Barzakh FM

Rumi, Allen Ginsberg, Ibn Ata Allah, and Baraka Blue come together in this episode of Barzakh FM to explore beauty, brokenness, and neediness. Through Sufi mysticism, poetry and aphorisms, alongside Beat poetry, we take a deep poetic, philosophical and metaphysical dive into our incompleteness and our longing for the sublime. We also enjoy dhikr and original music and poetry by your host.

📻 BARZAKH FMIt’s always 11 p.m. somewhere. Barzakh FM is a long-form transmission from the liminal spaces where Islamic humanities, decolonial thought, history, poetry, and contemporary life meet. Hosted by transdisciplinary poet and scholar Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes, it combines serious analysis and personal reflection with readings, music, Sufi soundscapes, and ecstatic verse—a late-night intellectual radio broadcast from the Barzakh.

🔗 CONNECT

• Barzakh: Essays in Islamic Humanities on Substack: https://substack.com/@jasonidrisssparkes

• Beauty in Islam on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jasonidrisssparkes6549?si=f1Gh7p6ZX2Rm6cZG

Selected reading by Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes

Dissertationhttps://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/2300/

Sayyida al-Ḥurra: An Early Modern Decolonial Muslim Exemplarhttps://doi.org/10.3390/rel16111362

“Morocco as a Hub of Globalised Traditional Islam”https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13050392

“Decolonizing the Left and the Right: Muslim Mistrust of Foxes and Wolves”https://themaydan.com/2021/02/decolonizing-the-left-and-the-right-muslim-mistrust-of-foxes-and-wolves/

This episode was produced and presented by Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes.

Original music, sound design, compositions, and arrangements © Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes. All rights reserved.

#Sufism #BeatPoetry #SufiPoetry #Rumi #BarzakhFM

Spiritual intoxication, ecstasy, wine symbolism, and Muslim poetry come together in this episode of Barzakh FM. Why do human beings seek to get drunk, get high, and escape the pressures of ordinary life? Can Islam answer the longing for joy, release, love, and transcendence that lies beneath that desire? Through dhikr, classical Muslim poetry, Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s celebrated Khamriyya (Wine Ode), original poetry, and a studio jam session from Montreal in the late 1990s, Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes explores profane and spiritual intoxication and what it might mean to become drunk with love.📻 BARZAKH FMIt’s always 11 p.m. somewhere. Barzakh FM is a long-form transmission from the liminal spaces where Islamic humanities, decolonial thought, history, poetry, and contemporary life meet. Hosted by transdisciplinary poet and scholar Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes, it combines serious analysis and personal reflection with readings, music, Sufi soundscapes, and ecstatic verse—a late-night intellectual radio broadcast from the Barzakh.🔗 CONNECT• Barzakh: Essays in Islamic Humanities on Substack: https://substack.com/@jasonidrisssparkes

• Beauty in Islam on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jasonidrisssparkes6549?si=f1Gh7p6ZX2Rm6cZGThis episode was produced and presented by Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes.Original music, sound design, compositions, and arrangements © Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes. All rights reserved.Additional musical excerpts not composed or performed by Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes are used under licenses provided through CapCut.

#MuslimPoetry #SpiritualIntoxication #IslamicSpirituality #IbnAlFarid #BarzakhFM

What does it mean to fulfill our potential as human beings? What would it mean to become a fully realized human being?

The Islamic tradition offers a holistic path of spirituality, enlightenment, and realization (taḥqīq) in which knowledge, action, character, perception, and spiritual life become aligned with Allah, al-Ḥaqq—the Real.

In this second transmission of Barzakh FM, I explore this path through the Qur’an and hadith, alongside reflections on the realistic character of Malcolm X and the proposal by Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Iskandarī that the reality of death can act as a test of our actual realization. The test of death allows us to keep it real on the path.

Some of my original music and sound creations are interspersed between the segments throughout the transmission.

📻 Barzakh FM

It’s always 11 p.m. somewhere.

In Islamic metaphysics, truth and reality begin with Allah as al-Ḥaqq—the Real and the True. In an age of fake news and post-truth, when everyone seems to have their own truth and religion is increasingly dismissed as belief rather than reality, this debut episode of Barzakh FM explores radical monotheism and realization (taḥqīq): how, quite literally, do we keep it real?

📻 BARZAKH FM

It’s always 11 p.m. somewhere. Barzakh FM is a long-form transmission from the liminal spaces where Islamic humanities, decolonial thought, history, poetry, and contemporary life meet. Hosted by transdisciplinary poet and scholar Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes, it combines serious analysis and personal reflection with readings, music, Sufi soundscapes, and ecstatic verse—a late-night intellectual radio broadcast from the Barzakh.

🔗 CONNECT & RESOURCES

• Barzakh: Essays in Islamic Humanities on Substack: https://substack.com/@jasonidrisssparkes

• Beauty in Islam on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jasonidrisssparkes6549?si=f1Gh7p6ZX2Rm6cZG

Produced and presented by Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes.Original musical compositions, sound design, and arrangements © Dr. Jason Idriss Sparkes. All rights reserved.