Enlightening Engagement

…were embarking on a course that constituted a venture into suhba ‘ilmiyya, the Arabic term for scholarly companionship. The class was a mosaic composed of Moroccan Muslims sitting for the…

Freedom and Liberty

…their servants, serfs, or slaves. Later, the meaning shifted from ‘affection’ to ‘freedom’.  The word liberty comes through Latin liber, ‘free’, from the Indo-European root leudh, still intact in the…

Between Certificates and Practice

…from a research visit to Indonesia where she had met with government officials, halal certification consultants, and ulama. In addition to tracking the changing and complex world of the now…

That Question Mark

Like the sword of Damocles, a perennial question mark hangs over Pakistan. Can Pakistan survive? Can it continue to endure the ‘war on terror’? Will it see out drone attacks,…

Sectarianism Unbound

…the suicidal man over the bridge. The humorous sketch gives us deep insight into the state of the Muslim ummah – the transnational Muslim community. It is simply not good…

The Bedrock Virtues

…three-legged stool, if any of them is compromised the whole structure collapses. But of course, in most modern societies, and most societies from the past, one or more of the…

I Hated Myself

For most of my life I have hated myself for being a Muslim. Of course, Muslims aren’t allowed to have feelings of contempt for themselves as Muslims or for the…

The Circumference of Freethought

…spaces, circumscribed by what Richard Scholar calls ‘freedom and constraints’. Freethinkers think freely but they know that freedom depends on constraints without which it cannot function. Freethought is not free…

John Brown Revisited

…needed to uproot the evil of slavery if the ‘free republic’ was ever to live up to its name. That revolution did eventually come, after 300 years of slavery –…