We chatted with Sofia Rehman, Muslim scholar, avid book reader, and author of A Treasury of Aishah: A Guidance from the Beloved of the Beloved. During our conversation, we asked her about some of her favorite books. Rehman suggested the following books for us to read.
Tuesday, April 23, is World Book Day. Please take a peak at the books and enjoy.
The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule
Beacon Press – In this bold and radical book, award-winning science journalist Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present.
Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story
Beacon Press — For hundreds of years it was common sense: women were the inferior sex. Their bodies were weaker, their minds feebler, their role subservient. No less a scientist than Charles Darwin asserted that women were at a lower stage of evolution, and for decades, scientists—most of them male, of course—claimed to find evidence to support this.
Superior: The Return of Race Science
Beacon Press — After the horrors of the Nazi regime in World War II, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide network of intellectual racists and segregationists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 title The Bell Curve, which purported to show differences in intelligence among races.
Sa’diyya Shaikh and Fatima Seedat
Muslim Women are already reclaiming their religious authority at mosques. They want to be heard. Professors Sa’diyya Shaikh, and Fatima Seedat show us in The Women’s Khutbah Book that it is possible to re-imagine women authorities at mosques while they give sermon or khutbah to mixed and women-only congregations.
Hidden Heritage: Rediscovering Britain’s Relationship with the Orient
Pinguin Publication –Why was there a Turkish mosque adorning Britain’s most famous botanic garden in the eighteenth century? How did a pair of Persian-inscribed cannon end up in rural Wales? And who is the Moroccan man depicted in a long-forgotten portrait hanging in a west London stately home?
Sorrow and Bliss
Harper Collins Publishers — Martha Friel just turned forty. She used to work at Vogue and was going to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content for no one. She used to live in Paris. Now, she lives in a gated community in Oxford that she hates and can’t bear to leave. But she must now that her loving husband Patrick has just left.
Because there’s something wrong with Martha. There has been since a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, leaving her changed in a way no doctor or drug could fix then and no one, even now, can explain—why can say she is so often sad, cruel to everyone she loves, why she finds it harder to be alive than other people.
River Spirit
Grove Press — Because there’s something wrong with Martha. There has been since a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, leaving her changed in a way no doctor or drug could fix then and no one, even now, can explain—why can say she is so often sad, cruel to everyone she loves, why she finds it harder to be alive than other people.
When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they’re taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power – the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam – Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. A scholar of the Qur’an, Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, even as his choice splinters his family.
The Kindness of Enemies
Grove Press — It’s 2010 and Natasha, a half Russian, half Sudanese professor of history, is researching the life of Imam Shamil, the 19th century Muslim leader who led the anti-Russian resistance in the Caucasian War. When shy, single Natasha discovers that her star student, Oz, is not only descended from the warrior but also possesses Shamil’s legendary sword, the Imam’s story comes vividly to life. As Natasha’s relationship with Oz and his alluring actress mother intensifies, Natasha is forced to confront issues she had long tried to avoid—that of her Muslim heritage.
The Blue Between Sky and Water
Blumsburry USA — In the small Palestinian farming village of Beit Daras, the women of the Baraka family inspire awe. Nazmiyeh is brazen and fiercely protective of her clairvoyant little sister, Mariam, with her mismatched eyes, and of their mother, Um Mahmoud, known for the fearsome djinn that sometimes possesses her. When the family is forced by the newly formed State of Israel to leave their ancestral home, only Nazmiyeh and her brother survive the long road to Gaza. Amidst the violence and fragility of the refugee camp, Nazmiyeh builds a family, navigates crises, and nurtures what remains of Beit Daras’s community.
Related subjects
A Treasury of ‘A’ishah: Mother of the Believers
The Power of Reading Transformed My Life
I Read Banned Books in Iran and Got an “F”
63: Muslim Women Expanding Scared Space to Gain more Religious Authorities
Please Pledge to Our Peace Journalism.
Goltune is editorially independent. We set our agenda. No one edits our editors. No one steers our opinion. This is important as it enables us to stay true to our values.
Every contribution we receive from readers like you, big or small, goes directly into funding our journalism. Please support Goltune, large or small.
Send your contributions to our PayPal account: [email protected]
Or, Click the link to pledge your support.
Thank you,
Goltune Editorial Team