53 Quotes by Leila Aboulela

I wanted to be good but I wasn't sure if I was prepared

Can I aske forgiveness for someone else, someone whose already dead?Yes, you can. Of course you can. And you can give charity in their name and you can recite the Qur'an for their sake. All these things will reach them, your prayers will ease the hardship and loneliness of their grave or it will reach them in bright, beautiful gifts. Gifts to unwrap and enjoy and they will know that this gift is from you.

The Mercy of Allah is an Ocean, Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean.It only has to open it's beak

It took him years to learn the value of silence, the power of carefully chosen words.

What was life like ?deprivation and abundance, side by side like a miracle. surrender to them both .Poverty and sunshine, poverty and jewels in the sky .Drought and the gushing Nile Disease and clean hearts, stories from neighbours and relationships .

I've come down in the world. I've slid to a place where the ceiling is low and there isn't much room for me to move.Most of the time I'm good. I accepted my sentence and do not brood or look back. But sometimes a shift makes me remember. Routine is ruffled and a new start makes me suddenly conscious of what I've become -

The coverage of Islam in the media is becoming more sophisticated, and there is more access to knowledge.

My faith was started off by my grandmother and mother, and so I always saw it as a very private, personal thing.

It was 1989, and the word 'Muslim' wasn't even really used in Britain at the time; you were either black or Asian.