(Continued from last week's post.) Here's what Deborah Baker writes in the afterword to her book The Convert, on Maryam Jameelah who was once Margaret Marcus--the Jewish girl from New York who converted to Islam, moved to Pakistan, and became an eloquent spokesperson for traditional Islam's case … [Read more...]
From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 2)
(Continued from last week's post.) "Now that I have settled myself here, I would like to explain how I came to be a part of the Mawlana Mawdudi's family. It seems I have spent my entire life trying to get to this moment, to explain myself in terms that make sense to you. I'm not sure I ever … [Read more...]
From Judaism to Islam – Margaret Marcus, Maryam Jameelah (Part 1)
Deborah Baker. The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2011. How many years has it been since I first heard of Maryam Jameelah, the former Margaret (“Peggy”) Marcus? At least 15 or 20, I think. Sometime in the 90s, I was in a library paging through an issue of … [Read more...]
Al-Khidr – The “Green One” of Islam (Part 7 of a series)
“Little green men” in the UFOs. From the Pope to the Flintstones, they’re everywhere in the popular imagination. Yet they’re seldom actually reported by people who experience close encounters of the third kind, or the fourth. (See my last post, though, for a qualification of this.) Where do they … [Read more...]
In Honor of Yom Kippur – Jews, Muslims, and a Zikr in Gaza
Chalk this post up to Saturday being Yom Kippur. Or to my having spent last Saturday evening at a Sufi-style zikr (religious dance) at a local Friends' meeting house. Or to a certain nervousness over the future of the latest Gaza ceasefire. For whatever reason, I was moved to pull down from my … [Read more...]
