In Catholic cultures, you run into believers who perceive miraculous images of the Virgin Mary appearing in odd circumstances, or who see the face of Jesus on a burnt tortilla.

Islamic religious imagery is usually non-representational. But like Catholics who constantly encounter Mary and Jesus iconography, many devout Muslims live in an environment saturated by Arabic script of a few important words, such as “Allah.” So the Muslim world is a source of recurrent stories of farmers slicing open a vegetable to find “Allah” inscribed in the pattern of seeds or a peculiar stain or whatever. These are duly accompanied by solemn pronouncements of a miracle proclaiming the truth of Islam.

A recent example from Nigeria was just reported by the BBC. A piece of beef spells “Allah” on the gristle, apparently.