Liy Learned That

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Spirit Garden

At this point, God is mine: Notes where I practice being the Muslim ancestor of my dreams.

We only own what was given to us freely

We only own what was given to us freely

If modern life in a climate emergency and multiple genocides means we could be among the last to ever believe, then it may be that we understand the struggle against injustice better than the early Muslims did.

Befriending the Qur'an

Befriending the Qur'an

What I send to those who ask me how they can start building their own relationship with revelation. How do you read it? Which translations? Where do you start?

Here is a queer Muslim wellbeing workbook to help you feel less alone

The Signs In Ourselves

Here is a queer Muslim wellbeing workbook to help you feel less alone

Sheltering indoors in the holy month of the first year of the global pandemic, encouraged by a friend, I made a love letter to God and to all the queer Muslims who changed my life.

Rethinking a social emphasis on procreation and proliferation

The Signs In Ourselves

Rethinking a social emphasis on procreation and proliferation

When confronted with this growth-oriented worldview, the burden is often placed on sexually diverse Muslims to change ourselves to conform to it.

The Tawhidic paradigm for human rights

The Tawhidic paradigm for human rights

Tawhid is a fundamental Islamic principle, often translated to as 'monotheism', but as we'll see, there are more layers to it than that. This is a brief adventure into the world of Islamic ethics.

The four-arched portal of Rahma

The Signs In Ourselves

The four-arched portal of Rahma

What do we do when encountering social rhetoric, verses, and hadith that seem to violate the higher Qur'anic ethical principles of love, rahma, beauty, justice, and equity? Dr Ghazala Anwar offers this Qur'anic portal of Rahma to negotiate this apparent challenge to our faith.

Women as authorities and producers of Islamic knowledge

The Signs In Ourselves

Women as authorities and producers of Islamic knowledge

The struggle to decriminalise sexual diversity from within an Islamic framework holds hands with the intergenerational struggle to democratise authority and justice for women.

Breathing with the Opener: A skeleton key meditation

Breathing with the Opener: A skeleton key meditation

A meditation based on the Quran's opener, Surah Al-Fatihah. If you know the sura, you'll have a grounding tool when thoughts wander.

In conversation with my elder, amina wadud

In conversation with my elder, amina wadud

amina wadud invited me to talk about our explorations of sexual diversity and human dignity— and the ethical question of our time for Muslims everywhere.

Expanding the Muslim knowledge tradition for gender justice

Expanding the Muslim knowledge tradition for gender justice

Muslims believe that the Qur'an is timeless in its benefit. To understand meaning in the Qur’an in any location or time after revelation, tools and concepts in Qur'anic sciences were created. Diverse Muslims can use these traditional tools towards achieving justice in our lived realities today.

Socrates, sense-perception, and the Quran

Socrates, sense-perception, and the Quran

"This is what the earlier Muslim students of the Quran completely missed under the spell of classical speculation."

A transcendent affiliation

A transcendent affiliation

When Muslims eventually created their own calendar a dozen years later, they looked back and decided this was the year it began.