folio

Sometimes my ego petitions me: “Why does nobody care what you have to say?” Why are gatherings too intolerant, too impatient? Why do forums wander on as if I never uttered a word? Why are my thoughts and concerns between friends so readily dismissed? My ego harangues me with questions like these, prompting all kinds of contemptuous [...]

I stumbled, tripped, fell flat on my face, witnessed by You alone. It was an abomination of my own making, for which I deserved your Anger, your Wrath. But instead You threw me a rope. First a stranger begging help: to my quest for sin, You responded with an opportunity to be good, to serve You by [...]

Oh how I love my wife. What a shame such sentiments hit with such force when she is so far away, when I am ill like this. In a moment of delirium wrought by the altercation between those biting shivers and the piercing sweaty heat late at night, I dispatched a message: ‘Come home early, if you [...]

I return once more to the word of our Prophet, peace be upon him, when he told his companions to throw dust in the faces of those who praised people in their presence. I was in Turkey, taking tea with our Muslim neighbours, when conversation turned to my conversion. People always assume that I converted [...]

Indeed, how hilarious: those Muslamic ray guns. How our sides split when we encountered the slurred petitions of the EDL supporter interviewed by Press TV last year. Or not. No, instead I just think of that video and the vile reaction to it — the sniggers, the mocking words, the superiority complexes — whenever another [...]

Thank God that we have reality to drive away the cynicism wrought by persistent stereotypes. How often it is said that men of Pakistani descent are untrustworthy and corrupt; amongst Muslims it has become acceptable to say these things as if they were certain truth. Nowadays it is not unusual to encounter the sniggers, the [...]

I am glad that multiculturalism enables Abhijit Pandya to contribute to the Daily Mail‘s RightMinds blog. But then I’m from a place noted for religious dissent for the past five hundred years: Lollards, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists. Multiculturalism runs right through our veins. Meanwhile, a reader in the comments beneath the article quotes from poorly paraphrased [...]

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.

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 [...]