Saudi Women Blogging

The Smithsonian Magazine has a feature on Pakistani Sufis, including one figure I am doing a lot of research on. It unfortunately still suffers from a bit of Orientalizing and exoticizing tendencies, but for a description of what happens, it’s pretty good. The “whys” are a bit shakier. Check out the photo gallery too. Pakistan, Sufism, qalandar

Having just come from a conference in Cairo, I can agree that everyone will want to give you directions, regardless of what they know, and everyone says “insha’allah” every second word. However, the worst culprits of the second act are British Muslims at the conference who seemed really insecure about any identification they had. Cairo, Egypt