Radical Hospitality as Institutional Practice

Rabia was known for her welcome to all seekers—rich and poor, scholar and merchant, adherent and questioner. She practiced radical hospitality: the stranger was not a risk or a burden but a potential beloved. This is the institutional translation of her teaching. Radical hospitality means: We deliberately create space for those we don't naturally prefer. We structure meetings so outsider perspectives shape decisions, not just echo majority views. We hire and promote based on potential and need, not on who reminds us of ourselves. We ask: Who is absent? Why? What would it cost to include them fully? Favoritism thrives in the absence of deliberate hospitality structures. When there are no mechanisms to ensure diverse hiring, diverse perspective-inclusion, diverse resource distribution, hidden preferences inevitably dominate. The costs accumulate: organizations lose insight, communities lose the gifts of the marginalized, institutions lose legitimacy. Rabia's legacy invites us to build hospitality into how we organize. This isn't charity; it's recognition that the excluded often carry wisdom the insulated lack. It's also recognition that favoring our natural affinity groups is a form of spiritual blindness—we're missing the teaching the stranger brings.