The 7 Best Global Muslim Companies of the Year

What do these companies have to do with each other? These are our 2020 Global Muslim Companies of the Year. Our forum from December 27th-29th is focused on Global Muslim Social & Spiritual Impact, and each of these companies has excelled this year in not only creating impact for Muslim communities but also in living into the global Muslim market. Each of these companies started between 2012 and 2015 and have quickly grown into global brands.

Wardah Books - Singapore

Wardah Books is a beautiful book store in the heart of Singapore right next to Masjid Sultan, but its reach is truly global as their founder Ibrahim Tahir has worked to curate the best selection of English language Islamic books anywhere in the world. Ibrahim has worked to bring together books from publishers in every part of the English speaking Muslim world, from the United States and Canada, to South Africa, the UK, and throughout Southeast Asia. They also have created a unique resource in their almost daily blogs about new books, and products. This might be one of the most important companies on this list, as it is helping Muslims to understand our own worldview in an era of so much confusion.

Yaqeen Institute - Dallas, Texas

In just a few years, Imam Omar Suleiman and his team at the Yaqeen Institute have grown this think tank and media production house into one of the world's top go-to resources about Islam on the internet. They have a team of SEO experts working with them to win back 400 of the top internet search terms about Islam and Muslims from Islamophobes, and they also worked with Google to better define what is good content beyond the normal bounds of SEO, which changed Google's larger SEO policies. While also producing beautiful content like their "Angels" series that reach around the world with millions of views.

Fashion Valet - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Fashion Valet founded by the husband and wife team of Vivy Yusof and Fadzarudin Shah Anuar on a TV show pitch competition in Malaysia in 2012 has now grown into Asia's largest modest fashion platform featuring designers from throughout Southeast Asia, with more than 6.4 million dollars raised through series C in venture capital funding. They have also grown their own in house Duck group clothing and cosmetic brands to huge partnerships this year with the likes of Disney and others. They also are ecosystem builders as Vivy Yusof features products sent to her from around the region on her Instagram stories, where she has nearly 2 million followers. This while also being featured in their reality tv show called, "Love, Vivy."

LaunchGood - Detroit, Michigan / Global Team

LaunchGood is one of the first truly global Muslim platforms, with more than 20,000 campaigns almost 1 million users, across 145 countries. It took them five years to reach 100 million dollars raised on their platform in February of 2020, now just ten months later they are nearing 200 million dollars raised on LaunchGood. They have created a unique way for Muslims to give to grassroots projects around the world that wasn't possible without their global team.

Haute Hijab - New York

Haute Hijab has grown over the last five years to become one of the largest modest fashion platforms in the world, while also making deep inroads in the US fashion industry as it has embraced modest fashion over the last few years. Founded by the husband and wife team of Melanie Elturk and Ahmed Zedan, they have raised 2.3 million dollars for their company, and recently launched their sports hijab featuring the basketball player and activist Bilqis Abdul Qaadir.

Wahed Invest - New York, London, Dubai

Wahed Invest is the largest company on this list with more than 100 employees spread across New York, London, Dubai, and Singapore with nearly 40 million dollars raised in venture capital funding. Wahed is the first automated Shari'ah-compliant investment platform in the world and has quickly grown to become the largest Islamic FinTech platform in the world with its platform currently available in the US, UK, and Malaysia. They also just announced that they have acquired the UK based Islamic challenger bank, Niyah.

Noor Kids - Minneapolis, Minnesota

Finally, we have Noor Kids founded by Amin Aaser in Minnesota, which has quickly bootstrapped its way from being a children's book publishing company into a full-fledged media powerhouse, with their first animated television show currently in development. During the lockdown for COVID 19, Noor Kids became a go-to resource for families with children at home around the world as they added nearly 40,000 monthly subscribers in March and April. When they recently announced their animated TV show they were able to raise almost $200,000 on LaunchGood in a matter of days to support the show's development.