Dear Singapore Muslims, We’ve Been Measuring the Wrong Things | Karyawan
Dear Singapore Muslims, We’ve Been Measuring the Wrong Things
Khai Asyraf
29 May 2026
8 min read
Qayyum (not his real name) did not see it coming. Not really.
Ten years in the same industry. Survived two restructurings. When the letter arrived, it was not quite a shock. It was more like something he had been careful never to fully imagine, because imagining it felt like manifesting it.
The first few weeks, he kept his routine. Woke at the same time. Dressed the same way. Told himself he was exploring options. His wife knew. His mother asked every Sunday.
The mosque became somewhere he went more often but sat with less certainty. He was not sure what he was asking for anymore.
When work falls apart, we worry about whether we can find another job. But we also start to ponder what our worth was tied to all along.
What unsettled him most was not the fear. It was the groundedness underneath it. The freefall he had been bracing for never fully arrived. Something was holding. He could not put a name to it then.
A lot of us have stood where Qayyum was standing. And we walked that path without saying very much about it, because the story we tell about career disruption in Singapore does not leave room for the burden we actually carry. Upskill. Reskill. Adapt. Tak habis-habis (It is endless).
We Have Been Measuring the Wrong Things
The system we inherited taught us what a good career looks like. Salary increments. Job titles. The five-year plan. Stability above everything else.
None of these are wrong. But they were never meant to decide our worth and place in society. We learned them, internalised them, and stopped asking whether they actually fit. So when disruption comes, they have nothing to say except how far you have fallen. A career is not a life. But somewhere along the way, we let it become one.
Faith gives us the language to describe what the economic system cannot measure. Deep down, we know this. We just have not been saying it out loud.
Rizq (sustenance) is not your salary. It is time with people you love. It is health you only notice when it wavers. It is clarity, rest, and the relationships that hold when the professional ones dissolve.
Retrenchment or layoffs can take away your income. But it cannot take away your rizq; it only changes its form.
That sounds simple until you are sitting with potential debt at 2 am, wondering if you can still provide for your family. Until you are typing a message to a few close friends asking if anyone can help, and then closing your WhatsApp without sending it.
I know. This does not make the bills disappear. It does not mean we stop looking for what comes next. But it changes how we carry ourselves through it.
That is the difference between losing everything, and losing one thing that was never fully yours to keep.
The Framework Nobody Is Naming
Ustaz Mizi Wahid offered a distinction that many of us know in theory, but rarely apply to our working lives.
Wealth is pursued. But rizq is bestowed.
We can chase opportunities. We can make plans. We can do the work. But only Allah decrees what reaches us, and when. As Ustaz Mizi has written1, the greatest thinkers of our time understood cause and effect, effort and reward. What they missed was the Source.
"And there is no creature on earth except that upon Allah is its provision." (Surah Hud, 11:6)
And provision, as Ustaz Mizi reminds us, is not limited to what appears in your bank account. There is something the economists cannot model and the career coaches cannot teach.
Barakah. The blessing that makes a little go a long way. When your time expands beyond logic. When peace fills the spaces where anxiety used to live.
That is where tawakkul comes in. Tawakkul is not giving up. It is doing what is yours to do, then trusting Allah with what you cannot control. Send that application. Make the call. Ask for help. Try again. But do not attach your worth to the outcome.
Effort is your test. The outcome is His mercy.
The question worth sitting with is why we keep leaving this part of our faith at the door.
The Story We Protect
There is real pressure in being the person who made it. In our community, stability is never only about you. It is also proof. Proof that your parents’ sacrifices meant something. Proof that you did not waste the opportunities they prayed (and paid) for. Proof that you are now someone others can rely on.
The degree. The stable job. The family provided for. The HDB paid down. This is the story we inherited about success. A story your parents believed in, your community celebrated, and somewhere along the way, you started believing it defined you too.
So, when a career falls apart, it is not just your finances that shake. It is that very story. And everyone who believed in it alongside you.
The struggle goes unspoken. You say you are exploring opportunities. You smile at family gatherings. You do not tell your mother the full picture because you cannot hold her worry on top of your own.
This is the silence that costs us.
The early Muslim community was not built on private resilience. It was built on looking out for one another, on shared risk, on refusing to let a brother or sister carry difficulty alone. That spirit is not gone. But we have not brought it into our professional lives yet. That is a gap we need to close.
What I Am Still Learning
I started working at 17. My education and career path have never been linear. I have made peace with that. Mostly.
Through The Big Pivot initiative, I have sat with professionals navigating challenging times. And if I am honest, I have been navigating my own at the same time.
What I keep noticing, in others and in myself, is that we are rarely as lost as we feel. We do not always need a guide or a new direction. Sometimes, we just need the words to make sense of where we are.
The pivot that hit hardest had nothing to do with a job title. Fatherhood caught me off guard. It changed what enough means. Responsibility. Fear. Love. Surrender.
Providing became real. It had faces. It had bedtime routines. Diaper changes. School fees.
It had small hands reaching for you, asking to be carried even on days you felt unsure of yourself.
And the answer I needed was never somewhere else. It was already there in what I had always believed, waiting to be taken seriously outside of prayer times.
The Conversation We Keep Deferring
Qayyum eventually found what had been holding him through those early weeks.
It was not a job offer. It was not one conversation that changed his mind. It was the realisation that his worth had never lived inside his job title, even when he had spent a decade acting like it did.
He did not find a new job overnight. But he stopped carrying it alone. He told one person the full picture. That was enough to begin. He is now exploring what it looks like to offer his expertise independently, taking small steps toward consulting work, and seeking guidance from those who have made a similar move before him. It is not certain. But it is movement. And it feels like his own.
Maybe that is where it starts for all of us. Not with a plan. Not with a pivot. Just one honest conversation with someone you trust.
We have to stop turning every career setback into a private test of dignity. It is not a test of character to need help. It is not weakness to say you are struggling. Sometimes it is unintended ego, not strength, that keeps us silent.
Because this is the conversation Singapore Muslims are not having enough of. Not faith as a coping mechanism. Not faith as a last resort. Faith as the first lens. Before that performative LinkedIn post. Before we pretend we are fine.
We already have the language.
We just need to start using it out loud.
"Ya Allah, may the hearts of our ummah be rid of the shame that keeps us silent. May we remember that our rizq was never lost, only changed in form. And may we have the courage to practice tawakkul, to do what is ours to do, and to trust what You have already placed within us."
About the Author
Khai Asyraf started The Big Pivot, a ground-up initiative supporting Muslim professionals through career disruption, entrepreneurship, parenthood, and identity. He serves on the board of SMCCI and works across media, community-building, and Gulf-ASEAN business conversations.