How Everything I Did Before Islam Led Me Right Back to It

Abel, co-founder of Zim Zam Labs

I have been fasting for most of my adult life. Not for religious reasons — not at first. I was into peak performance. Optimization. I wanted to understand what the human body could do when you stripped away the noise and paid attention to the inputs.

The fasting community has its own science. If you fast regularly, you learn fast that you need minerals — sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. Your body burns through them. So I started mixing my own electrolyte solutions. Raw salts, specific ratios, no sugar, no flavors. I had been drinking and doing these salts on my own for years. It was just part of how I lived.

I did not know it at the time, but I was building toward something.

Coming to Islam

When I found out that Muslims fasted as part of their faith, something clicked. I already knew all the benefits — probably even more than a lot of Muslims did. Fasting was not new to me. But fasting as an act of worship, as something bigger than performance — that was new. And it made sense in a way I was not expecting.

I became Muslim. I am an American revert. The practice I had been doing for my body became a practice I now did for my soul. The same discipline. The same hunger. A completely different reason.

The Comment That Changed Everything

I was explaining my fasting electrolyte mix to a friend one day. Just walking him through it — what was in it, how I used it, why it worked. And he said something I did not expect.

I had no idea what he was talking about. So I looked it up.

The Rabbit Hole

Zamzam water — the sacred well in Mecca that has been flowing for over 1,400 years — is a natural electrolyte blend. I had absolutely no idea. And I do not think most people understand that either.

I pulled up the mineral composition. Calcium. Magnesium. Potassium. Sodium. Bicarbonates. Sulfates. The same minerals I had been mixing by hand for years. The same ratios the fasting community had been using in their DIY electrolyte solutions.

What these guys had been doing to fast was naturally present in the water that Muslims have been fasting with for 1,400 years.

It came full circle. And it absolutely blew my mind.

The Gift

Here is what I need you to understand about the timing.

I was not looking for a product idea. I was not looking for a business. I had been running a business that was debatably haram, and I had been praying for a long time about how to leave it — not quietly, but in a way that actually helped the Ummah. I wanted to do something that mattered.

I was planning to sell t-shirts. That was my next move. T-shirts.

And then somebody mentioned one thing, and it led me down a rabbit hole, and now I am here.

"I did not find this idea. It fell into my lap. There is a concept in Islam — if you pray for it, truly pray for it, Allah will provide. I one hundred percent view that this was the case. I view myself as lucky to be in this position, because I view this as a gift from God. That is not marketing language. That is what I believe."
Abel

I want to show that it came full circle — from how I was before Islam to who I am now. Everything connected. The fasting, the electrolytes, the minerals, the water, the faith. None of it was wasted.

PHOTO: Saif Qasrawi, Zim Zam co-founder

The Chemist Who Missed It

When I met Saif Qasrawi, the story got harder to explain away as coincidence.

Saif is an inorganic research chemist. That is his actual job — studying mineral composition. He had been thinking about Zamzam water and prophetic medicine for ten years. It was one of his most passionate projects. He wanted to build a business around it. He dropped the idea because he thought it required too much money.

And he never once thought of a mineral blend.

"I'm a chemist myself and I should have been thinking minerals first. That's how I was trained. I'm literally a research scientist about composition. And the irony is that I'm not an organic scientist. I'm an inorganic scientist — which is literally this. And I still didn't think about it."
Saif Qasrawi, Zim Zam co-founder

The person who specializes in exactly this discipline, who dreamed about exactly this market, who had the training and the desire and the ten-year head start — he did not see it. I am not a scientist. I stumbled into it through a friend's offhand comment.

I do not know how to explain that without acknowledging that it came from somewhere outside both of us.

Building It

Saif and I partnered. He brought the chemistry. I brought the years of practical experience mixing and drinking these salts. Between the two of us, we had the science and the street knowledge.

It took about three iterations to get the formula right. Six ingredients. No sugar. No colors. No flavors. Every mineral chosen because it appears in Zamzam water's natural profile, in ratios that mirror the original as closely as we could get.

We are not Zamzam water. Of course we will never be Zamzam water — we are not Allah. But we are the closest electrolyte blend on the market to Zamzam water's mineral profile. And it is not close.

We tested it at mosque events. We gave samples to strangers. We ran blind taste tests against the biggest names in the electrolyte market. People preferred ours four to one. A kid at a Sudour fest tried it and his face lit up — "Oh my gosh, that's so good." That was the first time someone with no reason to be polite told us it was real.

Zim Zam Premium Mineral Mix product bags

Where This Is Going

For me as a Muslim, one of the most important things is helping other people see it. Not just the product — the sign behind it. Zamzam water has been flowing from the same well for over 1,400 years with the same mineral composition, and modern science is only now beginning to understand why the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, called it the best water on Earth. That is not something I take lightly.

This is an easy conversation to show people a legitimate sign of Allah. I am hand-delivering it.

I want to help the Ummah. I envision this getting all around the world one day — and when things get hard somewhere, this keeps people nourished. It ships for almost nothing. It weighs almost nothing. And it gives your body what Zamzam water gives it.

We are not paying Facebook or Google or Instagram to grow. We are funding mosques. We are building an affiliate program that puts 20% of every mosque-referred sale back into the masjid. We would rather fund our community than fund an ad.

This is where I am. This is where it is going. And I still cannot believe it started with a friend saying, "That sounds like Zamzam water."

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