Books

“Fiction based on a landscape of reality”

Carolyn Baugh, a native of Indiana who is in her fourth year of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in her new book The View from Garden City (Macmillan) about an unnamed American woman studying at the American University in Cairo who engages with several of Cairo’s women, learning more about their heartbreaking, fascinating and inspiring stories.

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Love, family, and survival in the new Iraq

Journalist Christina Asquith’s new book Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq tells the story of four women, their internal growth and external accomplishments, all of which give the reader a balanced, multifaceted look into the realities of post-war Iraq, including the failures, incompetency, oversights, and hubris involved but also the small successes and the opening of new opportunities.

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The focal point of cross-cultural dialogue

In the years since 9/11, Muslim men and women have responded to nativist hate mongering by working within the American legal framework. Muslim women have made the hijab a civil rights issue; similarly, the fight for the human rights of detainees has been going strong for some time. An additional response – one that is more nuanced to the gendered aspects of the problem – is to use gender and Muslim notions of femininity and masculinity as the focal point of cross-cultural dialogue.

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Kathy Zeitoun and Muslim women as change agents

While author Dave Eggers gives readers a lot of insight into what Kathy Zeitoun faces and her incredible character and spirit, there really has been little attention given to her following the book Zeitoun’s release. This lack of interest is a part of a larger problematic trend when it comes to highlighting the power of Muslim women in effecting change and being change agents in their respective societies.

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Part 1: Female, Muslim, and mutant: Muslim women in comic books

In the male-dominated world of comic books where female characters are depicted with large breasts and skimpy skin-tight clothing, it’s interesting to examine whether or not Dust, a Muslim female member of Marvel Comic’s X-Men since 2002, and other Muslim super-heroines, escape the sexual objectification and sexism that women often suffer in comic books.

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A response to “A warrior and a woman”

Recently, AltMuslimah reviewed my novel Mother of the Believers, a book that follows the birth of Islam from the perspective of Aisha (RA), the wife of Prophet Muhammad (SAWS). I would like to thank the reviewer, Uzma Mariam Ahmed, for taking the time to read my book and for writing a very gracious and positive review. And I would also like to take a moment to comment on the points that Ms. Ahmed raises as small problems for her that detracted from her overall warm response to the book.

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Mecca, AD 613

Author and screenwriter Kamran Pasha shares with us an excerpt from his new novel, Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam, published last month by Washington Square Press. The novel centers around the life of Aisha, the Prophet Muhammed’s youngest wife.

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A warrior and a woman

There is much to recommend about Kamran Pasha’s powerfully and sensitively written new novel Mother of the Believers, where Pasha proves his mettle as a writer representing the voice of a fiery and controversial female protagonist who lived fourteen hundred years ago.

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