Lauren Booth – Islam Is A European Way of Life
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The transcript discusses the history and cultural significance of the European religion, including its impact on the region and its cultural significance. The success of Islam in various countries, including Europe and the United States, is also discussed, along with reasons for "hasn't been easy," and the "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," and the "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," and the "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," and the "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," and the "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," as reasons for "hasn't been easy," and the "hasn't been easy," as reasons
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As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh.
Ever since going to Albania a couple of
years ago and recently to Bosnia, I have
been really amazed, excited, delighted and troubled by
the knowledge of what European Islam is, has
been and continues to look like in the
Balkans.
As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh.
Wa-alaykum as-salāmu wa-rahmatullāhi.
Thank you so much for having me on
Sister Lauren, thank you so much.
It's a real pleasure to be here sharing
this space with you.
It's great to see you and you know
what brothers and sisters, it's really important as
believers that we've got each other's backs and
when we're doing something great and positive and
the work is good that we're always there
amplifying each other's voices.
This is what family means, this is what
a kind of structured response to bad news
looks like.
Let's get the good news and the good
work out there inshallah.
Tell us about your nomination first and foremost
for the Bailey Gifford Prize for Nonfiction 2021
and why are you in that category and
what's your book about?
So the Bailey Gifford Prize, to those who
don't know, is the most prestigious non-fiction
award in the UK and in pretty much
in the English language in many ways.
And the reason that it's been nominated for
that is because my publishers felt like there
was such an immense amount of history, which
of course there is because I'm covering the
Muslim history and heritage of Europe in many
ways, they felt that there was so much
there that it constituted a pun as they
put it.
Travel literature, which is what my book is,
doesn't normally get a look in at the
Bailey Gifford because it tends to be for
big history type books and those autobiographies of
famous historical figures or historical narratives and things
like that.
So if I'm honest, I didn't hold out
much hope.
So to hear that it was nominated for
the award was a huge shock to me,
especially for what is my debut book.
But also of course it was a wonderful,
wonderful honour.
But more importantly, in my opinion, it alludes
to the fact that we're living through an
age where people know that there are alternative
narratives, people know that there are alternative histories
out there and I think especially when it
comes to Europe, there is a huge hunger
for the Muslim history and heritage of Europe
and across the continent, whether it's in the
places like the countries I went to on
this journey or Western Europe as well.
And we're seeing a growing number of people
exploring these histories now and I think that's
what piqued the interest of the judges who
spoke highly of the book and said that
it gave them that alternative kind of look
on places that they were already familiar with.
Everybody knows the Western Balkans, everybody knows these
countries in what is the former Soviet bloc,
but unfortunately they often get pigeonholed into being
little more than former Soviet bloc countries and
we have this popular image of them being
kind of grey, drab places that are war
-torn.
And I wanted to redress that, but of
course more importantly, I wanted to remind people
that this is actually indigenous Muslim Europe.
As soon as I hear that word indigenous
Muslim Europe, I think of unfortunately right-wing
parties being triggered by this idea.
It's simple and complicated at the same time,
because you've had this Turkey and the Ottoman
Empire and then communism and then secularism and
yet Islam is still there.
But first of all, take us back to
2014.
Was that your first trip to, was it
Albania?
No, the trip that kind of instigated it
was in Bulgaria.
So we were in Bulgaria, which is the
part that we deal, that I deal with
in the introduction.
And I'd actually, we travelled vastly across Eastern
Europe.
It was one of our favourite places to
visit as a family and as I often
did, whether it was Europe or anywhere else,
I like to go and explore and look
for the Muslim heritage in these spaces.
And at this point in my life when
I was in Bulgaria, I started to do
more than just go and look at these
places as tourists.
I had resurrected my career as a writer.
I was now writing articles for various international
magazines and travel guidebooks and I wanted to
kind of show the alternative history in these
spaces.
So when we were in Bulgaria, it came
as a bit of a shock to me,
because although I'd done a little bit of
research, I wasn't aware of just how vast
the living legacy still was in Bulgaria.
We were in the centre of the country,
we were staying in this tiny obscure village
called Palamaca, where we were staying on an
eco-farm run by two Brits.
It was a wonderfully kind of relaxed and
sedate way of living.
They were kind of proponents of something called
slow living, you know, a bit of the
old, living the whole kind of off the
fat of the land and you know, just
turning down the speed on life.
And it was wonderful growing their own food,
having their own animals, etc.
And we wanted to go and experience a
bit of that.
And on our way there from Romania, and
we'd started off the journey in Romania and
we were driving south into Bulgaria, I was
astonished by how many little mosques kept propping
up in the hills.
Obviously they were minarets, when I say mosques,
and obviously when I saw a minaret I
knew exactly what was attached to them.
Some were locked up and were clearly disused
and no longer being prayed in, so to
speak, and then others were clearly still in
use.
And this did come as a surprise to
me, even though I've travelled across Eastern Europe
quite a bit at this point.
And so when we pitched up, rocked up
at the actual farm, much to my delight,
one of the owners, Chris, was an archaeologist
and he had a fascination with the local
Muslim culture as well.
So he then helped me go and explore
a bit more of this history and heritage,
and he took me to the tomb of
a local Bektashi saint or Alevi saint called
Demir Baba, where we came upon this tomb
that was being wonderfully shared by both the
local Christians and the local Muslims.
And I just found it really rather humbling
and also quite mind-blowing.
And so it was on that trip that
I began to formulate a road trip across
the countries that I knew had a Muslim
majority population to this day, in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo, and some of the
surrounding countries such as Serbia, North Macedonia and
Montenegro, because by now I was also starting
to research the potential history and heritage in
these places, some of which I was also
realising as I began my research was being
dramatically and quickly eradicated.
And so there was a sense of urgency
to do something about this, and I wanted
to use the journey initially to maybe write
a series of articles or something.
And as we went on the journey it
became apparent to me that this could be
a book.
We're very glad it is a book.
I wonder about this word eradication that you
just used, because that's definitely something that Albanians,
Kosovans during my visit to various areas where
they are now being encroached upon.
What we don't realise about the Balkans, brothers
and sisters, is how difficult it is to
be Muslim there, even though many of those
areas are still Muslim populations.
Can you talk to us a little bit
about the eradication perspective?
Yeah, I think one of the things that
helped me appreciate this, which is important of
course, is that I also did one of
those classic travel writer things where I found
a historical narrator of the area, and I
wanted to follow in his footsteps.
But this wasn't just any old historical narrator.
Most of your listeners, especially those in Turkey,
will be aware of Evliya Celebi, who of
course is the 17th century Ottoman traveler that
most English speakers know almost nothing about.
Some of us more curious and intrepid Muslims
may have learned a little bit about him.
I knew a fair amount at this point,
and I could only access him in English.
So taking him along with me and the
parts of the Balkans that he wrote about
really helped to bring home just how much
had been eradicated in some spaces.
Because of course, when Evliya Celebi was wandering
through these lands in the 17th century, his
father having lived in the service of Sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent, he was essentially moving through
an empire that was more or less still
at its peak.
And in that respect, much of the Europe
that I wandered through, and much of the
Europe that was Ottoman at the time, was
the most Muslim it was ever going to
be.
And so he was looking at towns and
villages at a time when they were as
Muslim as they've ever been.
And then I was able to go to
those places and draw comparisons.
And yes, in some places, such as Albania,
you could see just how much of that
had been done away with.
A big part of the Albanian story, of
course, is to do with the dictator Ember
Hoxha, who declared Albania the world's first secular
state.
And he wasn't just anti-Muslim, anti-Ottoman,
he was anti-all religion.
He wanted to do away with all faiths.
And so many of the country's churches were
destroyed, as well as the mosques.
And we saw many of the madrasas, basically
anything to do with Islamic history or heritage,
in the main, Ember Hoxha did a pretty
good job of doing away with.
Some of it is being revived now, but
places like Albania also have a very interesting
relationship with their Muslim heritage.
Because, of course, in all of these countries,
Islam came on the back of colonialism.
It came on the back of a colonial
empire.
There's no denying that.
Are we comfortable about using that language, when
that's the language of a non-Muslim colonizer?
So the English who colonized India did it
for the East India Company, and for money,
and for a queen.
When the Muslims did it, it was some
expansion because of territory, and also, by the
way, the Bosnians are the tallest people on
the planet, and they're great fighters.
But driving our greatest leaders has also been
an ideology called Islam, which is to bring
justice and fairness for the poorest in society.
Now absolutely, of course, we can talk about
the intentions, but ultimately, if you look at
most of these imperial movements, they were not
these romantic Islamic movements.
And anybody who's an Ottoman historian, and I'm
not, but what I have read about Ottoman
history tells you that the Ottoman Empire was
not necessarily this wonderful beacon of Islam.
Because it was an imperial movement, as with
any imperial movement, there is resistance.
And in many of these countries, there was
resistance.
And so with countries like Albania, although Islam
was left behind, and many people have embraced
that, and are very happy about that, of
course, there are many who are unhappy about
the fact that they feel a foreign force
came and took over their country, so to
speak.
Whereas you will see in other places, like
the Bosnians, they have a very different take
on it, and they seem to be quite
comfortable, sorry, far more comfortable with the fact
that the Ottomans came to their lands and
effectively ruled there.
And so that in itself makes for quite
an interesting observation when you're in these countries.
The sense is we're being crushed.
We're being crushed.
Our beliefs, which are just waking up post
-communism, post-secularism, if I can say that,
or during this current secularism, are already being
crushed by a political system.
Did you get that sense?
Well, I actually got quite a contrary sense
in places like Sarajevo, in that I felt
like there was a real revival taking place.
So I was really quite, not excited, but
certainly really happy to see that, for example,
the faculty of Islamic sciences in Sarajevo is
now an official part of the University of
Sarajevo.
There is a Mufti office that is nationwide,
which centralizes all the training of the Imams
and the various Ulama that come through.
I felt like the infrastructure that had potentially
existed there before communism, before secularism, was experiencing
a type of revival.
But of course, we're talking about that part
of the country that is known as Bosnia.
There is another part of this country that
is known as the Republic of Saperska.
And those of us that know these things
will be aware that Saperska means Serbia, essentially.
So following the kind of agreement that was
made in the wake of the horrific 1990s
genocide and war, we have essentially two countries
in one.
And when I was in those other spaces,
which I did go to as well, it
was quite apparent that this wasn't a Muslim
country.
And you felt that in the most visible
way, because again, the history and heritage had
been eradicated in most places.
In some places, returning Muslims or Muslims who
are connected to a place like Visegrad, for
example.
Many of the Muslims whose families had been
murdered had obviously moved out and left as
refugees and gone to other parts of the
world.
And they had returned and invested in resurrecting
mosques, for example.
And this was something you saw again and
again in places where there had been a
systematic attempt to eradicate the Islamic identity.
Another place that springs to mind is Falka.
I'm probably pronouncing these places wrong, so do
forgive me.
And yes, so in those places I sensed
that, you know, that pull and push, that
struggle was still apparent.
But like I say, in other places, and
I've been a few times now, and I'm
fortunate enough to have Bosnian friends who I've
spent quality time with and who I still
spend time with and who tell me about
how they're feeling.
And I actually felt very much at ease
as a Muslim of Europe in places like
Sarajevo.
Sarajevo, having been founded by the Ottomans, is
a European Muslim city from birth in that
respect.
But it's not just any old European Muslim
city, it's of course what the Western writers
dubbed the Jerusalem of Europe, because of the
fact that you have this wonderful coexistence that
took place historically, which I compare to the
modern Bosnian term of consulate, which is very
much like the Moorish or Spanish La Convivencia,
where, you know, this coexistence at a time
when much of the rest of Europe was
struggling to live with each other's ideologies.
And so to go to a place like
that and see that that spirit was still
very much present in the people, and they
wanted to revive it, you know, they appeared
comfortable still living side by side in spite
of the horrors that they'd lived through, they
offered a lot of hope for me.
But what I also found interesting is I
went there very excited that I was going
to the Jerusalem of Europe and, you know,
and I was going to go to this
place where everybody had coexisted.
And then as I was there and as
I was traveling around and reading Evliya Celebi's
notes, he made it quite apparent to me
that it wasn't exotic to him, because this
was everywhere else.
And actually that's another interesting reason to read
and look at these spaces from a Muslim
perspective, because as English speakers, often our lens
are dominated by people who are non-Muslim,
just because, you know, that's the language in
which historically non-Muslims wrote about in these
spaces, as well as the fact that, you
know, English is such a popular language.
And so that was another reason Evliya Celebi
was so important, because it meant I could
look at these places through Muslim eyes, through
the literature of Muslims' eyes, as well as
my own Muslim eyes, and compare them to
how they'd been viewed by those who had
written about it, but were non-Muslim, people
like Patrick Lee Fermat, Lord Byron, and others.
And it was very, very interesting, because, of
course, within their writing you also pick up
on sometimes the not so subtle, but sometimes
the subtle othering, because they came from a
part of the world that would look at
that part of Europe as being the other
Europe, that Muslim Europe, or in their case,
having come from the Christian side, they would
often look at it as the invading force.
The amount of people praying, we met an
imam there who said that 20 years ago
he had trouble, when he made the call
to prayer, getting enough people to make a
jamaat, to make there enough three or four
people to pray, and now there are 60
young people legging it into the mosque.
Why do you think this is, and how
do you, in your book, try to contribute
to a version of European Islam as a
positive thing for non-Muslims, a positive presence?
Well, I think the reason that you see
this revival, and one of the most impressive
things, for example, I interviewed a gentleman who
was working as the tour guide at the
Ghazi Huzoor Bay Mosque in Sarajevo, which is
of course the main and the most beautiful
historic masjid in the center of Sarajevo, and
this guy is working as a tour guide,
but if I remember correctly, he had a
degree in, I think it was in Islamic
science or Arabic, he spoke Arabic fluently, he
was able to talk about things like fiqh,
he was able to talk about hadith, he
was able to talk about the way in
which ulama interpret our historical documents, our manuscripts,
in other words, he was highly trained in
a way that sometimes we don't even come
across imams in other parts of Europe, and
yet here he was working as a tour
guide, and for me he, along with others,
embodies this revival and this desire to reconnect
with what they see as their heritage and
of course their historic identity as well as
Muslims, and you're right, you're absolutely right that
in the immediate aftermath it must have been
an extremely challenging scenario.
What's interesting when you go there is if
you want to speak to somebody and you
don't speak the local language, which many of
us don't, whether you want to converse with
them in English or as many of the
gulf tourists who are making their way there
speak in Arabic, you should approach the younger
people because the revival of many of these
educational institutes and the desire by the locals
to revive these famous madrasas and their institutional
kind of approaches has seen many young people
speaking Arabic, many young people studying the Islamic
sciences, and of course many young people speak
in English as well because inevitably seeing themselves
as a part of the wider European community,
they're also picking up on that.
Now to your second point in terms of
how do I see my book contributing, well
for me I'm hoping the book is going
to begin to normalise this idea that there
is an indigenous Muslim Europe, even if people
are uncomfortable with this.
For a lot of people it was a
shock to hear that there are Muslim European
countries and what we mean by that is,
and we're getting into semantics here, but what
we mean by that of course is if
a country is majority Muslim in population then
you can quite conceivably call it a Muslim
country like you might call the country of
my birth Bangladesh a Muslim country even though
constitutionally it's a secular nation.
So that's why I keep calling Bosnia, Albania
and Kosovo Muslim, much to some people's annoyance
but there's a point I'm trying to make
here and of course there are other pockets
all over that region, not just the countries
I visited, Romania, Bulgaria and we could go
on and of course the Baltic Muslims in
places like Lithuania, Poland which I've written about
as well, all of these spaces have Muslims
who have been living there longer than white
people have been living in America so they've
got every right to call themselves indigenous European,
I mean not every right, they are indigenous
Europeans because no religion, none of the Abrahamic
religions is indigenous to Europe, they're all from
the Middle East, so I'm not saying to
be Muslim is to be indigenous European, I'm
saying an Albanian is indigenous, now if he
or she happens to be Muslim that's an
indigenous European Muslim, it's as simple as that,
there's no real discussion there, it's just something
that makes a lot of people uncomfortable and
I'm kind of saying that this is the
reality and I'm also saying the reason you
are uncomfortable with this reality is because you
historically and in the literary heritage of travel
writing by Westerners, this part of Europe has
been othered and if you look at the
language in which that's been used, it's often
been spoken about in really horrible derogatory ways
and that has led to the rest of
Europe consciously and unconsciously seeing Western Europe as
Europe proper and this is some kind of
other Europe and I think one of the
main reasons and I put this in my
book, I think one of the main reasons
for this consciously or unconsciously is because in
embracing that part of Europe, what we call
Eastern Europe, the whole of Europe has to
admit that there is a living indigenous Muslim
Europe and I don't think the rest of
Europe is comfortable doing that.
Do you know what, that's a really great
point, I mean as a British person we
call Eastern Europe that because we want to
kind of USSR it, we want to block
it off, it's the other, it's almost as
if Europe proper, the proper Christian Europe sort
of ends Poland and Italy and the rest
is sort of like unknown, it's like and
yet every road that you walk down in
Sarajevo has echoes for us in the history
that we're taught, whether it was where Archduke
Ferdinand was shot, the First World War was
instigated, so much war, so much negotiation has
come through there, so much trade and yet
it's your right, it's that idea of the
other.
I wanted to ask you as well about
this Christian Judeo idea of Europe and yet
it's definitely secular now, for the main studies
are showing that people do not consider themselves
to have a faith, yet we hear the
and feel, sorry, the echoes of an ethical
system, don't we?
We hear the echoes of that through our
behavior, it is Judeo-Christian, you know our
understandings broadly speaking are still based on why
is credit not given to this whole block
of nations that were and to a majority
remain Muslim majority, not allowed to have echoes
of Muslim morality there and if they're nice
places to go to, can we please credit
Islam with some of that niceness?
Is that something you see as happening and
is that something that you recognize and experience?
Well I think one of the reasons that
we get the Judeo-Christian narrative is because,
well firstly the Judeo element has only been
added in my opinion from what I've seen
in the post-Holocaust era and there's no
denying and most scholars will agree a lot
of that is off the back of the
guilt that Western Europe carries for the atrocities
committed against the Jews of Europe and whilst
the Holocaust is the most recent incident, throughout
history the Jews were treated horrifically across Europe
and they were constantly kicked out of Britain,
Spain, every single country that you can pretty
much name on the European continent at some
point that wasn't under Muslim rule, tried to
kick them out and then you know and
so on and one of the places, one
of the amazing things to answer your second
question as well, one of the amazing things
that I came to the realization of while
I was on this journey was that actually
throughout that time the Jews being what was
essentially then probably Europe's most oppressed religious community,
the safer spaces they found for almost 12
centuries from the 8th century when Muslims first
arrived in Spain right through to the early
part of the 20th century when the Ottoman
Empire collapses, the safer spaces for Jews tended
to be in Muslim lands and this is
something Jewish historians will of course openly admit
because it also saw certain golden periods in
that time like the period of people like
Memonides who was from Andalusia and then you
look at the period of the famous Jewish
poets and scholars during the period of the
Nazareth dynasty in Granada so one of the
most amazing pieces of heritage that I came
to the realization about was that my forefathers
as European Muslims had been the protectors of
the continent's most persecuted religious group for nearly
12 centuries and that the horrors committed against
the Jews of Europe had nothing to do
with the Muslims of Europe so this is
one of those you know beautiful pieces of
heritage you're talking about as well as of
course other things we can go into be
it the kind of you know the example
of coexistence at a time when most of
Europe was in you know behaving in this
intolerant way where even Christian sects felt safer
minority Christian sects felt safer in Muslim and
I mean sorry in Ottoman or Mayad lands
because the Muslims tended to be more tolerant
because they were embodying the spirit of the
faith in that respect so yeah um you
know that's that for me those those kind
of glimpses of heritage as well as the
the more typical stuff the wonderful nature of
the people the amazing art heritage that I
come across the the stunning you know Sufi
lodges and mosques and everything else there's so
much there that we can celebrate and there's
so much there that we can you know
take forward as as Muslims of Europe today
and learn from um and and we need
to but one of the reasons we don't
is because it's not in the popular domain
it's not a a kind of normative discussion
it's not a part of the normative discussion
of Europe's cultural narrative there is this myth
that Europe is pagan stroke Judeo-Christian and
as I said I think the Judeo was
added as a because of the gibble prior
to that the the Jews were being treated
in a way there's no nobody wanted to
admit that it was Judaic at all and
this is where we find ourselves from an
Islamic perspective as well you know ultimately it's
an Abrahamic cultural narrative along with the you
know pagan and other other cultural narratives that
we have across Europe as well um and
that's something that I think you know previous
scholars of of or sorry previous academics who
who have written the popular books from the
Bernard Lewis's Frieda Samuel Huntington they they have
proposed this as being the normative cultural narrative
of Europe and thereby the West and and
I think that's one of the reasons this
line is drawn between Western Europe and East
so I went to Blagaj as well again
brothers and sisters this is an incredible journey
that you should make um via Sarajevo inshallah
and you um it is right nestled in
a mountain and it's built on the Sufi
ideals of that region which is there must
be running water for the peace and there
should be a cave and there should be
a place of burial to visit and what
I did notice was this kind of scratchy
existence now brother Tariq whereby on the one
side you've got this lovely spiritual place to
visit and on the other side is a
restaurant selling beer and wine and when people
are looking deliberately unimpressed about Muslims being there
and you'll get dirty looks and um yeah
I just remember that being like oh that's
a shame yeah no absolutely this is the
this is the fine line that's being walked
between um you know commercializing a space for
tourism and of course it's still an active
Sufi space although today it's um it's managed
and it's used by the Naqshbandis it was
historically a Bektashi space and it was a
space that the Bektashis founded I think in
the if I remember off the top of
my head around the 16th century um a
space that Evliya Celebi also visited which is
another reason why I was really really chuffed
to be able to go and see it
because I knew that I was in a
place that he had come to where he
no doubt would have performed dhikr himself being
from a Sufi tradition himself and I also
knew that um historically the the the kind
of um movement so to speak that did
build the space and and had their saints
buried there um including some quite interesting saints
that you know are worth reading about in
the book um they were a far more
liberal bunch the Bektashis if we're honest because
the Bektashis are um more of a Shia
mystical branch of Islam and they and they
follow some very liberal kind of um approaches
to to Islam um liberal in the in
the kind of broader sense um and Bektashism
was something that really became popular across the
Balkans um during the Ottoman period and it's
something that again was news to me and
I learned about on this journey and and
I see it as being a kind of
you know uh a kind of European mystical
tradition um today because it is it is
again being revived and I went to functioning
Bektashi lodges in Cetevo most most um apparently
um I went to one there and then
there was one in Kruja um in in
Albania and it's no surprise that the places
I'm naming where where the Bektashis are quite
vibrant um tend to be in Albanian spaces
so Cetevo although it's in North Macedonia um
is a stronghold or or immensely popular populated
by ethnic Albanians and of course Kruja is
in Albania um where in Tirana it is
the headquarters of the international Bektashi movement um
and so the Bektashis are experiencing a revival
as well and my friend who spends time
with me in in Albania is somebody who's
from a Bektashi tradition although you know he
he's not he doesn't observe much of it
um these days because he also lived through
the Enver Hoxha period um so yeah um
certainly Blagaj is is a stunning space and
you can see that the the location being
completely conducive to meditation um and and zikr
and and solitude and you can see it
being the kind of place where historically um
the the kind of um the Sufi Dervishes
would have come there and they would have
tucked themselves away from the dunya which of
course as you've rightly identified isn't possible today
because it's become such a popular touristic space
where people from all persuasions are turning up
and maybe some of them are a little
bit disgruntled at the fact that actual muslims
are turning up.
Ironically of course Greece is further east than
most of the countries we're talking about but
it is embraced as being part of Western
Europe because there's Plato there there's Aristotle there
there's Hippocrates there there's all of this this
bastion of Western heritage which I find ironic
because essentially the cradle of Western heritage is
in Eastern Europe because it's a space of
Muslim heritage as the other Sufi lodges that
I went to were as well and and
it was a similar thing you you um
certainly in Kruja you have a lot of
a lot of tourists coming to that one
as well because it's right next to the
castle where the famous Albanian um um figure
of Skanderbeg was based and it was his
capital whereas the one in Tetovo um is
much more of a strictly functioning religious space
but there's other kind of contentious issues going
on there between the local sunnis and the
baktashis but all of them offered a glimpse
of the way in which Islam is being
practiced contested and revived across the region.
Mashallah.
Final message for people to go and find
your book where can they see you in
the coming months and hear more about your
journey any interviews that you've got coming up
and what can we do to promote your
book really to our families and our schools
inshallah.
Inshallah um so the book should be available
pretty much anywhere across the globe now so
wherever you would normally buy your English language
books you can order my book through that
because it's being distributed by HarperCollins so it's
available everywhere inshallah and of course you know
the usual space is the big online retailers
that I don't want to stop them um
if you can I'd love it if you
bought it through independent sources so you can
support them.
Allah bless you and we'll speak again soon
inshallah take care.
Yeah you know the beauty of Islamic tradition
is felt in these cities and the reminder
brothers and sisters that Islam is not for
a time and for a place it's for
all times and all places and all peoples
who worship one god alone Allah Ta'ala
and love the prophets and Prophet Muhammad sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam and that can happen at
any time in any place and that is
a good thing for humanity.
I hope you find that useful don't forget
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Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh