Life & Culture

An internationally recognised Islamic scholar, who saw spirituality, justice, and knowledge as integral to an authentic religious existence. Shaykh Seraj Hendricks, who passed away on the 9th of July 2020 at the age of 64, was a scholar of international repute, able to communicate and engage on the level of state leaders, religious scholars and the broader public.

I can’t breathe. George Floyd’s last words, conveying, verbatim, Eric Garner’s last words, with echoes through a long chain of souls – Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Freddie Grey, Jamar Clark, Alton Sterling, Stephon Clark and Botham Jean – is a testamentary call that should pierce every Muslim’s mind and heart.

I pray that, as we continue to lovingly welcome and vigilantly discover the blessings inherent in Ramadan upon us, we awaken to all the moments and especially the moment that Allah has chosen to place us. A quotation from Charles Dickens, the opening to one of his novels, is worth reflecting on: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Individually, the consequence of our fears is a more fragile mind and spiritual state, wrecked with the havoc of worries on the next paycheck, the next trip to the grocery store, and the next step to resolve this global crisis.

When your heart aches for the masjid
When iftar and maghrib bring no rush
When your jama’a is one or five
In the place of a thousand men,

May you remember the Ramadan
of the mother of small child.

A public intellectual recently wrote that we are all living, through the coronavirus tribulation, a pandemic of death’s dominion. Are we?

While we may long for an opportunity to purify the soul through a removal of the self from its current existence, in reality we are given the opportunity for purification of the heart over and over again throughout our daily life.

Goodnight Tales for Little Muslims is a collection of ridiculously interesting and thankfully short bedtime stories with spirit, soul and Islamic lessons for little ones.

To embody our tradition we need to connect to those before us who transmitted and embodied the sacred law and spiritual refinement.

Goodnight Tales for Little Muslims is a collection of ridiculously interesting & thankfully short bedtime stories with spirit, soul and Islamic lessons for little ones.

Travel expands our minds, our experiences, our connections, and can be spiritually transformative and inspiring. The Qur'an encourages us to travel and reflect deeply on creation, and to ponder on the fate of those who came before us.

In reproducing artwork, the calligrapher must try to obliterate his or her own stylistic preferences and give way to the essence of the original piece. Nuria Garcia Masip shares her attempt to reproduce a famous work from Abdullah Zuhdi from the Mosque of the Prophet.