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    Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim
    Unavailable
    Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim
    Unavailable
    Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim
    Ebook418 pages7 hours

    Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim

    By Sabeeha Rehman

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    ONE OF BOOKLIST'S TOP TEN RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY BOOKS OF 2016

    ONE OF BOOKLIST'S TOP TEN DIVERSE NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2017

    Honorable Mention in the 2017 San Francisco Book Festival Awards, Spiritual Category

    This enthralling story of the making of an American is also a timely meditation on being Muslim in America today.

    Threading My Prayer Rug is a richly textured reflection on what it is to be a Muslim in America today. It is also the luminous story of many journeys: from Pakistan to the United States in an arranged marriage that becomes a love match lasting forty years; from secular Muslim in an Islamic society to devout Muslim in a society ignorant of Islam, and from liberal to conservative to American Muslim; from student to bride and mother; and from an immigrant intending to stay two years to an American citizen, business executive, grandmother, and tireless advocate for interfaith understanding.

    Beginning with a sweetly funny, moving account of her arranged marriage, the author undercuts stereotypes and offers the refreshing view of an American life through Muslim eyes. In chapters leavened with humor, hope, and insight, she recounts an immigrant’s daily struggles balancing assimilation with preserving heritage, overcoming religious barriers from within and distortions of Islam from without, and confronting issues of raising her children as Muslimswhile they lobby for a Christmas tree! Sabeeha Rehman was doing interfaith work for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the driving force behind the Muslim community center at Ground Zero, when the backlash began. She discusses what that experience revealed about American society.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcade Publishing
    Release dateJun 14, 2016
    ISBN9781628726664
    Unavailable
    Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim
    Author

    Sabeeha Rehman

    Sabeeha Rehman is an author, blogger, and speaker on the American Muslim experience. Her memoir Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman's Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim, was shortlisted for the 2018 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, named one of Booklist's Top Ten Religious and Spirituality Books of 2016 and Top Ten Diverse Nonfiction Books of 2017, awarded honorable mention in the 2017 San Francisco Book Festival Awards, Spiritual Category, and chosen as a 2019 United Methodist Women's Reading Program Selection. Excerpts from her memoir were featured in the Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, and Tiferet. Since the publication of her memoir, she has given more than 250 talks in nearly a hundred cities, at houses of worship, academic institutions, libraries, and community organizations, including the Chautauqua Institution, where her lectures have been sold out. Sabeeha has given talks on the art of memoir writing at academic institutions including Hunter College, New York. She is an op-ed contributor to the Houses of Worship column of the Wall Street Journal and New York Daily News. She lives with her husband in New York City.

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    Reviews for Threading My Prayer Rug

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed reading this remarkable memoir of a Pakistani Muslim lady and her family evolving into an American-Pakistani Muslim. I suspect all religious minorities in the US can relate to quite a few of her challenges.Khalid Rehman is doing his residency in New York when his family and Sabeeha’s family negotiate an arranged marriage for them. They are married in Pakistan and then take off to the US to start their life together. Sabeeha is immediately confronted with culture shock. She soon realizes that it will be a challenge to fit into her new home while also maintaining her deep faith as a Muslim. And the challenges increase as their two sons grow into the American culture.Sabeeha tells us of the reactions of American non-Muslims when there has been a terrorist attack involving a Muslim, and of the reaction of the American Muslim community. She also tells of the compassionate non-Muslim Americans who stood beside them through turbulent times. She became an advocate for interfaith relations.But to me, the most interesting part comes toward the end of the book when she focuses on how culture influences the religion, and how a unique Muslim American is developing – an entity that holds true to its faith while absorbing traits of the country they now live in and love. Back when Sabeeha met Khalid she agreed to come to the US for only two years. They have now been married for over 40 years and have been in the US most of that time – and have become American citizens.
    • 5/5
      A valuable and informative account of a woman’s religious journey from Pakistan where she was raised, to New York where she came as a young bride and gradually became involved in the creation of a moderate American Muslim community.Sabeeha Rehman was born and raised in Pakistan. Although her parents were rather liberal, all those around her took the Muslim faith for granted. Her world was immersed in Islam. After an arranged and very happy marriage to a young doctor, she came to New York in 1971. Other Muslims seemed invisible. As her two sons grew, she wanted to ensure they were grounded in Islam. Her first step was to find and create a Muslim community to celebrate the faith and teach the children. She and her husband began a Sunday school and later a Mosque. After her experience of the Haji, a trip to Mecca, her faith deepened. Rehman became a leader in the group as they worked through what was essential to Muslims as a minority religion in America and what should be discarded or reshaped, such as the attitudes toward women. She also became deeply involved with Christians, Jews, and Hindus who shared her hopes for a pluralistic nation.As a woman who has known Islam in both Pakistan and New York, Rehman is able to write knowledgeably about its basic practices and local differences. She provides readers with some of the texture of living as a Muslim woman and offers valuable examples about the practical aspects of how Muslims pray and celebrate. She describes how traditional arranged marriages are giving way to practices that give young people more chances to meet other Muslims and still prioritize the existing families. She discusses differences among Muslims and the Islamophobia in the United States in recent years as well as her growing role in interfaith work.I enthusiastically recommend Threading my Prayer Rug as a fine introduction to what it means to share our country and our world with Muslims.
    • 4/5
      I almost stopped reading this book after finishing the section on the author's arranged marriage -- not because the topic bothered me, but because I wasn't finding Rehman herself all that interesting. (Although the first person account of the process of the arranged marriage was fascinating.) The author became more interesting to me when her story shifted to being a young Pakistani Muslim bride in New York in the early 1970's and she started to become more independent and intellectually engaged.

      Like many people who grow up in a religiously homogonous society, Sabeeha Rehman took her spirituality for granted and had no understanding of which practices were essential parts of her religion and which were local custom. Confronted by the utter strangeness of urban American culture as well as discovering differences in Muslim practice between ethnic groups, she reacted with stunned confusion -- and then with a fierce and persistent desire to understand the reasons behind the differences.

      When her first child was born she experienced an unexpectedly profound desire to ensure he grew up as a Muslim, and then realized how much she needed to do to provide that atmosphere at home. Step by step she deepens her understanding of her faith, engages more deeply in her local community, becomes part of interfaith dialogue, and boldly supports the Americanization of the next generation -- while holding on to what she considers essential Muslim values and beliefs.

      Rehman tells her story in an intellingent but informal and very personal style which is easy to read. This is an excellent book to give to Islamophobes or to read in a book club. Rehman is the "Muslim next door," a wife, mother and daughter, hospital administrator, friend, and proud American citizen. Her story -- and the stories of other American Muslims -- need to be read widely by non-Muslims in order to continue to dismantle the walls of fear and mistrust. And then, as Rehman points out: we all need to go out and meet our neighbors face to face.