My hair and I had always had an easy relationship. No drama, no thinning, no complaints. Then I had a baby. Postpartum didn’t just take my sanity; it took my edges, too. After having my baby, each passing week, my hairline was disappearing, and by month three, my forehead had doubled in size. My edges? Gone. Vanished. They didn’t even leave a note. My hairline needed a tombstone. Here lies Amina’s edges. Taken too soon. 

In my desperation, I found myself googling “how to stop my hair from falling out” at 2 am, one hand scrolling, one hand nursing. I landed on pages of sponsored serums, ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, subscription boxes all promising to “transform my hair.” It was information overload. I called my mother and lamented about my ‘struggle edges’. She laughed, told me to stop being dramatic, and advised me to put black seed oil on my edges every night before bed. I was struck by how simple her solution was. As my edges began to grow back, it struck me even more:

our mothers and grandmothers, from Lagos to Lahore, from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur, had already figured this out, long before these same ingredients started appearing in £45 serums with minimalist packaging and a sustainability pledge.

This article is for every Muslim sister navigating the overwhelming world of hair care, whether your hair is 4C coils, silky straight, thick wavy, or something beautifully in between. This is a return to our roots. Literally.

In Islam, our bodies are an amanah, a trust from Allah ﷻ. We are stewards, not owners, of what we’ve been given. That applies to our health, our minds, and yes, even our hair. Caring for our hair is an act of gratitude, not vanity. 

The Prophet ﷺ encouraged cleanliness and grooming: “Whoever has hair, let him honour it.” (Abu Dawud) 

Honouring it doesn’t mean chasing trends. It means understanding what your hair actually needs, and often, that wisdom already lives in your culture.

The modern hair care industry is a $100 billion machine largely built on stripping our hair of its natural oils and selling them back to us in a bottle, ideally in three separate steps and a weekly treatment. Our grandmothers were not having it. They used what the land gave them, and that’s exactly where we’re going today.

From the African Kitchen: Shea Butter and Black Castor Oil

If you have 4A–4C hair, the beautiful, tightly coiled textures common across West, East, and Central Africa, you already know that moisture is your best friend and dryness is the enemy. And nothing locks in moisture quite like raw shea butter (ori in Yoruba, nkuto in Igbo), hand-extracted from the shea tree and used for centuries across the African continent.

My Ugandan aunties swear by it. Not the whipped, fragranced version you find on Boots shelves, the real stuff, the kind that smells faintly of earth and warmth and something ancient. Applied to damp hair after washing, it seals in moisture, reduces breakage, and soothes a dry scalp. It’s also rich in vitamins A and E and has anti-inflammatory properties, which is to say, your grandmother was essentially running a peer-reviewed study. She just didn’t bother to publish it.

Jamaican Black Castor Oil (JBCO), rooted in West African castor plant traditions and widely used across the Caribbean diaspora, is another powerhouse. Its high ricinoleic acid content increases scalp circulation and has been linked to hair growth. It’s thick, so mix it with a lighter oil if you prefer. For protective styles like braids, twists, or locs, it’s liquid gold for edge care and preventing traction alopecia.

Chebe powder, a blend of herbs used by Chadian women from the Basara tribe, is having its well-deserved global moment. Mixed into a paste with oil, it’s traditionally used to retain length in locs, and is gaining recognition for its remarkable moisture-retention and strengthening properties. This kind of ancestral hair wisdom runs deep across the continent. Hibba, a mother of two from London, grew up watching her Swahili grandmother work similar hair alchemy, “She used to call it her ‘hair cocktail,'” Hibba recalls.

“She’d mix shea butter with aloe vera pulp and slather it all over our hair and tell us to sit in the sun until it hardened. Then you would wash it out, and our hair would be shiny, smooth, and so soft. I thought it was old-fashioned as a kid. Now I do the same thing for my daughters, except I use a dryer in place of African sunshine.”

From the Subcontinent: Coconut Oil, Mustard Oil and the Holy Grail of Hair Masks

If you’ve ever been in a South Asian household, you may be familiar with the scene: warm coconut oil, tinged with curry leaf, maybe a little fenugreek, being massaged into hair with the kind of firm, loving pressure that says “I am both caring for you and mildly disappointed in you.” The champi, a traditional South Asian head massage, is practically a sacred ritual.

Coconut oil is the queen of South Asian hair care, and for good reason. It penetrates the hair shaft (unlike many oils that just coat it), reducing protein loss and strengthening it from within. It’s antifungal, which helps with dandruff, and its lauric acid content makes it particularly effective for fine to medium hair textures. Warm it slightly before applying, work it into your scalp, and leave it overnight. Your hair will not be sorry. Your pillowcase, perhaps. But your hair? Thriving.

Fenugreek (methi) seeds, soaked overnight and blended into a paste, have been used across India and Pakistan for centuries to combat hair loss and add shine. They’re packed with protein and nicotinic acid, which strengthens the hair shaft and stimulates growth. Pair with yoghurt for a conditioning mask that your scalp will thank you for. Nadia, a British-Pakistani woman who now has what she describes as enviably thick hair, credits her Dadi’s fenugreek programme entirely.

“She would grind the seeds herself,” Nadia says, “and told me my hair was ‘weak like my chai.’ I have very thick hair now, and whoever sees it always asks me what I use. I tell them, and they never believe it’s that simple.”

From the Arab World: Argan Oil, Black Seed and Olive Oil

Argan oil, “liquid gold” from Morocco, has become so mainstream that you’ll find it in every high street salon. But Moroccan women have known about it for generations. Cold-pressed from the kernels of the argan tree, it’s extraordinarily rich in vitamin E and essential fatty acids. For wavy, frizz-prone, or colour-treated hair, it’s unmatched as a finishing serum and deep conditioner. A few drops on damp hair before styling keeps frizz at bay without the grease.

Then there is nigella sativa — black seed, habbatus sauda — and here is where our deen and our hair care traditions meet most beautifully. 

The Prophet ﷺ said, “In the black seed is healing for every disease except death.” (Bukhari and Muslim) 

Black seed oil applied to the scalp has been used across the Arab world, Iran, and Turkey to address hair thinning and stimulate growth. Modern research has begun to support what our ancestors knew: thymoquinone, its active compound, has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that benefit scalp health. The scientists caught up eventually.

Olive oil, mentioned in the Quran itself, has been used as a hair and skin treatment across the Mediterranean and Arab world for millennia. It’s particularly effective as a hot oil treatment for dry, brittle, or heat-damaged hair, which, for many of us who grew up in the era of the flat iron, is simply called Tuesday.

From East Asia: Rice Water and Camellia Oil

The Yao women of Huangluo village in China are famous for having hair that grows up to six feet long and remains dark well into old age. Their secret: Fermented rice water used as a hair rinse for centuries. Rice water is rich in inositol, a carbohydrate that can penetrate damaged hair to repair it from within, as well as amino acids, vitamins B and E, and minerals.

To make it: rinse your rice, soak it in water for 30 minutes (or ferment for 24–48 hours for extra potency), strain it, and use it as a rinse after shampooing. Leave on for 5–20 minutes before rinsing. The fermented version has a stronger scent, we’re talking an acquired smell, not a pleasant one, but it’s particularly effective for strengthening fine or thinning hair. I tried this myself during lockdown, when I had nothing but time and low expectations, and I saw real results.

Camellia (tsubaki) oil, long used by Japanese women, is a lightweight oil with an exceptionally high oleic acid content that mimics the scalp’s natural sebum. It absorbs quickly without greasiness and is excellent for fine, straight, or wavy hair that needs shine without weight. It’s also widely used in Korean and Chinese beauty traditions to combat split ends and protect against heat. Like most of our grandmothers, East Asian grandmothers had remedies that were as frugal as they were powerful, as Fatimah discovered.

“My Grandmother used to collect the water from rinsing rice and put it in a bottle in the fridge,” Fatimah recalls. “We thought she was just being resourceful. Turns out she was ahead of every TikTok hair trend by about sixty years.”

Know Your Hair, Love Your Hair

Holistic hair care isn’t one-size-fits-all, and nor should it be. Before reaching for any oil or remedy, it helps to know your hair type and porosity.

• High-porosity hair (often chemically treated or heat-damaged) absorbs moisture quickly but loses it just as fast; it needs heavy sealants like shea butter and JBCO.
• Low-porosity hair (common in fine, straight, and some Type 3 textures) struggles to absorb products; lightweight oils like camellia or argan, applied with heat, work best.
• Medium-porosity hair is the sweet spot; most oils will work well.

Seek out your texture community; there are thriving spaces online where women share what actually works for their specific hair type, trade recipes, and remind each other that what grows from our heads is not a problem to be solved. We have far more to learn from each other than from any cosmetic company that profits from our self-doubt.

And above all, learn to love the texture Al-Musawwir (the Fashioner of Forms) gave you. Every kink, every coil, every stubborn wave was crafted with intention. The cosmetics industry has spent decades profiting from our insecurities about our hair. Telling women with straight hair it was too flat, women with curly hair it was too wild, and women with 4C hair that it needed “taming.” It didn’t. It never did. All it needed was some traditional tlc from your grandma and mum.

There is something deeply moving about realising that the wisdom we need has been in our families all along, passed down in kitchens and hammams and braiding sessions, often without fanfare or packaging.

Our grandmothers didn’t have fancy products from faraway factories. They had observation, tradition, and an intimate knowledge of what the land around them offered. And frankly, results.

As Muslim women, we carry within us threads of so many different traditions: African, Arab, South Asian, East Asian, and more. Our hair care can be a place where those threads come together, where we honour our foremothers and our bodies simultaneously. Where caring for ourselves is also an act of gratitude to the One who created us.

So the next time you reach for an expensive product, pause. Call your mother. Ask your auntie. Maybe even look in your kitchen. The remedy might already be there, waiting, rooted, tried, and tested across centuries of collective wisdom. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always fermented rice water.

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References 

• Benefits of Black Seed Oil for Your Skin and Hair   
• Whoever has hair, let him honour it (Abu Dawud)
• In the black seed is healing for every disease except death (Bukhari and Muslim)
• Black Seed Oil Properties – Thymoquinone: Anti-inflammatory and Antioxidant
• Shea Butter: Vitamins, Properties and Benefits
• Jamaican Black Castor Oil for Hair
• The Magic of Chebe Powder for Hair
• What is Champi? The Ancient Indian Head Massage
• Coconut Oil for Hair
• Argan Oil and the Liquid Gold Rush
• Olive Oil for Hair Care
• What to Know About Rice Water for Hair
• Camellia Oil Benefits
• Hair Porosity Guide