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Halal — Issue 50

Hassan Mahamdallie faces a halal/haram backlash; Isham Pawan Ahmad argues that much of what goes under the rubric of halal is not ethical; M Iqbal…

Featured in this issue

Boyd Tonkin is overawed by Edward Burtynsky’s exhibition Extraction/Abstraction; Robin Yassin-Kassab is appalled with Arab world’s Thugocracy; Humera Khan studies the leadership qualities of the Prophet; Sadek Hamid remembers British orientalist explorers; Naomi Foyle’s verdict on recent poetry collections; short stories by John O’Donoghue and Juniad Ashraf; and poems by Mevlut Ceylan and Samantha Terrell.

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Highlights

Issue 49 Scotland

Breaking News

The morning sun lights up Maryam’s face through the gap in the curtains. She lies there with her eyes closed, enjoying the gentle heat. She knows she…

Parand

Issue 23 Bangladesh

Dhaka

Every city moves to its own beat. Although I am a city dweller through and through, it took me some days into my visit to Dhaka before I could sense…

Hassan Mahamdallie

Issue 36 Destinations

Lingering Scents of Hyderabad

They say that scent elicits the strongest memories, can transport you back into times long relegated to a distant past, bring forth fragments of…

Rita Sonal Panjatan

Issue 44 History

Anticolonial Resistance in Morocco

It is commonly acknowledged that Islam played an important role in anticolonial resistance in different parts of the Muslim world. Muslim countries…

Abdelaziz El Amrani

Issue 50 Halal

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 government, were permitted to address the Israeli parliament. The Knesset bylaws were changed to facilitate Merkel’s special address…

Adnan Delalić

Issue 21 Relations

Hajabi Dating

‘Terrorists don’t wear vintage shoes.’ At least not according to Sofia Khan, the heroine of my novel, Sofia Khan is not Obliged. Because she knows, just as well as the next person, that a terrorist would not be wearing a pair of teal, snakeskin, peep-toes. What else, after all…

Ayisha Malik

A city skyline at night with building lit up by lights

Issue 26 Gastronomy

Twice Removed Migrant

In January 2018, I went back to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, my birthplace. We Ugandan Asians were exiled from the country in 1972. I settled in London, vibrant, exciting, everchanging. In time that past faded like newsprint on old papers. Decades later, I was back in the…

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

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…

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 04 Pakistan?

Karachi in Fragments

Shahid kept his pigeons in a coop on the roof of his home, nested somewhere in the anthill labyrinth of Karachi's oldest neighbourhood, Lyari. The building was crumbling in places, but the coop was of the modern variety, replete with receding ledges and fluorescent lighting, and…

Taimur Khan

Our Kitchen in 1940s Baghdad

The house of my childhood in Baghdad had two courtyards, haush, Middle Eastern style. The larger one was the centre of the main living area, with…

Sami Zubaida

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