Saliha Bayrak Saliha Bayrak is the research editor at The Drift and a freelance reporter based in New York. Her writing appears in publications like The Nation, Texas Monthly, Acacia, and more.

Save Yourself | Secular Celibacy Gets Trendy

Saliha Bayrak

Much of what we know about Rabia Al-Basri is based on myth. The eighth-century Sufi mystic from what is now Iraq is said to have wandered the streets delirious with love of God. She was equally famous for rejecting other kinds of love: Rabia insisted on remaining unmarried. “It does not please me,” she proclaimed to one suitor, “that you should distract me from God for a single moment.”  As...