Somebody told me about St. Jude’s Catholic Worker House, and I’ll never forget the first time I stepped foot in there. It didn’t feel like a social service agency, it felt like a large family. People were cooking in the kitchen, kids of all colors were playing in the living room. A person emerged from the kitchen and asked me to stay for dinner before even asking me my name.
Dorothy Day’s philosophy was that if every Christian had a “Christ room” in their home, there wouldn’t be any homelessness.
Reading Dorothy Day and spending time at Catholic Worker Houses was the first step of my personal faith journey, a journey which ultimately led me back to the faith of my ancestors – Islam.
I discovered the writing of Muslim social justice heroes and towering intellectuals like Farid Esack, Ebrahim Moosa and Fazlur Rahman. It’s a story that I tell at length in my essay,
A Muslim at the Catholic Worker
clipped from: newsweek.washingtonpost.com