Ottoman Sufis were often criticized for engaging in bidʿa or innovative interpretations of Islamic texts by their orthodox opponents, such as the Qāḍīzādeh ʿulamā’. In their writings, members of the Qāḍīzādeh ʿulamā’ subjected Sufi treatises…
The name Khan is trending. One Khan – Imran Khan – is now the PM of Pakistan, another, Sadiq Khan, is the Mayor of London, and in the US, Khizer Khan, a five star dad,…
Introduction This paper aims to provide an overview of the historical and contemporary developments of the Xidaotang 西道堂 (lit. “Western Path Hall” or “Western Daotang [1]”), a Chinese Muslim community. First, I will examine the…
Preface Two of the highest modes of expression developed by humankind are poetry and philosophy. The poet speaks to us through verse, and the philosopher through prose, each one inviting us into their realm of…
In my 2013 MA thesis entitled “Making Lite of Islam: Representations of Sufism in American Religion and the Public Sphere”, I devoted a chapter to the proceedings of the “Understanding Sufism and its Potential Role in US…
Omid Safi. Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018). 284 pages. $25.00 hardcover | Reviewed by Cyrus Zargar. Omid Safi’s Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic…
Editor’s note: Published originally on erminsinanovic.com, these two posts about coffee, Islam on the edges, and Muslim culture are being re-posted here with the permission of the author, Ermin Sinanovic. (Jump to The Love of…
It is a deceptively innocent, straightforward question – what is Islam? Yet, this question has invited assumptions, debates, laws, and wars that have picked up in both speed and power over the course of the…
On a hot summer day in June 2015 I arrived in Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia-Herzegovina to conduct my fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation which focuses, broadly, on the revival of Sufism. More narrowly,…
In early December 2017, the British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson gave a speech to the Foreign Commonwealth Office on the U.K’s counter-terrorism efforts entitled ‘How global Britain is helping to win the struggle against Islamist…