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The Fourth Option: Alif and Silicon Valley’s Muslim Counterculture

kasurian.com · 3,370 words · saved by 1 readers

Alif, an accelerator at the frontier of a new subculture in Silicon Valley, is inextricably linked to the Jumu’ah prayer. After announcing its pilot cohort, Batch 0, in the summer of 2024, Alif began hosting a Jumu’ah in Fort Mason Park. The Alif Jumu’ah quickly took off, becoming an unexpected mainstay for San Francisco’s Muslims, natives, nomads and transplants alike — with some driving 45 minutes to attend. “There was no mosque near us to go pray together at,” Alif’s founder, Omar Waseem, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. So, with a partiful link and some tarps weighed down by backpacks, “we started one.” The photos of the Jumu’ah, shared on social media by Alif with a mix of quippy in-group references (“touched grass, JM”) and earnest captions (“a testament to our community’s commitment to faith and mutual support”), are compositionally striking. Rows of worshippers dot neon blue tarps centred on a seemingly endless expanse of green, framed by palm trees and the San Francisco

The Alif Jumu’ah: You Can Just Do Things Alif, an accelerator at the frontier of a new subculture in Silicon Valley, is inextricably linked to the Jumu’ah prayer. After announcing its pilot cohort, Batch 0, in the summer of 2024, Alif began hosting a Jumu’ah in Fort Mason Park. The Alif Jumu’ah quickly took off, becoming an unexpected mainstay for San Francisco’s Muslims, natives, nomads and transplants alike — with some driving 45 minutes to attend. “There was no mosque near us to go pray together at,” Alif’s founder, Omar Waseem, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. So, with a partiful…

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