Reviving Islamic Art: A Conversation with Nushmia Khan
Nushmia Khan is a multifaceted artist and entrepreneur who has seamlessly blended her passion for Islamic heritage with her creative expertise. Founder of Silsila, a platform dedicated to preserving and promoting Islamic craftsmanship, Nushmia draws from her background in video journalism, photography, and design to create meaningful pieces that resonate with Muslims worldwide. Now based in Istanb...

Sacred Objects In A Secular Space
We met with Betül Çakırca, a museum historian and researcher and talked about the issues we have heard so much, such as the exhibition of Islamic Art, the exposition of the sacred in museums. Although the museum is a secular institution, where should we put the art of Islam in the museum, the exhibitions of the Love of the Prophet, the Sacred Relics? We asked her all these questions and she kind...

Muslims in Europe - What to do?
Bashy Quraishy is the secretary general of EMISCO – European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion from Denmark and we had the opportunity to discuss with him the experiences, challenges and duties of Muslims in Europe.    I would like to start out by asking how Islam, and in particular, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is viewed in Denmark and in Europe? In fact, demonization of Islam or the cartoons ab...

Following the Steps of the Prophet in Argentina
Rehue (Idris) Calquin is an indigenous Latin American from the Mapuche tribe, Argentina. He is the spiritual guide of his tribe who obtained this role and ability from his mother. He and his wife, Sofia, embraced Islam seven years ago, and before their conversion, they used to pursue a lifestyle surprisingly similar to Islam. We have met them in the historical Sinan Pasha Madrassah, Istanbul, an...

Ekrem Demirli: "There Is No Voice above the Voice of the Prophet
We have visited Prof. Ekrem Demirli, founder of the School of Classical Thinking in Iskender Baba Dervish Lodge, which hosts the School in Üsküdar, Istanbul. We have made an interview with him about Mawlana’s (Rumi) vision of death, sheb-i arus (the wedding night), and the Prophet. Emphasizing that behind the words of Mawlana and all saints (wali) we mention is the exegesis of hadiths, Ekrem Dem...

Interview with Nouman Ali Khan
Nouman Ali Khan, founder and CEO of Bayyinah Institute, visited Turkey on August 23, 2016. Our youth team conducted an interview with him considering Muslim youth.

Jonas Yunus Atlas: Halal Monk
The film ‘Forest Gump’ has the main character sitting at a bus stop and telling his whole candid life to a series of passing strangers. It’s part of the human experience that we sometimes speak more freely and truthfully with people we don’t know than with our closest friends and family. There can be something powerfully insightful about the meeting with a ‘stranger’, as suggested by the Qur’anic ...

Murat Pay: Breath of the Beloved
The documentary “The Breath of the Beloved”, directed by Murat Pay and produced by Kaplan Film, is a compelling film about a tradition that is slowly withering away: meshk and mawlid. We had a conversation with the director, who seeks to evoke some of our waning traditions through the young mawlid-reciter Abdurrahman’s story, about his film, mawlid, and the tradition of meshk. ...

Dr. Fazlun Khalid & The Islamic Environmental Message
Dr. Fazlun Khalid is a pioneer of the Islamic environmental movement. The founder and director of The Islamic Foundation for Ecology & Environmental Sciences (IFEES), Dr. Khalid has led the way both as a scholar shedding light upon the environmental teachings of Islam, and as an adcovate raising environmental awareness among Muslims and developing methods of applying these teachings to small comm...

Animals in the Qur'an - An Interview with Sarra Tlili
We tend to think of the Qur'an from an exclusively human perspective, but what can it tell us about  God's relationship with the nonhuman world? Dr. Sarra Tlili, a scholar of Arab and Islamic Studies, and currently an Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Florida, explores this question in her recent book, Animals in the Qur'an (Cambridge University Press, 20...

Dr. John Andrew Morrow
The traditional sources for knowing and understanding the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) include the Qur'an, the Hadith, and to a lesser extent, the Sirah. Dr. John Andrew Morrow has brought attention to what may be considered another foundational set of source material. As the result of research that took him to churches and monasteries across the Middle East, Dr. Morrow has collected a set of writ...

Director Muhammad Bayazid
How can the life of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) be relevant to our own lives today? The miniseries ‘Inspiration’ explores the timeless nature of the Prophet’s message by telling the story of a young American Muslim who draws on the example of the Prophet to help confront the personal, professional and spiritual challenges he faces in his daily life. Muhammad Bayazid is a Syrian ...