One day, sooner than we like to admit, the people currently sitting in shūrā rooms, chairing boards, delivering khutbahs, planning projects and signing off budgets will no longer be there. Some will have stepped aside; some will have been pushed aside; some will have been carried to the grave. The work will not disappear. It will simply fall into other hands.
Part of responsibility is asking, very honestly: whose hands are we preparing?
We talk a lot about “the youth” as a category, as if they are raw material waiting to be shaped by our brilliance. But right now, in real time, the next carriers are already listening. They are watching how we speak about the dīn at our dinner tables. They are noticing who we joke about, who we dismiss, who we actually honour. They are hearing how we talk about scholars, imams, volunteers, Shām, Gaza, prisons, apostasy, power, money, and each other.
And they are quietly deciding whether this is a path they want to walk.
If we are serious about the future of any work: tarbiyah, daʿwah, relief, education, mental health, community building, then the next generation cannot just be “attendees” or “beneficiaries”. They have to be the ones we are consciously preparing to take the amānah further than we ever could.
That preparation does not start with a training course. It starts with the atmosphere we build around them.
There is a kind of speech about the dīn that sounds pious but quietly kills hope. When every conversation is soaked in despair, when all we offer them is a steady stream of “the ummah is finished”, “people are all hypocrites”, “no one can be trusted”, then we should not be surprised if their hearts decide, “This path is only pain and politics.”
On the other side, there is a shallow optimism that pretends everything is fine, that refuses to name real betrayals, abuses, or injustices. That is no better. Young people are not blind. They can see leaders stumbling, institutions failing, Shām and Gaza bleeding, friends leaving Islam. When we dismiss their questions or brush over reality with slogans, we do not protect their īmān; we make it more fragile.
The next carriers need a different tone from us: clear about the wounds, clear about the miracles, clear that the dīn of Allah is pure even when some of its carriers are not. They need to hear that the ummah has always gone through storms, that betrayal and weakness are part of the human story, and that Allah still writes victory for those who are sincere, patient, and truthful, whether or not their names are remembered.
They need us to talk about Shām not as a distant tragedy we consume, but as a living testimony of what sacrifice looks like. They need us to talk about the quiet apostasy on our streets not as gossip, but as a warning that īmān must be guarded gently and fiercely at the same time. They need to see us cry sometimes, not just comment.
The next carriers also need something more concrete than inspiration: they need to be trusted with real responsibility while they are still young enough to be formed by it.
We often say, “Our youth are the future,” but in practice we treat them as decoration until they are 30. We let them carry boxes, run media, play nasheeds, but we do not let them sit in real conversations, see how difficult decisions are made, or ask uncomfortable questions. We keep them busy and call it “involving them”.
Responsibility, if it is to form them, has to come with three things: real stakes, real guidance, and real room to make mistakes.
That might mean letting a young person lead a small project and feel the weight when things go wrong, while knowing that someone older is standing close, not to snatch the reins back at the first mistake, but to help them learn how to apologise, repair, and carry on. It might mean inviting them into part of a shūrā discussion, not just for show, but so they can see how egos flare, how they should be tamed, how budgets are debated, how safeguarding is argued over, how a difficult “no” is given.
It also means giving them space to do things differently. If the message they receive is, “You can be involved, as long as you copy everything we did and never question our way,” then we are not preparing successors; we are grooming replacements for our own egos. The amānah will not be preserved by clones. It will be preserved by people who share principles but can disagree on methods without being thrown out.
There is another layer to this: what we choose to talk about with them when we are not on stage.
Many young people wrestling with doubts have never had one honest, unhurried conversation with an adult who both knows the dīn and understands the world they live in. They have heard many warnings about “doubts” and “shubuhaāt,” but very few patient explanations that take their questions seriously.
If the next carriers are going to stand firm in a world of atheism, liberalism, extremism, and every other ism, they cannot be raised on “don’t ask”. They have to hear us say, “Ask. Ask properly. Ask with adab. And let’s sit until we have gone as far as we can together.” They need to see that Islām, as revelation, is stronger than the trends that swagger across their screens. They need to see scholars and people of knowledge who are not afraid of questions, even if they sometimes have to say, “I don’t know.”
The same is true for conversations about Shām, Gaza, and political suffering. If we only ever present these as fuel for outrage, without anchoring them in Qur’an, in history, in the stories of sabr and shukr and tawakkul, then we risk raising a generation that can shout slogans for the oppressed but does not know how to live for Allah in the long, dull stretches of peace.
Preparing the next carriers means teaching them how to read the world through the Book, not only how to react to headlines.
We also have to be honest about the culture they are inheriting from us.
If they grow up watching us tear each other apart over internal disputes, if they see us cling to positions long after we have become a barrier instead of a bridge, if they notice that the people of quiet service are always sidelined in favour of the loud and charismatic, then they will either copy us or quietly walk away.
One of the most powerful things we can give them is the sight of elders who know how to let go.
Imagine what it would do for a young worker to see a senior figure say, “My time in this role is finished. Alhamdulillah for what Allah allowed me to do. Now I will serve from the side and support those coming after me.” No bitterness, no backroom campaigns, no attempts to sabotage those who follow. Just a dignified handover.
That one scene would teach more than a dozen talks about humility.
Likewise, what would it do for the next carriers if they saw us resolve a long-standing conflict properly? Not by wallpapering over it, but by sitting down, naming the harm, seeking forgiveness, agreeing on boundaries, and then returning to some form of cooperation, or at least to mutual duʿā’. They would learn that disagreement is not the end of brotherhood or sisterhood, and that fitnah is not the only story.
We say we want our children and students to have sound hearts. Then we parade our grudges in front of them for years. They are watching. They are learning. They will either carry our bitterness further, or quietly choose a cleaner path away from all of it.
The next carriers also live in a world more external than ours ever was. Their lives are half-documented without their consent. Their mistakes are screenshotted before they have even processed them themselves. If we expect them to stand in public for the dīn without collapsing, we have to give them something our generation rarely tasted: elders who protect their dignity in private.
That means not dragging their sins into group chats as entertainment. It means not using their missteps as content for lectures before they have even had a chance to repent. It means building spaces where they can say, “I messed up badly,” and be guided, not humiliated.
Young people who are treated like scandals waiting to happen will not grow into leaders. They will grow into people who either hide everything or drop everything.
On the other hand, young people who are treated as works in progress, whose mistakes are taken seriously but not weaponised, are more likely to become adults who show the same mercy to others. That is how we break cycles of harshness.
All of this still has to be tied back to the reality we began with: Shām’s blood and our streets’ quiet apostasy.
The children growing up under the shadow of bombs and siege have a clarity about cost that we do not. The children growing up under the shadow of Wi-Fi and loneliness have a different kind of test, but no less real. Both groups will, in different ways, be the ummah of tomorrow.
For those of us in relative safety, the question is not just, “What can we send to them?” but also, “What can we learn from them, and how do we prepare our own youth with the same seriousness?” If we only ever speak about sacrifice as something that happens “over there,” we risk training our young to be commentators on other people’s courage, not practitioners of their own.
The next carriers will need to know how to say “no” to their nafs, to comfort, to invitations that compromise principle, to offers that buy their silence. They will need to know how to say “yes” to long, hidden work that will never be captured in a viral clip. They will need to know that they might be asked to pay a price, not the price of blood, perhaps, but the price of reputation, opportunities, relationships.
We cannot guarantee they will be ready. But we can at least stop pretending that the path ahead of them will be easy.
In the end, preparing the next carriers is not a separate project from everything we have already spoken about. It is simply the long shadow of responsibility.
If in Part 1 we said, “Guard īmān, not images,” then for the next generation that means watching what we normalise in front of them. If in Part 2 we said, “Move from events to formation,” then for them formation has to include space for questions, responsibility, and real succession. If in Part 3 we said, “Protect the hearts of the workers,” then for them we have to model hearts that repent, that step back when needed, that accept being outgrown.
One day, a young person who is currently stacking chairs, running slides, or sitting quietly at the edge of a circle will be the one making decisions that affect hundreds of souls. By then it will be too late to say, “We should have prepared them better.”
Responsibility means thinking about that day now.
May Allah make us honest enough to admit where we have failed the next carriers, humble enough to change, and hopeful enough to believe that He can write a better story with them than we managed with ourselves. And may He make them, by His mercy, better than us: softer in heart, clearer in principle, deeper in worship, and more loyal to the amānah than to any image or name.
