A vital and practical book, a game-changer November 17, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is revolutionary. Under the quiet guise of portraying an all-American life, Sumbul Karam-ali demolishes stereotypes and presents her reading of Islam in a way that is fully compatible with the modern world, and with the good-enough life. Some version of this book could have been written by each of the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. Her writing, however, is easy to read, witty and informative, deliberate, and she bears witness to her own interpretation.
Over the past few years we have heard assertions that Islam is an "evil" religion, that Muslims are to be viewed as generically suspect and that Islam is somehow incompatible with American values. This book is a welcome and refreshing antidote to the fear and hysteria around Islam and Muslims.
With a lawyers' methodical style, Sumbul Karam-ali is quite comprehensive in addressing all the hot-button issues: womens' rights, the veil, the rituals and rules, and the other aspects of Islam that have been discussed in the popular press. While much of the prior debate has been calculated to position Islam as suspect, her book is an in-your-face rebuttal.
All religions are complex. People do what they do, and then point to their chosen dogma as justification. In this case, Karam-ali leads a normal exuberant hyper-successful California life, and finds it quite casually reasonable to be Muslim at the same time. How refreshing!
This is a must read for anyone corrupted by the blather of the past 8 years, and also for the rest of us.
Required Reading Effective Immediately by Ren Faught October 21, 2008 10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Sumbul Ali-Karamali has written a prayer, and modestly called it a book. It is "The Muslim Next Door: The Qur'an, the Media, and that Veil Thing."
I don't care who you are or what faith tradition you follow, this book is necessary. I use the word necessary because it's the only one that fits. Really. This book should be required reading in America. Ms. Ali-Karamali has written gently, and repectfully, with humor, and also with an authoritative scholarly voice. I can't remember the last time I carried a book around with me the way I have carried this book. Part of the power of this book for me has been in the experience of carrying it with me and encountering the interest and puzzlement of other people simply in reaction to the title. Always with the "Why are you reading that?" as a kind of subtext. I have enjoyed carrying the book with me as a social experiment, and as a way to enter into the suggested topics for discussion in the back of the book. This book will stay with me a long time.
I read a previous review of the book that said something like it was a quick read. I would say, instead, that this book is very approachable while maintaining its scholarly integrity. It provides citations, easily notated by chapter, an historical chronology, and recommendations for further reading. It should be taught. How lucky would be the students of the author herself. She should tour. Seriously. At the least, this book should be required reading in curricula around the country.
I have gone over my copy carefully and have dog earred and post-it marked and highlighted and underscored. I have read the chapters in order and returned to them again. I have sat thinking deeply about the questions for discussion at the end of the book. I am hoping that others are reading this book carefully and respectfully as well- with an open heart to the author's personal experience, and with due respect given to her curriculum vitae.
I am hoping, selfishly, that the author will tour with this book and lecture. I hope that the author will be invited to universities and high schools across the country. I hope that the author will be invited to churches, synagogues and community centers. I hope that the author will be the key note speaker at a long line of interfaith dialogue dinners. I hope that this is a "first" book with more to come.
As a Jewish Spiritual Director, I was looking carefully at each chapter of this book to see if I might find a bone to pick with the author or reason why I could not wholeheartedly recommend this book. There are theological differences, of course, but that was a given since this is not a book about my faith tradition. Readers have to remember what they're reading! I found only tiny nits to pick that arose from my own knee-jerk worries about anti-Semitism on the rise in America. I worried that some reference to a particular group of "Zionists" and Jewish Defense League might be misunderstood by common readers as representative of the opinions and activities of all Jews. But, the author was respectful to Jews and to Judaism and to Christianity as well. I will return to this book many more times in my life I have no doubt. I will recommend this book without reservation and will give this book as a gift to our local library and URGE all of you to immediately get a copy from Amazon or to order it through your local bookseller. In fact, this book should be required reading for all candidates for political office in the U.S. and certainly anyone sent as an emissary on behalf of the U.S. into Middle East. I learned a lot from this book, was reminded of more, and encouraged to delve deeper into the recommendations for further reading. Thank you for this good work.
I found the book to be honest and well-researched. This author is the genuine article: a thorough scholar and a gifted writer. Throughout, I kept thinking that this American Muslim woman is a real patriot. Her writing is enhanced with love and hope and bravery and pride in the American ideal; specifically an a nation of tolerance for religious diversity. I found myself nodding in agreement at every turn of the page. When I got to the last page, I found that my notion of this book being a combination of religious, political and social educational tool, a personal memoir, and prayer for peace to be summed up in the most beautiful final paragraph. I hope the author will forgive me for reprinting it here:
"I live inside my religion because it is sensible, simple, and it teaches good things like forgiveness, generosity, tolerance, and compassion. I live in America because I believe it can be a nation of many faiths, As people of all religions have urged, it is time for genuine understanding and dialogue, not media hysteria and anti-Islamic racism. If we can separate the daily distortions from the reality, perhaps we can break out of that medieval framework of domination and hostility. Instead of working toward a "clash of civilizations," perhaps we can avoid a "clash of ignorances."
This just reads to me like prayer....like a prayer for all of us. Isn't it? For my part if we redact "anti-Islamic" ...that sentence would read ...it is time for genuine understanding and dialogue, not media hysteria and racism.
Amen.
-"For those who have come to know God, the whole world is prayer mat" -Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Now a different opinion.... October 20, 2008 12 out of 32 found this review helpful
Yawn.... The book supposedly addresses the so-called "difficult questions." I got this hoping to find a sincere analysis of important issues but found just another politically correct catalog of "you don't understand," "out of context" and "it is cultural" excuses. Not only that, it is full of inaccuracies relating to both the Quran and Islamic traditions (ahadith). For example, the word "lightly" she uses does not appear in the original when permitting the beating of women. It is added by modern translators for obvious reasons. Some older versions use the word "scourge." Note that Ms. Ali-Karamali overlooks relevant passages in the hadith in which Aisha is beaten by her husband (unless "he hit me and caused pain" means something else) or in which the young girl states "she has never seem women so abused as the wives of the believers." She said that polygamy is condemned in the Quran without providing us with a reference to this yet undiscovered verse.
In summary, this book is about how the writer would like Islam to be, not what it is. She ignores or explains away any element she dislikes. She pretends that the Quran doesn't say what it says. She ignores the verses that teach hate and violence against non-Muslims. She ignores the violent history of Islam and the many evil things done by Muhammad recorded in Islam's own Traditions (of course, this only applies if one considers dozens of attacks on non-Muslims, plunder, enslavement of men women and children, murder, torture and rape to be evil). She ignores the discrimination and oppression of Non-Muslims in Islamic societies today. I say "ignore" because I don't consider "it is cultural" or some other flippant excuse to be an acceptable response to these issues. She wants us to believe that none of these problems are representative of Islam because they differ from her personal interpretation of it.
Ms. Ali-Karamali is a typical of Muslims in the West. She benefits from the freedoms of Western cultures but works through her ignorance and denial to end these freedoms. I would say that she has double standards but the fact is that she has no standards for Muslims except to take the irrational position that the acts and ideology of many Muslims have nothing to do with Islam as she believes it to be. She seems to argue that her personal interpretation or beliefs are to be taken more seriously that the hate preached in many mosques or the actions and attitudes of Muslims around the world.
Her preconceived "Islam is perfect, some Muslims not" attitude precludes any serious analysis of issues and therefore limits her narrative to finding a seemingly proper excuse or somebody to blame for the actions of Muslims. This is a good book to understand why Islam doesn't change. It provides a clear understanding of why Muslims condemn terror and why the terror continues.
Having said this, I say buy this book. Don't buy it, however, without also buying a book that is critical of Islam. Study both. Compare how they explain the issues. Check verses and sources. Look at how Muslims act and react to current events. I recommend Spencer's "The Truth about Islam". This, I believe, is a fair way to learn about and evaluate any subject.
Jay
A thoroughly enjoying read October 16, 2008 2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The title caught my eye.
The blurb promised that:
"The Muslim Next Door clears away the misconceptions about Islam and why they flourish -media distortion, confusion about what is cultural rather than religious, the language barrier, and the old tall tales that still persist after thirteen centuries."
Lofty promises, I thought.
I bought it expecting another one of those "here's why Muslims aren't so scary, we are proud Americans and proud Muslims at the same time" books, but I was pleasantly surprised.
The first thing I noticed right off the bat is that this book is extensively researched: there are over 25 pages of endnotes citing sources (as well as a chronology, index, suggested reading list and discussion questions). But at the same time, it's not a `true' academic book--it's conveyed through anecdotes and stories by the author, Sumbul Ali-Karamali, a South Asian Muslim who grew up in Los Angeles. In essence, you get the best of both worlds: scholarship and story telling.
The author has a graduate degree in Islamic Law from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where she also taught Islamic Law as a teaching assistant. She's also a research associate at the Center of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law. In other words, she's qualified.
This book is basically what you wish you can give to those people who ask you all those questions that you have to answer over and over again. Now you can just hand them this book and trust that it'll answer their questions.
Ali-Karamali doesn't shy away from difficult questions, or gloss over them. She splits up her book into 11 chapters, and tackles the issues the media loves to talk about (veiling, stoning, jihad etc). She takes the major misconceptions about Islam and deconstructs them into base elements before explaining them.
The first half of the book introduces Islam to the non-Muslim reader and delves into more detail as the book progresses. The second half tackles the meaty topics: women in Islam, jihad and fundamentalism, stealing and adultery in Islam, American Muslim reactions to 9/11 and a concluding chapter on why misconceptions persist.
So...women.
From the very first chapter it's made clear to us that the author and her interpretations play an important role in the novel. She gives the various opinions, and then her own interpretation when it diverts from mainstream belief. For example, with regards to prayer, she says:
"Standing behind the men [in prayer] is insulting because the men never stand behind the women. (If they took turns, that would be different)."
Throughout the book, she is honest that there are many aspects about some interpretations of Islam that she finds hard to reconcile with what she believes is essentially a feminist religion:
"It is difficult, as a woman and a Muslim, to understand why the Qur'anic picture of paradise includes [houris: "dark eyed female virgins."]."
She reconciles that by using an interpretation of a Muslim linguist that translates houris as "pure beings." Elsewhere, with regards to the verse that is said to refer to a man's right to "lightly slap" his wife under certain circumstances, she says:
"I wish this verse were not part of the Qur'an. [...] I do not intend to blaspheme. A part of me can understand why it is there, but another part wishes away the need to explain why the Qur'an contains apparent permission for a husband to strike his wife lightly."
Her honesty not only gives her book credibility, but makes it relatable to the average person.
Let's move on to the 50-page chapter about Women in Islam (which is the longest chapter in the entire book). Ali-Karamali begins by giving us examples of Muslim women in history (Prophet Moses's mother, The Queen of Sheba), and then moves on to discussing how the Qur'an treats women--the historical context, how the text treats women, and how 7th century scholars developed the law "imposing their own [...] andocentric worldview onto the text and mixed culture with religion."
She then tackles successively the veil, marriage, divorce, polygamy, inheritance, and what she calls "The Three Gorgons:" clitoridectomy, honor killings, and infanticide.
One of Ali-Karamali's main arguments throughout the chapter is that women's rights are a cultural issue and not a religious one. She is adamant that:
"Some countries oppress women by using Islam as an excuse. That is culture, not religion and largely the reason [...] that Islam is perceived as sexist."
She illustrates this by saying:
"When the Islamic empire appropriated Persian and Byzantine governmental institutions, Muslim rulers gradually appropriated their cultural practices as well, even those directly contravening Qur'anic reforms, such as harems, concubinage, veiling and seclusion for women."
Onto "That Veil Thing:"
(I particularly liked the way she called it "that veil thing;" it somehow poked fun at the oppressive all-encompassing `Western' belief that the veil is all there is to Islam, illustrated the ignorance attached to what exactly it was, and simultaneously conveyed how tired Muslims were of dealing with the same issue over and over again. The equivalent of rolling your eyes).
Ali-Karamali began talking about the veil by explaining what modesty is in Islam. I particularly liked how she drew parallels with Christian and world history in order to `real-ify' matters. She gave examples from real life and popular culture as well as quotes from all different kinds of people to bring things alive to her readers and supplement her claims. For example:
"The definition of modesty has always been subjective. In The King and I [...] the English governess stares, shocked, at the immodest trousers of the wives of the King of Siam. The wives stare, shocked in their own turn, at the wanton expanse of neck, shoulders, and bosom that the English governess's dress reveals."
She makes the argument that the Qur'an could not give women so many rights and require them to be "veiled completely and ostracized from society" and argues that:
"The basis for [veiling] is cultural rather than religious, although two Qur'anic verses have been manipulated to support it."
She walks the reader through the stereotypes of veiled women, how veiling was seen historically, different interpretations of the verses thought to relate to veiling, and different reasons for veiling.
And even though she herself doesn't believe in veiling, the fact remains that she addresses the other opinions, and makes the valid point that even if the verses do refer to veiling, they "have one inescapable features that is simple, crucial, and often ignored: the verses themselves are not sexist." In other words, they refer to both sexes. She concludes this section by saying:
"I am not taking sides here. I do not cover my hair and I challenge the notion that Islam requires it. Nonetheless, [...] the women who choose to wear one do so for a variety of reasons, none of which may be "oppression." It is having the choice that matters."
Next, polygamy.
The author approaches the issue of polygamy (as she does everything) in a logical, clearheaded away, beginning by taking the reader through marriage in Islam. With regards to polygamy, she explains the situation in 7th century Arabia and then the verses relating to polygamy, concluding that:
"Polygamy is allowed but not approved. [...] A man can have more than one wife if he can treat them equally [...] but since that is impossible, the Qur'an is actually obliquely limiting a man to one wife."
The mainstream Muslim view of polygamy, she points out, is disapproval. She also discusses why the prophet got to marry so many women and why Lady `Aisha was so young. She is perfectly rational, and I found myself going "Yes! That's exactly what I wish I could articulate!" more than once. You can so tell that she used to be a lawyer.
Next, she talks about divorce in the same levelheaded manner, followed by inheritance. In (what I think is) a stroke of brilliance, she encapsulates Islamic inheritance law using Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as an example, contrasting the world today and the world then:
"Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters would have been entitled to receive two-thirds of their father's estate if they had lived in Islamic seventh-century Arabia instead of nineteenth-century England."
And even though she does not go into the mainstream reasoning why women typically inherit less than men, and focuses on how "reforms [that keep] to the spirit of Qur'anic reform rather than to the letter of it" aiming to correct "injustices" (she believes women should get the exact same as men) her explanation is more than adequate.
She then quickly tackles the issues of slavery, concubines, The Three Gorgons, and addresses two common accusations: that One Women + One Woman = One Man in Islam and beating wives.
The only critique I might have of this chapter is that the author comes across as being very slightly apologetic, and keeps repeating that although now Islam's status towards women may seem slightly strict, it was considered a revolution in 7th century Arabia and a revolution compared to women's rights in European law as late as the 18th century. The problem with this logic that I see is that the Qur'an is supposed to be for all ages: what does it mean if she says the Qur'an was great back then?
In the end, I would definitely suggest this book to those who want a good summary of what Muslims believe and why. It tries to tackle a lot, and it's therefore understandable than in just under 250 pages it would be impossible to delve deeply into issues surrounding Islam. However, because of Ali-Karamali's conciseness and her style, she manages to cover almost everything of importance (though I do wonder why hadith [sayings of the prophet] make almost no appearance).
Although the very orthodox might find some things in her interpretations objectionable, many Muslims might not. The book is funny and humorous, contextualizing Islam in a context everyone can relate to (Star Trek, Shakespeare, and Aladdin all make an appearance) and yet it's serious and scholarly.
I found myself laughing often, and nodding my head at other times. It's a book you can read in one sitting and not feel tired, or one you can read in bits over a longer period of time. It's a book for those who know nothing about Muslims, and for those who are Muslims. It's a book that's needed in our world today, where stereotypes of Muslims have instilled fear in the hearts of many. It's a book that'll make you think outside the box, and will stay with you long after you're finished.
(Review for Muslimah Media Watch.org)
Clarifies Many Misconceptions - A Great Read September 26, 2008 5 out of 8 found this review helpful
I could not put this book down and managed to read it in two days despite being the mother of a newborn! I appreciate the author's clarifications of which practices are rooted in the Qur'an and which are merely cultural practices that have been mistakenly attributed to Islam. Once you understand that there is a difference, it's easy to see that an individual can successfully be both a Muslim and an American. This book is well-researched, but that doesn't mean it's boring. This book was a joy to read and I have already recommended it to many friends
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