Imran Mulla

Political Correspondent @MiddleEastEye. Author of The Indian Caliphate (2025) and The Crescent and the Commons (2027). Winner, Press Awards 30 Under 30 in 2025.

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

My book reviewed in the Wall Street Journal:

"An exceptional feat of investigative research... [Depicts] the historical moment when the modern overpowered the ancient—a world, now lost, of floridly costumed courtiers, fabled princes, exotic vices and perfumed palaces"

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

@davidchaffetz @KasurianMag Thanks very much, David!

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

'Modern Muslims’, declared the late Shahab Ahmed, suffer the ‘existential problem of living in terms of a conceptual incoherence with their past.’

My new piece for @KasurianMag revisits Ahmed's magisterial and little-understood work, a grand odyssey from the Balkans to Bengal:

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

@dialecticabebop Greatly recommend the full book!

[Younus | یونس @yejaazy]

سهو و خطایِ بنده گَرَش اعتبار نیست
معنیِ عفو و رحمتِ آمُرزگار چیست؟

زاهد شرابِ کوثر و حافظ پیاله خواست
تا در میانه خواستهٔ کردگار چیست

حافظ

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

@papaburi Thank you sir!

[papa buri @papaburi]

phenomenal by imran, some of the most thought provoking and thoroughly against the grain writing you will read

[Bactrian 🌴 @ElegantiaeArbit]

Incredibly important intervention on behalf of one of the most misunderstood books of our time.

[FA @FAnewsfeed]

This is essential reading.

As Muslims and western critics alike continue to adopt the narrowest possible framing of what constitutes Islam, @Imran_posts
provides some much needed context

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

@caveheraa Thank you Heraa, hope you find it interesting!

[Heraa @caveheraa]

Putting on today’s reading list - had to read portions of Shahab Ahmed’s ‘What is Islam’ this summer for a fellowship, and @Imran_posts is a great writer

[Kasurian @KasurianMag]

What is Islam?

In When is Drinking Wine Islamic?, Imran Mulla (@Imran_posts) revisits Shahab Ahmed’s magisterial work that sought to answer this very question.

Some critics took Ahmed to mean that anything Muslims had ever done could be called Islamic. Others took him to mean that the word itself had no coherent meaning. Ahmed died in 2015, aged 48, and What Is Islam? was published posthumously. He was never able to answer his critics.

For centuries, Muslims from the Balkans to Bengal read the Persian poet Hafiz. In one of his verses, the ascetic longs to drink from the Fountain of Paradise, while the poet reaches for the wine-cup. Both hope for God’s mercy. A jade wine-jug belonging to the Mughal emperor Jahangir bore an inscription beginning, “God is Most Great!” At the Ottoman court, the traveller Evliya Çelebi recalled meeting Sultan Murad IV at a party where wine was served. Evliya abstained. The gathering ended with the afternoon prayer and a recitation from the Quran.

How do we make sense of this?

For Ahmed, the question turns on what Muslims understood themselves to know of God, and how they came to know it. The Quran directs its readers to look for God’s signs on earth and within themselves. Philosophers saw reason as one way to discover such truths. Sufis spoke of knowing them through experience. A reader of Hafiz could recognise in the wine of a ghazal both the cup passed between friends and the experience of intoxication with the Divine. The difficulty for a modern reader is that the poet could mean both at once.

Ahmed thought we did an injustice to Muslims of the past when we could recognise the Islam in a jurist’s ruling but scarcely recognise it in a poem that generations of Muslims had known by heart. We also, he wrote, did an injustice to ourselves.

For 14 centuries, in Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s words, the Islamic had been “one of the salient ways of being human”. Ahmed’s book closes with an invitation. “Let us understand, apprehend and benefit from the importance of being Islamic.”

Read more on Kasurian. Link in reply below:

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

@MehreenKhn @NewStatesman @TomMcTague @tanjil_rashid_ @piptbailey Congrats Mehreen!

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

@OborneTweets https://t.co/qt7p3BmETC

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

Exclusive: Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband is determined to press ahead with the settlement sanctions - whatever the outcome of the Israeli elections.

But some Foreign Office officials are trying to water down the measures.

Peter Oborne @OborneTweets and I write for MEE:

[Peter Oborne @OborneTweets]

Miliband set to press forward with sanctions regardless of Israel election outcome as officials try to weaken measures. Imran Mulla and I write for Middle East Eye:

https://t.co/2l1QWqEqAL

[Sarah Champion @SarahChampionMP]

Exclusive: London event advertises Israeli agency building illegal settlements. I thought these were banned? @fcdo @SDoughtyMP https://t.co/rFeyNZ2pVw

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

Now the Palestinian ambassador urges the British government to take action, after my @MiddleEastEye story yesterday revealed that an event in London next week is advertising an Israeli agency building illegal settlements

[Husam Zomlot @hzomlot]

Last month the UK Government banned the promotion of illegal settlements and committed to sanctioning those who support or profit from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Next week Israeli companies guilty of ethnic cleansing will be platformed at @WTM_London.

The UK government must now turn their words into action: enforce these commitments and ensure those complicit in illegal occupation and settlements face real consequences.

https://t.co/c4fwS56xJU

[Husam Zomlot @hzomlot]

Last month the UK Government banned the promotion of illegal settlements and committed to sanctioning those who support or profit from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Next week Israeli companies guilty of ethnic cleansing will be platformed at @WTM_London.

The UK government must now turn their words into action: enforce these commitments and ensure those complicit in illegal occupation and settlements face real consequences.

https://t.co/c4fwS56xJU

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

https://t.co/0aCuW8GyQ3

[Imran Mulla @Imran_posts]

EXCLUSIVE: A major travel event in London next week is set to advertise the Jerusalem Development Authority, which is involved in the construction of Israeli settlements and efforts to dispossess Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Full story on World Travel Market London below: