By Cii Radio Features | From Sabeelul Hayaat with Mas-oodah Jappie
The first thing you notice about Zain Bhikha when he speaks about his parents isn’t sadness; it’s awe. Not the kind that demands tears, but the kind that silences you.
“They were everything,” he says quietly. “My father was discipline and principle. My mother was love and dua. Losing them… it changed everything.”
For an artist whose voice has carried the prayers of millions, Love & Loss, his new album, has become more than a nasheed album. It’s a journal of grief, gratitude, and faith. And at its core are two people whose lives built his.
The father who taught integrity
Zain’s father, Professor Rashid Bhikha, was a man whose name carried weight in both the medical and community worlds, but to his son, it was his character that mattered most.
“He was a man of integrity,” Zain recalls. “Hard work, discipline… he treated the man cleaning the street and the millionaire with exactly the same respect.”
Even in illness, the lessons continued. Towards the end of his life, Professor Rashid was battling motor neurone disease. Watching him fight through weakness became a living sermon. “He pushed through pain with such patience. That’s where my song Prayers of the Prophets came from, thinking about the struggles of those who bore hardship with dignity and trust.”
His father’s final years reminded him that true success is silent, private, and deeply human.
The mother who filled the house with dua
If his father was structure, his mother was song. Her melodies found their way into his music long before he realised it. “She would always hum something beautiful,” he says. “Sometimes she’d even suggest a tune, ‘Why don’t you sing something like this?’”
But her legacy went beyond melody. “Everyone who knew her remembers her duas. She’d call, ask about you, and then make dua for you. That was her love language.”
When she passed, that silence was deafening. “Sometimes I think we live on Allah’s mercy through the duas of our parents,” he says. “You only realise that once they’re gone.”
His song ‘My Beautiful Rose’ blooms from that realisation, a tribute wrapped in rhythm for his beloved mother.
When faith becomes your only vocabulary
Zain’s grief didn’t drown him; it redirected him. “After losing both my parents within two years, I found myself writing just to breathe,” he admits. The album ‘Love & Loss’ poured out during that time: twenty songs that read like chapters of a diary left open before Allah.
The first single, ‘Allah Is Greater,’ was born from those nights. “It’s not just saying ‘Allah is the Greatest,’” he explains. “It’s a reminder that He is greater than… greater than our pain, our fear, our losses. That’s the comfort.”
He pauses for a moment. “Sometimes, when I sing those words, I can feel them wrapping around me like a blanket.”
A friendship forged in loss
One of the people who helped him process the grief was fellow nasheed artist Dawud Wharnsby, his long-time friend and collaborator. “Dawud said something I’ll never forget: ‘The day I buried my parents, I buried a part of me too.’”
Zain says he understood that line only when his own moment came. “It’s true. When you lose them, you don’t just lose your parents—you lose the part of you that was still a child.”
It’s that feeling, the quiet ache of missing their duas, their voices, and their ordinary presence, that runs through the album.
Carrying their light forward
Even in mourning, Zain doesn’t linger on darkness. His tone shifts, tender but resolute. “They taught me everything that matters,” he says. “My dad showed me how to stand firm, and my mom taught me how to soften. Between them, I learnt what Islam looks like in motion.”
He still finds himself doing what they would have done, making dua for others, mentoring the young, and turning pain into purpose. “I think that’s how you honour your parents,” he says. “You don’t just remember them; you continue them.”
And when he performs A Million Lives, a song for his father that imagines the memories of a lifetime flashing like fireflies in the night, he sometimes catches himself smiling through tears. “It’s strange,” he says, “but even grief, when you hand it to Allah, becomes a form of worship.”
The legacy of dua
He’s certain they’re still part of his story, just in a different chapter. “Their duas built me,” he says. “Now I just hope my deeds reach them.”
And that, perhaps, is the quiet beauty of ‘Love & Loss’: it’s not an album about mourning; it’s an album about recognising Allah through those He surrounded you with.
Zain Bhikha’s album ‘Love & Loss’ releases this Friday, the 5th of December 2025, on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music.
May Allah grant Jannatul Firdaus al-A‘la to all our parents who have returned to Him, and make us honour those who are still with us. Aameen.
