Kasurian in Season: A Letter from the Editors
Concluding Spring 2025, and what to expect this summer and beyond.
With In Abraham’s Shadow, Kasurian’s Spring 2025 issue has concluded.
We thank you, the reader, for your overwhelming reception, and in particular, we thank those who have engaged us in constructive dialogue. Ultimately, Kasurian is not just a set of essays. It is a space for sober minds and spirited inquiry, a space to explore the true nature of things with curiosity, depth and agency.
Energised by your response, we have been working hard to finalise the launch of our summer issue on 1st June 2025. You can learn more about the Summer 2025 issue below.
In the meantime, our Sunday Stack will continue hitting your inbox. Next week, be on the lookout for our Request for Essays. In it, you will find the themes, issues and stories we are eager for writers to pitch us on. For now, visit our Writer’s Guide to understand our editorial style, and if you would like to write for us, get in touch.
Before we wrap up our Spring 2025 issue, we want to share more about Kasurian: what “kasurian” means, the mission behind it, and what lies ahead.
What is Kasurian
What does Kasurian mean?
Kasurian is a remixed Latinisation of the Arabic term for fractal. A fractal is a geometric pattern that repeats itself at every scale, revealing a blooming, intricate self-similarity. We were inspired by the concept of an infinitely replicating phenomenon that shares one source. As a mainstay of Islamic artistic expression, it seemed fit to couch our literary efforts in that tradition. Thus, Kasurian: a sensibility attuned to the oneness of God in the myriad phenomena that constitute civilisation.
How have we tried to act on this meaning?
Where others might brute-force a grand metanarrative to explain the world, we begin instead with the fractal itself, with the idea that every fragment of civilisation, no matter how small or strange, offers a lesson. From odd curiosities to great men, from founding institutions to epic events of past and present, we intend to build a set of case studies that form a new vocabulary. An applied vocabulary for seeing, naming, and understanding the structures that animate history, civilisation, and God.
Why Kasurian? Instead of engaging in reactionary culture-war-esque discourse or debates over modernity, our mission is to create an alternative space for thoughtful ideas that grapple with reality in a grounded, generative, and spiritually serious way. Perhaps, in doing so, we come to understand the world, and in acting on it, shape it for the better.
Spring 2025 Recap
Kasurian’s Spring 2025 issue set the stage, exploring themes such as Islamic history, contemporary culture, and technology. To recap:
In Kasurian: A Magazine for the 21st Century, Ahmed Askary laid out some of the themes that Kasurian will be pursuing over the coming year and beyond, offering the the beginning of a manifesto for thinking seriously about civilisation that is both rooted in tradition, but open, with sobering reality, to the future.
In The Lost Art of Research as Leisure, Mariam Mahmoud explored the turn of research from an amateur occupation into the expert’s preserve, what we can do to revive ‘amateur research’ in our lives, and how leisurely but rigorous curiosity is a sacred pursuit.
In How the Mongols Revived Islamic Civilisation, Yana Zuray made the case that the Mongol invasions did not trigger Islam’s “long decline”, but that Islamic civilisation mustered a response that would take it to new heights in the coming centuries. Yana showed how cataclysmic events can be sites of renewal – if your civilisation can handle it.
In The Conspiracy to Save the Ottoman Caliphate in India, Imran Mulla uncovered the last-ditch effort by the last Ottoman Caliph to unite two of Islamic civilisation’s last great dynasties, and transfer the seat of the Caliphate to Hyderabad in the heart of India. This nearly forgotten effort was a fork in the road and forces us to contend with our history not as a predetermined series of events, but as an ongoing negotiation of possibilities informed by the choices people make every day.
In The Institution that Engineered a Culture, Burak Omer looked at how cultural production was shaped and engineered through institutions, using the Royal Society of Arts as a case study. Through this, Burak shows how culture does not necessarily spontaneously emerge, but is built and sustained through institutions.
In How Islam’s European Elites Were Destroyed, Haris Khaleel wrote about the tragic destruction of Albania’s Islamic elites as part of a global persecution of Islamic civilisation’s elite classes, and the civilisational cost after we became bereft of power and patronage.
In Lessons from the Lebanese Space Program, Yasin Atlassi wrote about the forgotten Lebanese Space Program in the 1960s, and the lessons we can learn on how technological ambition and success do not always require ideal conditions, only courage, vision, coordination and belief.
We concluded the spring issue with In Abraham’s Shadow, with Ahmed Askary presenting Abraham’s legacy as a challenge that calls each generation to respond with moral clarity and personal conviction.
We hope that this issue leaves you feeling more conscious of the past, curious about the present, and confident in the future.
Towards Our Summer Issue
On Sunday June 1st 2025, Kasurian returns and runs until the end of August. The next issue expands on the themes introduced in the spring and introduces new ones. Some of the Summer 2025 themes include Islamic law, history, technology and art.
First, we review The Islamic Secular by Dr. Sherman A. Jackson, exploring the meaning and possibility of an “Islamic Secular”, Marshall Hodgson’s concept of technicality, and the question of whether a modern Islamic art can emerge in today’s context. Next, we take a look at Muslim builders and the emerging technology startup ecosystems they are leading.
We also get technical, exploring the role of religious-based trust networks in enabling material exchange and how Muslims might approach blockchain technologies. Throughout these discussions, we interrogate the obsession with “Muslim apps” and argue we must achieve escape velocity from this limiting notion if we are to build things of true and lasting value.
As a time of great upheaval across Islamic civilisation, we then turn to the 18th-19th centuries. We begin with the Jadid movement in Russia as one of the early responses to European modernisation from within Islamic civilisation. With its emphasis on education, cultural and intellectual revival, the movement sparked vital debates and clashes between reformists and traditionalists, before its end at the hands of the Communists.
We also present two essays on some of the last rulers of sovereign Muslim states in this period. The first begins with Tipu Sultan in 18th-century India. As one of the last active Muslim rulers in the subcontinent, he innovated in arms and diplomacy to resist British encroachment. Although his military successes against the East India Company would ultimately come undone by political machinations, Tipu’s ability to internalise and innovate on contemporary developments coming out of Europe demonstrates an unsentimental and pioneering mindset largely absent today.
The second begins at the turn of the 19th century, with Muhammad Ali Pasha, who similarly embarked on reforms to indigenise innovations in military technology and statecraft to create what was arguably the first ‘modern’ Muslim state. Like Tipu, Ali Pasha was an innovative statesman who fell at the hands of the British.
Both Tipu and Ali Pasha’s approach to innovations at the onset of what is called the modern, industrial age, and the reasons for their failure, are little known but bear a great many lessons for us today. Understanding these men and the period they lived in will begin to demystify what is otherwise a greatly misunderstood period of Islamic history.
Finally, we turn to the 20th century. One essay looks at how Malaysia courted Muslim professionals to build its Islamic finance industry from scratch, and what lessons it offers for similarly bootstrapping new industries today. Another essay, in topical fashion, takes a hard look at Pakistan, both as an aspirational ideal and a state in practice, weighing its promise against its enduring contradictions.
Why You Should Subscribe to (and Share!) Kasurian
With the conclusion of our spring issue, we are excited to announce that paid subscriptions are now live. That means you can directly support Kasurian’s mission: to produce consistent, high-quality essays on culture, civilisation, and the Muslim world that inspire real-world conversations and impact.
As a paid subscriber, you will receive access to:
Kasurian Chat: An exclusive private space for regular, thoughtful discussion around the themes we explore. We are building a unique network for those serious about the questions of culture and civilisation. We invite all our readers to join.
Kasurian Salons: Intimate, in-person gatherings we are planning in cities around the world. Logistics are in motion, but as a paid subscriber, you will get early access and priority invites.
Kasurian Annual Review: A beautiful, book-sized print edition collecting our essays, artwork, and more.
But more than a paid subscription, the most important thing you can do is to share Kasurian. Start conversations about our essays with friends, with family, and the internet mutuals you argue with in good faith. To reward the effort of sharing, we have designed a referral system: Share Kasurian using your Substack referral link with 50 people who subscribe (even for free), and we will give you a free year of paid access with all the perks listed above.
We at Kasurian, with your help, are building an alternative literary ecosystem for better thinking from scratch. We hope you enjoyed the spring, and we hope you are looking forward to the summer. Thank you for reading.
Editor-in-Chief, Ahmed Askary
Managing Editor, Mariam Mahmoud
Editor, Imran Mulla
You can follow Kasurian on Substack Notes, Instagram, and Twitter/X for the latest updates.
All art has been custom-drawn for Kasurian by Ahmet Faruk Yilmaz. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter/X.