I have renamed my YouTube channel Islamic Arts & Humanities and I am excited about using it as my main patform for public teaching as well as sharing poetry and Sufi chanting.

Here are some new videos I have posted (a chanted poem and a short talk:

It has taken me two years to get fully into the flow as Assistant Professort of Humanities and Social Sciences, at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University. While it has been a pleasure getting used to my life with my family in Saudi Arabia, it has also kept me extremely busy. That is why I have not been posting here as often as I should. Hopefully, this will change now (in sha Allah)! Anyway, here is an update:

New academic publications:

A review of the following book by Walaa Quisay: Neotraditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality and Politicshttps://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/939072/pdf
 An encyclopedia article entitled "Sufi Groups in North America: A History," published in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion.
 https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.1153

I will make another post about my updated Youtube page...

Fifty years learning to love hope and fear
Allah has kept me still wandering here
To witness the Real despite all the lies
To fall in love with the colourful skies
To fight like a lion and cry like a child
To walk across cities and into the wild
 
Fifty thousand times I told you beware
Watch your step there are traps everywhere
The devil’s teeth cut deep into the bone
But remember my child you are never alone 
Allah is the Real and the night disappears
The sun still rises after fifty years
 
Well over fifty methods they have tried
To stop me from simply walking outside
Identity is the first lie they try
To keep you from even asking them why
You should never choose between wind and stream
Or hold on in the morning to a dream
 
Fifty ways to travel and to survive
Fifty ways to remember I’m alive
Fifty years of experience tasted
Not a second should ever be wasted
Allah is One but His ways are diverse
We cannot stay still in this universe
 
Fifty reasons to share from what I know
Countless stories to tell and scars to show
That the joy of water is found in thirst
And the last is present within the first
I have been around long enough to teach
That it’s better to be real than to preach

I have just returned from four months in Morocco, where I was honoured to conduct fieldwork as part of a team collecting life stories of irregular migrants 'stranded' in Morocco and Mexico on there way to the core of the modern/colonial world-system. I was also able to deepen my knowledge of irregular migration by Morcoccans to Europe and the impact of modern/colonial border policies on people living in liminal spaces such as the southern shore of the Gibraltar Strait. In the West, irregular migrants are constantly framed by the arrogant Right as 'illegal aliens' who need to be kept away, and by the condesceding Left as 'poor babies' in need of care and pity. Listening to actual migrants tell their diverse and complex life stories gives a much more nuanced perspective.

It is somewhat depressing that one still only hopes that such efforts might 'humanize' people from the modern/colonial periphery in the eyes of those living in the core. But how many people are actually willing to listen?

No matter the broader impact, some of us are deeply touched by these stories and feel incredibly honoured to have developed friendships within this fascinating population living in the margins of the world-system. Many of the migrants I have met are true heroes who have confronted incredible obstacles simply in the hope of sending enough money back home for their mothers or siblings to have access to basic necessities. May Allah give them success! 

Check out my most recent publication, an article in the Maydan:
https://themaydan.com/2021/02/decolonizing-the-left-and-the-right-muslim-mistrust-of-foxes-and-wolves/