The moment that changed everything for Salman Hassan wasn’t planned. He went to the Arizona State campus protests in the spring of 2024 to stand in solidarity, not to work. A friend asked him to record what was happening. Then she asked him to live-stream it. By the end of the day, his coverage had become one of the most-watched livestreams of that day and night — and he had stayed on camera through every arrest, until the last person was taken into custody.
The next day, people started telling him, “You’re really good at this.“ You have a particular way of telling stories.
That was the inflection point. The skills he’d quietly been building for years — photography, videography, video editing — collided with a moment when stories were being told, untold, and contested in real time. Kufi Productions was born out of that collision.
This week on the Muslim Philanthropy Podcast, AMCF Co-Founder Muhi Khwaja sat down with Salman Hassan, Co-Founder and CEO of Kufi Productions, to talk about the path that brought him there, the meaning behind the name, and what he’s building.
A name for the whole ummah
Most people assume Kufi Productions was named after a single visual — someone saw a kufi, the light bulb went off. The actual story is more textured. Salman grew up moving through different masjids and watching what men wore on their heads in each one. The Turkish kufi looks one way, the Pakistani topi another, the Malaysian different still. Even the American kufi — call it a baseball cap if you want — is a regional expression of the same idea. The same garment, the same gesture, expressed differently in every culture that wears it.
“I wanted something that represents the world,” Salman said. “The humanity. The different people that exist on this earth.”
The name is the thesis. Kufi Productions is built around the idea that the ummah is not monolithic, that diverse Muslim experiences deserve to be told accurately and broadly, and that representation in media isn’t optional — it’s “essential to being able to live your life, and other people live theirs, with dignity and justice and human connection.”
A non-linear path
Salman was born and raised in Dallas, moved to Phoenix in 2011 for undergrad at Arizona State, and now lives there with his wife and three daughters. His undergraduate degree was in biomedical engineering — the plan was medical research, medical devices. He spent his first year out of college in pharmaceuticals in Los Angeles, then five years in the medical device industry as a field analyst reporting device malfunctions to the FDA, then three years in patient advocacy and insurance.
Halfway through that arc, he picked up a camera in LA, took photography classes, and started shooting. Short-form video came next. Then video editing — increasingly professionally. He went back to school for an MBA at SMU, then landed a consulting role at PwC, where he spent another three years.
He describes it as a left-brain/right-brain split. The analytical training carried him through the corporate roles. The creative work was the quieter parallel track, building steadily through nonprofit projects and personal work until 2024, when the two lines finally converged in the decision to leave consulting and build Kufi Productions full-time.
The five barriers Kufi Productions is built to address
On the podcast, Salman walked through the specific gaps that motivate the organization’s design:
- Limited access to professional-grade production resources for Muslim and other underrepresented creators
- A shortage of culturally informed storytellers and journalists to tell those communities’ stories with accuracy
- The absence of platforms that elevate underrepresented voices — the Netflixes and Prime Videos of the world largely decide what reaches mainstream screens, and the alternatives (he name-checked Watermelon Pictures, the distributor of Palestinian and Arab films) are too few
- The difficulty of connecting audiences who want authentic representation with the creators producing it
- And underneath all of these, the resource gap that keeps Muslim and other underrepresented creators from professionalizing the work even when the talent is there
Kufi Productions isn’t trying to be the next Netflix. It’s a creative media collective — emphasis on collective — designed to be infrastructure that storytellers across the field can use.
Two flagship initiatives
Kufi Khan, an inaugural storytelling summit, is Kufi Productions’ anchor event. The goal: bring together storytellers and media experts across the spectrum — journalists, filmmakers, fashion designers, graphic designers, animators, anyone whose work touches media — to celebrate one another’s projects, platform them, and learn from each other. The summit will include workshops led by industry veterans with 10+ years of experience in the field.
The Circle is the year-round complement. It’s the membership community Kufi Productions is building — accessible 24/7, with library resources, mentors, paid project opportunities, and pathways to funding. The premise is simple: events are good, but they end. Community is what carries the work forward.
Kufi Productions also produces its own podcast, The Treaded Path, which interviews Muslim professionals across diverse industries about their career journeys and the accountability they bring to their work. It’s a deliberate resource for job seekers, mentees, and anyone trying to figure out their next step.
The five- and ten-year vision
Salman is candid about the gap between what’s happening on the ground and what an entrepreneur dreams about. The work is the constant attempt to close that gap. The vision he named on the podcast: a world where underrepresented voices are represented as they should be, where harmful stereotypes are actively challenged, where cultures and histories are preserved properly, and where storytelling becomes a tool for shifting public discourse — and, eventually, policy.
He also offered a sharp observation about the work that needs to happen within Muslim communities themselves: “Muslims, even Muslims, we don’t know much about each other and our experiences and who we are. How can we expect non-Muslims to know about us if we can’t first understand each other?”
How to support
You can learn more about Kufi Productions at kufiproductions.com — there’s a newsletter signup pop-up on the home page, and they’re active on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If you’re a Muslim creator, journalist, or media professional interested in joining The Circle, the website is the front door. If you’re a donor interested in supporting media infrastructure for underrepresented Muslim voices, our AMCF team can help facilitate a grant from your donor-advised fund.
Listen to the full conversation with Salman Hassan on the Muslim Philanthropy Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
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