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July 2018

July 16, 2018

When Prophets Come Alive

I recently accompanied my murshid on a spiritual retreat in Turkey, along with a group...

June 2018

June 18, 2018

Truth Is From Your Lord

“O My God, show us Truth as truth and bless us with following it and...

June 05, 2018

Nurturing Intimacy During Ramadan

It’s well after midnight and burning candles flicker in my dimly lit living room. Music...

April 2018

April 09, 2018

Coming Home to the Sufi Kitchen

What would life be like if you all you had ever eaten was dirt? That’s...

April 05, 2018

The Many Directions of Prayer

Lately I’ve been having a funny mix-up: I keep opening the prayer app on my...

March 2018

March 24, 2018

My Journey From ‘Moderate’ Muslim to Seeker of Love

For many years starting at around the time of the 9-11 terror attacks, I referred...

February 2018

February 09, 2018

Thanking Big

I’d just finished getting my hair cut and styled at the one salon in London...

December 2017

December 08, 2017

Awakening the Sacred Feminine In All of Us

Huddled at the back, left-hand corner of a large hall, me and a handful of...

October 2017

October 25, 2017

Bob Dylan and the Beloved

When I ask myself who or what the Beloved is in Sufi terminology, I have...

August 2017

August 24, 2017

Sacred Space: Making Prayer Beautiful

My childhood memories of the mosque hardly evoke the idea of sacred space. I recall...

July 2017

July 17, 2017

The Work of Heart

Lately I've been seeing hearts everywhere I look. In a magazine I was reading, I...

July 04, 2017

Ramadan with Shams: The Ambush of Love

This Ramadan, I drank from the wisdom of Shams of Tabriz contained in the...

June 2017

June 06, 2017

Preventing Spiritual Flabbiness: The Benefits of Regular Fasting

Several years ago, one of the most-thoughtful readers of my blog commented on a piece...

May 2017

May 29, 2017

The Timelessness of Hunger

“O you who have faith, fasting is ordained for you as it has been ordained...

April 2017

April 28, 2017

Complex Trauma and Spiritual Healing Power of Sufism

Since I was a 13-year-old spending recesses in the schoolyard composing poems inspired by my...

April 20, 2017

On Saints as Friends of the Divine

Saints were everywhere in my Catholic childhood. Their haloed, beseeching visages appeared in the unlikeliest...

April 04, 2017

What the Heart Knows

My wife and I were recently invited to lead another service at our local Unitarian...

March 2017

March 27, 2017

The Mercy of the Ailing Body

One evening a few weeks before my 25th birthday, I alighted from a train in...

March 09, 2017

The Most Important Thing I Learned From Our Murshid

He could have been someone's grandfather from Sicily, dressed in a three-piece suit, walking with...

February 2017

February 20, 2017

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and the Women in His Life

Dearest M, Where do we go from here? For the last...

January 2017

January 27, 2017

Mother Nature and the 99 Names

One of the aims of our new book The 99 Names of God is to...

January 19, 2017

Spiritual Wisdom In A Treasure The Burglars Left Behind

In the heap of objects strewn across the dining room floor, I spotted a sterling...

January 13, 2017

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and His Battles, Then and Now

Dearest M, My heart is heavy as I write this. Not because of anything between...

November 2016

November 24, 2016

Guests of Love: Leonard Cohen and the Sufis (Part 2)

One of the greatest musical performances I have ever witnessed was one wet summer evening...

November 10, 2016

On Animal Companions

Dearest M, Before I came to Islam, the only story I’d ever heard about...

October 2016

October 03, 2016

Coming home to the heart

Dearest M, Expatriates are supposed to fall into one of three categories: missionary, mercenary or...

September 2016

September 15, 2016

Forgiving my reflection

Sufi stories and poetry often allude to mirrors. Not the ones that immediately come to...

August 2016

August 29, 2016

Finding Guidance in Dreams

My dearest M, There’s the Hadith that says, “Anyone who sees me in a...

August 16, 2016

Turning to the Quran: Reflections on Learning to Whirl

When we think of a whirling dervish, we might automatically think of somebody in...

August 08, 2016

On Learning to Listen

I was pacing the uptown side of Prince Street station, waiting for the R train....