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Last night on our return from an adoption seminar in London we dropped into West Ealing mosque to perform Maghrib before our not-too-long journey back to our green and pleasant valley out west. As I stood within in the midst of that diverse tribe — a mini united nations — I found myself thinking this: [...]

I used to be exacerbated by what I perceived as the aloofness of the folk at the local mosque wherever I happened to find myself. But times have changed. Over the past year or so attending the mosque in town in my lunch break, I have become part of the furniture. I am no longer [...]

Friends are allowed to have blue moments, brief falling-outs, disagreements and the odd depression. Because a friend shouts at me, or takes issue with something I say, it doesn’t mean the friendship’s through. But even it was and we were suddenly enemies to one another, it would not change God’s sacred law. Back-biting is still [...]

The old Pakistani uncle at the mosque is due his seventy excuses too.1 People like me are often found muttering taciturn complaints about the unfriendliness we perceive in our fellow travellers when we come together for prayer. In weeks and weeks it could be as if we are not even there, as if ghosts standing [...]

Be careful of assumptions. A friend of mine once complained that a friend of his didn’t want to know him any more. But in truth, the brother in question had died.

[49:10]The Believers are but a single Brotherhood: So make peace and reconciliation between your two brothers; and fear God, that you may receive Mercy.

One of the beauties of brotherhood as we experience it within the fold of Islam is sincerity amongst friends. In my days before Islam, friends were people who told me exactly what I wanted to hear. My true friends today are those who speak the truth and grant me wise counsel even when this is [...]