“Friendship is a real thing where people open their living to one another, allowing the paths of life to crisscross in journeys imagined as in some sense shared.” ‘Friendship First’,…
We had climbed to part of the area that had been devastated by the earthquake. Under a makeshift shelter an old lady sat rocking back and forward. She described the…
My Muslim friends have often challenged me about what it means to live my faith as an act of submission to God in the everyday of life. Where I struggle…
Mawlid an-nabi (the birthday of Muhammad) is celebrated around the Muslim world in different ways (except in the most Salafi of contexts), and in it popular veneration of Muhammad reaches…
There are a number of pictures of Hagar in western art. Some portray Sarah offering Hagar, her slave, to Abraham to get her pregnant, so she can have a child…
"I have 3 different Instagram accounts," said Ika, a young entrepreneur who wears a hijab. "On Instagram A I become a devout Muslim, on Instagram B I become a tough…
I was new in this large Middle Eastern city, about to embark on a year of study. I was travelling in the women’s carriage of the tram, at a time…
Everyone says, ‘I will pray about that’, or asks ‘please pray about that for me’. But what does that really mean? Sometimes it is just a pious but empty expression.…
Any language learner will know that language mirrors culture and often reveals the values which underpin the life of a group. I had a fresh insight of this when I…
Jesus’ power and desire to set people free from fear of ghosts has regularly come to the surface in my years among Muslims in SouthEast Asia. Once I was travelling…
We have traveled several hours from the capital city to visit Fatima in her home, in a tiny village which overlooks miles of hills covered in orderly lines of olive…
Men are sitting on the floor, plates in front of them. They talk easily among themselves, barely acknowledging the presence of the young unmarried women who move around the group,…
