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.
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…
Jonas Atlas in conversation with Dr. D. Latifa
When I met the Pakistani psychologist Dr. D. Latifa for the first time in 2012, we were supposed to meet for a short interview, as part of a series of conversations with influential Muslim scholars, artists and activists. …
by Jonas Atlas
The Pakistani Tahir-ul-Qadri (who resides in Canada these days) gladly presents himself as a great Sufi scholar. In that capacity, his hundreds of books are eagerly read by his thousands of followers from the (higher) middle classes of Pakistan. In 2010 he was abundantly praised by the…
on the crossroads of religion, mysticism and politics
