads Guidance Residential's multi-state sales teams.

Mohamed KararFinance

Mohamed Karar

Venture Partner

Launch Africa Ventures

San Francisco, CA

Helped back 100+ startups across 21 African countries, the continent’s missing seed round.

Faris KhanHealth & Wellness

Faris Khan

Founder

BF Workout

Washington, DC

Nearly 400,000 people train with Brother Faris. He coaches them like athletes, not gym members.

Enushe KhanLaw/Policy

Enushe Khan

BizOps

EvenUp

New York, NY

Goldman Sachs to venture capital to legal AI. Each move further from the safe one.

Cyrus McGoldrickMedia

Cyrus McGoldrick

Founder and Host

The Young Uncles Podcast

Istanbul, Turkiye

Ran civil rights for CAIR-NY. Now broadcasts from Istanbul to millions of views.

Jawad MourabetHealth & Wellness

Jawad Mourabet

Co-Founder

Velto Pickleball Club

New York, NY

Left McKinsey to build NYC’s first fully automated pickleball club, the one hosting Friday night.

Javad MushtaqTech/AI

Javad Mushtaq

Founder & CEO

ImpactLab

New York, NY

Norway's top leader under 35, three years running. Now he runs NYC's official AI accelerator, backing the next 165 startups.

Hamdan AzharTech/AI

Hamdan Azhar

Data Scientist

Brex

Fifteen years finding human stories in strange datasets, from emoji and payments to culture, community, and the data of a human life.

Omar NassimiBusiness/Strategy

Omar Nassimi

Co-Founder

Pvblic House

Washington, DC

Built the room in the DMV where spiritually rooted builders finally found each other.

Yusuf OmarContent

Yusuf Omar

Founder

Seen.tv

Covered the Syrian war on a phone. Then taught 750 newsroom journalists to do the same.

Hussam QutubFinance

Hussam Qutub

Senior Vice President, National Sales Manager

Guidance Residential

Vienna, VA

Joined Guidance Residential in 2003 and built its brand. Now he runs national sales for the largest Shariah-compliant home financier in the US.

Jay SadiqClimate Tech

Jay Sadiq

Founder & CEO

FortyGuard

Washington, DC

Maps a city’s heat at human height, from Abu Dhabi, one of the world’s hottest cities.

Shaniyat TuraniMedia

Shaniyat Turani

Investigative Reporter

GrayStak Media

New York, NY

Reported from Lebanon and Palestine during the 2024 war. Then traced covert U.S. weapons shipments through JFK.

Dr. Mohamed AbuTalebFaith/Ethics

Dr. Mohamed AbuTaleb

Director of AI Research

Yaqeen Institute

An MIT PhD in electrical engineering and an Alimiyyah degree. Lead author of Yaqeen’s fiqh of artificial intelligence.

Samy Harmoush, Esq.Law/Policy

Samy Harmoush, Esq.

Founder & Managing Attorney

Workers' Advocate Law Group PC

Worked both sides at two litigation firms, then founded one that acts only for workers.

Suhan JunaidFinance

Suhan Junaid

Chief Investment Officer

Junaid Ventures

New York, NY

Seven years on Wall Street, on deals worth more than $20 billion. Now he writes the checks, in real estate and in venture.

Yousef SalemTech/AI

Yousef Salem

COO

Ummah Accelerator

London, UK

Left NHS residency a year in to build the AI that answers the phone at private clinics.

Naureen RahmanLaw/Policy

Naureen Rahman

Director of Development & Marketing

Muslim Public Affairs Council

Eighteen years at Homeland Security, leading its policy work on face recognition and AI.

Najla ZaidiMedia

Najla Zaidi

Director

MPAC Hollywood Bureau

Award winning screenwriter and AFI directing fellow. Now she works on how Hollywood writes Muslims.

Yasmeen TadiaBusiness/Strategy

Yasmeen Tadia

CEO, Founder

Make Your Life Sweeter

Patented a cotton candy pop in 2014. Now she is building AI portrait experiences.

Haroon ChouderyTech/AI

Haroon Choudery

CEO

AI Ready

New York

Came from rural Pakistan to Brooklyn in 1998. Now he teaches organisations to use AI.

Juvaria ShahidLaw/Policy

Juvaria Shahid

Legal Fellow

Tech Justice Law

Two years a software engineer, then Harvard Law — now she holds the industry she came from to account.

Mostafa ElBermawyMarketing

Mostafa ElBermawy

Founder & CEO

Goodie AI

New York, NY

Trained as an archaeologist. Now he works out how brands get found inside ChatGPT.

Hashim SyedTech/AI

Hashim Syed

AI GTM Lead, Startups

Google Cloud

New York, NY

Sits between frontier models and the founders building on them, at Google for Startups.

Tamara ZeidanLaw/Policy

Tamara Zeidan

Head of Innovation / Director of Innovation

DC- Deparment

Washington, DC

She built DC's first Office of Innovation from scratch, overseeing AI transformation.

Sana AliMedia

Sana Ali

Co-Founder

Samosas & Soulmates

Social marketing at MTV, BET, iHeartRadio and WWE. Now she co-founds the events where the diaspora meets in person.

Shaden AwadTech/AI

Shaden Awad

Founder & CEO

QUWA Labs

New York, NY

Founder of QUWA Labs and a former Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase engineer. She teaches non-technical founders to actually build.

Muskan EffendiFinance

Muskan Effendi

Senior Associate

OdysseyRE

New York, NY

Weighs reinsurance risk across Bermuda, London and North America, and builds the AI to do it faster. Miss Universe Pakistan finalist.

Mark GonzalesBusiness/Strategy

Mark Gonzales

Senior Director, Institutional Strategy

Institute of Narrative Growth

Washington, DC

Builds public interest platforms across technology, capital and culture. Appointments at Stanford and the United Nations.

Mohamed Ali HafezTech/AI

Mohamed Ali Hafez

Adjunct Faculty, AI & Climate

Johns Hopkins University

Washington, DC

Teaches AI and climate at Johns Hopkins, and hosts the Beyond the Byte podcast. Founded ByteWise, an ethical technology strategy firm.

Sh. Nouh KawkabEducation

Sh. Nouh Kawkab

Founder

Kawkab Institute

New York, NY

Imam and Director at New York's largest Islamic center, and teacher to more than 700 students. Now he trains the next generation of reciters.

Sania KhanBusiness/Strategy

Sania Khan

Chief Economist

Becoming You Labs

Ran the country's largest employment data program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now she measures what AI is doing to work.

Ramy NoamanTech/AI

Ramy Noaman

Co-Founder

Habibi Tech

New York, NY

The youngest delegate from any country to negotiate the UN Sustainable Development Goals now builds AI for Meta and AstraZeneca.

Osamah SalehBusiness/Strategy

Osamah Saleh

Chief Operating Officer

Orphans In Need USA

Washington, DC

Runs operations for Orphans In Need USA, and a khateeb at ADAMS Center. Trained more than 500 professionals across Fortune 500 companies.


Sessions

9:00 AM
9:30 AM
9:45 AM
10:40 AM
11:10 AM5 at once

PanelMain Hall

The People's Mandate: Governing and Building AI from Queens to Cairo

AI policy is being written in very different rooms: a city council chamber in Queens, a parliament in Cairo, and an accelerator operating under a mandate from New York City government.

Mod Javad Mushtaq · Honorable Sahar Albazar · Julie Won · Tamara Zeidan

PanelMecca

Building Physical Brands in a Digital World

The most talked about Muslim brands of the last three years are not apps. They are a pickleball club in Red Hook and a camping trip in Death Valley. Two founders who left McKinsey and Meta to build things you have to show up for, in a market that rewards things you scroll past.

Jawad Mourabet · Faris Khan · Yasmeen Tadia · Mod Juvaria Shahid

PanelMedina

Fiqh of AI & Emerging Technologies

When an AI orders the wrong medication, denies the loan, or drives the car that hits someone, who answers? Not the machine. Islamic law does not let a tool carry blame, and it does not let legal immunity stand in for innocence either.

Mod Cyrus McGoldrick · Dr. Mohamed AbuTaleb · Sh. Dr. Yasir Qadhi · Sh. AbdulNasir Jangda · Shaykh Rasoul

WorkshopAl-QudsLimited access

Masterclass: Turn Your Idea Into 8M Views

A production studio used to be a room, a crew and a budget. It is now a laptop and a workflow, and most people are running it badly. This is a real content operation opened up end to end, from my own experience creating Arzi's Dream, the first Muslim AI anime.

Zaurbek Tsoroev

FiresideMamdanistan

50°C AND ZERO GRAVITY

The most ambitious money in technology is pointed at orbit, while cities across the Muslim world are already reaching summers the human body was not built for.

Humna Khan · Jay Sadiq

12:25 PM5 at once

PanelMain Hall

What to Build Next?

Entering 2027 the map is drawn. The frontier models are American and Chinese, the compute is leased from a handful of companies, the Gulf is spending $148 billion to rent a seat at the table, and the products two billion Muslims live inside, the phone, the feed, the model, the bank, were built for the wealthiest hundred million and route everyone else through systems designed to extract from them.

Mod Enushe Khan · Ashequl Hoque · Mohamed Karar · Amany Killawi · Chris Blauvelt

TalkMecca

Owning Your AI Story Before Someone Else Writes It

For twenty years, a brand's story lived in a search engine, and an entire industry learned to optimize for it. That's over. Today, the first answer someone gets about your company, your product, or your work comes from a model, and you don't get a vote unless you show up in the sources it trusts.

Powered byGoodie AI

Mostafa ElBermawy

FiresideMedina

AI in Mental Health Treatment

Millions of people are already telling a chatbot things they have never told a human, and nobody has decided whether that is care. A Harvard-trained child psychiatrist who helped write Boston Children's manual on problematic screen use sits with a licensed counselor who spent fifteen years inside a Silicon Valley tech company.

Dr. Tarek Aly · Dr. Mehboob Ali

WorkshopAl-QudsLimited access

Masterclass: You are the Newsroom

When newsrooms cut the desks that verify claims and answer engines summarize a war without sending a reader to the people who reported it, the record of what happened to our communities depends on whoever was there with a phone.

Yusuf Omar

WorkshopMamdanistan

How to Sue Your Boss

Most people who have a claim never learn they had one, and most of the leverage is spent long before anybody files anything. The severance agreement with a deadline on it, the performance review that appears a week after you asked for somewhere to pray, the clause in the offer letter nobody reads until they are leaving: this workshop is about what to do in the hour each of those lands.

Powered byWorkers' Advocate Law Group

Samy Harmoush, Esq.

1:15 PM5 at once

FiresideMain Hall

Inside the AI Industrial Complex

The same systems marketed as the future of human flourishing are being financed, trained and deployed in ways most of the people building them never see whole.

Mod Hamdan Azhar · Dr. Waleed Kadous · Dr. Mona Hamdy

WorkshopMecca

Getting Started with AI Agents

Almost everyone in this room has used a chatbot. Far fewer have handed over a piece of work and had something go away, take twenty steps on its own and come back with it finished, which is a different skill and a much less forgiving one.

Powered byAI Ready

Haroon Choudery · Faris Khan

WorkshopMedina

Building the Incorruptible Company

Every founder starts with conviction. Most lose it, not through a single bad decision but through a slow drift, deal by deal, term sheet by term sheet, until the company that once stood for something becomes another vehicle for extraction.

Powered byMiraj Collective

Sh. Mikaeel Ahmed Smith · Othman Altalib

FiresideAl-Quds

Future of Fiqh: Using AI to Issue Fatwas

Somebody in your community asked an AI a fiqh question this morning and acted on the answer. This fireside is about whether that should worry you, and what a seminary does about it.

Powered byQalam Institute

Sh. AbdulNasir Jangda · Mod Ozair Hasan

PanelMamdanistan

Reimagining NYC & Urban Innovation

A city that can route a package across five boroughs in an afternoon still cannot approve a benefits application in a season. New York is running its own flagship AI accelerator, has a new administration, and is deciding in real time whether technology will make the city work for the people who hold it up or simply make it more legible to the people who already own it.

Powered byOneNYC

Mod Yusuf Abdul-Qadir · Yasser Salem · Javad Mushtaq

2:05 PM4 at once
2:55 PM4 at once
3:45 PM3 at once
4:45 PM
5:30 PM
See the full program

Stages, prayer times and the lunch hour, laid out by room. Published as each session is confirmed.


Stand with us · seats are filling fast

Stand on the
Right Side of AI.

Join the people who refuse to build the wrong future.

New York City · September 26, 2026

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