folio

As usual, my mother-in-law has been busy knitting all year round in anticipation of a cold winter and I am duty-bound to share such delights… http://folio.me.uk/patiks/2011/11/december-2011/ A description of this hobby of hers can be found here: http://folio.me.uk/patiks/about/ Lest any of your gadget-hipsters think there is nothing here for you, here is proof that she [...]

I have become rather passive of late. The practice of my deen has been confined pretty much to the performance of the five prayers; I don’t think I am in a very good place spiritually and my relationship with my Lord is strained by the sins I willfully pile upon others. All those passions that [...]

Once again the biting cold dismantles another piece of my romantic vision of premodernity — those dreams of the self-sufficient homestead farm fed by spring waters and warmed by the wood burning stove that account for many a wasted moment of my youth. Here I sit in the kitchen before such a stove, warming myself [...]

Have we become driftwood? I know I have.

What a splendid typo… a play by Peter Jukes Insha’Allah. Thought it was a funny name.

Every day I wish I was a better person, but wishing is not the same as trying.

The reality of this road is that it is difficult. It may be straight, but it is steep and at times rough, and often vulnerable to the molestations of bandits. As anyone who journeys to the highlands of any nation will know, the easiest route to the top of a mountain is via the winding [...]

I’m sorry for alienating you too.

How easy it is to lose one’s roots, to become disconnected.

On my way to Istanbul Ataturk Airport this morning, my taxi driver — breaking the silence wrought by my woefully meagre Turkish vocabulary — reached into my soul and began blasting Brooklyn Funk Essentials’ Istanbul Twilight from his dashboard. Had my wife been with me, she would have requested a rendition of a Noble Recitation, [...]

Do not convince yourself when you embrace Islam that you are special, immune to the trials of this world, for every living man and woman must decide whether to take up this path or reject it. You are not a special case. You too must struggle and strive against the call of your nafs. You [...]

In this month of clemency, our Lord sent us a mercy in the form of a man who refused to fly into an unholy rage when his son was torn away from him in the midst of the anarchic disintegration that had seized a nation in the preceding hours. He has become an example for [...]