Naielah Ackbarali

Naielah Ackbarali is the founder and CEO of Muslima Coaching, an Islamic coaching and counselling service for Muslim women and couples. IslamQA, which republishes her fiqh answers, likewise states that Muslimacoaching.com was founded by her. ^{1 2}

She was born in Trinidad and grew up in South Florida, and holds a BA in Sociology and International Affairs from Florida State University. In 2004 she travelled to the Middle East and studied the Islamic sciences in Syria and Jordan for over fifteen years — fiqh, tafsir, hadith, seera, aqida and Arabic — with teachers including Hassan al-Hindy, Adnan Darwish, Faraz Rabbani and Hamza Karamali; she also partially completed a hadith-specialisation postgraduate programme with Mufti Ismail Moosa. She later qualified in Britain as a CBT therapist, earning a master's degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice with Distinction at Bath Spa University and a postgraduate certificate in Psychological Therapies at Queen Mary University of London, alongside Gottman Method couples-therapy training. ^{1 2}

She founded Muslima Coaching in 2015; in 2022 the service became a division of Inspired Muslim Women Ltd. She has worked as a Muslim marriage counsellor for over ten years and as an Islamic studies teacher for over fifteen, and in 2020 she launched a fiqh Answers Service for Women on the site. She is the author of books including Secrets of Successful Muslim Couples, Fiqh of Menstruation Simplified, Blossom: A Muslim Girl's Period Guide and Ramadan Ready, and of an English rendering of Imam Birgivi's treatise on the advanced fiqh of menstruation; she has been featured on Islam Channel and British Muslim TV. ^{1 3}