Founding
I founded The Sina Collective in January 2026 during my last months of medical school at Stanford. Throughout my training in college, graduate school, and the bit of medicine that I’ve seen so far, I’ve felt that there have been few (if any) spaces for me to understand how Islam can inform my practice and experience of medicine. Questions snuck up in the shadows of my practice- in the cadaver lab as an MS1, in ethics didactics during MS2, in the neuro ICU during my sub-I in MS3, and even in clinic treating chronic disease in MS4. These questions remained questions, without clear answers. What does a Muslim palliative care physician owe their non-Muslim brain dead patient? Is there something more to chronic disease management that I can offer as a Muslim?
Fortunately, I was surrounded by a nurturing Muslim community throughout my studies. In them, I found that we all had similar questions and a yearning for answers. In the absence of spaces to discuss these questions and begin to propose answers, I founded The Sina Collective- an organization dedicated to fostering Muslim talent in medicine. We began with an Instagram page in January 2026 and quickly onboarded our inaugural MD Admissions Fellows, a group of 9 Muslim pre-meds who are applying to medical school this year and who additionally seek the same answers I do about Islam and medicine.
A Quest to Define Muslim Physicianhood
The core question that we seek to answer is this- what is Muslim physicianhood? During my first couple years of medical school, we spent considerable time thinking about professional identity formation, or in other words, thinking about the type of doctors that we wanted to be. If we can spend this time thinking about what type of doctor we want to be, then surely we can think about what type of Muslim doctor we want to be too. There is incredible work already happening at the intersection of Islam and medicine, but I’ve felt that it has predominantly been responsive to problems. For example, we have research about the Islamic perspective on various biomedical issues like organ donation, brain death, or the use of heparin. But we have less disseminated knowledge that is centered around theorizing what the aims and scope of the Muslim practice of medicine is.
With The Sina Collective, our goal is to work together to define Muslim physicianhood. Importantly, this is not a research project- we are not primarily in the business of producing reports or studying issues. Rather, we are focused on the formation of people, specifically Muslim physicians. Through our cohorts, we have an opportunity for in-depth formation of values, perspectives, ideas, and more via conversation and thought.
A Vision for the Future
Why care about defining Muslim physicianhood in the first place? I think the answer is twofold. First, being a physician is a deeply spiritual role. There are few vocations in history that are as spiritually and morally charged as the practice of medicine. For that reason, we care about Muslim physicianhood because our practice of medicine should reflect our belief in Allah and what he wants from us, namely to be good representatives of him, to care for the creation, to bear witness to pain and suffering, etc. Second, being a physician is a deeply practical role. Modern healthcare has no shortage of issues, and I believe that physicians have an indispensable role and perspective in creating solutions for these issues. Part of Muslim physicianhood is excellent physicianhood itself- a true excellence in the dimensions of modern medicine that extend beyond only clinical care to issues like healthcare ethics, health policy, innovation, entrepreneurship, and more.
With The Sina Collective, we aim to nurture the American Muslim physicians of the future who will set the tone for leading conversations and solutions in medicine. We invite you to think with us and dream with us.