To travel to a new place in search of books is one of life’s most delightful pleasures. There is great joy in perusing the shelves of a hard-to-find bookshop, where one might develop a keen friendship with the owner, and perhaps unearth an interesting book with some notes in the…

There is something profoundly beautiful about visiting a mosque in Istanbul, the city of a thousand minarets: To listen to the call to prayer, in its unmistakably Turkish style; to become part of the crowd rushing inside before prayer starts; to stand side by side with others, and to prostrate…

Pursuing a PhD in Islamic studies, especially as a Muslim in the West, is a delicate balancing act. Answering the question, “What do you do?” is never straightforward. At this stage in life, most of my peers are beginning to gain serious traction in their careers, including by obtaining high-profile…

In these days of Muharram, I have been thinking a lot lately about Hoda Katebi’s thought-provoking article written in 2019, Understanding Structural Anti-Shi’ism in Sunni Diaspora Spaces. Although the immediate impetus for this article is an exchange I had with Zaytuna College and Hamza Yusuf, these words are long overdue. …

In the weeks since Israel began its brutal bombardment of Gaza, which has included the targeting of hospitals,¹ churches,² schools,³ and residential neighborhoods,⁴ Israel and the United States have tried to justify the mass slaughter of civilians by claiming that “Hamas is ISIS.”⁵ Notwithstanding Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, the…

Setting foot in Bosnia, a stunningly beautiful and forested country on the Balkan peninsula, is a surreal experience. Because Westerners have little sense of societal dislocation, loss, or utter devastation, at least as compared to the marginalized populations of the world, we tend to underestimate the resilience of those who…

A couple of months ago, the New York Times published a story about the increasing popularity of faux books, which have become the latest home décor trend. The idea is that, in order to appear more sophisticated, folks are populating their homes with fake books, where the pages are removed…

Whenever I travel to a new country, I am always most interested in visiting local, independently-owned bookshops, because they preserve a part of our humanity that is so deeply vulnerable. I don’t mind seeing glitzy new monuments, but they rarely touch the part of my soul that craves something built…

One of my favorite aspects of traveling is discovering the book-cultures of different parts of the globe. Having briefly studied at Oxford more than a decade ago, I already knew that London was one of the literary capitals of the world. The libraries there are filled with priceless manuscripts, many…