New Releases

This is for ages 10-13 and up. It was recently announced that this book, one of the first I’ve read set in Turkiye, will be adapted into a manga publication.

HUDA F ARE YOU (HUDA FAHMY) This graphic novel was written and illustrated by Huda Fahmy, known as @yesimhotinthis on Instagram. She tells the story of how after Huda and her family move to Dearborn, Mich., Huda realizes she’s not the only Muslim at school anymore — a realization that causes an existential crisis. This graphic novel is a hilarious exploration of self-discovery and what it means to be a Muslim.

“Huda F Are You”is perfect for high school students and up.

YOU TRULY ASSUMED (LAILA SABREEN) Sabreen’s debut novel follows three African American Muslimas as they make a digital space for others and break common stereotypes on their online You Truly Assumed blog. This is a heartbreaking and eye-opening book. When one of the girls is threatened, they have a hard call to make: shut down the blog they’ve worked so hard on, or stand up for what they believe in, even if it means endangering themselves.

“You Truly Assumed” is for ages 13 and up.

SQUIRE (SARA ALFAGEEH AND NADIA SHAMMAS) This graphic novel, set in the Ottoman Empire, follows Aliza, a young girl who has an epiphany: Battlefield glory is not as glamorous as she thought it would be. It’s also a story about creating a home with strangers who eventually become a close-knit family to her.

This novel, which also includes bonus scenes, is perfect for middle and high school students. ih

Amani Salahudeen (BA, The College of New Jersey, ‘20) is pursuing a master’s degree in education from Western Governor’s University.

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The Muslim, State and Mind: Psychology in Times of Islamophobia

Tarek Younis 2022. Pp. 120. HB. $62.00. PB. $15.00 SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Mental health is positioned as the cure-all for all of society’s discontents, from pandemics to terrorism. But psychology and psychiatry are not apolitical, and neither are Muslims. Younis bares where the politics of the psy-disciplines and the politics of Muslims overlaps, demonstrating how psychological theories and practices serve state interests and perpetuate inequality — especially racism and Islamophobia. Viewing the psy-disciplines from the margins, he illustrates how these necessarily serve the state in the production of loyal, low-risk and productive citizens by offering a modern discussion of three underlying paradigms: neoliberalism, security and the politics of mental health.

Heavenly Returns: What the Abrahamic Faiths Teach Us About Financial & Spiritual Well-Being

M. Yaqub Mirza, Gary Moore 2022. Pp. 84. PB. $4.99 Center for Islam in the Contemporary World Leesburg, Va.

Mirza and Moore argue that more religion is needed in finance and more finance is needed in religion — a radical premise that goes against the grain of much conventional theology.

This unlikely pair, a Muslim and an evangelical Christian, show that the Abrahamic faiths are replete with wisdom about wealth management. Drawing on their knowledge of Islamic and Christian teachings, they call for believers to align their spiritual lives and investing choices toward a more holistic, integrated and compassionate existence.

While discussing their faiths and approaches to financial management, they found that more connects them than separates them. “Heavenly Returns” mixes practical advice on topics such as career planning and charitable giving with practical tips from Moore’s and Mirza’s lives. For example — Is it okay for Christians and Muslims to aspire to become rich? What are “sin stocks,” and is it okay to own them?

Islamic Finance in Africa: The Prospects for Sustainable Development

Aishath Muneeza, Karamo N.M. Sonko, M. K. Hassan (eds.) 2022. Pp. 358. HB. $165.00 Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, Mass.

The editors have put together a comprehensive overview of this field by exploring legal, regulatory and governance challenges while balancing the issues and innovations found in both Islamic commercial and social finance.

Its content can be broadly classified into three parts: legal, regulatory and governance developments and issues; issues and innovations in Islamic commercial finance; and issues and innovations in Islamic social finance. The editors use a case study format to present each topic and provide insight into actual or potential areas of growth.

Scholars and Islamic finance stakeholders, including research and education institutes, should find this book useful in understanding this important topic and region.

Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion

Evelyn Alsultany 2022. Pp. 320. HB. $30.00. Kindle $16.50 New York Univ. Press, New York

Alsultany argues that even amidst institutionalized Islamophobia, diversity initiatives fail on their promise by focusing only on crisis moments.

Muslims, she says, get included through “crisis diversity,” where high-profile Islamophobic incidents are urgently responded to and then ignored until the next crisis. In the popular cultural arena of television, this means interrogating even those representations of Muslims that

others have celebrated as refreshingly positive. What kind of message does it send, for example, when a growing number of “good Muslims” on TV seem to have arrived there, ironically, only after leaving the faith?

In the realm of corporations, she critically examines the firing of high-profile individuals for anti-Muslim speech — a remedy that rebrands corporations as anti-racist while institutional racism remains intact. Muslim university students, she points out, get included in diversity, equity and inclusion plans; however, such plans get disrupted if they’re involved in Palestinian rights activism. She also notes how hate crime laws fail to address root causes.

In each of these arenas, Alsultany finds an institutional pattern that defangs the promise of Muslim inclusion, thereby deferring systemic change until and through the next “crisis.”

Living Where We Don’t Make the Rules: A Guide for Muslim Minorities

Ebrahim Rasool (ed.) 2022. Pp. 236. PB. $28.00 Claritas, Swansea, U.K.

Today, 90% of all countries have significant minorities that constitute at least 10% of their populations. One in four Muslims lives in minority situations in almost every part of the world. Some have assimilated and forfeited their practices and identities to “belong”; others have isolated themselves with those who share their language, national origin, culture or religion. However, some Muslims have been able to manage both their Islamic identity and other elements of identity that come with their new places of residence.

This guide pursues the third option — balancing theoretical rigor with practical direction. It includes the minorities’ lived experience as well as the scholarship of those who apply the synthesis of Islam’s timeless values, norms and principles with the exigencies of these minority communities. It provides leadership that can guide everyday life, manage our faith and direct partnerships with fellow citizens and campaigns for inclusivity.

Mohamed Zakariya A 21st century Master Calligrapher

Mohamed Zakariya (ed. Nancy Micklewright) 2022. Pp. 184. PB. $29.95 (CAN$ $39.95) Independent Publishers Group, Chicago

This book studies the life and impact of the contemporary American artist Zakariya. His pursuit of Islamic calligraphy has earned him an international reputation. Along the way, he played a major role in bringing this art form to the U.S. and, through his teaching, public appearances and work, has created a uniquely American style.

The account of Zakariya’s life, told from his students, colleagues and scholars’ perspectives, results in a nuanced, thoughtful presentation of a complex and brilliant artist. Essays by leading scholars in the fields of Islamic art, calligraphy and Islamic religious studies unpack the complexities of this art form through history. In addition to placing the calligrapher and his work in a centuries-long historical context, they also explain why he is a maverick at the forefront of a global resurgence of traditional Islamic calligraphy.

Islamic Ethics: Fundamental Aspects of Human Conduct

Abdulaziz Sachedina 2022. Pp. 224. HB. $39.95. Kindle $26.49 Oxford University Press, New York

The Islamic tradition contains two main traditions of writing on ethics: (1) philosophical and related to the works of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, represented by thinkers such as Ibn Sina, and (2) theological, represented by such figures as al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar (d.1025). Some later scholars attempted to combine these two traditions. For the most part, however, the jurists’ views have been ignored.

Sachedina calls attention to this third tradition, which has its home in legal literature. However, the jurists didn’t produce a genre of ethical manuals, and their form of ethics, which the author terms “juridical ethics,” must be derived or extracted from works that ostensibly treat legal rulings and obligations, or scriptural hermeneutics and legal theory.

Presenting an outline this third tradition, he argues that juridical ethics is an important, even dominant form of ethics, in modern Islam. He notes that it has been challenged by modernity and examines how legal ethical thinkers have reacted by asking: How do Muslim religious leaders come to grips with modern demands of directing their communities to live as modern citizens of nation-states? What kind of moral and spiritual resources do their scholars garner to respond to the new issues in the sciences, more immediately in medicine, and constantly changing social relationships?

Sachedina argues that one must go beyond the philosophical ethics of virtue and human character to answer these pressing questions and acknowledge the importance of ethics in formulating Muslim interpretive jurisprudence of religious and moral decisions based on reason and revelation.

Out of Place: An Autoethnography of Postcolonial Citizenship

Nuraan Davids 2022. Pp. 174. PB. $30.00 African Minds, Oxford, U.K.

Davids offers an in-depth exploration of experience as a “colored” Muslima traversing a post-apartheid space. Her book centers on and explores several themes, which include her challenges not only as a South African citizen and within her faith community, but as an academic citizen at a historically white university. This is her story — an autoethnography, her reparation.

By embarking on an auto-ethnography, the author not only tries to change how others have told her story, but also to transform her “sense of what it means to live” (Bhabha, 1994). She is driven by a postcolonial appeal, which insists that if she seeks to imprint her own way of life into the discourses that pervade the world around her, then she can no longer allow herself to be spoken on behalf of or to be subjugated into the hegemonies of others.

The author’s argument is that “coloured” Muslimas are subjected to layers of scrutiny and prejudices that have yet to be confronted. What we know about these women has been shaped by preconceived notions of “otherness” and attached to a meta-narrative of “oppression and backwardness.”

By centering and using her lived experiences, the author takes readers on a journey of what it’s like to be seen in terms of race, gender and religion — not only within the public sphere of her professional identities, but also within the private sphere of her faith community.

Rethinking Islam in Europe: Contemporary Approaches in Islamic Religious Education and Theology

Zekirija Sejdini 2022. Pp.180. HB. $60.00 De Gruyter, Berlin

It took a long time for Islamic theology to be granted a place in European universities. This start occurred in German-speaking areas, leading to the development of new theological and religious pedagogical approaches. Sejdini presents and discusses one such approach from various perspectives. He analyzes different theological and religious pedagogical themes and reflects on them anew.

The primary focus is on contemporary challenges and possible answers from the perspective of Islamic theology and religious pedagogy. It discusses general themes like the location of Islamic theology and religious pedagogy at secular European universities. The volume also explores concrete challenges, such as the extent to which Islamic religious pedagogy can be conceptualized anew, how it should deal with its own theological tradition in the contemporary context and how a positive attitude toward worldview and religious plurality can be cultivated.

At issue here are foundations of a new interpretation of Islam that considers both a reflective approach to its tradition and the contemporary context. In doing so, it gives Muslims the opportunity to further their own thinking. ih