As a child, I used to relish these greatly, and it was the part of Islam that resonated for me; they were pretty much for me. These people that my fa… - Sa'diyya Shaikh

I grew up in a Muslim community, particularly with parents and a father that used to tell me the most extraordinary stories and which inspired me. So, I grew up on stories of Shaykh Abdulkad Jaylani Sheikh Rabia, and those were not stories that was told to me as if they were Sufi stories; they were told to me as stories of what good Muslims were, and so my imagination and my heart was fired up.

Hardly have the words left his lips when a hand softer than silk touches his shoulder. He turns. A young woman of breathtaking beauty gazes intently at him. As if omniscient, she responds to his poetic rumination with a depth of spiritual discernment, subjecting each line of his poem to careful scrutiny, culminating in a reprimand: How can “the great mystic of the time” pos-sibly question God’s knowledge of his state? A true lover is content with the desires of the Beloved even when they entail absence and separation.

My relationship to religion became a little bit more fraught. So, that initial relationship to religion was all about these beautiful characters who had incredible virtue and valour and courage and spiritual refinement and beautiful adap. That was formative for me thinking about in living Islam and the things that inspired me and the things that were shown up to me as a mirror of goodness.