Four Khans Everyone Must Read
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,…
Islam in Northwest China: An Overview of a Sino-Islamic Group, the Xidaotang
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…
A Translation, Transliteration, and Commentary on Muhammad Iqbal’s “Jibreel-o Iblees”
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…
The Problem of “Political Sufism”
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…
[Book Review] Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition by Omid Safi | Reviewed by Cyrus Ali Zargar.
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…
The Love of Coffee: Letters from Istanbul and Sarajevo
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…
What is Islam?: A Call for Scholastic Innovation
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…
“An Education of the Heart”: Revival of Sufism in Bosnia-Herzegovina
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,…
Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Shaping of British Muslim Religious Identities
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…
Breathing With Others: The “Science of the Breath” in early-modern South Asia
“This is the practice of the yogis. It is not the activity of the people of Muhammad, but it is correct.”[1] This line, taken from the margins of a mid-eighteenth century South Asian Persian manuscript…