About

Who are you?
Saqib Salman Shafi. I live in the western Chicago suburb of Lisle, IL and am a student at DePaul University downtown in the Loop. I’m 22 years old and am currently nikaah’d to a girl from Detroit, MI. I also part-time as an internal audit intern.

Why SaqibSaab.com?
Like all the self-proclaimed cool internet fiends out there, I’ve been keeping personal websites since around 1996. It started with SockEm64’s AOL Homepage, to Maajin_Vegeta’s Geocities Site, to SaqibSaab’s Xanga Site which was somewhat known in a small buzz of Chicagoland Muslim internet go-ers. Now I’ve moved to my own site to take it to the next level.

You’re Muslim?
Yep. I’m a proud Muslim, part of the fastest growing faith in the world, Islam. And if you’re reading this you most probably are, too, so if you’re looking for some reading material, take a look at www.islaam.com, it’s solid. If you’re not, check out www.whyislam.com for more info; not to convert or anything but just to let you know whassap about us. I also volunteer and take seminars with AlMaghrib Institute, the largest Islamic education organization in North America.

So what’ll you write about?
A mix of things. Blogging is currently the coolest thing since Shan masala, and with the advent of Web 2.0 it’s really easy to communicate ideas, share links, leave feedback, and connect with people unlike anything people have seen before. So yeah, expect anything, I guess. I particularly like to write stuff on Islam, technology, design, and of course, food!

Did you say Shan masala?
Oh forgot, I’m Indian by ethnicity, also referred to by many as Desi. In Chicago, the majority of Muslims seem to have decent Hyderabad, followed by Pakistanis. So I always get two inquiries: either “you’re Pakistani right?” or “you must be Hydro.” Both are wrong (fail). My parents came to the states from Bangalore, India, foo! Bangalore is south of Hyderabad. Also, here’s an interesting factoid for all you ABCDs: ten years ago there was an estimate that of the six million Muslims in America, almost 30% of them were Desi. That’s 1.8 MILLION Desi Muslims in the US alone (not including Canada). That’s a lot of Sub-continent Muslims!

Hope you enjye it this one!
Saqib