My Way

A Muslim Woman's Journey

Mona Siddiqui

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857735102
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

Polarized debates about 'Islam' and 'the West' are now so ubiquitous that it is easy to forget how damaging they can be. The vast majority of Muslims do not wish to see Islam used as a divisive force within the largely secular societies in which they live. How then can Muslim stereotyping be challenged? Mona Siddiqui is one of the foremost Western authorities on the reconciliation of 21st-century life and Islamic custom. In this new and searching book, she applies a uniquely probing intelligence to crucial issues of faith and identity (such as wearing the veil) within society at large. While speaking from within a particular tradition, she touches on matters of universal concern. Who are we? How do we cope with growing older? What kind of world will we leave to our children? Placing her rich personal journey in a wider context, the author is able to explore love and sex, multiculturalism and diversity, and ageing and death through the prism of her experience as both a Muslim and a modern woman. Her book shows why she is one of the most vital thinkers of our age.

Notes

Chapter 1: Home: Past and Present

1 This quote has been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and its origins has a rather complex history. Please see http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/01/11/what-lies-within/ (accessed 7 July 2014).

2 Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity, Violence and the Need to Belong, translated from the French by Barbara Bray, New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000, 102.

3 Al-Ghazali, On the Manners relating to Eating, Kitab adab al-akl, Book XI of The Revival of the Religious Sciences. Ihya’‘Ulum al-din, translated with an introduction and notes by D. Johnson-Davies, Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2012, 30.

4 William Mckane, Al-Ghazali’s Book of Fear and Hope, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1962, 22. I have made a couple of minor changes to this translation for ease of reading.

5 Ghazali, On the Manners, 19.

6 Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant, The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam, Leiden: Brill Classics, 2006, 2.

7 http://40hadithnawawi.com/index.php/the-hadiths/hadith-26 (accessed 7 July 2014).

8 http://hadithqudsi.sacredhadith.com/hadith-qudsi-18/ (accessed 7 July 2014).

Chapter 2: Marriage and Desire

1 Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Charlie Louth, London: Penguin Books, 2011, 42.

2 Mitch Albom, Tuesday with Morrie, London: Time Warner Paperbacks, 2003, 127.

3 William Irvine, On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, 2.

4 Murtada Mutahari, Islamic Sciences, London: ICAS Press, 2002, 205.

5 Ibid.

6 Shahzad Bashir, ‘Islamic Tradition and Celibacy’, in Carl Olson (ed.), Celibacy and Religious Traditions, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 140.

7 Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-nikah, Vol. 7, Jeddah: Maktaba Darrussalam, 1997, 19 (Arabic–English translation by Muhammad Muhsin Khan).

8 Ghazali, Kitab Adab al-nikah in Ihya’‘Ulum al-din, Vol. 2, Damascus: Alam al-Kutub, 1992, 25. Further references to this work in this chapter will be abbreviated to Nikah.

9 Ibid., 26.

10 Abu Talib al-Makki, Qut al-qulub, Sustenance of the hearts, 2 vols, Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1961, 2:528.

11 Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-nikah, 20.

12 Roger Scruton, Sexual Desire, reprint, New York: Continuum, 2006, 62–3.

13 Ibid., 67.

14 Ibid., 359.

15 Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, London: Saqi Books, 1998, 95.

16 Yossef Rapoport, Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 4.

17 Theodore W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1951. English translation London: Verso, 1974, 131.

18 Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1979, 188.

19 Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim, London: Faber and Faber, 1984, 289.

20 Orhan Pamuk, Other Colours, London: Faber and Faber, 2007, 34.

21 Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, 11.

22 Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond, New York: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1997, 34–5.

23 Karen V. Kukil, The Journals of Sylvia P...