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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 [...]

If you were a real man, she said, you wouldn’t have tolerated me talking to you like that. She thought it would be her final knock-out blow — victory hers — drumming her point home; feeble loser. And by your definition, he replied, if you were the real deal you wouldn’t have talked to me [...]

I have always found it strange when friends — especially converts — emphasise that they are “independent”, although of course I understand what they’re saying… that Islam is their choice, that they didn’t embrace it because of someone else or because someone made them. But it strikes me as strange because when I look at [...]

A quick note to say thank you to those who read this website and decided to vote for it in the category of Best European Blog in the recent Brass Crescent thingymabob.

This afternoon I put my eldest brother’s name into Google and clicked on search; he came up as the first listing out of about 476,000. He has been involved in a number of landmark cases in the High Court and Court of Appeal, and Chambers and Partners list him as an up and coming individual. [...]

I appear to be going off on tangents a lot these days and here I go again. In an opinion piece on a US website last week, a British Muslim journalist lamented the growth of pop culture within the Muslim community. She was commenting on the response of female audiences to the nasheed performances in [...]