Before, there were green hills. Now, narrow roads snake through layers of blackness and thick phantoms of smoke float up from the grounds as if the air is drawing out the past’s vestiges.

The morning sun lights up Maryam’s face through the gap in the curtains. She lies there with her eyes closed, enjoying the gentle heat. She knows she should get up, but her blanket hugs her whole body with kindness and forbids her from leaving the warm bed. It is a rare comfort: most days she has to wake before sunrise to get ready for work. 

Breaths shallow, eyes unfocused, he lets the ringing in his ears drown out the shouts and sirens, and grasps the gift like a lifeline. The memory plays in his mind: the first time his akhee taught him how to perform wudu. 

Ghazals by Deema K. Shehabi.

A poem by David Pollard.

At the start of 2017, Donald Trump enacted a series of Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations prohibiting travel from a number of countries that eventually became known as ‘the Muslim Travel Ban’.

In early 2021, a photograph in marvellous colour became viral on social media. Gen Z, mostly diasporic Africans, were hooked by its timeless appeal. It seemed to us a carefully choreographed Instagrammable shot taken during a throwback summer along the turquoise shores of the Côte d’Azur or the Cyclades.

The last decade or so has seen the publication of a number of interesting memoirs by Muslims.

Extrajudicial killings for the alleged act of blasphemy have become increasingly common in Pakistan, as have officially registered cases of blasphemy under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

How did it come to pass that twenty years after neoconservatives launched their ‘war on terror’, self-proclaimed Muslim leaders were queuing up to ingratiate themselves to a mainstreamed far-right headed by Donald Trump?