Best In-Depth Reporting on Religion

I am beyond grateful to announce that I was named the third place winner of the Best In-Depth Reporting on Religion award from the American Academy of Religion.

I love writing on religion, and going in depth on stories of relevance and import. To be recognized by the world’s largest association of academics who research or teach topics related to religion and to place behind wonderful religion writers like Peter Manseau and Dawn Araujo-Hawkins is an immense honor.

The judges had this to say about my work:

[Ken’s] reporting includes a delightful and eye-opening history of a Muslim acrobat in Liverpool, an insightful and timely article on how sports play a role in combatting ignorance and Islamophobia, and interesting reports on Jewish music and spiritual seeking in modern-day Germany.

Here below are the three stories I submitted, just in case you missed them last year.

Thanks in advance, for taking a (second) look.

The Liverpool Effect

A hidden grave, Moroccan acrobats, and combatting Islamophobia in Liverpool through sport.

Berlin: The not-so-secular city

Is Berlin the atheist capital of Europe? Maybe so…but maybe not.

Klezmer’s modern European revival

Yiddish Music Is Resurging In The Weimar Square Hitler Frequented

The magnificent tale of Moroccan acrobats in 19th-century England

Mohamed “Mo” Salah, the 28-year-old Egyptian professional footballer, is idolized by fans across the globe for being a goal-scoring machine for Liverpool Football Club in the English Premier League and Egypt’s national squad. But beyond his adept dribbling and scintillating scoring, the “Egyptian King” has left his mark on Liverpool in other ways. 

Researchers from Stanford University in the U.S. claimed that as a visibly Muslim, and very successful, footballer, Salah has helped humanize Islam not only in Liverpool, but in Britain writ large. They called this the “Mo Salah Effect.”

Even so, they suggested, the effect isn’t limited to Salah. They wrote that other “celebrities with role-model like qualities have long been thought to shape social attitudes.” 

Preston, UK, journalist Ismaeel Nakhuda poses beside the gravestone that gives the acrobat’s full name, Achmed Ben Ibrahim. (Photo courtesy Ismaeel Nakhuda/AramcoWorld Magazine)

For instance, about an hour’s drive outside of Liverpool lies the small city of Preston. There, around the turn of the 20th-century, a traveling Moroccan acrobat named Ali — known as Achmed ben Ibrahim — was part of a prominent community of Muslims that left their mark on Victorian British society. 

In fact, before there was a “Mo Salah Effect,” one might say there was an “Achmed ben Ibrahim Effect,” or, at the least, a “Moroccan acrobat effect.” 

The connections between the two Muslim athletes — Salah and Achmed — is a story that involves a traveling troupe of Moroccan acrobats, a Liverpudlian lawyer, and a mysterious grave located on the margins of a middle-class Lancashire cemetery.

It is also the story of the evolution of Muslim life in England and the cosmopolitan transformation of a port city like Liverpool, and how the early arrival of immigrants helped pave the way for the likes of Mo Salah to act as cultural humanitarians today.