Dr Nusrat Shehbaz

Dr Nusrat is a dentist with a master’s in children’s dentistry from London, and has lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for nearly four decades — including more than three years at King Abdulaziz Air Base Hospital. Alongside dentistry she studied psychology, and has spent years counselling families through in-law conflicts and helping young couples get married.

Her stand on jahez is not theoretical. When her own son married, she refused jahez and gold and set up the couple’s home herself — because she believes the groom’s family must be the ones to break the custom.

That work continues outside Misaq too. She is founding a charity hospital in her village in Pakistan — the foundation approved and the NOC received — and is soon joining a university. She plans a series of booklets on marriage, in-laws and jahez, drawn from authentic hadith and handed out before every nikah, alongside awareness seminars in mosques.

At Misaq she leads the Family Council: the education that prepares families for marriage, and the counselling that helps couples through the emotional and marital challenges that come after it — so every nikah begins on the sunnah and not on expectations.

The Misaq Family Council is the counselling arm of Misaq: the people who prepare families before the nikah and stand with couples after it.