Most Muslims looking for mental health support find good therapists and trusted imams. What they don’t find is the two of them coordinating. The translation work falls to the client.
A therapist might say "set boundaries with your mother-in-law" while an imam says "patience with family is ibadah." A therapist might encourage exploring difficult emotions while an imam says "make du'a and trust in Allah's plan." Neither is wrong. But without coordination, the client is left holding two contradicting maps to the same destination.
"The word 'zaha' means to bloom, to flourish, to come into light. That's what healing looks like when faith and science work together."
Zaha Health was built to end that compromise. We pair a licensed Muslim therapist with a vetted imam on a shared care plan for each client. The therapist handles evidence-based clinical treatment — CBT, DBT, EMDR, motivational interviewing. The imam handles spiritual guidance — processing grief through a faith lens, finding religious permission to heal, reconnecting with worship after crisis.
And for the first time, they actually talk to each other. They coordinate. They align. The client gets one coherent plan — not competing opinions.
therapist + imam
therapist + imam care model
for real-life struggles
We're building the first productized coordinated care model for Muslim mental health — clinical rigor and spiritual depth, working together as one team instead of two.
Zaha Health launches April 2027, delivering coordinated care nationwide via telehealth. We're currently assembling our founding provider team of licensed Muslim therapists and vetted imams who share this vision.
Why I’m building this
The gap between therapy and faith isn’t abstract to me. I’ve watched it up close — in friends, in family, in conversations after jumu’ah, in the messages Muslims send when they don’t know who else to ask.
The pattern is always the same. Someone finds a good therapist. They find an imam they trust. Both genuinely care. Neither knows what the other is saying. The person in the middle ends up doing the translation work themselves — clinical language into spiritual language and back again — while trying to actually get better.
It struck me that this can’t be how our community is meant to navigate hard seasons. Quietly, alone, carrying the contradictions on their own.
Zaha is what should exist for Muslims who need care. A licensed therapist and a vetted imam, on one shared plan, talking to each other so the person in the middle doesn’t have to. That’s the whole thing.
"I'm building Zaha because Muslims deserve care that honors both the clinical and the spiritual — without being asked to choose between the two. A therapist and an imam, coordinated on one plan, isn't a gimmick. It's what should have existed all along."
— Faizan Farukh, Founder