The latest episode of Winter Reading List is now available to watch in full.
In this annual reflection, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad presents five carefully chosen books that range across history, theology, biography, and critiques of modern civilisation. As ever, the episode is not simply about recommending titles, but about situating reading within a wider contemporary landscape.
This year’s list includes Prisoner of the Infidels, the remarkable seventeenth-century memoir of an Ottoman Muslim captured in Europe; Joel Hayward’s The Warrior Prophet, a historically grounded study of warfare in the life of the Prophet ﷺ; and Born Far from Home by Shannon Staloch, a powerful theological meditation on motherhood, embodiment, and faith.
The episode also reflects on Paul Shepard’s Coming Home to the Pleistocene, a searching critique of modernity and human dislocation from nature, and Encountering the Qur’an by the late Swedish theologian Tage Lindbom, offering an accessible and contemplative engagement with the Qur’anic worldview.
Together, these works highlight the vitality and breadth of contemporary Muslim writing in English. The full episode is now available to watch.