50 story hotel=Kaaba (or destroying Mecca for fun)

Beliefnet Voices – Aziz Poonawalla – City of Brass. It is in these 6:42am moments, as I am woken by the blinding sun, hungry and incapacitated that I know there is no magic in the minute, no need to count fasting by the number of hours completed. It is the simplicity of routine, the humility borne from discipline that I always seem to leave out of my lofty Ramadan plans. It is my favorite lesson to rediscover and it leaves me forever thankful that Ramadan graces us, and especially me, every year.

Iqra.

Hussein Rashid: A Gay Mosque?. The recent story of a gay mosque in Paris raises conflicted feelings in me. On one hand, I recognize the need for safe spaces of worship, where people are not constantly being threatened for who they are. However, I also fear that creating a separate mosque perpetuates stigma by allowing other Muslims to avoid having discussions about what a truly devotional space could look like.