How to Live an Ethical and God-Conscious Life: A Conversation with Sa’diyya Shaikh

In this rich conversation, Dr. Sa’diyya Shaikh, Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town, shares her personal journey of growing up as a Muslim in South Africa during the apartheid era and how this informs her study of Islam and worldview. With a profound interest in Sufism, Sa’diyya explores the intersection of spirituality, gender ethics, feminist theory, and social justice, illuminating how these realms influence each other.

As a scholar-activist, Sa’diyya brings humility from her spiritual practice and a unique approach to liberation theology, motivating her to fight for the oppressed. She delves into the spiritual legacy of Islam, emphasizing how Muslims can engage with the Divine through attributes. Sa’diyya rejects the gendered limitations of the Divine, suggesting that Muslims can cultivate both power (Jalali) and beauty (Jamali) within themselves. Her extensive work includes interpretations of Islamic texts, Islamic feminism, and the embodied ethics of contemporary Muslim women. Sa’diyya also shares insights on balancing emotional and spiritual health with family and work life demands.


Sa’diyya Shaikh specializes in the study of Islam, gender ethics, and feminist theory, with a special interest in Sufism. Her study of Islam began with an abiding interest in existential questions and a commitment to social justice – much of her work is animated by interest and curiosity about the relationship between the realms of the spiritual and the political. She has published on interpretations of the Qur’an, hadith, and Sufi texts; Islamic feminism; religions and gender-based violence; Sufism and Islamic Law; contemporary Muslim women’s embodied ethics; and marriage, sexuality, and reproductive choices amongst South African Muslim women. 

Sa’diyya is the author of Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender, and Sexuality (2012) and co-author and editor of The Women’s Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from Around the World (2022) In her current work on ethics and Sufism, as well as in her own spiritual life, Sa’diyya draws on the inspiration, transmission, writings and teachings of several contemporary Sufi teachers including Shaykh Muhammad Rahim Bawa Muhiyadin (rahmatullah alayhi), Shaykha Cemal Nur Sargut, Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri and Shaykha Fawzia Al-Rawi.

Transcript

Dr. Rose Aslan: Welcome to Rahmah with Rose. Today we are joined
by Dr. Sadia Shaikh. She is a professor in the study of religions at the
University of Cape Town. She specializes in the study of Islam, gender
ethics, and feminist theory with a special interest in Sufism. Her study of
Islam began with an abiding interest in existential questions as well as a
commitment to social justice.
Much of her work is animated by an interest and curiosity about the
relationship between the realms of spiritual and the political. She has
published on interpretations of the Quran, Hadith, and Sufi text, Islamic
feminism, religion, and gender based violence, Sufism, and Islamic law.
Contemporary Muslim women's embodied ethics and marriage,
sexuality, and reproductive choices among South African Muslim
women.
She is the author of Sufi narratives of intimacy, Ibn Arabi, gender and
sexuality, and co author and editor of the woman's Khutba book,
contemporary sermons on spirituality and justice from around the world.
In her current work on ethics and Sufism, As well as in her own spiritual
life, Sadia draws upon this inspiration, transmission, writings, and
teachings number of contemporary Sufi teachers, including Sheikh
Mohammed Rahim Bawa Muhyiddin, Sheikh Jamal Noor Sargut, Sheikh
Fadlala Hayri, and Sheikh Fawzia Rawi.
It is absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast, Sadia, and I'm so
excited for this conversation.
Sadiya: Thank you, Rose Jan. It's such a privilege and an honor to be
here, so thank you so much for inviting me.
Dr. Rose Aslan: Thank you. So let's start with the question I'd like to ask
everyone when we start is, what do you remember? When did you start
getting interested in spirituality?
Sadiya: I grew up in a family where I never thought about spirituality as
being anything separate from Islam. so I was very fortunate and blessed
to have, a father that was deeply, invested in to solve, although he never
called it

Dr. Rose Aslan: It's stupism in
Sadiya: Yeah. so I would grow up, I grew up on stories of Shaykh Abdul
Qadir Jilani, of Shaykh Rabia Basri, and many of the Sufis, and so I
grew up listening to those stories, and they were never framed as Sufis,
they were just framed as good Muslims.
Dr. Rose Aslan: And I found, as a child, I got told stories, the ones with
the slightly supernatural stuff, which I always thought was quite
fascinating, and stories of enormous courage. there's, there was the
story of Shefatul Kabirji learning, going on a journey with his,on a
caravan.
Sadiya: And in the story, his mom, before he had left, has sewn a piece
of gold inside his coat, so that he wouldn't get robbed. And he went off
and, they were on this, caravan. I remember the story very distinctly,
from childhood. I just marveled at it, and so he was on this caravan
and,they got stood up by, the kind of regular brigands that used to rob
caravans and they stole the stuff and basically held up this entire
caravan and then were doing the last round and came and said, do you
have anything on you?
And he said, well, yes, I do. and reveal the sewed up gold coin in his
jacket. And of course, the guy that, was so astounded that this man
would speak truth. And he said, why did you tell me? I wouldn't have
known it otherwise. And he said, you asked me, and if I spoke an
untruth, I would be in the prisons.
of Allah and Allah would witness that. And so I would rather lose this
gold coin than speak in untruth. And for me as a child, and of course the
story goes on to say how all of these robbers converted to Islam and
were so moved by this. and that struck me as virtue that was so
exemplary and extraordinary and unbelievable.
And,and I just thought that for me, and then there's stories of Sheikh
Abdul Qadir tending very, tending to his ill mother, and of course, very
deeply informed spiritually by his mom. And the way in which he took
good care of her and was at her side. And those are the stories I grew
up with, of what good great Muslims, what it meant to be a good Muslim.
so those inspired me as, from a young child, the stories of Sheikh Abdul
Qadir. Sheikh Rabia Basri for me was also fascinating. and those were

the people that Echoed in my heart as a child, they echoed in my heart
as something that I needed to aspire to, that I felt kind of drawn to and
would've would like to be.
And I think I was very blessed in that sense to have, parents and
particularly a father for whom these were the stories that I sat on his lap
and heard.he was a very loving father as well. So the way in which I
received that was these beautiful stories from, a very loving, parent.
And that kind of stuck with me. I think subsequently my journey within
Islam,had an interesting terrain that traveled in a variety of ways, but that
kind of formative, initial, luminosity that was transmitted to me through
these Sufi stories were the things that, I think I trusted him most deeply
at a gut level without thinking around him, for me, there was truth and
the truth was truth.
At this course, the tradition, and there was a way to be a human being
that was responsive to this. And that was what I was seeking my whole
life and continue to seek
Dr. Rose Aslan: Yeah.
Sadiya: shama.
Dr. Rose Aslan: sorry, this is really beautiful. I think you're the first
person I've asked this question to, and you have an answer coming from
a Muslim family that is one that your family themselves carry the spiritual
tradition and instilled within you a really positive approach to spirituality. I
must say that most people had to struggle and find their own place
within it.
So it's really beautiful to hear that because of your positive experience,
this stuck with you and you were just able to pursue this path that you
were given as a young person.
Sadiya: I feel very blessed. In fact, you know, it was, I think you're
making a really interesting point because we recently launched our
woman's book, which is a story, which is a collection of servants by 21
different women from around the world of 23 contributors, actually. for
having me. 23 contributions.

and each of these stories are accompanied by a biographical piece, or a
piece that tells the story of coming to write this chutbah. And one of the
panelists that were, or one of the interlocutors at a book launch, actually
brought this to my attention in a way that I hadn't recognized before. She
said to me, and she comes from a Muslim tradition herself, that she,
We're so thrilled to see these stories of women that was so deeply
informed by beautiful fathers and beautiful families, because the stories
are often very traumatic.
The stories in the public space tend to be traumatic and, It's also very
beautiful to hear stories. I think to recognize, in all of the spaces, the
complexity of different experiences, the diversity, the spectrum and the
range. And I think, to also recognize the beautiful ways that many of us,
were gifted, even if those families were not simply one thing, we also
had family dynamics that were problematic and we had other things, but
to be able to recognize thatmany women do indeed Have and continue
to have deeply, nourishing, relationships with family, things that have fed
their spiritual lives.
So it is good. I didn't think about that on specifically in this geopolitical
moment, with Muslim masculinities and Muslim patriarchal families are
rendered. Shope. what it means to also reclaim those spaces, which is
not to neglect or to deny the difficulty, the challenges that many women
face in their families.
but that there's a spectrum of different kinds of experiences as well.
Dr. Rose Aslan: That's why I interview women from such different
backgrounds to hear all the different ways that people exist in their
spirituality and walk this path. And so I really appreciate hearing your
story here. so from a young age, you clearly had this beautiful approach
to spirituality, thanks to your father and your family.
Can you take us along your journey from being a young child,
adolescent, and how your, path and relationship to spirituality
progressed?
Sadiya: Absolutely. as I grew up in this family, Madrasa wasn't the most
fun. I went to, we went to Madrasa like everybody else, every single day
after school. We went for an hour and a half to Madrasa. and I didn't
take too much of that too seriously, primarily because at home I was
getting something very different.

I went there to learn Arabic and to learn, to read the Quran, and I would
get told some things that I would I was a bit of a cheeky young one and I
would contest things now and then. And I think as I went along, I also
encountered within the broader community, understandings of Islam that
were deeply denigrating to my femaleness, to being a woman.
and I, really struggled with that. I struggled to see where it sat, how to
make sense of it. I resisted it very strongly. I was, In some sense, quite
there was a lot of cultural impact as well. And I come from a community
that has historically come from an Indian Muslim background.
And there were very specific dynamics to that community that were
deeply problematic. I also was formed, not deeply formed, by the fact
that I grew up in the 70s in South Africa in the 70s and the early 80s.
and that was. a particular moment in South African history where one's
personhood was so deeply defined by living in a context of apartheid,
where there was a strong anti apartheid movement that was formed, and
that one was grappling with ideas of what it meant to be human, how
one made sense of these, different kinds of identities, how one made
sense of how did race impact your humanity.
We were living in a context where. Your very humanity was defined by
race in very clear political and explicit legal terms. And so growing up in
that moment, was very challenging, but also it was a profound
opportunity to grapple with what it meant to be a human being at this
intersection of race and gender and religion.
And I was very fortunate because there was a cohort of Muslims at the
time, and the Muslim community was very, was diverse and varied and
had very different responses to apartheid.some of them were very
politically quietest, others were even complicit with apartheid regime,
and there wasa large group of them that simply wanted to mind their
own business and not get,live within the norms.
And then there was a significant group of people who were strongly anti
apartheid and who, activists and who were anti apartheid activists and
were involved in social movements. And so as I got to university and I
was in high school and university, I was drawn to this group of people,
because, the absolute barbarity of living in a space where race just so
deeply stratified, exploited, hurt and damaged human beings was very
explicit. and so the fortunate part of this was that there was a cohort of
Muslims who engaged the Islam as a source of inspiration, to work for

justice. so really the Quran and the engagement with the Quran was real
liberation theology on the ground. And for me, because Islam was so
fundamental and because I was also resisting
Dr. Rose Aslan: of culture and community within my own more local
space that used and weaponized Islam, to entrench patriarchy, to enable
patriarchy.
Sadiya: So there was a resistance to that on the one hand, and there
was a resistance to racism and apartheid. And the racism wasn't just out
there with white folk, there was racism within the community as well. And
so one was working at these multiple levels.and so I was fortunate to
have that cohort because there was a home, there was a kind of a
political home where, and a political home that was spiritually imbued.
So for me it was a space that You know, the deep grappling that one
does in a highly racialized context is about what it means to be human
and what justice means, what it means to grapple as a Muslim and as
somebody in search of the divine and wanting to see the face of the
divine is to grapple with what that relationship translates like into the
public sphere.
And of course, love the saying, I know Cornel West used it, but I think it
was used even earlier that, justice is the public face of love, that love for
God and love in the intimate sphere, in all of its dimensions,it's a, it's
often a personal, kind of experience.
Love looks like justice when it's in the public square. And for me that
those were the connections between spirituality and justice, that you
could not have a space that enabled people's, humanness if there wasn't
justice. And so that kind of kind of propelled a lot of my work. And so
spiritually, I did a lot of this kind of Grappling through very strongly
political terms and had a community that I, found, like mindedness and a
sense of support.
and then I, did, I went to an Islamic studies program, thinking I
Dr. Rose Aslan: Before we go further, can I just ask you one question?
Sadiya: yes, of course.

Dr. Rose Aslan: For those listeners who haven't heard of liberation
theology and then there's the Islamic liberation theology movement,
could you tell us a little bit more about that? Because I think this is a new
term for a lot of people and it's a very important one too.
Sadiya: the term liberation theology has often been associated with
South America, particularly, and the ways in which, Catholic priests
actually, resisted the imperative to be complicit with, political oppression
and socio economic oppression, and actually, moved into communities
to live with the poorest of the poor, chose the existential option of most
marginalized in society, and read the Bible from the spaces of
marginalization and what it meant to empower those on the margins.
And Muslim liberation theology simultaneously, Islamic liberation
theology, is about what does it look like to be engaging, injustice,
oppression, and to be keeping liberation and the empowerment of those
marginalized and vulnerable and most damaged by political systems at
the front and center of one's, ethical awareness and one's spiritual
awareness and one's, Political activism.
So you know, that kind of, that developed in South Africa, the liberation
theology aspects developed both in, Christian Liberation theology in
South Africa, but also in Muslim liberation theology in South Africa. they
were, and there was interfaith, cooperation and strong kind of activist
links between Christian leaders, Muslim leaders.
Atheist leaders, Jewish leaders, Hindu leaders, people that were
agnostic, a whole bunch of folk. And so South Africa is also a deeply
religious context. It's one of the countries where religion is deep and
formative. and it's a way in which many people make sense of their
world. So it's something that there's a comfort.
Dr. Rose Aslan: it's not necessarily The secular kinds of dynamics that
religion has to encounter in Europe, for example.Yeah. Thank you. I
think a lot of people haven't heard of this term and this movement. I think
a lot more people need to hear about it. I, you mentioned love looks like
justice and the public's there. And I think that really sums it up. The idea
of what are you doing with this love and compassion you have?
How are you changing people's lives? So it's beautiful that you were
involved in this. It's such a, important part of South African and global
history.

thank you guys. yeah, it's been an interesting journey. yeah. So where
was I? you're about, you're talking about university and Muslim liberation
theology.
Sadiya: yes. So I kind of then went along,did an undergraduate with a
major in law and psychology, originally thinking I was going to be a
human rights lawyer. Then really didn't find law that interesting at
university and thought psychology was wonderful. And, I did a major in
psychology and what we call an honors degree in psychology here,
which is a fourth year.
what we have is a fourth year graduate degree, and then decided that I
would take my gap year to go and study Islam for a year. And I came to
the University of Cape Town. That's the university picture that's behind
me for my supposed gap year. And then pretty much did an honors, a
master's, in religion, and then went to the U.
S., on a Fulbright scholarship to do a Ph. D. so what was very interesting
for me is that I was reading a lot of religion on the side. I was doing my
academic work, and religion was my fun stuff. Islam was the stuff that I
was reading on the side as my own thing, and the opportunity to spend
A year with people that I admired to be studying Islam was for me just a
gift.
It was a gap year. And I imagined that I would have some very deep and
profound spiritual kinds of understandings. And I was deeply
disappointed because I started this academic degree in this very
academic manner. And I suddenly recognized that all of the things I was
studying history and, looking at source texts in different ways.
And the understanding of the tradition was very different from what I'd
inherited.
Dr. Rose Aslan: And although it's always very rational, very historical,
very intellectual, and I really felt that my heart was depleted. I was
completely, and it was important. It was my, not my night of this, not my
dark night of the soul.
Sadiya: It was my dark year of the soul. where I was really struggling
with what, how I had this image of the Prophet being this kind of way,
and yeah, I'm reading these sources about him saying and doing this,
that, and the other, and that doesn't, all of these kinds of things that you

encounter when you study religion in this kind of intellectual manner, and
you look at history outside of the kind of categories that you've
encountered it previously, just as a beneath.
And that was, very depressing for me. and so one moment that I've,
mentioned and spoken about in another interview as well was that,
Amina Wadud, actually, I was 21 at the time and she came to South
Africa, just over 20 at the time, 2022. and I was a graduate student here
and she came to South Africa and she gave her, now her very famous
khutbah in our masjid.
And I was just very taken with the fact that this woman was, doing these
extraordinary things and had this deep knowledge of Islam and also
seemed very spiritually imbued. And I sent her a letter telling her about
all of my struggles and she wrote back to me with such tenderness and
such spiritual wisdom, and really asked me pretty much to keep up my
salah and keep my practice and keep doing the things.
And that part of the journey was difficult and hard and grappling with the
things that I was grappling. She wasn't giving me answers, but she was
very much guiding me to stay focused. With the difficulty, but not
necessarily to surrender my heart to this kind of intellectual path and to
keep nourishing it.
And so that was very meaningful for me. And then I went off to
Philadelphia and did a PhD at Temple University. And for me, I was
really in search of a super teacher and had seen a few folk and met a
few people and they didn't think there was a fit.and then very
unexpectedly ended up At a community that I,that I ended up at the Bahi
community in Philadelphia, which I didn't initially think was a fit for me.
when I visited for the first time, I just liked the folk there, but I didn't think
that it was the kind of Sufi community I was looking for. And it turned out
to be the most exquisitely, refining beautiful family. of spiritual souls that,
I encountered both the beautiful luminous teachings of Bahamut Hetin,
who was no longer in the physical form, but also the embodiment of his
teachings in a few of his students, which was, provided a real
companionship, a real spiritual companionship and a teaching in a
community with other folk that I admired and respected deeply.
so that was a real gift for me. Of course, the other lovely gift for me was
that it came in a place that I didn't expect it to come. It came in a form

that I didn't expect it to come. I was so ambivalent about going to the U.
S. I was a strong activist who thought that the empire sucked. And when
I went there, I was filled with, Conflict of being at the heart of the empire.
And I think Allah SWT has a beautiful sense of humor because the
teacher that I was seeking was there and not in the form. He wasn't even
in his body. I was like, okay, couldn't you just wait for me to get here
before you passed out? So Alhamdulillah, it came in forms that I didn't
anticipate, and it came in ways that I didn't anticipate.
And so I think for me, the spiritual journey is being just firstly being very
attentive to the fact that. Spirituality is really in the everyday, in how we
are, engaging in the smallest of interactions, that it's not something that
happens, in a cave somewhere or quietly in a room. it does all of those
things too.
But that it really is something that you do, and you work at and you fail
hopelessly sometime and you get it right other times, and you just, you
keep going at it. And more and more of late, I'm trying to also think about
what softness and gentleness.in this journey, and I now recognize I
wouldn't have said this about myself before.
I probably didn't have that self recognition, but I was quite hard on
myself about spiritual discipline. And when I didn't get it right, I would
really feel great deals of anxiety about not doing what I need to do. And I
am humble. I think I'm also learning that one can be quite gentle with
oneself and yet committed and that commitment doesn't need to take.
a kind of disciplinary mode all the time. Alhamdulillah, there's that. And,
yeah,
Dr. Rose Aslan: That's lovely. I love how you talk about practicing
spirituality in every day. Could you talk about what that looks like for
you? Because I think a lot of people would understand that in a different
way. So I'm curious what it looks like in your life.
Sadiya: yeah. So I had this conversation with this beautiful woman in
Philadelphia. I was actually doing interviews with Sufi women there for a
sociology project that I was working on, in a sociology class I was doing
in grad school. and she was just this really intelligent woman. And for
me, I couldn't understand.

why was she not out in the public sphere? She's so brilliant and smart
and educated, and she was a stay at home mom. And I just wanted
there's all this talent. And so she turned to me very simply and said, it's
absolutely irrelevantwhat you're doing on the outside side here.
It's really the qualities which you bring to it and you will bring to different
spaces in your life at different times.there'll be very different outer
spaces, things that are either recognized or not recognized, seen as
important or not seen as important. That's entirely irrelevant. What is
relevant is what work you do, what qualities you bring to it, how you pitch
up, how you make your kids lunch, how you greet and smile to a
stranger, how you take a request, what generosity of spirit you have.
in terms of just the everyday interactions. When you are tired and moody
and cranky, the capacity to just say Bismillah and say, I'm actually not
going to talk right now. That's a generosity because right now I'm likely
to snap and be really ugly. And so Bismillah, the best I can do is to shut
up, And so in those kinds of, that kind of Really, I've, in some other work
that I've done, I've really said the world is the workshop of the spirit. Yes,
Alhamdulillah, I think on the spiritual path it's incredibly important to
create spaces of solitude, to create spaces of practice, spaces of,doing
dhikr, doing the kind of work that does the inner refinement.
equally important is to kind take that presence into everything we do.
And That's more difficult sometimes because we often put spirituality into
this category of okay, I wake up and I do my morning practice of so
much of this, this Adhkar or that Adhkar, I do Salah, Quran.
All of that is absolutely imperative. In fact, if I don't have that, I'd probably
not cope with the world very well. And I think one shouldn't
underestimate the absolute importance of that. But I think the other part
of it and the equally important part is how that translates to the
community. What does that do?
And it's not like you're going to get it right. And sometimes you're going
to mess up badly, sometimes to be aware of it. And more and more,I
was having coffee at a restaurant and doing some work there. I
incidentally had a conversation with this young, very tattooed waiter,
who just saw the name of the book that I was reading.
I was reading, Kabir Helminski's The Mysterian. And he looked at me
and said, Oh, what, what is that about? And so we ended up having this

conversation. And this young, this one young South African white boy,
all tattooed, was telling me about his practice of Murakawa.he was like,
every night he goes home and before he goes to bed, he goes through
what he's done for the day, and he said, Oh, so today I'll say I had this
really lovely conversation with a stranger.these practices are things that
many people do, not necessarily with the fancy names that we might
have in a tariqa, but the question of how you do this practice. doing the
practice is important. It actually reminded me when he told me this, I
thought, Oh, muraqabah is really important.
When last have I done muraqabah? I really need to at the end of the
day. do a kind of reflection on how I've spent the day. so I think those
practices, the kind of, the very powerful practices that one has inherited,
And for those that don't know what Murakaba is, it's a question of
interrogating, looking back on your day and looking for your motivations,
what you did, to reflect on it in a space that you're not in that space at
the moment, but to reflect on it from a spiritual lens and to render visible
to yourself things that you might've done not as consciously. so I think all
of these practices are absolutely vital. It's, the bread and butter of being
on a spiritual path. as equally important as speaking gently, making
lunch for your kid with dua and with love, when you're actually sitting at
your computer. And this is what I'm trying to do.
sometimes I'm sitting working really hard and one of my children will
walk into the room and my instinct is to say, Oh, can I speak to you in a
half an hour, please? I'm really busy. And so what does it mean to say,
okay,how are you going to make this call? maybe the better thing,
maybe sometimes I need to do that.
And maybe other times I need to close my computer and say, Hey,
sweetie, how was your day? What's going on? and that's the spiritually
responsive thing to do in the moment, rather than to say, I have the stuff
that I need to finish. and I think it's sometimes it's that simple.
Sometimes it's that simple.
Dr. Rose Aslan: but it's so powerful, Sadia, to just bring that into the
everyday because some people, they teach and they talk from a
pedestal as if and only have, and only can happen in a cave and a
monastery and in some faraway place. But it actually the most powerful
spiritual exercises and practices happens in the everyday, right?

In the marketplace, in the midst when you are being challenged by other
people and having your ego rubbed the other way. So what a beautiful
description of practicing that. Thank you. And I really loved your
discussion of softness. I would love to talk a little bit more about that.
Like you said, only recently discovered the need for softness in your life.
and as a scholar who's looked at gender and the feminine Islam, can
you talk more about the softness and even how it corresponds to
understanding of like the feminine?
Sadiya: Yeah. So I don't know. I think for the longest time, of course the
soul for Sufism has always been the path of love. And so it's assumed
that it's, full of this. soft huggy stuff, and it's not. I don't know what
Dr. Rose Aslan: stuff. Yeah. I don't have to see a lot. Soft huggy stuff.
Sadiya: there's one kind of sense in which it's seen, but really if you are,
looking at many of the texts, the informative texts, and if you're looking at
even practice in different communities, there's a very clear sense in
which Discipline is really important and indeed it is, I would not deny for
a second that discipline is really important.
So I'm not saying that it's a question of discipline being the issue. I think
the way in which one approaches oneself, with not a kind of castigating
sense of you must do this and that. and I think I find,Kabir Helminski's
writing on this quite compelling as well. And, I've been, one of the people
that I read on a daily basis is Shefa Fawzia Rawi's,The Divine Names.
it's literally a book that I open every single morning. It kind of is a, and I
love her, I loved her softness. I love her gentleness. I love her way in
which she engages. The path. Kapil means he speaks about befriending
the ego. how do we befriend that part of ourselves that needs to be
disciplined?
And how do we discipline that gently? and I'm a mother of two. My oldest
is 21 and my youngest is, is my younger one is 16. And,one of the things
that I have learned, perhaps sometimes the hard way, Is that if I invite
them to attend to something that I would like them to attend to as an
invitation rather than an instruction, and then I leave it to them, they
appear more fully than.
And so I'm trying to wonder what that would look like to myself.

Dr. Rose Aslan: yeah.
Sadiya: How about I invite myself with that kind I when I started kind of
recognizing that I need to,I think being a mother teaches you a lot.
There's a lot of learning in mothering.
There's a lot of spiritual learning in mothering and parenting, actually.
And part of learning that capacity to be responsive and to not hold your
authority in an authoritarian way. While simultaneously providing and
creating nurturing boundaries
is a really important spiritual learning. And then the question is, how do
you then transfer that to yourself?
how do you, because the importance of boundaries are there. I also
have friends who have a very different approach to parenting and
everything goes. And that's really destructive for their children, not
having those boundaries. But the question is, how do you then create
boundaries, but enable them to be loving boundaries, but there are still
boundaries.
And so I'm thinking more about, what does that mean for the self? what
was, what, how do you parent that part of yourself? That's that part of
your nubs. That's, five years old that just doesn't want to. so I'm working
with this, and I'm working with not just putting myself on this whole trip of
I need to do so many of this and I need to do it.
because I had that propensity, my own nature tends to be, I love Atkar
by the way. So you give me as many Atkar and then I'll be like, am I
going to do this one? Am I going to do that one? Which one am I going
to do today? So part of it is also not to become spiritually materialistic.
Like it's not how much you can gather. It's about actually how much you
can shed. But how much you can shed and what allows that shedding.
And I don't always get it right. there are mornings that I wake up and I
really want to do, and I do exactly that kind of, and then I have to take a
deep breath and change that. But I think, I'm going to take this to the
question that you asked me about, Rose, which is to think about Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala and the, the beauty of the tradition and the beauty
of Tasawwuf and the beauty of Islam. Of course, it's, I don't think it's a
prerogative of people that are interested in Tasawwuf itself.

It's the deep legacy of Islam is that we have these smiles. We have
these different modalities of thinking about the divine, engaging the
divine, but there's all of these 99 names that we have in the tradition that
speak to very different registers to very different qualities, very different
attributes, and they all belong to the one.
And the, and I love the fact there's a lot of writing around this more
recently. That Rahman and Rahim are the most evoked names in the
Qur'an, and they are, as we know, names that are born from the root of
Rahm, which is the womb, and the womb of compassion and mercy.
And so that A'la defines Allah A'la's self most regularly by the attributes
of Rahman and Rahim throughout the Qur'an.
And what does that mean for us here now? what does it mean to on that
divine attribute to recognize that a human being, and this is some of the
work from Ibn Arabi and other Sufi teachers, is that human beings are
effectively a constellation of divine attributes. That's our existential hard,
our hard way, that's what we are.
we are Allah's attributes. Our work in this world is to refine and to
calibrate those. We have been given everything we need. And it's not
that women have been given, the nice maternal qualities and men have
been given the hard, powerful qualities. We are all combination of those
various different attributes.
And our work in this world is to calibrate them. And the work of all
human beings is to calibrate Rahma, first and foremost. The Rahman
and the Rahim is not just for women. It's not just the womb, like the
womb, like mercy and compassion is the human legacy. And what does
it look like to bring that into existence within ourselves, within our
families, within our communities, within this planet, within this time where
we ravaged, with the opposite of Rahman, the global stage where
there's just an absolute violation of human rights, human lives, where
there, there just seems to be a complete absence.
So how do we then? Think about what we would think of as the divine
feminine, but for me, it's the divine and it's bringing into existence.
Things that we have through our gendered lenses, seen as the divine
feminine, but if in fact, I would argue based on my argument, Allah says,
my Rahmah precedes my Rahmah.

Allah says, call me by Allah or call me by Rahman. So Allah and
Rahman of all the attributes. That's the one. first and foremost, those are
the qualities that are foregrounded by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala self.
The Rasul sallallahu was called rahmatul alameen, the mercy of all the
worlds.
So our creator and our messenger have defined and been defined by
this quality of Compassion and love really, womb like compassion that
encompasses.
Dr. Rose Aslan: really amazing.
Sadiya: so it's the quality, it's the way of being that we may call the
divine feminine, but I would just call it the divine that needs to be more
deeply, nurtured, developed, cultivated, refined within the individual and
within the collective.
And so many people say, that it is the divine feminine. I'm fine with that. I
just think it's the divine. And I think I don't even want to limit it to the
feminine. I want to say it's the divine. If we're talking, and there are
different ways people speak about gendered language, right? Some say
we all have the feminine and the masculine within us.
Let's work on developing the feminine. Fine. My problem with those
categories is that we've projected Rahma as feminine. We've projected
Qadr as masculine. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta A'la never did that. So how
about we just loosen our feminine masculine qualities and say, we need
to cultivate Jalal and Jamal.
With precedence of Jamal. So Jalal is the powerful, the Jalal is the
powerful, and the Jamal is the beautiful. The Jamali, the aspects of
Jamali attributes have been seen those with power. The Jalali are those
of beauty. And generally these have been seen as masculine and
feminine, but those are our projections.
I'm saying let's just hold Jamal and Jalal, and the Jamal is necessary,
the Jalal is also necessary. I wouldn't for a second let go of the power,
because power is really important, right? But a calibration, a balance.
Where you have overriding Rahma as being the modus operandi would
be the way in which we cultivate a divine feminine, the way we cultivate
a balanced divine for men, women, for all human beings, for whoever,
for all lives and not just for folk, just not just for people.

We need Rahma in terms of how we interact with this planet. the
devastation of our planet, that the kind of ecological destruction that
we've wrought as human beings who have just had, just Jalali qualities
on the rampage with no kind of care, no compassion, no mercy, no
sense of, also no sense of how much the earth and the, this planet is a
gift to us.
And how much we connected to it and we dependent upon it. And a
relationship that is based in a deep kind of relationality is the goal, I
think,of the work that, that I do and the work that. people that are
working on the Divine Feminine I invested in doing.
Dr. Rose Aslan: you're, what you're bringing to the table here, because
in this other world of, like in the spiritual world, people are always talking
about divine masculine, feminine. I just love that. You're just like, Nope,
we don't need those gendered languages because the divine contains
all. Would you say that women and men.
Have to do this calibration differently, perhaps, because perhaps they
hold more or less. How do you look at and explain that? Yeah,
Sadiya: is a wonderful mystery. I used to have very strong positions on
A, B, or C, and I've, of late, have been, much more comfortable with
unknowing. So I don't have a definitive answer, and I also know that my
answers have changed, and I'm pretty sure they're going to change in
the next, so I don't know.
I think you encounter people. There's some ways in which many of the
women I know, and many of the ways, the families that I'm, you know,
that I'm, that I know. There's ways in which women serve a certain kind
of emotional grounding in that family. And I don't know if that's because
we've been socialized in that way or if there's something essential that
we are the divine that we manifesting in that space, right?
There's something about. An emotional space that mothers provide in a
family. And this is not the case for all and every family. I know also
families where fathers do that grounding primarily in the mother's a lot
more generally. So I'm not making this claim for everybody, but I'm
saying in my, and this is purely on my, in my experience and my
experience is defined by my culture and my context and the people that I
know and the folks that I've been.

So it has that limitation. But I think this is something to be said for ways
in which. women sometimes manifest, bring into existence, reflect
certain aspects of care and compassion in spaces that men don't. And
there's spaces that there's certain forms of masculinity thattake space in
the public domain and in the private domain in ways that.
That women don't like, I always use my family as a context because it's
such a learning space for me, I realized, I have a very loving relationship
with my children who I both of whom I adore. There are times when my
husband's more kind of, this is how it's going to be.
Actually is needed and I just don't have that kind of, this is how it's going
to be, energy, and then I watch it and I watch its impact and I think, oh,
wow, that was really needed at this time. But that's also just could be
Sadiya and Ashraf. That's our energies. It doesn't not necessarily, so I
don't know.
I mean, I don't know, Rose, to be perfectly honest, I think these things
are You know, there's these debates. If you think about where, I have,
I'm teaching students now who are far more at undergraduate level,
thinking around questions of sexual diversity, thinking about identities.
And in my last class, the students said to me, this idea of gender
essences has come back. Because you now have people claiming that
they have a male body, but they have a female persona, which means
the essence to how gender is thought about. Now, these questions of
course open and can be thought about and reflected with great, that's
not really what I'm wanting to talk about here, but those discussions
about gender essences, and maybe we don't need a yes or no.
I think I'm becoming much more comfortable in the Barzakh, in the in
betweenness. I don't know that they are. I think yes and no answers. Is
there something that's essentially masculine? I don't think that's how
reality works. I think there are moments in which that might work and
function.
And I think at other times they switch completely. And in other moments,
none of that matters. so when I teach my students, I also say that
religions across the board have ideas of shared universal sameness of
human beings, irrespective of any social identities. And then they have
notions of difference. And sometimes these kinds of different concepts
or modalities occur concurrently. And the question is, how do we hold

the complexity of saying, we're both the same and we're different. And
sometimes the way we're different is not consistently across the board. I
don't know if that's a helpful answer, but it's the best answer I got right
Dr. Rose Aslan: I appreciate the, your humility and in the Barzakh and
acknowledging the Barzakh. Because some people have definitive
answers and I think you're right. It's going to constantly change as we
understand and it's hard to know exactly what is. Humans who don't
have access to the as much as we'd like to think we do.
So I really appreciate your answer on that note, your contribution to
academic discourse in gender studies and islamic studies I remember
reading your work when I was in grad school like defining islamic
Feminism and I was like, I think of you, I'm going to do this for some of
the four mothers of Islamic feminism, among some others.
So how do you place yourself as a spiritual being, the spiritual person,
but also in this highly intellectual scholar Who intellectualizes, theorizes
about religion and how it works in society, in a way that doesn't
necessarily, but maybe you have a different approach, correspond to
spirituality.
I guess you can say for me personally, I, I left academia because I got
burnt out and it just wasn't working for me spiritually either, really. I
wasn't able to connect between my spirituality and my, Academic
teaching and study of Islamic studies. So I would love to hear how you
do that because you, your scholarship is so brilliant.
So please tell us how you reconcile or understand the connection
between the two
Sadiya: Thank you. I think you're right on the head. I think academia in
the spaces that it is. So it's been a journey for me. I have to say it's been
an interesting journey. And that moment that I reflected on where I really
felt like spiritually, this was the worst possible thing. I thought, why did I
come and study Islam?
I should have just stayed with my own kind of concepts. And I would
have been perfectly fine, studying this stuff, intellectualizes it,
rationalizes it. And then I find such a disconnect from my heart. That it's
becoming really alienating. So I think that is not an experience that's
unique to you or many people in academia.

And I think the other thing about academia, or at least, let me say this,
the current university framework, one shouldn't say academia as such,
the current university, and I think this is globally the case, maybe more
so in some contexts and less so in others. But there is an environment
where we've made an idol of the intellect that's disconnected from the
heart.
You think about the mind as the space where pure celebration happens
as though the mind is not constantly and fundamentally connected to the
heart. And so you also probably have the experiences that some of the
most Arrogant, horrible human beings that you could potentially meet
would be in an academic space because they're huge egos.
I also some of the most amazing human beings I've met have also been
in academia.
Dr. Rose Aslan: including once you write about spirituality, another
Sadiya: so now so you actually find that because the university prizes,
or at least the current The dominant kind of framework at university
prizes the intellect in this kind of specific way that it sometimes becomes
really difficult to connect, because what is valued is this intellect that can
show off that it knows X amounts of theories and it can talk back to
somebody else and that, that, the display it is another enough theater
than us, actually, it's a display of your intellect that's the normative thing.
Thank you. If you're in a debate, you're supposed to disagree with the
person that you're supposed to show how well and how articulately you
can critique a position. And we teach our students that critique is really
important, right? so it is actually a place that can potentially be very
alienating and often is very alienating, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I think, that we, what I try to do and, a few of my colleagues as well that I
work closely with, is to rethink and to re embody and think about what
that connection is. Between the mind and the heart is that actually
intellect is always connected with values and values are always related
to the heart and to the work, whatever you call that, you can call it other
things.
The heart may seem too soft and too, too touchy feely for some people,
but it's not. What is your existential core? so I, of course, use the heart,
not in the heart way, or the kind of the modern thing about heart. When I

speak about the heart, I speak about that center of spiritual intelligence,
right?
and that center of spiritual intelligence is where values abide, where
character abides, where, the aspiration for human life abides, and the
intellect is meant to serve that. And the teachers in the tradition have
always taught that whether they've, they've always taught that's the
essence of the question is, if you are in an environment with a dominant
Ethos is a certain way.
How do you occupy that space differently? And that's been a road for
me. It's been a, it's been a journey for me. it's been a very interesting
journey because I've also confronted my own nubs in the process, my
own desire to be smart and to show my smartness, and to then deal with
that desire as a nubs desire and as not something that's necessarily, the
most productive and healthy part of myself.
And so to recognize it is also then to say, you're not really me. you're not
really me. That nasty desire comes from somewhere else.
Dr. Rose Aslan: And,concomitant to that, which often people don't
speak about, is that almost every academic I know has an imposter
syndrome, right? Because on the one hand, it's okay, I'm so smart, I can
show this off.
Sadiya: On the other hand, in that theater, there's always going to be a
hundred other people's theories you don't know and a hundred other
people and thousands of other people who can argue better and more
critically and more analytically than you. So you constantly. Constantly
not good enough. And between this, these kinds of two ends of the
spectrum, academia can become a very alienating space, spiritually.
more and more, I think, I've taken something that Balmohir Deen, a
teaching that he, a very simple teaching that I've really started to grapple
with and to inhale and to breathe and to taste in very different ways. And
he says,he talks a lot about keeping like many Sufi teachers that purify
your intention, be aware of it, reflect on it, figure out the work you want to
do that is going to serve the higher good.
And then you just put it out there. And when praise comes, you say,
Alhamdulillah, you blow it over your right shoulder. And when blame
comes and criticism comes, you say, Alhamdulillah, and you blow it over

your left shoulder. And I use that actually quite practically. I literally use
that. I sometimes have you even see me like, in certain spaces, and
what that is about, for me, that's a spiritual gem. It's actually
underestimated what you're actually doing in that moment. Is this a
moment in which something is coming towards you? You can decide in
that moment, whether you're going to be internalizing that. At your nafs
level and taking that seriously. So if somebody says, Oh, Saadia, that
was a brilliant book.
You're so intelligent. Alhamdulillah, if it's done any good in the world,
Alhamdulillah. Really for any of us, any good that we've done, we know
the collective energies. We know that we get it right. Sometimes we
know. Everything that goes into creating something good is never
something you do by yourself.
It's through the mercy of Allah, it's through the opportunities that Allah
has opened through doors. It's through loved ones, it's through support,
it's through all of those things. Yes, you may be the conduit,
Alhamdulillah, to that part of yourself. That's a conduit. Well done. Nice
work. You can do that, but it's not me.
Alhamdulillah. It needs to go. And so that allows your kind of your ego
self to not be become inflated. Which is an easy thing that happens in
academia, I think. And the other, when everybody says, Oh, that's, one
of the critiques that I often get when you come from a kind of religion
background or the study of religion, where there's a very, despite all
things, and despite decolonial theory, and despite the transparency of
the kind of subjectivities entrenched in enlightenment thinking, you still
have people that go, Oh, you can't really do theology in a department of
religion.
That's not good scholarship. What you really should do is good analytical
sociology of religion. Alhamdulillah. Good for you. You do sociology of
religion. I think there's lots of important things. I'm going to do what I
need to do and I'm doing the work that I care about and I'm not saying
yours is less valuable, but I can do my work and it doesn't need to be
valued by everybody.
For those that value it, Alhamdulillah. For those that don't value it,
Alhamdulillah.they'll find it somewhere else. They find their sources of
what they need to nurture their lives. in different places. So I think also

just the comfort by knowing that you're not going to speak to all
audiences.
You were not intended to speak to all audiences. you also can, I think
more and more, I bring a kind of transparency to my teaching and to my
students. and try to render visible the foundations of how we think about
knowledge or what we call a real interrogation of epistemology. what,
how do you know what you know?
Who tells you By which means? And I say, this is who I am. These are
the limits of What is for me. And so when I've been engaging with them
in this manner, they don't think of me as this authority on high who
knows answers, yes, I have some expertise on here to offer you stuff
that I've learned, but that's in process, and we can engage with that and
so it's really about, and I think, The spaces that one can occupy is trying
to create a different kind of academy to think about in small spaces, I
don't have any intentions of changing my university or changing,
anything big, but I can have an impact on the students that are in my
class and I can have an impact on the graduate students that I
supervise, and I can impact.
The everyday interactions that I have with people in the spaces of
knowledge creation or what's considered, an area where knowledge is
produced or talked about, and we can do it differently. And we can do it
by rendering clear to people that intellects that are disconnected from an
existential core, or don't think about what that means, can really go awry.
how do we manage that? How do we engage different modalities? And
of course, there's not a singular way to be thinking about that, right?
there's no one paradigm. I speak to students, most of whom are not
Muslim. So I need to be able to engage with them in ways that are
meaningful for them and that are spiritually enriching for them and not
just intellectually.
And I think there's ways in which we need to create those kinds of
languages at universities without becoming, sectarian or, yeah, and
that's not an easy thing. That's not an easy thing.
Dr. Rose Aslan: I'm so appreciative of you, Saadia, and what you have
to offer, academics and intellectual world, but also just people in general
and with your way of living and lessons learned from your life. It's just
really been, like receiving all these gems of knowledge and your

everyday experience, wrapped up in this brilliant way of, explaining
things, Saadia.
So I really appreciate this discussion. As we wrap up, I always like to ask
people, what gems of wisdom would you want to share with listeners?
kind of life lessons that you like sharing with others that could help
people.
Sadiya: So I am going to share something that Shaykh Fathullah Hayri
shared with me because I actually use it. So one of them I've just shared
with you, which is the very simple Alhamdulillah, not attaching to
outcome, but this is also about not attaching to outcome. and Shaykh
Fathullah gave me a His own right?
And then, and he talks about the four pillars of the kaba of the heart.
who believe, who calibrated truth. okay, so it's about belief doing right
actions what, and those who calibrate with ha truth. Those who are
patient. And what I really appreciated about that was these and he says,
to believe is one pillar of the heart to act is another pillar of the heart to
calibrate your action and you're doing with Huck constantly to
recalibrate, not just to have the near but to constantly calibrate.
To connect it back to truth isn't there. And the fourth one, sabar, for me,
that was a spiritual gem. It's not just to be patient, but to truly surrender
outcome. Just to surrender. You do what you need to do. You do it with
good intention. You constantly interrogate your action and your thought
and your mind and your constant doing and your way of being with haq.
and then,you want to do all kinds of things in the world. The normal
human expectancies. Okay, we're working hard in this organization. This
is the outcome I want to see. Yes, of course we want to see those
outcomes. That's normal. That's human, but no attachment to that,
because the outcome could be now, or it could be in a hundred years.
So you do the best you can. And then you really have to buckle. And
sometimes you look and you go, Oh my God, that really was the
complete opposite of what I wanted. Alhamdulillah. To truly surrender
outcomes, very liberating actually, because you can actually then not
look to see, did I do good enough?
did I, and anyway, what calculus are we using? we're using a calculus
that has a limited frame. This is not to say that we shouldn't be working

for particular outcomes. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying to detach
internally from the outcome. you work towards certain outcomes.
You want to see that. That's normal. That's good. But deepen in your
being the capacity to simultaneously say, Wa Allahu a'lam, and
Tawakkaltu ala Allah. Allah knows best, and I am handing this over to
you. And yes, Whatever happens, then happens. I've done the best I can
with this. I'd probably, and then we never know, you never really know
what, what's going to be a fruit.
who would know that Ibn Arabi, in the 13th century, writes all these
amazing things about gender and women, gets some criticism for his
stuff on Nizam, writes this thing, doesn't seem to have too much of a
problem. And, in the 21st century, there are people that say, wow,
there's the divine feminine all the time.
And we have in our tradition, all of these resources. So for me, the work
that he did with the Nia that he did, might have had some traction in his
time, but the capacity for it to bear fruits and to become a source of
nourishment. And of spiritual water to generations of people who've
been, not fed with the kinds of things that he made available through his
action and he's near and he's work.
SubhanAllah, you know, whatever we're doing in this world, and it's not
even in those kind of big writing treatises, it's even just in, you do the
best you can with your children and what's. So it stays with them and
what they take forward to their children who then take that forward to
their children.
Who knows? Allahu Allah. We don't even have to worry about that. It's
not our business. We just do the best we can and we surrender. So I
think that, yeah. To detach from outcome.
there's one other very important thing that I'm still hard at work on is to
not react. Very hard one, to not be drawn into something and to react.
I think genuine detachment in spiritual life is to be able to have anything
come at you and not be immediately. reactive to it, to go Bismillah. And I
think sometimes it's helpful is to literally go, if something is coming at
you from somebody you didn't expect or somebody you love, you kind of
literally go, Because if it sticks here,

the instinct to hit back or to say something sharp or, so I don't know that,
I'm working on that.I'm also like quite a fiery character. So I, I've got to
work with that because fighting comes sometimes quite instinctively,
especially when there's injustice.
I'm I don't hold. And I need to work on that, Inshallah.
Dr. Rose Aslan: Yeah. Those are some very deep lessons. I really
appreciate that. I think I needed to hear, especially today, especially the
outcome one, . 'cause I've been waiting for specific outcomes. And
you're right. when we just do the work, we sow the seeds, the flowers
will come out, the plants will come out, right?
We just need to sow the seeds. It's very hard as a human in this modern
world to just sow the seeds and then. Wait for the flowers to bloom. but
it's one that I'm going to sit and meditate with. And I think others listening
to this are also going to benefit and really deeply sit with, I think, and
reflect on and see how we can bring into our lives.
So thank you for sharing. Wow. This is a very nourishing conversation
and I hope others listening find also nourishing, but I know I've benefited
a lot. So thank you so much, Sadia. If people want to find you or connect
with you, I know you're, they can find you on your university website. Is
there any other way people can connect with you or?
Sadiya: I'm not a very, technologically sassed person. I am the director
of the Center for Contemporary Islam, and we've got a slightly newer
website. Two of those websites, it's probably not the best place to go.
But yeah, I got a couple of things on different talks that I've done on
YouTube for different audiences, which people have plugged onto
YouTube.
I have two books that people can get from Amazon or anywhere else.
The Sufi narratives of intimacy, Ibn Arabi gender and sexuality for those
that are people. Really,the one wonderful compliment that I tried not to
attach to but was very grateful for was the fact that a scholar after so
said to me, oh, thank you for this book.
It's the first time I've understood it in now. because I really do have a
love relationship with him, not just on the questions agenda, but at the
level of how he thinks about existence and being. And so I think that
work can have an appeal to those of us that are searching for what it

means to be in San, and it's powerful and it is to render it in a way that's
accessible for folks here.
I think that's the, that might be appealing. I have to of course say that.
The work that I'm extremely excited about is the woman's hot book that
has been published by Yale University Press in 2022 and Wits University
Press in 2023 is being republished in South Africa. And the reason that I
think that book is incredibly powerful, I'm a co editor of this collection
where there are women from all over the world presenting some of the
deepest understandings The nature of God, the nature of relationality,
justice virtue, a relationship with the Raul, understandings of Rahma.
and these are coming from women. There's, we've got three Sufi Sheha
in the group. We've got, a bunch of activists who've got academics.
We've got,a whole bunch of different women across spreading from
South Africa to Senegal. To Pakistan and Indonesia and Europe and the
US. So Hamdanah, it's a very, it's a collection I think is very valuable in
that it has voices of women.
and really offers a contemporary engagement with. With the things that
are apparent in our world that we need to be responding to spiritually. So
that book is available at Amazon as well. and I think people would find,
and I have a biographical reflection on my, I have two photos in the book
and I have a biographical reflection as well, which is some of the stuff
that I spoke about today, but other things as well.
Dr. Rose Aslan: Yeah, I definitely hope people will get one or both of
your books and you can always look up her work on Google. She has
lots of articles and so many things that you've given to people that are
available online and in book form. So thank you so much for this
conversation, for your contributions to scholarship and just the
contribution to just being a good teacher.
A good model of insane or human on this earth. So it was a delight to
have this conversation with you today.
Sadiya: Thank you so much, Rose. Thank you for the time. And thank
you for the conversation because Hamdillah, so much of this is really
just what happens in the dynamics. So thank you for being that, that
lovely interlocutor.