S5: E5 - Beyond Cause and Effect with Ousama Alshurafa | Bradford Literature Festival 2026

Ousama Iyad Alshurafa offers a way of reading life itself, treating the dunya as something encrypted that can be decoded once you find the right key. His central insight is that this world is built on perception: it constantly tests whether a person trusts what they see in front of them or what God has revealed beneath the surface. Most people, he argues, live captive to appearances, believing that money solves the problem, that medicine brings the cure, that other people hold the answers, when, in reality, these are only means, lifeless without their Source. Drawing on Quranic teaching and the stories of the prophets, Alshurafa shows how to reorder one’s inner life so that the heart turns first to God in every moment of need, hardship or fear, while still taking the practical steps the world requires. The result is a grounded philosophy for managing life: set the compass of the heart before acting, look beyond the means without abandoning them and recognise that the difficulties we face are often invitations to return rather than punishments. Lived this way, he suggests, belief steadies, actions improve and the conditions of one’s life begin to fall into place. In partnership with Muslimi www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk