Muslim Journeys: Literature & Biography

About a thousand years ago a vast number of stories in Arabic from various countries began to be brought together. Much later the collection was called The Arabian Nights or the Thousand and One Nights. The stories were told by Shahrazad (Scheherazade) to entertain her husband, King Shahryar. His custom was to execute a wife after a single night. Shahrazad begins a story each night but withholds the ending until the following night, thus postponing her execution. This Arabian Nights collection was translated by Husain Haddawy from the oldest version of the stories.

This mystical poem is regarded to be among the most significant of all works of Persian literature. It is an allegorical rendering of the Islamic doctrine of Sufism, about the search for truth through God. The poem describes the conference of the birds of the world when they meet to begin the search for their ideal king, the Simorgh bird. When the birds learn that to find the Simorgh bird they must undertake an arduous journey, they express their reservations to their leader, the hoopoe. With eloquence and insight, the hoopoe calms their fears, using a series of riddling parables to provide guidance in the search for spiritual truth.

Jalalu'l-Din Rumi was one of the greatest of the Persian mystical poets. In his writings he explored the profound themes that had evolved with Sufi thinkers, such as the nature of truth, of beauty, and of our spiritual relationship with God. Professor Nicholson translated these poems directly from the Persian language. This collection contains versions of over 100 short passages from Rumi's greatest works, together with brief explanatory notes.

This is the story of a poet seeking his lost love in a remote Turkish town divided by religious conflict and cut off from the world by a blizzard. Returning to Turkey from the West, Ka investigates a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head scarves in school. But the Kars, the city of the suicides, is also home to beautiful Ýpek, a friend of his youth. Ýpek's younger sister is a leader of the rebellious schoolgirls. As a snowstorm descends on Kars, violence between the military and local Islamic radicals explodes, and Ka finds his sympathies drawn in unexpected and dramatic directions.

As the daughter of radical Marxists and the great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor, Marjane Satrapi has a unique perspective to Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Through black-and-white comic strips, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, a period of the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.

In her youth Najwa was an upper-class, westernized Sudanese, with dreams to marry well and raise a family. Her dreams ended when a military coup drove her and her family to political exile in London. As the years pass, Najwa realizes that she has come down in the world. She works as a maid and wears her Muslim hijab. But Najwa receives comfort at the Regent's Park Mosque and the other Muslims there. Islam has brought her peace and strength. Then she meets Tamer, the brother of her employer. Could Najwa have another chance at love?

This novel captures life in Libya in the wake of Muammar al-Qaddafi's revolution. Through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy named Suleiman, we witness a family's struggle for survival against political suspicion and daily danger.

In this novel of modern Pakistan, the country's greatest poet is brutally murdered and his wife Samina, a political activist, then disappears. Their daughter Aasmaani has always believed that her mother abandoned her, but now, as a worker at Pakistan's first independent televsion station, Aasmaani receives messages written in her mother's secret code. Can Aasmaani decode the letters and find her mother?

The story of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a Muslim slave who, in 1807, was captured, sold to slave traders, and sent to America. where he worked on a plantation in Mississippi. Ibrahima finally gained freedom in 1828 and returned to Africa, but soon died there.

The remarkable true story of an African prince, who endured the humiliation of slavery without ever losing his dignity or hope for freedom.

G. Willow Wilson was an all-American girl and the daughter of atheists. As a writer specializing in modern religion and the Middle East, at 27 years of age she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course. She relates strongly to the Qur'an, which leads her to convert to Islam, and to journey to the Middle East. She moves to Cairo, Egypt, to teach English and to immerse herself in the culture of her new religion. There she meets Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of Western influences. They fall in love, but their relationship tests their values, beliefs, and traditions. This is the story of a Westerner who embraced the Muslim world and tried to forge a “third culture” to include her values and friends and family from both sides.

G. Willow Wilson was an all-American girl and the daughter of atheists. As a writer specializing in modern religion and the Middle East, at 27 years of age she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course. She relates strongly to the Qur'an, which leads her to convert to Islam, and to journey to the Middle East. She moves to Cairo, Egypt, to teach English and to immerse herself in the culture of her new religion. There she meets Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of Western influences. They fall in love, but their relationship tests their values, beliefs, and traditions. This is the story of a Westerner who embraced the Muslim world and tried to forge a “third culture” to include her values and friends and family from both sides.

Anthony Shadid is one of the New York Times reports who was captured as a prisoner of war in Libya in 2011. After he was released, instead of returning to the U.S. or Beirut, where he had lived, Shadid goes to his his family's ancestral home in Lebanon. His goal is to reconstruct the house his great-grandfather built there. In the process he learns and explains the modern Middle East and the people there who have survived generations of war.

View these YouTube videos of Shadid's renovation.

Written in the form of a memoir, this historical novel explores the meeting of two worlds, Islam and Christendom, through the adventures of real-life Arab traveler and geographer Hassan al-Wazzan.