The Program
Twelve steps, walked with Allah (SWT).
The same framework that has carried people out of addiction for ninety years — rewritten by Muslims, for Muslims, so that nobody has to leave their deen at the door.
Where these steps come from
The framework on this page was not invented in Chicago. The Twelve Steps began with Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s and have since been adapted by dozens of fellowships.
In September 1989, at the Baltimore Masjid, the late Imam Zaid Imani and a group of believers set out to work the steps without stepping outside their deen. They rewrote them so that the higher power had a name, and so that the language matched what they already believed about the self, repentance, and mercy. They called it Millati Islami — the path of Islam.
The wording below is theirs, reproduced as they publish it. We follow it because it has already been thought through by people who came before us.
Millati Islami's adaptation
The Twelve Steps
Reproduced as Millati Islami World Services publishes them.
- 01
We admitted that we were neglectful of our higher selves and that our lives have become unmanageable.
- 02
We came to believe that Allah could and would restore us to sanity.
- 03
We made a decision to submit our will to the will of Allah.
- 04
We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- 05
We admitted to Allah and to ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs.
- 06
Asking Allah for right guidance, we became willing and open for change, ready to have Allah remove our defects of character.
- 07
We humbly ask Allah to remove our shortcomings.
- 08
We made a list of persons we have harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- 09
We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- 10
We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- 11Salaat · Iqraa
We sought through Salaat and Iqraa to improve our understanding of Taqwa and Ihsan.
- 12Iman · Taqwa
Having increased our level of Iman and Taqwa, as a result of applying these steps, we carried this message to humanity and began practicing these principles in all our affairs.
The words in the steps
- Salaat
- Iqraa
- Taqwa
- Ihsan
- Iman
Why this framework
What the evidence actually says.
In 2020, Cochrane reviewed Alcoholics Anonymous and twelve-step facilitation for alcohol use disorder across 27 studies and 10,565 participants. It found high-certainty evidence that manualised twelve-step facilitation increases continuous abstinence more than other established treatments, including cognitive behavioural therapy — and usually at lower cost.
On other measures — how much people drank when they did drink, and the harms that followed — the review found twelve-step programs no better and no worse than the alternatives. The advantage is specifically in staying stopped.
What it does not say
That evidence is for alcohol, and for manualised facilitation delivered clinically. The evidence base for other substances is thinner. It is not evidence for Millati Islami's adaptation, and it is not a claim about our own results — we are new, we measure nothing about you, and we would rather tell you that than imply otherwise. We cite it because it is why we chose this framework.
Attribution
You don't work them alone.
That is the whole point of a fellowship. Come on Friday and start where you are.