How accountable are we to the societies within which we live? How do we distinguish between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb when we live within nation-states, whether “secular” or “Islamic” that are shaped by often…
Islam is not only spatially-embedded. Like any other religion, it is also a mode and labor of space-making; and it has particular ways of imagining, talking about, making sense of, practicing, and experiencing space that…
Introduction By nature, every person’s life is organised in such a way that for his own existence and achievement of the highest perfection, he needs many things that he cannot provide for himself alone. He…
In his study of mosques in Europe, Roemer van Toorn noted that a mosque “is not just a house to honour God, but a place to come together, a collective space for the community. In…
“Muslim minorities in the non-Muslim world will ultimately realize that their history has put them in a position somehow reminiscent of the Prophet’s Meccan period. Their isolation will purify and strengthen their belief. It will…
Is money dirty? Is it wrong to be rich? How can a Muslim build their wealth in a “halal” or “religiously permissible” way? These are some of the questions that Islamic finance companies, especially those…
In his Oft-Repenting Ones, Ibn Qudāma (d. 1223) recounts the story of Awlāsī, a pious ascetic from the early centuries of Islam. It so happened that in his youth he stumbled across a sick, homeless…
My task here is to offer some critical thoughts on the ethics of place and the production of space, with the ‘American mosque’ as a case in point. I have argued in Deconstructing the American Mosque: Space,…
Since the earliest days of Islamic history, Muslims have deliberated over the structure and purpose of the mosque. The Arabic term for mosque, masjid, derives from the Qur’an and translates simply as a place of…
In the twenty-first century, economists have increasingly recognized the profound issue of wealth inequality that afflicts societies worldwide. This realization holds true not only in non-Muslim countries but extends to the Muslim world, where disparities…