The Egyptian poet al-Busiri (d.1294) is considered the most distinguished author of poems praising the Prophet Muhammad (a.s.). His tomb and mosque in the Anfushi district of Alexandria have recently been restored with the help of local benefactors, and are again playing an important part in the life of the

Imam al-Ghazali’s significance is manifold. He not only understood philosophy, but he showed the dangerously speculative nature of its basic premises in a way which anticipates much modern positivism. This awareness led him to develop a Muslim epistemology rooted in ‘tasting’ (dhawq), i.e. the illuminative fruits of systematic and divinely-assisted

History has not recorded the name of the first British Muslim to carry out the rites of Hajj. Rumours abound of converted Crusaders who made the trip in medieval times, and of British Muslims in Ottoman naval service who visited the hallowed precincts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But

Getting away from the rat-race and enjoying the natural beauties of Europe seems to get harder by the minute. Especially in overcrowded Britain, savouring real fresh air and the God-made marvels of nature can sometimes appear no more than a hopeless and nostalgic fantasy. The Peak District, Snowdonia, Exmoor, even

It is said that the 19th century French poet Mallarmé can only be fully understood by those who are not French, because they read him more slowly. Converts to Islam, the subject of this essay, can perhaps claim the same ambiguous advantage in their reading of the Islamic narrative. Several

A number of difficulties will beset any presentation of Muslim understandings of the Trinity. Not the least of these is the fact that these Muslim understandings have been almost as diverse and as numerous as those obtaining among Christian scholars themselves. It is true that medieval Islam knew much more