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About the Book
In 1992, as war engulfed Bosnia, Abdulah Shabar arrived in Britain as a refugee. His search for belonging led him to Shia Islam and into the close-knit world of the Khoja community.Over the next three decades, he worked among the Khojas in Britain, Iran, and Bosnia—publishing, teaching, building institutions, and devoting himself to a religious mission he believed in deeply. But questions of authority, conscience, and intellectual freedom gradually brought him into conflict with the world he had served.Thirty Years with the Khojas is a candid memoir of exile and belonging, faith and questioning, service and separation—and of the difficult freedom that begins when loyalty can no longer demand the surrender of conscience.
About
Abdulah Shabar is a Bosnian writer, researcher, and community worker whose life and work have taken him across Bosnia, Britain, and Iran.Born into the family of a Sunni imam, he developed an early interest in religion and the questions of faith, authority, and human responsibility. The war in Bosnia took him to Britain in 1992, where an unexpected intellectual and spiritual journey eventually led him to Shia Islam and into nearly three decades of work in publishing, religious education, and community life.His education has followed an equally unconventional path, from mechanical engineering to Islamic studies, social work, and sociology. This crossing of disciplines—and of cultures, countries, and religious traditions—continues to shape his writing and work.His first memoir, Thirty Years with the Khojas, examines belonging, religious authority, conscience, and the price of intellectual independence. His current and future writing turns to broader questions of faith, pluralism, society, memory, and the political and moral legacy of the former Yugoslavia.Today, he is based at Kuća Bosanska, a Shia centre in Bosnia and Herzegovina established in 2007, where he continues his religious, educational, and community work alongside his writing.
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