Renovatio

Renovatio Renovatio is a Muslim journal about the ideas that have shaped our past and present world.

We ask scholars, theologians, and writers to examine timeless questions and today’s moral challenges by drawing from the enduring texts of revelatory traditions.

An Answered PrayerPerhaps the most moving story in Michael Sugich's essay involves his decades-long yearning to see the ...
09/17/2025

An Answered Prayer

Perhaps the most moving story in Michael Sugich's essay involves his decades-long yearning to see the Kaba that was satisfied in miraculous fashion.

Then came November 20, 1979—the day armed extremists seized the Holy Mosque. With news blackouts and apocalyptic rumors, Sugich feared he might never see the Kaaba. In desperation, after his midday prayer, he made a simple plea: "Please, God, please, let me see Your house just once before I die."

"Not more than a quarter of an hour had passed when the telephone rang." A stranger called offering to send him a plane ticket to Saudi Arabia for a business opportunity. "I had just asked God to let me see His house. I received the ticket."

The result: twenty-two years living in Mecca.
In Sugich's reflection, this story illustrates the Hadith Qudsi: "When My servant comes to Me walking, I come to him running." Sincere spiritual longing creates conditions for extraordinary providence.

But Sugich's point isn't that prayer always gets answered this dramatically. It's that "states of need" strip away our illusions of self-sufficiency and open us to recognizing grace that may have been present all along.

As he puts it: "We ought to change our reference points and not listen to the popular narratives that measure everything in life from a purely material and temporal—that is to say, profane—standpoint."

Read the article online. https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/states-of-need-are-gift-laden-carpets

"The driving force behind my research and writing was this existential question that I always had," explains Dr. Nasrin ...
09/07/2025

"The driving force behind my research and writing was this existential question that I always had," explains Dr. Nasrin Rouzati, author of "Trial and Tribulation in the Qur'an: A Mystical Theodicy."

In this fascinating conversation with Hamza Yusuf and Aisha Subhani, Rouzati shares how she discovered something surprising in her Qur'anic research: "I'm from Iran, but I've been in the United States since I was seventeen, and our culture here talks about balā' as something undesirable, unwanted. It has this really negative connotation. In the Qur'an, by contrast, I found everything about it was so positive."

Her key insight? "If prophets are not exempted, and if they are role models for us—uswatun hasanah (an excellent exemplar), as the Qur'an calls the Prophet Muhammad and the other prophets, peace be upon all of them—then trials must be good for us, and they must have a purpose."

A thought-provoking discussion that reframes how we understand life's difficulties based on the Qur'an.

Read in the new print issue. https://bookstore.zaytuna.edu/collections/renovatio/products/renovatio-signs-for-our-times

We ought to consider whether the very structure of reality points beyond itself.In Faruque's latest essay, he does not r...
09/05/2025

We ought to consider whether the very structure of reality points beyond itself.
In Faruque's latest essay, he does not retreat from reason to discuss the debate over God's existence. Instead, he invites us to reexamine the assumptions behind what we consider rational.

Read "Reason and Belief in an Age of Empirical Science" in the print issue of Renovatio.

https://bookstore.zaytuna.edu/collections/renovatio/products/renovatio-signs-for-our-times

“We have been raised on the mythology of progress—that everything is getting better—whereas, in fact, we are on a downwa...
09/05/2025

“We have been raised on the mythology of progress—that everything is getting better—whereas, in fact, we are on a downward trajectory, as we know from the famous tradition of our Messenger: 'Show endurance, for you will not come to a time that isn’t worse than the time before it until you meet your Lord.' Just when you think things can’t get any worse…they do.”

—Michael Sugich
“States of Need Are Gift-Laden Carpets”
https://bookstore.zaytuna.edu/collections/renovatio/products/renovatio-signs-for-our-times

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