African Tones in Qur’an Recitation: A Tribute to Sheikh Noreen Muhammad Siddiq
When I listen to the recitations of the late Sheikh Noreen Mohammed Siddiq, may Allah have mercy on him, I am met with waves of unrelenting nostalgia and melancholic yearning for a place and time that, for the most part, I am a stranger to. Slivers of time spent in a home away from home…
HEBELOW!
“Hebel” is a placeholder in Somali, closest to “so-and-so” in English. When a poem begins with Hebel baa yidhi… the reciter signals that he is quoting someone else. When it opens with Hebelow! the poet is addressing the listener directly, an urgent “hey you, listen!” that sets the tone. The poem I’m sharing here was…
Built From Memory: How Somali Archivists Are Reclaiming the Past in a Digital Age
Without the work of Somali archivists and historians on platforms like X, vital elements of our history and culture would face the very real danger of vanishing, quietly erased from collective memory. Not long ago, while going through some of my father’s papers, I came across a remarkable collection: documents from the Western Somali Liberation…
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