When Raidah left medical school in Sydney to spend the summer at what was promise to be an Islamic utopia in Jordan, she thought she was taking a break to heal.
Instead, she found herself inside a high-control religious community led by Nuh Ha Mim Keller — an American-born Catholic convert who reinvented himself as a Sufi sheikh and built a devoted following of Muslims living in Western countries.
Through his English-language books, lectures, and retreats, Keller promised these diaspora Muslims a spiritual home — a refuge from Western chaos and Islamophobia.
But what Raidah found instead… was a cult.
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FOLLOW RAIDAH SHAH IDIL
Follow Raidah on Instagram → @raidahwrites
Check out her debut novel How to Free a Jinn — available now from Allen & Unwin (ANZ and Asia) and Simon & Schuster in the U.S
READ Storm Without a Port (PDF) — the 77-page survivor testimony compiled by former members of the Jordanian Sufi cult.
Visit In Shaykh’s Clothing — a resource for Muslim survivors of spiritual abuse.
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