Together with Mark Vernon, Jonas Atlas discussed various aspects of spiritual development. Vernon’s latest book takes a deep dive into Dante’s Divine Comedy, a classic masterpiece, which, after many centuries, still provides many helpful insights for those who find themselves on a spiritual journey. In their podcast conversation Atlas and…

Jonas Atlas in conversation with Abdal Hakim Murad The islamic scholar Abdal Hakim Murad is the dean of the Cambridge Muslim College. In the 2020 edition of The Muslim 500, he’s placed in the top fifty of the most influential muslims in the world once again. Earlier this year Murad…

Fr. Jens Petzold I belong to a small Christian monastic community of nuns and monks who contemplate Islam and interact with its different currents. Our community was founded in 1991, after the restoration of Deir [Monastery] Mar Musa in Syria. The site is an old sacred one, named after Mar…

By Jonas Atlas Religion is a daily theme in our social and political debates. Yet no matter how diametrically opposed the opponents in those debates can be, in the end they always also share a common ground: the assumption that it’s quite clear what the concept of ‘religion’ entails. …

Jonas Atlas’ book is available now Sufism is often described as ‘the mystical branch of Islam’. Giving some more attention to this underexposed spiritual side, it is often proposed, could help us to ease certain contemporary societal tensions. …

by Jonas Atlas Even though religion is a core theme of many contemporary debates, a solid definition of the concept cannot be procured. Several possibilities have been proposed by plenty of academics, yet they vary greatly and no single definition ever became generally accepted. …

By Jonas Atlas It’s often thought that Christianity is predominantly occupied with dogma and ritual. Mysticism, so it seems, belongs to the fringes of the Christian tradition — certainly in its contemporary Catholic and Protestant forms. Yet Christian mysticism wasn’t always as marginalized as it is today. …

A conversation with Michiel Leezenberg By Dino Suhonic Islam has a reputation of being exceptionally repressive when it comes to sex. Yet this reputation is surprisingly recent. Only a century ago the Islamic world was seen as licentious and sensual — even flat out effeminate. These changes in the Western…

by Dr. D. Latifa Monotheism itself is not some simple objective entity which functions in an invariable manner. There is also a psychology of monotheism and its internalization in the life of a community: the manner in which this large Greek word denoting belief in one God (Theos) has become…