[BCVB9SOc]

I feel for you bro, I am in the same situation but I am the younger brother ( and my brother is a lot less practicing than your brother, but a heart of gold )

Your brother's character is much better than I expected before reading the thread. I thought he was correct about cleaning the beard (we should be mindful about our appearance in the sense so that we look neat and clean) but not trimming it obviously.

My advice is to make sincere apologies to him, and to explain that you love him so you want for him what you love (deen). But criticizing him is the easiest way to turn him away from the religion and you. I personally do not talk about religion with my brother, but he knows. The best is when religion somehow comes up spontaneously, in those instances we talk about it. Otherwise when I bring it up it seems forced and faked. I try to let my actions speak for themselves and just smile around him, and make jokes about myself when he tries to convince me to cut my beard (but it keeps me warm in the winter!) to diffuse the situation. Avoid arguing over the religion, just smile and diffuse the situation (this is key!).

Also understand where he is coming from, he is concerned about his and your clients so deal softly with him. Make it a sincere/serious point that during such and such hours, you are not attending meetings. Those meetings are not worth it if they are during Jummah hours. It is all about how you say it. Like: Man I know what your saying, we can only meet them at these hours but I already had a meeting with Allah (swt) at these hours and he is more important to me than them. If we had to choose I would choose Jummah even if we would lose our opportunity for business. Allah inshaAllah will put barakah in our business, and we can make it up elsewhere by working harder at other times.

Hope it helped, your in a better position than you think brother.