Meet Dr. Alaa Murabit, a physician and Founder & CEO of RAIS (Resilient Architecture for Integration & Security). Her work spans security, child and adolescent flourishing, and new financing models, including faith-based finance. At 21, she founded Voice of Libyan Women during Libya’s revolution, working with communities and religious leaders to advance women’s rights and inclusive security. She created the first zakat-approved philanthropic collaborative dedicated exclusively to maternal and newborn health, For Mama (since evolved into the independent organization Every Pregnancy). The model she created has mobilized over US$130 million across three Ramadan campaigns so far. She also conceived and co-created The Beginnings Fund, a US$600 million maternal and newborn health collaborative. Based in Cambridge, MA, she is a co-architect and advocate of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Board Chair of Girls Not Brides, and a Commissioner on the Lancet–Georgetown Commission on Faith, Trust & Health.
What faith(s), if any, do you practice? How does your tradition and/or spiritual practice inspire or influence you as an innovator?
I’m Muslim, and very proudly so. The most interesting thing about faith for me is that it has made me more comfortable with risk and failure. A lot of people worry about what others will think of them. For me, there’s one entity I’m accountable to beyond myself, and that has been incredibly freeing. If I’m put in a position, I assume it’s because God felt it would either benefit me or I would benefit it. Either I’ll learn from it or I’ll be able to contribute to it. From an innovation perspective, that’s been incredibly helpful.
Islam has two domains: ibadat, or worship, and mu’amalat, or worldly dealings, which include finance, governance, trade, and social welfare. In worship, the default is that you do what is prescribed. In worldly dealings, it’s the other way around: everything is permissible unless it is specifically prohibited. That makes it a design space for institutions, contracts, and financing, and the tradition gives you a lot of license to build.
The interesting question is method. All of our faiths have boundaries. In Islam, the method is disciplined reasoning applied to circumstances the text doesn’t anticipate, and that’s how Islam has always innovated. The great Muslim scientists and mathematicians innovated while honoring the maqasid al-sharia, the higher objectives of Islamic law: protecting life, intellect, faith, lineage, and wealth.
So you start with an objective. For me, at times, that’s been: how do we preserve the lives of mothers and newborns? Then you ask what structure best serves that today. Sometimes we limit ourselves by treating innovation as the outcome itself. It’s not. It’s a means to an end.
I’ve never looked at any faith as restrictive. Our work on Faith for Child Flourishing comes from the reality that we all see divinity in each other, and all of our faiths speak to the importance of children’s flourishing and futures. I firmly believe we’re all climbing the same mountain by different paths. So how do we work with each other and use our faiths in a positive way, when so many people try to use faith negatively?
What are you currently working on?
At RAIS, we work on what makes countries secure before a crisis hits. Right now, that takes us in three directions. The first is AI. We’re looking at how investment in AI can unlock investment in water security, agriculture, and human capital development. The second is child and adolescent flourishing. Through Faith for Child Flourishing, we work with faith communities to help shape national priorities for children. Through The Deciding Decade, we’re asking what changes when countries treat investment in adolescent girls as central to national prosperity and security. The third is innovative financing, including faith-aligned finance. We’re exploring how zakat, the Islamic practice of obligatory almsgiving, could be released when agreed conditions are met. We’re also working with faith communities to build financing facilities, find ways for funds to invest together, and gather better evidence on what works.
What can we find you doing when you’re not working?
Reading, as my kids will attest. I used to read only paper books, and I need to get back to buying them. I switched to a Kindle because I didn’t want to check a bag when I traveled, and the number of books I carried always meant a super heavy carry-on.
I have ten brothers and sisters, so my social life is largely consumed by family, which is quite nice. I also have two very young kids. Last year I went on a bender about needing a hobby. Then I realized my hobby is hanging out with my kids and whatever they’re into that week. I get to see all these things and relive childhood. These are the only years I get to be fully absorbed in their world, and that’s kind of cool.
What is piquing your curiosity these days?
Three things. The first is aging. My grandmother passed away in January, and I’ve given a lot of thought to what it looks like to age with dignity and to treat others with dignity as they age. The numbers on care and aging are dismal, especially in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, where people are often most in need. What do we owe our elders? There’s a lot written on grief, adulthood, and childhood, but much less on aging that isn’t policy-focused.
The second is what AI will actually mean for all of us. I’ve been reading a lot of Yuval Noah Harari, and I saw a video where he said that when you buy milk, the cow doesn’t know you’ve paid for it. As sophisticated as these tools are becoming, many of us will be like the cow: we won’t understand the decisions being made about us. The bigger concern for me is security. We already see how machine learning can affect different communities, and I worry about how pronounced that will become. I also worry about what AI will do to human hubris and the decisions we make.
The third is loneliness. We talk about the community we grew up with nostalgically, but there’s a lot of truth to it. There was a sense of community, however flawed. The world has technically never been safer for our kids, and yet most of us won’t let them go hang out at the park. I think about how freely I played growing up, and how much harder it feels to give my own kids that same freedom. Where will they find that kind of community? What can we do to make more room for it in their lives?
Is there something you’d like help on?
There are so many ways. One very tangible way is to engage with us on Faith for Child Flourishing and share what child flourishing means in your own faith. It’s an interfaith movement with many different partners.
Second, I’m having a lot of conversations about community and loneliness, and I’m curious where other people’s heads are on that.
Third, I want to know how people of faith are exploring AI. I don’t mean day-to-day ChatGPT use. What implications are you seeing in your community, your congregation, your family, and your work? What are you wary about? That’s become an area I’m a bit obsessed with.
You can find Alaa via LinkedIn or her website, and watch her TED talk, “What my religion really says about women.”
Meet an innoFaither is our series to introduce the inspiring optimists in the innoFaith world and what they’re working on and thinking about. We hope it helps you find and engage with each other across the network to advance faith-rooted social innovation and interfaith collaboration for social impact. Or just meet some cool people. Find the full series at innofaith.org/meet-an-innofaither.