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Islam

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Monotheism At Thirty Thousand Feet

Below me the world turned slowly through the night, unaware of the multilayered geopolitics my coffee-jangled brain was imposing upon it. I could find reasons to forgive Judaism and Islam their present-day sins. Christianity was another matter.

By Andrew Boyd May 2020
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Notes On Surrender

Over and over I have discovered that my children feel alienated in environments where, at their age, I felt an automatic sense of belonging.

By Krista Bremer December 2018
The Sun Interview

Leaving The Faith

Ali A. Rizvi On Being An Atheist Muslim

“You can’t have freedom of religion without free speech. You have to protect all of it: the Bible and the Quran and my right to say, ‘These books are full of fairy tales.’ ”

By Caleb Powell December 2017
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Wrong Imam

If we could have been inside his heart, if we could have been offered transportation from our Jerusalem to his heaven, this is what we might have absorbed: Abkar was not leading us in prayer. He was talking to God while we happened to be behind him, squeezed in so tightly we could hardly find places for our foreheads on flawless plush carpet.

By Haroon Moghul December 2017
Poetry

Selected Poems

from “To My Husband At The Beginning Of The Holy Month Of Ramadan” | Even though you no longer believe, you wake with me / before dawn. You prepare my breakfast: porridge, sliced banana, / a cup of tea, a glass of water.

By Kasia Clarke December 2017
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Biblioclast

My father. He wanted me to become a writer, but when I did, he didn’t like what I wrote.

He hated my first novel and called it pornography: it features lots of teenage sex and masturbation, as well as an unsavory portrayal of a narcissistic and selfish patriarch.

By Randa Jarrar March 2016
The Dog-Eared Page

The Water Carrier

Guru Gobind Singh’s small fort in Anandpur Sahib was besieged by the mighty forces of Emperor Aurangzeb. The emperor, who believed Islam was the only valid, true, and right religion, was forcibly converting Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians. Guru Gobind Singh, however, believed that all humans worshiped in their own unique ways and that all religions, if practiced with love and heart, led to God.

By Kamla K. Kapur December 2012
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Blues For Allah

I was wrong. Ismail did, in fact, have powerful connections to the band, connections called “Africa” and “exile.” He under­stood what I’d failed to grasp: that when he led Aliya up the narrow stairs of the tour bus, he was leading her back to the deserts of North Africa, where those who have been driven from their homes recognize the longing in one another’s eyes, where unexpected guests are treated like nobility and children like family.

By Krista Bremer July 2012
Poetry

Selected Poems

from “In His Wallet after the Terrorist Bombing” | Three library cards, all tattered — college, city, county. / Driver’s license in which he looks about ten years old. / Grocery-store club membership cards, all bright colors.

By Brian Doyle February 2012
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Go Fly A Kite

I was on a trip back home to northern California — part work, part vacation — and I had a terrible head cold. My research for a magazine article on the wine country north of San Francisco had brought me to a chilly town on the edge of the San Andreas Fault, a place populated by a combination of wealthy tourists, ranch hands, and hippie holdouts.

By Frances Lefkowitz February 2010