Essay published on Islam and cultural appropriation in the Dune franchise

I am so excited to announce that my essay on Islam and cultural appropriation in the Dune franchise was published by The Revealer!

Titled, “Layers of Dune: A Sandworm-sized Case Study of Cultural Appropriation in Contemporary Science Fiction,” I lay out a few of my thoughts of how Frank Herbert uses Islam to tell his story about humanity’s far future on the desert world of Arrakis.

This essay took me quite a long time to put together, and I really appreciate the support I received from the team at Sacred Writes (especially Brook!), and of course Brett Krutzsch, editor at The Revealer for shepherding the project along from inception to publication.

I hope this is just the beginning of more and more public-facing writing on pop culture. To paraphrase a common refrain from Dune, “the [critique] must flow!”