I've just created a new category of post on here; that's how excited I am about this piece of news that I wanted to share with you! To the news...

​I wrote a paragraph here listing the many reasons I respect Shaykh Akram Nadwi, but I feel like that would be contrary to his (from what I see) ethos of humility and getting on with work without too much talk, ma sha Allah. Instead, I'll just say that of all the work he does, the two most relevant to this post are his particular focus on involving women in Muslim intellectual and social life and publishing his own books in multiple languages.

But the book I am referring to is is no simple book: it's a 43-volume biographical dictionary of female hadith scholars across history! Entitled الوفاء بأسماء النساء (Al-Wafa' Bi Asma' An-Nisa'), this collection is written in Arabic. However, for non-Arabic speakers or those who want a shorter read since this is more of a reference collection, an introductory book called Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam was published in English in 2007 and can be bought here. I read this book a few years ago and it really opened my eyes to the range and sheer number of women who have contributed to our knowledge and understanding of Islam through history in a major way.

As a side note, Safiya and I had a discussion about women's spirituality and individual, personal worship in the motherhood podcast episode recently and I feel like this type of publication can really help to refresh the understanding of Muslim women and men that being a woman (and indeed a mother, wife, daughter, etc.) is certainly not a reason to be any less ambitious in our study and contribution to the Islamic Sciences. I'm sure it could also give us something to think about in terms of how our social structures often fail to support women in these endeavours - another topic discussed in that episode. Of course, it's one thing to make airy statements about women's importance in Islam and another thing to have a 43-volume collection of books listing the lives and contributions of generations and generations of Muslim women.

May this work serve as a reference for many other scholars and academics to produce impactful, meaningful work. May Allah accept this huge work from Shaykh Akram and reward him and his family and all those involved in this work immensely. May Allah have mercy on all the women and men across history who have strived and dedicated their lives to Islamic scholarship, giving us the rich literature we can refer to today.
Source: Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi (Official) Facebook page

The ladies at The Qarawiyyin Project kindly invited me to suggest a book for one of their book list posts recently. I was excited to work with them since I really admire what they are doing and strongly recommend having a look at the articles on their site.

For my review, I picked a book that I haven't reviewed on this blog, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas by Sylviane A. Diouf. This book was a very educational experience for me, helping me to reframe a lot of what I had previously learnt about the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I include my review below; please also go to The Qarawiyyin Project's full post to see the reviews written by other excellent Muslim women book reviewers.

Please go to The Qarawiyyin Project's post to see the full list and reviews!

I Refuse to Condemn is not the type of book I find easy to review; it's a complex interweaving of the personal and the structural rooted in the writers' difficult, painful experiences. Although I attempted to review it in this post, I considered that more a collection of thoughts. In such cases, I like to highlight particular lines or chapters that struck me, so I thought I would do so in this post.

Note: I was provided with an advanced review copy of this book by the publisher and editor with no conditions attached.

After the powerful and personal introduction by editor Asim Qureshi, I felt that this chapter was a strong start to the collection. It broke down the discussion around the book's topic, the expectation for Muslims to explicitly condemn violent acts by Muslims, in a way that was clearly developed and rooted in a tangible reality. Of course, I'm not suggesting that only numbers and tangible measures are of value in such a discussion, but I found it insightful and took a different approach to other pieces in the collection.

Reading this was a moment of realisation for me.

Secular academia and Prevent is not a combination any Muslim is excited to engage with. This piece brought some difficult feelings to the surface for me. May Allah give us courage when we need it, wisdom in our silence and forgiveness for our shortcomings.

This piece was one of the most touching and profound for me; not only did it address a crucial element that is rarely present in secular discussions around this topic - the impact of existing in such an environment on a Muslim's faith and Islam - but it was also written in a beautiful, sensitive, poetic style.

Another chapter that gave me a feeling of recognition, I felt that this one said out loud some ideas that many Muslims might sense but not know how to or want to voice publicly. It was also written honestly and openly, carrying the reader along on McGoldrick's emotional and intellectual journey as he navigated trying to live his faith with integrity.

I think these quotes summarise the combination of approaches in this book that helped me to think about this topic. The first three highlight the structural injustices that need to be understood and addressed by us as Muslims who aspire to a just world for all. While we are trying to do this, we need to protect our understanding of who we are and our ultimate purpose. The last two quotes soothed my heart in addressing this, whether directly or otherwise. Contrary to some messaging from mainstream and other media, we need protect our hearts to ensure we don't internalise their narrative to the point where we become "the Other" in our own lives. May Allah guide us to understand our value in the way He has taught us: in our relationship with Him.

For some related reviews, resources and pertinent questions, read the review of this book here.

I've been thinking about this book for a while after finishing it and I've come to the conclusion that it has real potential as a new Muslim-specific personality type test. It would work something like this: for each chapter, you choose how much it resonated with you on a spectrum and then at the end you get an overall score about how you deal with the pressure to hate yourself (aka condemn the world's Muslim population).

I joke, but this demonstrates what I feel is the strength of this book: the variety of perspectives and wide-ranging responses offered by the different contributors as well as the fact that they all have intimate experience of the topic through their professional life, social work and/or research. For context, this book provides insight into the workings and impact of racism in national security policies and discourse with specific focus on Muslims from the Western world in the context of the "War on Terror". It is divided into four broad sections focusing on the history of these policies and attitudes, and three different areas of impact and resistance: structural, personal and performative. Within these sections, some writers choose to focus more on the detailed workings of the system, others on its psychological and emotional effects and others on the spiritual impacts and response.

I mentioned in a previous post about this book, before I had read it, that one of my expectations was that it would help me to break down my own feelings and experiences around the topic. There were a few chapters that certainly did this for me, but for the most part, it wasn't the cathartic experience that other reviewers have mentioned, but more of an exploration of how others perceive and deal with these challenges in their own contexts, where they have largely faced much more direct, aggressive examples of this than I have. May Allah protect them, their families and everyone in similar situations. Having said that, I suspect that this is one of those books that will keep rolling around in my mind, shining a brighter light on relevant experiences and ideas that pop up every now and then as I go through daily life.

I had hoped that since it was by Muslims for Muslims (in my understanding but maybe I'm mistaken), it might go a bit further in terms of questioning how we can move forward using frameworks rooted more explicitly in a Muslim consciousness and with reference to Islamic thought and history. I do realise that this may be influenced by my own perspective and expectations and perhaps there are elements that I have overlooked.

However, I don't want this to suggest that this book is anything less than a valuable contribution to discussion around the topic at hand: a rigorous and sincere work by the editor Asim Qureshi and the contributors. It is also quite ground-breaking in its particular focus on the Muslim experience of national security policies, which particularly in academic circles is often written about by non-Muslim scholars.

I don't want this to be too long, so I think I will write another post to highlight a few particular quotes and chapters that struck me, in sha Allah. In the meantime, here are a few questions that came to mind as I was reading:

• What subconscious defence mechanisms have I developed in response to these expectations?
• How have these expectations influenced me at a psychological and spiritual level?
• What steps can I take to reprogramme these responses?
• What examples and lessons can I find in the Sunnah to help me navigate these expectations?
• What would the Prophet, peace be upon him, do? (I wouldn't dare express an answer to this myself but it helped me to reframe this topic in my mind)
• When I exist as a Muslim in a public, non-Muslim and/or secularised space, do I compromise my beliefs (in small ways) to conform to what I think others expect of me? What am I afraid of happening if I were to be my full Muslim self in that space? Am I prepared to deal with these eventualities?
• Am I considering this problem from the perspective of a person only dependent on Allah or am I still hoping for the approval of others (non-Muslim or Muslim)?
• What ideological frameworks am I employing to consider this problem? Are they rooted in Islam?
• How do I perceive and value myself? Is it rooted in Islam and God-consciousness?

Note: I was provided with an advanced review copy of this book by the publisher with no conditions attached.