Adli Yacubi

Tag: Storytelling

  • When the Pirates Wear Uniforms

    When the Pirates Wear Uniforms

    When flags become brands and uniforms cloak injustice, we must name what we see: a world where war hides behind legality and theft wears a tie. This blog is a poetic protest against global hypocrisy — from Gaza to gilded offices — and a reminder that resistance still rows quietly below deck.

  • Joburg Remembers Too: From Gaajah to Burdah

    Joburg Remembers Too: From Gaajah to Burdah

    From a family Gaajah in Florida North to the chorus of the Burdah at Houghton Mosque, Joburg’s dhikr carries both intimacy and grandeur. This Rabiʿ al-Awwal, in Heritage Month, I was reminded that memory does not belong to Cape Town alone. It stretches wider — across towns, valleys, mosques and homes — carried in the…

  • In Our Veins, In Our Graves: Mawlud and Memory

    In Our Veins, In Our Graves: Mawlud and Memory

    This reflection flows from my Radio 786 series with Gadija Ahjum — Rooted Light, Series 2. In the month of Rabiʿ al-Awwal and Heritage Month, I write of Mawlud as memory in our veins and in our graves: sandalwood tasbihs from Makkah, rampies leaves cut by children, the riwāyah of Barzanji, and the moment we…

  • In the Circles of Azzawia

    In the Circles of Azzawia

    From whispered questions in the Haram to the green dome of Azzawia, these are the moments where the old way of learning still lives — teachers in a circle, books open, hearts leaning forward. In Cape Town, the chains of knowledge are not shackles but links that draw us closer to Allah.

  • The Stormborne Sisters: A Karoo Creation Tale

    The Stormborne Sisters: A Karoo Creation Tale

    In the Karoo, three koppies rise like ribs from Mother Earth’s chest — storm-sisters who absorbed a comet’s grief and became stone. This is their myth. Their vanishing. Their voice beneath the silence.

  • The Garden of Words

    The Garden of Words

    Before Rafiq ever dropped his first scroll, there was a garden of words — planted in silence, grown in love. This is his origin soil.

  • Our Inheritance: The African and Islamic Civilisations That Shaped the World

    Our Inheritance: The African and Islamic Civilisations That Shaped the World

    Discover the hidden contributions of African and Muslim civilisations to science, education, culture, and daily life — from algebra and surgery to universities and the fork itself.

  • The Mother Tongue of Tasbih: Afrikaans, Islam, and the Echoes of Resistance

    The Mother Tongue of Tasbih: Afrikaans, Islam, and the Echoes of Resistance

    “Os wiet dat ’n taal is ook ’n houvās.” We know that a language is also a holding — like a salomie wrapped in a roti: not to preserve perfection, but to keep the inside warm. Spiced, sacred, messy, surviving. This blog is my offering — a prayer for our tongue, our tasbīḥ, and the…

  • Comfort of Our Eyes…

    Comfort of Our Eyes…

    In a world where sermons often speak to the youth or about parents, this khutbah speaks for the child. Inspired by the memory of Jayden-Lee Meek — an 11-year-old who died under tragic, preventable circumstances — this reflection draws from the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ tenderness towards children and confronts the silence that allows harm to…

  • The Forgotten Tongue of Remembrance

    The Forgotten Tongue of Remembrance

    A rare Cape relic — the Ratib al-Haddad handwritten in Arabic script, with Afrikaans transliteration in the same sacred calligraphy. A language of remembrance once shaped in the shadows now returns as a light for generations.