bookclub
Islam empowers Muslim women. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was the world’s first feminist. Women are highly revered and granted fundamental rights by Islam. I’ve encountered variations of these statements throughout my decade-long study of Muslim feminism, but they were rarely accompanied by a thorough list and explanation of the rights they refer to — until now. Daisy Khan’s 30 Rights of Muslim Women: A Trusted Guide provides a compact yet comprehensive list of rights granted to Muslim women by the Quran and Hadith. Grounded in these Islamic sources, Khan categorises the rights und...
The New Arab
“What forbidden fruit did I take a bite of?” asks the young girl whose perspective we follow in The Djinn’s Apple by Algerian writer Djamila Morani. This historical crime fiction, which won the English PEN Translates Award in 2021, is set about a thousand years ago during the golden age of Baghdad. The young adult novel’s translation from Arabic by Sawad Hussain delivers a lyrical and fast-paced narrative. It pulls back the curtain on the society and politics of a prominent era in Islamic history — the Abbasid period — told through the lens of a fierce female character forging her path in the ...
The New Arab
A day in Palestine shows the harsh reality of Israeli colonial violence. This becomes clear right away in Nathan Thrall’s non-fiction book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story (Penguin, 2024). The book tells the story of the Jaba bus accident northeast of Jerusalem in 2012, connecting different people and events within the broader context of Israeli colonialism, military occupation, and settlement expansion. Thrall’s book is based on interviews with relatives of the victims and witnesses. It is well-documented to show the history and reality of Palestinian lives under Israeli s...
The New Arab
Cairo 1951: Islamic feminist Fatiha has just stormed the Egyptian Parliament with her best friend and sister-in-arms, legendary Egyptian feminist Doria Shafik, demanding the president grant Egyptian women equal civil and political rights to men, as promised in the constitution. Fatiha’s husband Ali is supportive but sometimes her activism tries his patience. Cairo 1970: Yasminah, daughter of Islamic feminist and professor Fatiha Bin-Khalid, has had her marriage arranged to a man she does not love after her parents’ apartment has been broken into and the walls graffitied with the words 'shaza g...
The New Arab
The author of this book poses many intriguing questions: Why was there a Turkish mosque in Britain's famous botanical garden in the 18th century? How did Persian-inscribed cannons end up in rural Wales? And who is the Moroccan man in a long-forgotten portrait in a West London stately home? Examining the origins of paintings, drawings, carvings, and statues in Britain's galleries, museums, and civic buildings offers clues to discovering a largely unknown past. Often hidden in plain sight, this rich heritage reveals Oriental influences on pre-twentieth-century Britain. The term "Orient" is delib...
The New Arab
What can fiction teach us about the world we live in? According to Egyptian novelist Reem Bassiouney, it can impart lessons on everything from the history of the lands in which we live to secrets about how to communicate and love. Bassiouney is likely a little-known name in many English-speaking countries, but her work is widely read across the Arab world. She studied at Oxford University and has worked in the UK and the US, as well as in Egypt. Her fiction has garnered awards, including the 2020 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy; the same book was also nominated ...
The New Arab
Seventy-six years after the Nakba, Palestinians continue to be pushed back from their lands, their lives snuffed out, as their culture and country continue to face systematic destruction. To remind the world of Palestine's rich culture and heritage, Franco-Palestinian chef and restaurateur, Fadi Kattan turns to the cuisine of the region to showcase the beauty and resilience of his people in his recently published book, Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food. "Writing this book has also sent me back to memories of how the city has evolved under occupation, how the raising of walls has cho...
The New Arab
Earlier this month, Tunisian authorities detained Saadia Mosbah, a human rights campaigner and the head of an NGO defending migrant rights in Tunisia. This incident marks the latest example of Tunisian President Kais Saied's autocratic behavior since his power grab in July 2021. The main Tunisian opposition parties have recently announced their intention to boycott the presidential elections expected to take place around October this year. In his book Loved Egyptian Night: The Meaning of the Arab Spring, Tufts University Professor Hugh Roberts argues that Tunisia was the only country to underg...
The New Arab
In our current times, when state surveillance mechanisms are directed at students, professors, and people of conscience protesting genocide, Between Two Moons by Egyptian American writer Aisha Abdel Gawad is a novel that transports readers to a critical turning point in the US for Arabs and Muslims. The novel is a nuanced and necessary narrative written as a coming-of-age story set in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, against the backdrop of anti-Arab prejudice and New York City Police Department (NYPD) surveillance of one of the largest Muslim communities in America. In a story that unveils state surveill...
The New Arab
The Land in Our Bones by Layla K. Feghali, a Lebanese ethnobotanist and cultural worker, is a remarkable book focused on the plants and ancestral healing practices of the Levant. It is also filled with reflections on the wounds inflicted by colonisation, what it means to live in the diaspora, and finding meaning and belonging in the spaces “in-between.'' Seamlessly flowing from the informative to the poetic and back again, it is richly interspersed with the stories and knowledge shared by village elders and indigenous healers, as well as relevant folklore and mythological cosmologies of the re...
The New Arab
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