Selections

Read a selection of articles from issues of Critical Muslim.

Chinese 'Re-education' by Maha Sardar

The massive human rights violations perpetrated against the Uyghur community in China have been largely undocumented and hidden from worldview. Only in recent years has the brutal reality emerged: the state-sponsored cultural eradication and forced assimilation of Muslim Uyghurs. Muslims make up the majority population in the Xinjiang Uyghur ...

Ziauddin Sardar's Twelve Postnormal Plagues

I don’t know about you. But I feel a bit unnatural. It has become rather unnatural to be an ordinary, caring, socially conscious human ...

Ten Cities to Visit Before You Die

1. Fez There is only one city that can be on the top of your travel list: Fez. After the destruction of Aleppo, it is the only Islamic city that ...

Postnormal Blues by Ziauddin Sardar and Samia Rahman

Superpowers. Of all the possible superpowers in this best of all possible worlds, which one would you most like to possess? We sought the counsel ...

Top Ten Jihadi Janes by Shanon Shah

There’s an old riddle that is surprisingly current. If you haven’t heard it before, allow yourself some time to answer before reading ...

Sun and the Shadow by Tahir Abbas

‘So, you are Pakistani?’ Almost every day, when I meet Turks for the first time, I am asked ‘where are you from?’ Almost ...

Researching Islamophobia by Sindre Bangstad

I have probably dedicated more time and energy to researching and teaching the topic of Islamophobia than any other academic in Norway, yet I ...

The Republic of Islamophobia by Jim Wolfreys

An openly racist party with deep roots in France’s fascist tradition, the Front National, won control of a dozen local authorities, in March ...

Al-Biruni: Against the Grain by Bruce B. Lawrence

Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad Al-Biruni liked school. No, he loved school.The challenge to read and recite, to count and to calculate was fun, but ...

The Sect as Homeland by Rasha Omran

On the telephone in Damascus, or via Facebook with Tartus (the Mediterranean coastal city and surrounding region with an Alawi ...

Sectarianism Unbound by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies

‘Taz’, a new channel on the Pakistani Geo TV network, is dedicated to twenty-four-hour news. There is a rapid-fire news bulletin every ...

Dusklands by Robin Yassin-Kassab

Morocco’s Arabic name, ‘al-Maghreb’, emerges from the root gh-r-b, which denotes concepts including the west, distance, and ...

Out of this Dead-End by Ziba Mir-Hosseini

In July 1979, six months into the Iranian Revolution that brought Islamists into power, Ahmad Shamloo wrote a poem, ‘In This ...

Me, Islam and Literature by Linda Christanty

He was astonished when he discovered I was a Muslim. He was a member of the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong, an Englishman whose name ...

Return to Al-Andalus by Ziauddin Sardar

A young surgeon seeks new techniques to relieve the suffering of his patients. He is a rationalist familiar with the latest advances in ...

A Veronica on the Eve of War by Martin Rose

Cities also believe that they are the work of the mind, or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take ...

Coke Studio by Bilal Tanweer

There are no billboards on the streets. For the last four years, a week or so before the new season of Coke Studio is launched, most of the ...

Twenty-First-Century Crusaders by Arun Kundnani

In September 2009, as the organisation was preparing for a major demonstration in Manchester the following month, the English Defence League (EDL) ...

The Race of Women by Samia Rahman

As an array of condoms burst out of her handbag, a skimpily dressed Samantha flails about on her knees scrambling to retrieve her ...

Tahrir Square by Robin Yassin-Kassab

Cairo felt different. Tahreer Square, of course, carried a new set of meanings. The traffic, the pollution, the Stalinist gloom of the Mugamma ...