POSTMUSLIM

An Egyptian author examines the dilemmas of identifying as Arab and Muslim in the contemporary world.

In essays that span a youth living in Cairo, an adulthood spent in Britain, and, later, the United Arab Emirates, the author explores both the discomforts and epiphanies that living between Arab and Western cultures has brought him. He begins by mapping his relationship to Islam through the lens of boxing—“one more part of me that didn’t originate in Muslim civilization.” The sport, he writes, is “a spiritual routine. An aesthetic discipline. Self-care.” He traces internal fractures, such as the one he developed toward Islam. He experienced a “religious change of heart” that set him on his path West in 1991, the year R.E.M. released Losing My Religion. “Even in my head,” he writes, “I still can’t hear the phrase except the way they sang it.” Islam, along with the conservative milieu in which he lived, felt like a suffocating trap, whereas the West—especially Britain—felt like a “glittering world of ideas and relationships.” Only after he began attending university in northern England did he experience the alienation that came from being a brown Muslim “other.” He embraced democracy and liberal capitalism even as he bore witness to Western islamophobia and political hypocrisy—not only in Europe, but also among British and American colleagues in an Abu Dhabi newsroom. Rather than succumb to his politically disillusioned father’s despair, the author discovered that he could exist as a Muslim in any space, Western or Middle Eastern, “without feeling either beholden to or victimized by the West.” Thoughtful, imaginative and erudite, Rakha’s book offers a vision of Arab-Muslim identity based in tolerance, diversity, and pride in global citizenship.

A bold and timely collection that artfully challenges Arab-Muslim stereotypes.