Category: Featured
What Two Cultural Memes Teach Us About All Religion and Spirituality: Humility
This past week, two cultural memes got their time in the public spotlight. One of them was new and one was a generation old. I’m speaking about The Dress and the fictional planet named “Vulcan.”... Read More
Art and Soul?
The world is a hard place. Too many hours in front of the 24-hour News Networks and one can feel desolate in the face of Sisyphean problems in the world. ISIS in Iraq. Boko Haram in Nigeria. The Lord... Read More
Laughter and Postponing Lent
In case you haven’t heard, we’ve recently gotten a little snow in Boston. Just a little? Okay, it’s more like seven feet, but who’s counting? At Andover Newton Theological School, located in t... Read More
The Paradox of Knowing
This was my thought: “Is God sad over us – for our selfishness, our disconnection, our paving a path to the extinction of life on a planetary scale – which includes ourselves?” So I reache... Read More
Can We Just Love Each Other?
Today is Valentine’s Day and as a Muslim I’m expected to write terrible things about it. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that the whole concept of sexual promiscuity dressed up as “love” is... Read More
An Audience with Pope Francis—Dispatch from Rome
We were on our way to meet Pope Francis. We—the participants in the 50th anniversary meeting of the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies—departed together from the Urbaniana campus a... Read More
Tipping the Scales
It was a cold January afternoon as I pulled into the parking lot of the Noor Islamic Center; the temperature gauge in my car was hovering at around 29-30 degrees. The moment I stepped outside, it felt... Read More
What Nourishes Your Activism? Reflections on Interfaith Sustenance for Social Change
I stood in the pouring rain, my numb fingers frantically pressing the buttons on the intercom box of the brick building where my spiritual director has her office. Sloshing my way through that Saturda... Read More