Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam [Hardcover]

I don't know how many times I put this book down, only to pick it up again because the story Ms. Nomani has to tell is so good and so important. Her superficial level of thinking and analysis through much of the book, paired with the painfully repetitive narrative, amazed me from a woman who has written for the Wall Street Journal. Throughout the book she feels the need to mention the names of stores and restaurants she passes; why? Yes, it seems odd when we encounter the landmarks of American commeralism in foreign countries, but one mention would have sufficed, rather than the dozens we are subjected to, getting in the way of her own story. In addition, she repeatedly points out typos made by her detractors (but not those of her supporters)- overall I have an impression of a person prone to pettiness and without a great capacity for deep thought. Nevertheless, she is a couragous woman doing important work for the Muslim Community, and I applaud her. While not greatly impressed with her writing, I remain impressed with her story and am interested to read some of the other books she refers to, written by people I know to be better writers.

Although written mainly for an American Muslim audience, Nomani's book tells an absorbing story for other readers whose knowledge of Islam is limited by whatever happens to be the day's news. Nomani, best described as a reformer within the American Muslim community, accomplishes two things: describing in detail the compelling experience of hajj (a pilgrimage with her family to Mecca in post-9/11 Saudi Arabia) and opening the doors of the mosque to reveal the fiercely intense political struggles that are currently being waged there between hard-line conservatives and moderates.

The polarizing issue (and its magnitude may surprise some readers) is the role of women in the mosque, where the near absolute dominance of men prevents women from worshiping as equals before the Creator. Simply insisting on the right to enter by the front door of her family's mosque in Morgantown, WV, causes an uproar, and her Bill of Rights for Women in Mosques has the impact of Luther's 95 Theses in shaking the foundations of rigidly held Islamic dogma.

Meanwhile gender intolerance, as she notes, is accompanied by the anti-Western, anti-democratic politicizing of Islam that is being advocated within the walls of many mosques in America. Hers is a disturbing account of a religious community under siege. Nomani is not a scholar, and her book is more the story of a personal journey than a reasoned argument in support of toleration, compassion, and equality, which she holds as the core values of Islam now betrayed by religious extremists.

Along the way, she struggles with doubts and uncertainties, confronts obstacles, and over a period of time (2001-2004) overcomes barriers both within and without to assume leadership as an advocate for Muslim women's rights. It's easy to find fault with aspects of this book, and many are noted in the other reviews posted here. While her story is fascinating and worth reading by anyone wanting to understand more deeply the political and cultural complexities of Islam both in the world and here in the U.S., it's probably not the only one a person should read.

My brother was in her class, and I grew up an older MHS alumni, reading her work as a very young journalist. Watching as she evolved into this activist writer. And then, years later seeing her work, I was thinking her family must be so worried, so proud, thinking of how from here to there of the ways she was taken onto her path. I just finished watching "America At the Crossroads" on PBS, a program telling of the struggle Asra Nomani had returning to Morgantown. After the horror of the loss of her friend Daniel Pearl, she went home going to raise her son. I was so surprised in some ways, watching the program, as it was showing her encountering her religion there. Shockingly she found a very rigid Mosque.She had to enter a back door. And in the things her journalist self would catch, she listens and sees that she is called to act, she knows this kind of language leads to places we cannot undo. So I was watching this program follow her there through time- as the story of her confronting the mosque unfolds, as she is seeing her book (this book) into print and asking of her community to look fully at how women are treated within that Mosque of Morgantown, WV. Looking at her asking about how we slide a slope into things unrecognizable when we fail to stand and debate difficult questions. And demand of one another open communication.

I know that town too. Can understand thinking going there again might keep us safe, shield us from things that are too painful to know, but having gone on into my work to serve others knowing it would ask more of me, not less should I ever return. It would require an adult. Truthfully Morgantown always held me aware of all that is our requirement to understand, see and process to develop ourselves in our time here. I designed the county seal of this place, I grew up there, and it does not surprise me in any way to see debated there the issues of our times as so very often I saw this spring from Appalachian soil as the very meanings of America it represents to me. To think and to act based on the looking from perspectives and reason as well as love and community. I looked at the program tonight and at the way my town looks.
You know similarly as the book looks through her entire life perspectives and lessons to interpret to us her meanings. You can glimpse the roads I walked too, if you want to know a place for me that is quite dear.

She's an amazingly brave person, cannot recall a time my brother has failed to praise her. So I encourage reading this work. It seems such a short time ago I was reading something with her by-line in the Dominion Post.
Quite a longing for home comes to me, and the struggles she's bringing forward have been touched by this place. I can send to her my respect and love..