Carla Power's Blog, page 2

Lovely friends Caro and Liz being adorably excited re finding my book at Barnes and Noble in Union Square, NYC.

New piece out today on Salon.com-- http://www.salon.com/2015/04/08/the_messy_business_of_defining_islamic_case_in_point_isis/


The messy business of defining “Islamic”: Case in point, ISIS
www.salon.com
Outlier or "very Islamic"? With many voices claiming their right to interpret the Quran, debate gets more complex

Reading Ayaan Hirsi's Heretic about why Islam Needs a Reformation, and am distressed by how she elides what bad Muslims do with what Islam is. By that logic, the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition were sanctioned by Christianity.

If you haven't had too wild of a Friday night, tune into NPR's Morning Edition tomorrow, April 4, to hear me talking about the Quran and Islamic feminism with Linda Wertheimer.

Reading deets: April 1, 2015: Left Bank Books, St. Louis, Missouri

Left Bank Books

399 N. Euclid Avenue, 63108

7 pm

I'm reading from my memoir If The Oceans Were Ink at Left Bank Books in my old neighborhood, the Central West End in St. Louis, on April 1 at 7 pm. Come on by, if you've time and inclination....

At a community hall in Oxford, a crowd crunched on potato chips and sipped tea, while listening to a lecture by the leading Islamic feminist theologian, Amina Wadud. Wadud’s theme was language and gender in the Quran, but this discussion eventually led to a broader one: who has authority to interpret Islam? On this, the American scholar was adamant: any Muslim with an open Quran and an open mind. “What’s this about a specific class of people, the scholars, who can understand it?” she asked. “ By making it seem inaccessible, they create a mystique around it. But how does that jive with the Quran saying that it’s for everybody?”

If you're in St. Louis with an evening free, I'll be at University City Library tonight at 7 pm, talking on 'Reading the Quran in Starbucks' and signing copies of my book, If The Oceans Were Ink.

Delmar's under construction, but don't let that deter you: there's plenty of parking at the Delmar-Harvard school playground lot. Just turn north on St. Mike King Drive, between City Hall and the Library. The parking lot is straight ahead, to the left.

At a Muslim charity fund-raiser on Saturday, I sat next to a young Oxford grad, now studying to be an Islamic scholar. She'd studied English, and loves Austen and the Brontes. She wore a russet hijab, and on top of that, a black niqab. We sat in the women's section of the ballroom, watching men speak on big screens. When a father, husband or waiter strayed beyond the red curtain dividing men from women, she'd flip her niqab back over her face. When they'd gone, she'd flip it back up and eat her kebab...

Huddling in his grey windbreaker against the in-like-a-lion early March cold, Sheikh Akram Nadwi sipped a yogurt drink at a kebab house in Oxford yesterday, and ruminated on justice and peace. I'd always been taught that justice, and the pursuit of it, was a cornerstone belief in Islam. "Yes, justice is important," he said, sipping with some caution at a slightly bitter bottled yogurt drink. "But without peace, nobody can pursue justice. Peace first." " He sipped the yogurt drink, and quickly set his glass down. "Perhaps some sugar in it...?" he said brightly.