Critical Muslim

Water — Issue 53

C Scott Jordan immerses himself in images of water; Ebrahim Moosa is drowned and then saved by water; Liam Mayo learns a few lessons about water and…

Featured in this issue

Also in this issue: James Brooks and Liam McKenna go to the cinema to see films about Palestine; Iftikhar Malik reads a book that venerates the British Empire; Ghazal Tipu visits halal dating apps; a short story by Steve Noyes; poems by Saadia Peerdzada and Abigail George; and our list of refreshing bidets (travel options included!).

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Highlights

Issue 52 Genocide

Genocide, Then and Now

In Spring 146 BC, Roman forces led by Scipio Aemilianus breached the walls of Carthage, spending the next seven days systematically destroying the…

Maha Sardar

Issue 53 Water

Drowned World

I woke up early, with a start, suddenly evicted from a dream, as though compelled by a forgotten task or someone calling me. Villa Oneiro was…

Alev Adil

Issue 50 Halal

German Redemption Theology

Jerusalem, 18 March 2008. A first: German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a speech to the Knesset. Thus far, only heads of state, not heads of…

Adnan Delalić

Issue 51 Desire

INTRODUCTION: Orbits of Desire

Let’s begin with the great man himself.The Grand Sheikh. The illustrious portrayer of desires.The anthology of celebrated poems by Muhyiddin Ibn…

Ziauddin Sardar

Issue 36 Destinations

In June this year, a ninety-six-year-old German grandmother was given a sixteen-month prison sentence by a Hamburg court for repeatedly claiming that Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was not a concentration camp. This was the last of many convictions the unrepentant Nazi elderly lady has…

Abdelwahab El-Affendi

Issue 51 Desire

Ready or Not

‘Welcome to PostnormalTimes’.The first words inviting visitors intoThe Postnormal Times MADANI Exhibition in Kuala Lumpur (26 May–10 November 2024) are the same as the title of the 2010 paper by Ziauddin Sardar. The seminal text initiated the development of a future oriented…

Maya Van Leemput

Interior damage to an Armenian church in Mosul, Iraq, destroyed during the ISIS occupation of the city.

Issue 20 PostWest

The West is Dead

It is clear. The West is dead. It is time to stop beating a dead West. It is time to start grooming and riding new horses beyond even postnormality.

Jim Dator

Issue 29 Futures

Futures in the Qur’an

What does the Qur’an have to say about studying and exploring alternative futures? In certain circles, the question itself is regarded as somewhat out of the ordinary if not downright blasphemous. The future is the domain of the Unseen; it belongs to God. Any attempt to predict…

Mirza Sarajkić

Issue 07 Muslim Archipelago

The Dome of the Rock

Early on a Friday morning, we enter the Muslim quarter of old Jerusalem through Damascus Gate. Arab owned shops are opening languidly. Some display images of Mecca and Medina, indicating that the owner has been there on pilgrimage. Sounds and smells of a market place are in the…

Iftikhar Salahuddin

Issue 53 Water

A Most Refreshing Inventory

‘In days of old when Knights were bold’, says the much-loved limerick of schoolboys, and paper wasn’t invented they wiped their arse with blades of grass and walked away contented.There are, as bound to be, various other versions of this little diddy. One…

Asad, The Neglected Thinker

Born to Jewish parents in 1900 in the Austria-Hungarian Empire, Leopold Weiss converted to Islam in 1926, changed his name to ‘Muhammad Asad’, and…

Josef Linnhoff

Grandfather Telling a Story paining by Albert Anker

Issue 28 Narratives

INTRODUCTION: Stories We Are Heirs To

Let me tell you a story…To begin at the beginning. I’ll tell you how it was… In the beginning there was talking. ‘Where did we come from?’ ‘It’s like…

Merryl Wyn Davies