The Sacred Footsteps core team share their reflections on the journeys, challenges and successes of a year that was…unusual.
Listen to the audio version of this article: Podcast Ep 30 KHAYAL DIARIES | Reflections
Zirrar
I’m a writer and photographer from London, who has spent the past decade traveling the Muslim world to learn more about the rich history of Islamic civilisations. My work reflects a vision of cultural and identity revivalism, where the might and beauty of Islam can be re-discovered and shared with others. I am also an active writer and commentator in the fields of Islamic art and architecture as well as Orientalism, especially in modern travel photography. I published my first photo-poetry book entitled ‘Enwrap’ a year ago and I am currently working on a modern English translation of poetry by the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. Like most travellers from the West, I saw travel as a necessary luxury, an activity or experience that must be had in order to feel some sort of fulfilment. Soon after my first trip to Egypt in 2010, I realised I was highly drawn to places that had some elements of Islamic history. If the history wasn’t visible, in plain sight, I would seek it out. These same places then became walls on which I would find my faith written in a language that would speak to me. After decades of learning Islam, I had failed miserably to connect with my God, and it was in these minarets and domes that I found purpose. Travel then became a pilgrimage that I would perform as often as I could.
In the past two years I began to publish my travels on social media, and this experience further cemented my purpose and mission in not only learning more about Islamic history but now also about teaching it to others. This exercise in knowledge sharing has come with great strain and responsibility, because not only must the knowledge be accurate, but it must somehow reflect onto the multi-spectrum mirror of each person that comes across it. For example, is the history of Cairo the history of all Muslims globally? Can it be presented in such a way or must it be categorised, coloured and circled into compartments that we can appreciate it in isolation but not really own as ours? Or what about Iran, is it simply the history of Twelver Shias or can Sunni’s identify with the land that for 700 years was ‘Sunni’? I attempt to push the concept of multi-truth in my work, and this exercise has upset a few, however pleased and benefited many others.
When it comes to operating on social media, the line between personal/intimate and public and informal is difficult to always identify. During my Umrah trip in 2018, I disconnected from the internet when I realised that the journey to the two Holy Cities had exhausted my spiritual capacity. I could not, I decided, show the walls and carpets, the faithful and the spiritual, whilst also dealing with my own spiritual crisis. Weeks after my trip had ended, I began to construct thoughts that summarised a wider and more general pattern of questions and thought that I felt were more universally relatable.
Almost a year of lockdown provided me with the opportunity to develop and progress a few personal projects, including the commencement of writing for my second poetry book (I published the first ‘Enwrap’, in Oct 2019), a photo-poetry book on Iran, and a translation of poetry by Mohammad Iqbal into English. Within the SF realm, I have further pushed commentary and discussion on the ‘orientalism of poetry’ phenomenon, focusing especially on the global popularity of Rumi and other Persian poets (Khayyam, Hafiz and Attar). Reading poetry and literature in translation has significant repercussions for a people who rely on translations to learn and practise their cultural and traditional identities.
Besides creative writing and translation, I have had the wonderful opportunity to spend the best summer months outdoors in the garden. This experience of uninterrupted daily immersion in an English garden has opened my mind into the wonderful world of birds. Starting from March and April, the spring months when birds gather words to create nests and then lay eggs, to August when the months of care and loves leads to hatching, I witnessed the prostration of the birds to their creator every single day.
I hope to deliver more ‘Heart of Persia’ tours for SF in the coming future, with the addition of some new destinations (Cairo, Tunisia and more). I am also working on a new publication with the founder of SF, Zara, a book that tells the historic story of Medina through the eyes of pilgrims, travellers and explorers as well as sharing the secrets of the architecture of the house of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
Looking to the future personally, my hopes are that the inner resolve that has helped me progress through the hardships of 2020 continue to grow, and that within it, I am able to succeed in an outwardly way so that others can benefit from my work even in insignificant ways inshAllah. I have also decided to limit travel and see how further into my own mind I can traverse to better understand myself. Hoping that this journey can improve my writing, my creative process and thereby build stronger foundations for my faith.
Yasmine
Hi, I’m Yasmine, one of the core team members of Sacred Footsteps, currently working full time in comms for transport and travel (what a coincidence).
It’s been a long and weird year in which travelling has very much come to a standstill for me and undoubtedly countless others…or so I thought. I did start to ponder (a dangerous pastime) when this all kicked off and I stopped worrying for half a second about a deadly disease, how we would continue to engage our travel hungry audience who were wanting our next venture into historical and spiritual travel. The answer, it turns out, and not to be ridiculously cliche, through journeying within.
I joined SF when I was trying to figure out how to navigate Lisbon from a spiritual or faith perspective. This sort of thought often defined my travel, and my way of travelling. A few googles later and I stumbled upon a blog by no other than our Editor in Chief, and thus, I fell in love. I quickly scrambled an e-mail and asked to get involved, had I finally found my people? A few explorations, ideas, writings, ideas for a podcasts and laughs later – I found out I had. This year (was it this year? I have no concept of time anymore), I loved doing the Qawalli episode with fellow team member Omar and contributor Shahroze, and I think that’s also when as a team we started to think more outside the box with our direction of travel (pun intended), drafting and talking about content related to music and art in relation to spirituality and travel. I now mainly work behind the scenes doing editing, direction and process work because you know, life, but I am always there…watching (and reading all of your comments!)…waiting for this space to grow into something even more phenomenal in 2021.
This year has given me the opportunity to reflect on the kind of traveller I used to be. To be honest this persona has taken many evolutions. I was always mindful of travelling to Muslim countries specifically, wanting to find a space to belong and also seek out a space that complimented my heavy Muslim identity. However, much of this was seeking out the nearest tariqa and adding a quote about God or a sunset to my travel pictures. Facebook was all the rage those days, so I am a late bloomer to Instagram (I still dislike it, we can talk about that one day over some chai if you wish) so even though there was some authenticity to my travel intention, it felt marred by trying to show whoever was following me the extent of my spiritual depth and pursuit for knowledge. I wanted to belong. Heck, don’t we all?
My way of travelling was often spontaneous, I would just get up and go. I had that privilege. I didn’t consciously think about the cultural, environmental and ethical practices of travel, being a guest, and respecting people’s dignity and way of living. I THOUGHT this was what I was doing, but being amongst honest, authentic individuals in the SF crew has expanded my knowledge ten fold, and thus, now I am so much more mindful about how/with what means / with what outcome I choose to travel. Now when I travel (much more locally nowadays), I try to be present as much as I possibly can. I’ve also come to realise that God’s beauty is not only in the Rif in Morocco, the intricate tilework in a mosque in Istanbul, but right on my doorstep, in the muddy forests of the Midlands, the deep misty air of the Peak District, the criss cross of city lights blurred at night by rain dancing across my window. Friends have been tour guides to their cities and tree branches have welcomed me with open arms. I have come to realise that travel in order to try to know God is as simple as feeling the season outside with gratitude, no matter where you are. In this beauty, are all of the opposites and similarities, all of the cosmos in a single leaf, and that is nothing but perfection. That to me, is spiritual travel.
This year as a team we have had to use ingenuity and creativity to keep things together, and although we felt like our physical worlds had to come to a halt, there were so many conversations and world events kicking off at the same time, that we tried to use our expertise, our academic connections and all of the knowledge we could get our hands on to contribute to these conversations. You guys may not know this (and this is because we often get mail saying how resourceful we are) but we are a TINY team, and so we can only control a certain amount of narrative. You’ve all probably seen the Orientalism series (and if you haven’t, I suggest it as a good place to start) which has only grown and will only grow further, but I’ve realised being part of Sacred Footsteps that travel is so much more than jetting off on a plane to Dubai (although anyone in a tier 4 lockdown is probably loving that idea right now), but it is about education and a deep critical eye of where/how and why certain things happened in history to give us the nuance of culture and diaspora that we see today. In terms of social media as a tool for good and a platform to promote this work, the spiritual implications of putting your whole life on Instagram and social media is so huge, and this is something as a team we discuss and think about often – it has sort of become an unspoken code for checking in on each other. We often ask, why are we doing this? What is the end goal? I encourage everyone to think about the same question before they decide to post something. As a team we are speaking to ourselves first. Reminders can be a nourishing thing.
My hopes for SF for the new year is that firstly, we can travel again and host tours for all of our wonderful audience members who have rooted for us, stuck by us, and challenged us – to be better and create more meaningful work; that we can give this back for them. Secondly that we release some very exciting publications that we have been working hard on this year! And finally, that God grants us the opportunity to see this wonderful and vast world in all of its infinite glory and sadness, lushness and deprivation, in all of its opposites, so we can indeed be vicegrants and stewards of the earth, treading gently and with intention:
‘’The servants of the Lord of Mercy are those who walk gently upon the earth…” (Quran 25:63)
Omar
I am a public service and international development professional based in Canada and in 2015 and 2016, I spent four months in India and nine in Bangladesh working on development projects related to climate change. I had always been enthralled with Islamic history and architecture (in fact it was one of my majors in undergrad!) and so I started snapping and sharing photos from my travels across north India and Bangladesh. That’s when I stumbled upon Sacred Footsteps. When you’re an enthusiast photographer, you jump at chances to get featured by more established accounts but Sacred Footsteps was more than just an account showing pretty places; it was aligned with my core values of responsible and socially-aware content. As a young professional in international development, I was so frustrated with the industry’s constant disregard, infantilising and dehumanising of the people it “served.” Simultaneously I’d see photographers and travel bloggers that were presenting such shallow and even misinformed histories.
In 2017, I wrote my first article for Sacred Footsteps, ambitiously titled as ‘Safarnama‘ in which I shared my experiences traveling in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. I learned that Sacred Footsteps was a one-woman team supported by a community of contributors. I don’t remember exactly what happened but I was asked to join the core team when Zara started to think about expanding the platform.
My travel experiences in the last eight years were tied to education or professional development. I was fortunate though that most of the places I visited and lived in were related to my passions like Islamic history, art and architecture. But yah…there was superficiality as well. I was in it for the numbers game (how many places could I knock off my to-see list?!). I wanted to take pretty pictures, recreate missed moments for the camera and essentially tell someone else’s story.
In 2015, while working in India, I visited eight cities in a span of four months. But if you ask me the city that I remember the most, it’s Delhi, because that was my home base. So a year later, when I was in India again for a short visit, I went back to Delhi to recover from the shock of almost losing my passport for a full 48 hours. It was my first time returning to a place, an opportunity to keep going deeper. To stay.
Now obviously, I am not going to cancel you for visiting new places. I’m still creating tiered lists of countries to visit. But I have come to value the returns.
Earlier this year, when Canada had only reported two cases of the novel coronavirus, I was on the train heading home. I had a half baked idea; what if travel was practiced as an art form meant to be perfected through trial and error, taking risks, reflecting and seeking inspiration? Of course, it would be one of the most privileged forms of art, right up there along sculpting (who amongst us has spare marble or limestone?!). Nevertheless, I was ready to meditate further on this thought as I looked forward to my planned trip to Peru.
But then the pandemic materialised, the writer’s block to my travel-is-art argument!
And now I’m not so sure that I can convince myself, or others, about how travel is an art form….but that doesn’t mean I can’t try! Afterall, the entire experience of the pandemic has been a risky and reflective one, with plenty of reminders of privilege. Oh and guess what everyone has been told to do: Stay. Put!
At the beginning of the pandemic (so about five years ago!) I felt charged with creative ideas. Working from home allowed me to develop a healthy work-life balance so that I could focus on creative ventures. Sacred Footsteps went through several stages of growth this year. In the early days of lockdown, we decided to step into some unknown territory with Live Sessions with other content producers like Khadija Farah, Mutua Matheka, Hassam Munir and Haroon Khalid. Through some electoral rigging, I got handed the responsibility of hosting these sessions. As somebody who is incapable of acting like a normal human being in front of a camera, I slowly began to feel more comfortable with these sessions and they taught me a lot about photography, culture and history.
I spent a lot of time researching and then hosting a podcast episode on the musical tradition of Qawwali. It was the perfect manifestation of my love for South Asian music and poetry.
My restless energy and creative drive didn’t get wasted this year because I really feel that my relationship with Sacred Footsteps was the perfect outlet for both. The resulting growth and strengthening of the Sacred Footsteps mandate was simply doubleplusgood (fitting dystopian reference for what seems like a dystopian year).
This year presented several challenges of Faith and Afiyah. And now that it’s almost over, I’m not going to stamp a Hallmark ending on it and brush off the challenges I faced with reductive statements like “it was all worth it in the end” – because that would be a complete disservice to the discomfort, the pain, the joys, the little moments of respite and just…all of it!
The support systems that upheld me this year also encouraged me to follow my creative interests whether it was obsessively reading Faiz Ahmed Faiz, photographing the moon, capturing strikes of lightning in the night sky, or writing the story of a visit to my maternal ancestral village in India.
If I’m being really honest, I am not ready to plan for a world after corona (or as the memes say, the new InshAllah). All I want to preserve in the new year is the hope and optimism that surfaced during this one.
I want to end with a poem by Faiz Ahmad Faiz that I continuously visited this year:
shafaq kī raakh meñ jal bujh gayā sitāra-e-shām
shab-e-firāq ke gesū fazā meñ lahrā.e
koī pukāro ki ik umr hone aa.ī hai
falak ko qāfila-e-roz-o-shām Thahrā.e
ye zid hai yaad harīfān-e-bāda-paimā kī
ki shab ko chāñd na nikle na din ko abr aa.e
sabā ne phir dar-e-zindāñ pe aa ke dī dastak
sahar qarīb hai dil se kaho na ghabrā.e
It was translated beautifully by Agha Ali Shahid as follows:
In the Sun’s last embers, the evening star burns to ash.
Night draws its curtains, separating lovers.
Won’t someone cry out, protest Heaven’s tyranny? An era has passed,
And Time is still stranded, its caravan of day and night lost.
Nostalgia for friends and wine: to crush that sorrow
We’ll allow memory nothing, neither the moon nor the rain
Once again the breeze knocks on the prison door.
It whispers, Don’t give up, wait a little, Dawn is near.
Muazzam
Salaam Alaykum. My name is Muazzam Mir I’m from Nairobi, Kenya.
A few years ago, I stumbled on the SF page on Instagram and wondered why there wasn’t more East African content at the time. In 2018 I offered to do social takeover during the Lamu Mawlid. It ended up being successful and I wound up getting invited onto the Sacred Footsteps Podcast to discuss Islam on the Swahili coast. After that, my involvement with Sacred Footsteps became more frequent until finally I joined the core team.
Before I was involved in SF my travelling ideas were developing and they still are after my involvement with SF too. Growing up, travel was always about spending time with the family. Once I grew older, that was still important to me, but I realised that I also enjoyed solo travel because it allowed me to learn about myself. It helped that I grew up going camping and this instilled in me a deep sense of adventure.
I joined Sacred Footsteps at a very interesting juncture in my life. A few years before my involvement I attended the Rihla, which is a famous retreat where Muslims learn about the fundamental points in their faith, which every Muslim needs to know. Traveling to Turkey and meeting Muslims from all over the world had awakened a dormant desire in me to travel for spiritual reasons.
I was never really into social media; I also didn’t like the idea of sharing things about my life, especially something so vulnerable leaving your comfort zone and traveling. This is probably why I could never imagine that I would be involved in a platform dedicated to travel! What I did realise is that travelling for Instagram is not necessarily a bad thing. Just by following somebody’s travels online you can learn so much about a place, its people, culture and history. It was certainly how I managed to bring the Swahili coast to the attention of Sacred Footsteps and all our followers. I really do think travelling for social media can be a force for good if utilised correctly.
The pandemic has been revealing; whilst I haven’t travelled as I expected to this year, I think it was a brilliant time to travel inward and be still. The pandemic has given us all a chance to learn more about ourselves and to reflect on life. This Ramadan, I had wanted to travel somewhere. It’s been a dream of mine to fast for part of the month in one of the three holiest cities in Islam. What wound up happening, was that I was locked in with my family for an entire month, with no taraweeh prayers nor guests- and yet, it was one of the best Ramadans ever! The internal journey during stillness the month brought was something I couldn’t have experienced if I had travelled to the ends of the earth. It truly gave a chance to learn more about myself, confront my demons, negative thoughts, fears and worries all whilst sitting indoors. I felt like I had gone on an epic quest, but inwardly. As Hafez once said, I wanted to go on a pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days.
Living in East Africa I believe there are many gems here waiting to be uncovered. Next year once the pandemic has subsided, I plan on visiting the great ruins of Kilwa in Tanzania, described by Ibn Battuta as one of the most beautiful cities he had ever seen. I also plan on attempting a road trip following the path of the colonial lunatic express railway line, stopping at significant mosques and tombs that grew up alongside the railway. I also want to visit Morocco for the first time – I’ve had many chances that have never come to fruition. Basically, I have too many plans to count!
This year has allowed me to sit back and look deeper into the history of cultures and places that I wish to experience and has especially increased in me an interest in the Arabic and Persian languages. As Muslims, I believe we need to reclaim our spiritual and cultural tongues. One could argue that no languages are as important to Islam and Islamic civilisation as Arabic and Persian.
Spiritually I wish to memorise more Quran and to visit more of the righteous men and women of Allah, both living and those departed. This of course all depends on the situation with the pandemic. But I suppose, the wait is part of the journey? The patience needed in going somewhere is something that our world sorely needs. These days, you can be on a beach in Miami and in a matter of hours you can be standing in front of the Kaaba. Previously, a lot of patience and forbearance was needed before reaching the conclusion of a journey. Even though there are gems to visit in my own East African neighbourhood, I am barred from seeing them. Maybe there is a wisdom in this?
As far as Sacred Footsteps work is concerned, I used this year to focus more on our website articles such as my recently released ‘Dada Masiti: the Rabia al Adawiyya of East Africa‘ – and there are more to come! I was also glad to be involved with our podcast projects and I am so excited to see what the future holds. At the beginning of the year I recorded an episode with our guest Mohammad Isaaq, on the somewhat cliched sounding topic ‘knowing yourself through travel.’ Although I always knew you could learn about yourself while traveling and experiencing new things, I never realised the same was true if you stayed still. Like so many others, my year was tough, but I learnt so much about myself just from being home.
We have big plans for 2021 and I am sure our followers will be in for a treat.
Zara
Salam! I’m Zara, the founder and editor of Sacred Footsteps.
In a year that has been so difficult for so many, it feels insensitive and extremely self-centred to lament broken travel plans, so I’m not going to do that.
With travelling abroad not an option, I tried to make a more conscious effort to appreciate my local area more, and its natural beauty. I’m fortunate to live in a semi-rural location, so it’s been fun looking for different routes to walk.
I did a lot of my travelling before Instagram came along (boy does that line age me) and before I even started Sacred Footsteps. I had a vague idea in my head about starting a travel website (not a blog as I constantly found myself explaining to people), but it didn’t take real shape until I visited Mauritania. That trip was the first time I felt I understood what travelling for a spiritual purpose truly meant. To begin with then, SF was pretty much a reflection of my ideals and what I wanted from travelling (think less sunbathing on the beach, more getting sun stroke in the desert (ok obvs that wasn’t an ideal, but you get the point).
While initially SF was just me and my laptop, slowly and organically, we were able to form a small team. Each person that joined was someone for whom the concept of travelling for spiritual purposes, of wanting more from travel than just mindless ‘fun,’ resonated.
Earlier this year, however, somewhat unexpectedly, it took the pandemic for me to realise something: I had lost my enthusiasm for what we were doing at Sacred Footsteps.
Throughout history, travel has been a privilege for the few, never the many – and it remains so. It’s easy to compare ourselves to those in the past who lived with the constraints of the age, and feel grateful for the opportunities we now have that were impossible for them. It is harder to do that and come to any sort of satisfying internal resolution when we realise that the vast majority of the world is still living with constraints – and that they will never have the same privileges many of us have become accustomed to.
I remember how disheartened I felt when, after an Insta Story about a historical site in India (I forget which site exactly), someone pointed out that most Indians don’t have the means or the ability to visit it, even if they wanted to.
And so a slight crisis of conscience followed; I found myself questioning whether our work was even worthwhile (I wrote about my thoughts here). Not to get too dramatic, I didn’t want my life’s achievement to be that I helped the privileged few make travel plans.
I spoke to the rest of the team, and thankfully, they understood. We took a small break, and used that time to renegotiate our plans for SF, renew our intentions (I find this is key, and so important to do at regular intervals), and remind ourselves what the purpose behind SF was at the beginning, before we even had any followers. We decided to focus less on social media and more on the website and creating content that we were proud of.
Speaking of the team, their digital presence throughout the day (via Whatsapp mainly) while the UK was in lockdown was such a blessing. Though we are fortunate to have a pretty wide pool of writers and contributors, our core team is still small (spread out over four countries), but one thing I’ve noticed is that though in some ways we’re all like-minded, everyone has different strengths and skills, which comes in massively useful when meeting the challenges that come with running a media company.
Sacred Footsteps is so much more that just travel, and reminding myself of that gave me a renewed sense of purpose and allowed me to regain the enthusiasm I had felt slipping away.
Looking forward, though travel will always be an important part of our publication, we will focus equally on culture and history – content that is more inclusive and not only targeted towards the privileged few.
I can’t possibly finish this without mentioning Yaseen, one of our core team members. I know it’s been a difficult year but I want you to know how grateful we all are for your presence on the team. We’re all praying for a full and speedy recovery and can’t wait to have you back- there will always be a place for you on the team and we look forward to many more zoom catch ups together!
And finally, and with the utmost gratitude, thank you to all of our contributors, writers and supporters – this platform and our work is truly shaped by you, your dialogue, discussions and ideas. I’m so excited for all the content we’ve got planned for the coming year and can’t wait to share with you all. Duas for a (inshallah) Covid-free new year!
