EVERY YEAR, AS Ramadhan ends, I watch it happen. The sun goes down on that last day, and something shifts. Something grows distant, in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. And then, so gradually nobody notices, the days return to normal. By mid-Shawwal, we just feel… Less connected. For years, I thought … Continue reading After Ramadhan
I WAS FLYING back to London from Istanbul some years ago on a British Airways flight. The back of the plane was full of families returning from holiday, the clamour of children, the negotiating of small needs, the particular exhaustion of parents at the end of a journey. A flight attendant was speaking to a … Continue reading Motherhood Is Not the Trap
THERE ARE MOMENTS in history that expose the true condition of a nation. What we are witnessing today at Masjid al-Aqsa is one such moment. For the first time since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, and possibly since the liberation by Salahuddin from the Crusaders in 1187CE, the blessed mosque has been closed during … Continue reading Al-Aqsa in Chains
Eid Mubarak, dear brothers and sisters. Alhamdulillah for the Ramadhan we were given. A month ago, I asked you to go deeper. To consider the big questions, to hold the Qur’an not just in your hands but in your thinking, to look honestly at where the ummah stands and how we got there. I asked … Continue reading Eid Mubarak
THERE ARE MOMENTS when you look at the world and realise you have run out of reactions. The grief has been grieved too many times. The anger has nowhere left to go. The shock of one week becomes the ordinary of the next, and somewhere in that process something in you goes numb, not because … Continue reading The Affair Belongs to Him
EVERY YEAR, IN Ramadhan, I sit down and calculate my zakat. The calculation itself is not the hard part. Determine the nisab, assess eligible wealth, apply the 2.5%, the fiqh is clear, the method established. Within an hour, I have a figure. Then the real difficulty begins. How do I distribute it? Who do I … Continue reading Zakah Without a System
THE THEME OF the United Nations International Women’s Day 2026 is “Rights. Justice. Action.” Few would dispute the importance of these ideals. The question Muslims are entitled to ask is whether the framework promoting them is actually capable of delivering them, or whether these words have become a slogan, selectively applied abroad and largely undelivered … Continue reading The Slogan and the Silence
ON THE 17TH of Ramadhan, a little more than three hundred men stood on a plain called Badr and faced an army more than three times their size. They were fasting. We think of Ramadhan today as a month of withdrawal. More prayer. More Qur’an. Slower days. A turning inward. And none of that is … Continue reading Ahad
“I SWEAR BY Allah, if the people in the graves were told to wish for something… they would wish for a single day in Ramadhan.” (Ibn al-Jawzi) And here we are. In Ramadhan. And half of it has already slipped through our fingers. If, like me, you find yourself wondering where the days went, and … Continue reading Still Here. Still Breathing. Still in Ramadhan.
TODAY MARKS 102 years since one of the most significant moments in modern Islamic history, the abolishment of the Ottoman Khilafah on 3rd March 1924. On this occasion, it is worth reflecting on a profound prophecy of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ that frames where we stand today. The Hadith That Frames Our Times Imam … Continue reading 102 Years On: Will We Be the Generation That Answers the Call?
