Salam was born in Rampur in 1970. His father, Mufti Abdul Dayem Sahab, an Islamic scholar, had written several scholarly works on Islamic sciences in Urdu and Arabic and also worked as a hadith translator, while his mother is a housewife. Salam has a sister, who works as a doctor. He and his family later moved to Delhi. He started his formal education at the Bluebells School International until the tenth grade and later at a convent school. Salam pursued his undergraduate study in History at St. Stephen's College.[3] Following this, he started his career as a journalist in 1995. Recalling his childhood, he said: "When I was in grade V, I used to scribe the handwritten notes from different columns of the newspapers. After compilation, I used to distribute the Photostat copies of my notes among the friends in my colony at Lajpat Nagar. I was in grade VII when the first of my article was published