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  • Palm trees in Southern Iraq next to a brick wall
    Issue 13 Race

    The Revolt of the Zanj

    The story of the revolt of the Zanj slaves in southern Iraq has always been seen as a striking exception among the political and social movements of…

    Hugh Kennedy
  • ancient manuscript featuring a bird and flowers in its image
    Issue 12 Dangerous Freethinkers

    Jahiz: Dangerous Freethinker?

    Free-thinking is characterized by a reliance on reason and autonomy rather than authority or institution. It is an inquisitive and questioning state…

    James E. Montgomery
  • Hafez al-Assad waving at a crowd of people
    Issue 11 Syria

    Revolutionary Culture

    In ‘Assad’s Syria’, as the slogans at the borders and in the streets called it, schools taught by rote and intimidation. The universities were…

    Robin Yassin-Kassab
  • Sheikh Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi
    Issue 10 Sects

    The Sunni Orthodoxy

    The Iranian revolution made me giddy. I was a theological student at the Nadwatul Ulama seminary in India at the time, and barely 21. My optimism…

    Ebrahim Moosa
  • aerial view of the Medina from the phoenician tombs near body of water during night time
    Issue 09 The Maghreb

    Souk Shopping in Tangier

    It was shopping that first inclined me towards an interest in Islam, though it must be said that the lupine line of hassling touts that in the old…

    Barnaby Rogerson
  • Biennale
    Issue 08 Men in Islam

    The Aesthetic of Promise

    The Venice Biennale is regarded as one of the most prestigious cultural events in the international calendar. Its history dates back to 1895; since…

    Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton
  • Muslim young woman with hennaed hands
    Issue 08 Men in Islam

    Other Than Men

    Official pre-modern histories of Islam typically tell the stories of prominent men and their lives. Unofficial chronicles and literary sources…

    Asma Afsaruddin
  • The Old City of Jerusalem, including the Dome of the Rock and various church steeples, seen through coils of razor wire, illustrating the Holy Land's history of division and conflict.
    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…

    Iftikhar Salahuddin
  • Mohammad Natsir
    Issue 07 Muslim Archipelago

    Muslim Intellectuals in Indonesia

    Indonesia is increasingly identified as an upcoming global powerhouse ready to join the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), but too…

    Carool Kersten
  • The Window of Enlightenment
    Issue 06 Reclaiming Al-Andalus

    The Original Enlightenment

    History, wrote the Roman Catholic saint Gregory of Nyssa (335-395), is a non-stop sequence of new beginnings. Some sixteen centuries later, we are…

    Emilio Gonzalez-Ferrin
  • three brown puppies
    Issue 06 Reclaiming Al-Andalus

    Muslim Dogs

    It was a packed London underground train, so social interaction was already set at a glacial minimum –the standard non-communication of a…

    Barnaby Rogerson