Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke: When public vice improves private virtue

I suspect my friend Trev of being a follower of Malamatiyya — a Sufi sect that does good deeds in secret and bad ones in the open

[Getty Images/iStockphoto] 
issue 11 January 2014

So I go to the all-night house party with my rolled-up yoga mat under my arm. Nice house, middle-class crowd, everybody drunk. Women’s screams coming from upstairs. Looking for the lavatory, I find one vacant at the top of the stairs. I’m in mid-stream when this bloke bursts in and slams the door again behind him.

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