Reddit Reddit reviews Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam

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Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam
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1 Reddit comment about Engaged Surrender: African American Women and Islam:

u/_JosiahBartlet · 13 pointsr/circlebroke2

I really loved 5 books we read, so I’ll just mention them all and you can pick if any sound good.

First was Amina Wadud’s Quran and Woman . It’s basically exegesis on the Quran from a female perspective. It challenges a lot of what is presented as evidence that Islam is inherently sexist using textual support. It’s a controversial book, but it’s worth reading for sure. Wadud is brilliant and the perspective definitely gave me some food for thought.

We also read So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba. It’s fictional, but still extremely insightful. It’s essentially a narrative told through letters that discusses polygyny in Senegal. It is a critique of the affects of the Islamic tenet of taking multiple wives, but one from an actual Muslim perspective. It’s fair and from a place of understanding. This is also just one of the best pieces of 20c African literature in general. I love reading outside of the canon.

Next is Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki. This is about sex and sexuality, primarily in urban Egypt. It was extremely readable and gave absolutely fascinating insight on a taboo topic. It’s shocking how much El Feki was able to get women to reveal.

Engaged Surrender by Carolyn Moxley Rouse focuses on African American Muslim women. Once again, we’re getting their stories on their terms. It helps to shed light on why they convert, how Islam affects their lives, and what their religion means to them. As an American, I found this really fascinating. There was a lot of valuable commentary on America within the book.

Finally, I’m gonna bring up a book that deals with men. Farha Ghannam’s Live and Die Like a Man covers the construction of masculinity in Egypt, specifically Cairo, from birth through death. Each chapter essentially tells the story of 1 or 2 men and their experiences. This book was a really important complement to the rest of the course, as it mainly focused on women. Reading an ethnography on men was a shockingly unique experience.


The last 3 I mentioned are ethnographies that I feel are extremely well-done. All of the writers were extremely fair in their analysis. There’s not really explicit praise or criticism of Islam, but just discussion of how it manifests and affects the life of Muslims. Or how Muslims navigate being Muslim in their day-to-day lives. Two of the authors are Muslims themselves and the other discusses how she considered conversion in the book.

I didn’t really leave the class with a different opinion on Islam, as I was never anti-Islam or anti-religion despite being non-religious. I just now have a much more nuanced opinion and ideally a better understanding. As it was a woman’s studies/anthropology course, we were just focused on understanding the lives of Muslims on their terms. Obviously discussion of how we felt about these things and how we can navigate morality across cultures came up, but my professor was wonderful and we primarily focused on understanding, even when we didn’t necessarily agree.

I think if you read literally any of these books, you’ll be left feeling similarly to how I do. They’re all wonderful. Hopefully this was helpful and sorry it was so long! I could talk for hours about this class.

(Also none of these actually discuss Iran even though that’s what I initially brought up. We mainly covered that through lecture)