If The Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran - Softcover

Power, Carla

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805098194 ISBN 13: 9780805098198

Verlag: Holt Paperbacks, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • Named A Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The Denver Post • Praised by Fareed Zakaria as “intelligent, compassionate, and revealing,” a powerful journey to help bridge one of the greatest divides shaping our world today.

If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power's eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship-between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh-had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names. Both knew that a close look at the Quran would reveal a faith that preached peace and not mass murder; respect for women and not oppression. And so they embarked on a yearlong journey through the controversial text.

A journalist who grew up in the Midwest and the Middle East, Power offers her unique vantage point on the Quran's most provocative verses as she debates with Akram at cafes, family gatherings, and packed lecture halls, conversations filled with both good humor and powerful insights. Their story takes them to madrasas in India and pilgrimage sites in Mecca, as they encounter politicians and jihadis, feminist activists and conservative scholars. Armed with a new understanding of each other's worldviews, Power and Akram offer eye-opening perspectives, destroy long-held myths, and reveal startling connections between worlds that have seemed hopelessly divided for far too long.

Praise for If the Oceans Were Ink

“A vibrant tale of a friendship.... If the Oceans Were Ink is a welcome and nuanced look at Islam [and] goes a long way toward combating the dehumanizing stereotypes of Muslims that are all too common…. If the Oceans Were Ink should be mandatory reading for the 52 percent of Americans who admit to not knowing enough about Muslims.”—The Washington Post

“Journalist Power writes about her year studying the Quran with a Muslim scholar she befriended while working at a think tank in London. For some, this will be a strong introduction to Islam. To others, it's fodder for discussion on the Sheikh's views, how Westerners (such as Power) interpret those views and the interplay of culture and religion.” —The Denver Post

“For all those who wonder what Islam says about war and peace, men and women, Jews and gentiles, this is the book to read. It is a conversation among well-meaning friends—intelligent, compassionate, and revealing—the kind that needs to be taking place around the world.”—Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World

“Carla Power’s intimate portrait of the Quran, told with nuance and great elegance, captures the extraordinary, living debate over the Muslim holy book’s very essence. A spirited, compelling read.”—Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad

“An inspiring story of two [people] from different worlds who refuse to let religious and cultural differences, prejudice, and ignorance get in the way of their friendship, If the Oceans Were Ink is as thought-provoking as it is elegantly written. It takes a difficult, highly charged topic and puts it into terms that are not only understandable and eye-opening, but beautiful.”—Bustle (11 Beautifully Written Memoirs by Women)

“Unique, masterful, and deeply engaging. Carla Power takes the reader on an extraordinary journey in interfaith understanding as she debates and discovers the Quran’s message, meaning, and values on peace and violence, gender and veiling, religious pluralism and tolerance.”—John L. Esposito, University Professor and Professor of Islamic Studies, Georgetown University, and author of The Future of Islam

“A thoughtful, provocative, intelligent book.”—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Birds Of Paradise and The Language of Baklava

“With a journalist’s mind for the story, a born traveler’s heart for the adventure of crossing borders, and a seeker’s yen for the poetry and mysticism of belief, Power creates an exceptional record of a timeless quest.”—Merritt Tierce, a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and author of Love Me Back

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Carla Power writes for TIME and was a foreign correspondent for Newsweek. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, The New York Times Magazine, and Foreign Policy. Her work has been recognized with an Overseas Press Club award, a Women in Media Award, and the National Women's Political Caucus's EMMA Award. She holds a graduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford, as well as degrees from Yale and Columbia.

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If the Oceans Were Ink

An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran

By Carla Power

Henry Holt and Company

Copyright © 2015 Carla Power
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8050-9819-8

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Introduction: A Map for the Journey, 
PART ONE: THE ORIGINS, 
1. The Quran in Twenty-Five Words, 
2. An American in the East, 
3. A Muslim in the West, 
4. Road Trip to the Indian Madrasa, 
5. A Migrant's Prayer Mat, 
PART TWO: THE HOME, 
6. Pioneer Life in Oxford, 
7. Nine Thousand Hidden Women, 
8. "The Little Rosy One", 
9. Veiling and Unveiling, 
10. Reading "The Women", 
PART THREE: THE WORLD, 
11. A Pilgrim's Progress, 
12. Jesus, Mary, and the Quran, 
13. Beyond Politics, 
14. The Pharaoh and His Wife, 
15. War Stories, 
16. The Last Lesson, 
Conclusion: Everlasting Return, 
Author's Note, 
Glossary, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 
Acknowledgments, 
About the Author, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

The Quran in Twenty-Five Words

A few days before my lesson on the Quran's first sura, I went to a Sunday lunch party in North London. At the table, I met a man—I'll call him Hans—with crisp graying hair, brushed apple-green tweeds, and a languid Continental accent. Born in Vienna and educated at Cambridge, Hans had pronounced on subjects from primary school pedagogy to F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose before he'd even finished the first glass of Prosecco. After he told me about the book he'd published, on a literary journal in wartime Paris, he learned I was a journalist and asked what I was writing about. When I told him, he looked as though he'd just swallowed the backbone of his sea bream.

"The Quran," he spluttered. "But, why?"

An awkward pause. On hearing this daring dismissiveness from so refined a man, I felt as flummoxed as he seemed. A year or so earlier, a British Muslim politician had charged that Islamophobia "passed the dinner-party test" and was now, disgracefully enough, an acceptable form of discrimination in polite society. I'd hoped she'd been exaggerating, since I hadn't come across it in my tiny, tolerant circle until now. I swallowed my fish and ran through the reasons. They seemed so self-evident that I restrained myself from reciting them in the singsong tones I use to chide my children to brush up to the gum line: A lifelong personal interest in Islamic societies. A worldwide population of 1.6 billion Muslims and counting, a number that was ever-growing, Islam being the planet's fastest-growing faith. Post-9/11 wars. A crucial new issue in European parliaments and American elections. The text's power, its poetry. I felt vaguely silly as I rattled off the list. Until a minute ago, I'd assumed that the sort of person who rereads Tender Is the Night and writes on twentieth-century intellectual history would deem reading the Quran a worthy pursuit. I finished my monologue, triumphantly forked some kale into my mouth, swallowed, and parried. "Why? What do you think about Islam?"

"They're living in the medieval ages," Hans said breezily. "They need to get up to speed with the rest of the world."

I'd heard this dozens of times before—from London taxi drivers, on Midwestern talk radio, and even from cultivated types like Hans. Had it not been for the din of kids bickering over whether to watch Peter Pan or Snow White, perhaps I would have retorted that fundamentalists can't be dismissed as medieval. That they don't exist outside modernity but are very much a part of it, with their use of technology, their sophisticated global networking, and their keen sensitivity to media cycles. Had I not been on my second Prosecco, and conscious of other guests waiting for us to tie up the strands of our conversation, I might have told Hans what various scholars have posited: that the anti-Western, antisecular rhetoric of Muslim fundamentalists is a response to the fraying social fabric in fast-changing, increasingly polarized societies. That for new migrants to big cities or foreign countries, the mosque provides shelter from loneliness. That for people unmoored from home or family, a prescriptive faith provides an anchor. I didn't launch those arguments, deciding that they were a shade heavy for a Sunday afternoon, what with our hosts taking advantage of the rare winter sunshine and opening the sliding doors onto their deck. I took an easier tack. "Well, of course, you're probably just going by what you read in the papers," I nodded. "Believe me, I know, as a journalist: Who makes the best stories, who gives the best quotes? The extremists, the crazies. So who do we tend to hear from? The people who shout the loudest."

"But where are the moderates?" he asked. "Why aren't they speaking up?"

"Well, they're there—they just don't make the headlines," I answered. "Quietism doesn't make for news. Sometimes they're writing op-eds, or working with interfaith groups or NGOs. But you're not going to hear about them, since they're not blowing things up or blowing off steam."

"But are there any Muslim moderates, really?" he asked. "I mean, real moderates?"

"Of course there are!" I said. "You've got millions and millions of Muslims who view their faith in much the same way that most Christians or Jews or Buddhists do—as a private matter. And if you're looking for Muslims trying to square their faith with universal human rights, you've got mini reformation movements going on: women and gays and minorities going back to the Quran and reading it for themselves, not letting the local mullah tell them what to think. You've got lots of scholars, and lots of ordinary Muslims, trying to take back their religion from the radicals who've styled themselves as leaders without any training in Islamic law or tradition. There are Sufis, reacting against the strictness of the mullahs ..."

"But what about Saudi Arabia?" he pursued, pushing his chair back from the table with the air of a wrestler limbering up before a match. "What about the Taliban? What they do to women ... In Saudi Arabia, women can't drive. Under the Taliban, they couldn't go anywhere without covering up ..." The other guests, sensing a low hum of tension, began to gather their plates and ferry them to the sink.

"They aren't practicing Islam," I replied, perhaps a tad too smugly. "That's local or tribal custom made into national law. Yes, those laws and restrictions are terrible, but they're not Islamic. All you have to do to find out that it's got universal values—ones very much like yours and mine—is go back to the sources."

Our hosts had returned to the table bearing chocolate cake, so we came to an uneasy truce in the interests of gluttony and good cheer. Together we stepped, a bit shakily, onto the safer conversational turf of the dangers of Iranian nukes and the virtues of Neapolitan pizzas. I knew I hadn't swayed him, but I had complete confidence that the sources, as read by Akram, would reveal a just and humane faith. I left the party troubled by Hans's prejudice, but charged with righteousness, and braced by my own certainty.

* * *

I carried this clean, bright feeling to Oxford with me a few days later, where it only grew on seeing Akram again. As we walked up the steep stairs to the Nosebag, he talked about how he'd spent the day before in Leicester, meeting with women and Muslim community leaders to talk about allowing women to pray in mosques....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Holt Paperbacks
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0805098194
• ISBN 13: 9780805098198
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 350
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar