The Muslim Literary and Arts Magazine

Welcome to rather quiet

SHORT STORIES . POETRY . ART . CREATIVE NONFICTION . ARTICLES . ESSAYS . AND MORE
“Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light.”

― Imam Al-Haddad

Latest issue

The editors at Rather Quiet have a secret: we’re terribly bad at picking themes. So far, I think we’d done a great job covering up this flaw of ours. Themes like SpaceLanguageFear – how inspiring! It makes it seem as though we had an entire list of themes to pick from and had put in a whole lot of planning and due thought in coming up with them. Truth be told, we lucked out then. This issue, however, we did pitch a lot of ideas – and came up with Creep. While internally, we did have a good handful of ideas for the theme, our dear readers seemed baffled by the bizarreness of it – and to be fair, it really is quite random!

“So with confused readers and few adventurers, submissions trickled in slowly, very slowly. I think we’d already been exposed before I let the secret out in this editorial. The few lovely submissions we did receive this issue did not fail to surprise. The many interpretations of such an odd word, it was very impressive to see …

From the editorial, Volume 02, Issue 02 ‘Creep’

Inside this issue

Poetry
By Afra Ahmad

Short Story / Creative Nonfiction
By Jabal Maryam

Creative Nonfiction
By Various

why rather quiet?

Rather Quiet was born as a pet project of three cousins who were frustrated with the lack of visibility of good literature and art from young Muslims  This whole realm of literature and art from young Muslims – well it’s rather quiet, isn’t it? The young Muslims that make art and literature – they too are rather quiet. And so the magazine was born: giving a show case to the rather quiet.

editor's picks

Under the Desert Sky – Kiran Shah & Barq al Hind

Ilham is a bus driver caught seemingly caught in the rat race of life. But under the great desert sky, where the clouds clear out to make space for the vast blue sky – minds seek to find clarity too.

By Mariam El-Khatib

By Adeeba Jafri

By Shahid Shabeer Malik

By Samu R. Ai

By Greg C. Bolanos

By Warisul Imam

East Turkestan: Through My Eyes

By Gulruy Asqer, Geigo Sakayudha & Sumayya FS
Gulruy tells her story from the start. Growing up in East Turkestan, fleeing East Turkestan and speaking up for the Uyghurs. When living a life of fear, it’s hard to not be controlled by it.

Past issues

Issue 05 | Fear
Issue 06 | Space
Volume 02 Issue 01 | Cycle

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Masthead Image Credits

Art by Hikmet-Barutcugil, ebru, painting via Islamic Arts Magazine