A Keynote on Muslim Nonprofit Collaboration

30 years building Islamic Relief USA from $0 to $1.3 billion raised — and the single throughline that explains every win: nothing was done alone.

The 2nd Annual AMCF Nonprofit Summit opened with a question that quietly threaded every session that followed: what does it actually take to build a Muslim nonprofit sector that lasts? The answer, delivered by one of the people who helped build the largest Muslim relief organization in America, was almost embarrassingly simple. Collaborate. Not as a strategic option — as a survival principle.

In 34 minutes, Anwar Khan traced a path from the four waves of Muslim immigration to America, through the Quranic mandate to be united by the rope of Allah, to a live challenge daring the room to recite their own mission statements out loud. It closed with a phrase that has since become the most-quoted line of the summit: Chai and Kebab Diplomacy.

“I Didn’t Do Anything. We Did.”

Of every project across 30 years and $1.3 billion raised, Anwar could not name one done alone. The grammar of nonprofit leadership, he argued, has to be plural. The instinct to claim individual credit is precisely the instinct that keeps Muslim organizations small.

We need to remember the past where we came from. We owe it to our spiritual brothers and sisters.— Anwar Khan

Firefighting vs. Farming

One of the most useful frames of the keynote was the distinction between organizations that spend their lives reacting and those that learn to plant. Anwar described his own arc honestly: most of the 1990s spent firefighting, a little farming in the 2000s, and the last decade mostly farming — which is when the overwhelming majority of that $1.3 billion was actually raised. Harvest time, he reminded the room, is not when you plant the seeds.

The Pact of Virtue

Before he was a prophet, Muhammad ﷺ joined an alliance with non-Muslim tribes in Mecca to protect the weaker among them — and later said he would honor it again. The model for collaboration with non-Muslim allies, Anwar argued, is 1,400 years old. Muslim nonprofits do not need to invent coalition-building. They need to remember it.

How Collaboration Defeated an Anti-Muslim Bill

In 2017, a bill was introduced targeting Islamic Relief, with the apparent intent to follow with further measures. Anwar’s organization didn’t have the standing to defeat it alone. What they had was a years-deep relationship with non-Muslim peers in a coalition of international NGOs — relationships built by showing up, helping, and investing in others long before there was anything to ask for. The amendment was withdrawn. That outcome, he argued, was not what collaboration yielded. That outcome was what collaboration looks like when the crisis arrives and the relationships are already there.

Chai and Kebab Diplomacy

When I get to know you the first time, I have chai. If there’s a small problem, we fix it over chai. If it’s more serious, we fix it over kebabs. I can’t think of a single partnership I built that I didn’t build over kebabs.— Anwar Khan

The argument is deceptively practical: the relationships that carry organizations through political threats, funding crises, and reputational attacks aren’t built when you need them. They’re built years earlier, over food, when there’s nothing on the table but the relationship itself.

The 3rd Annual AMCF Nonprofit Summit is in Detroit on September 3, 2026. Theme: Community Building.