Burqas, Baseball, and Apple Pie: Being Muslim in America

219 Pages·2014·2.01 MB·English

by  Ranya Tabari Idliby

BURQAS, BASEBALL, AND APPLE
PIE
ALSO BY RANYA TABARI IDLIBY
The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew—Three Women Search for
Understanding
BURQAS, BASEBALL, AND APPLE
PIE
BEING MUSLIM
IN AMERICA
RANYA TABARI IDLIBY
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For
my mother’s faith,
my father’s reason,
and
my faith and reason in life:
Leia, Taymor, and Sami
* * *
“One who lives forty days among a people becomes one of
them.”
—Muslim proverb
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1: Why Would Anyone Choose to Be a Muslim?
2: Accidental Muslims
3: The Faith Club, My Abrahamic Family
4: A Crisis of Faith: Sticks and Stones Can Hurt
My Bones, but God Should Not Hurt Me
5: Food for Thought
6: In God We Trust: An American Muslim Knight
7: How to Beat a Wife
8: Who Speaks for Islam?
9: Foolish Fatwas
10: “Mommy, Sometimes I Don’t Want to Support the US Team”
11: Thumbs Up!
12: I Heard It on Hannity
13: “No Muslim Parking”
14: “Mom, Are All Terrorists Muslims?”
15: The Path to the Watering Hole
16: “Mommy, Can I Marry a Jew?”
17: Burqas and Pornography: Two Sides of the Same Coin
18: Islam, Not “Hislam”: On Muslim Feminists
19: Apes and Swine
20: “In Any War between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the
Civilized Man”
21: Proud Muslims, Not Lesser Muslims: Let There Be Joy
22: Proud Americans, Not Lesser Americans: America, a Love Story
Notes
Index
8 pages of photographs appear between chapters 11 and 12.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you Elizabeth Kaplan for your perseverance, patience, and critical input during the
early stages of the manuscript, without you there would be no book. Thank you
Karen Wolny for seeing what others did not foresee. Thank you Adrienne Hart
for your help editing, but most importantly for our late-night conversations and
your emotional support. Thank you to the publishing team at Palgrave
Macmillan, who worked hard on producing and marketing this book. Thank you
to all those who have ever believed in me and who continue to support me, you
know who you are. Finally, thank you Leia and Taymor, for being my pride, my
joy, and my daily inspiration.
PROLOGUE “HOW DARE YOU SIT
HERE AND NOT APOLOGIZE FOR
9/11?” AN OLDER, DISTINGUISHED-
LOOKING GENTLEMAN DEMANDED
TO KNOW AT THE END OF THE Q&A
SESSION FOR A PRESENTATION OF
MY BOOK THE FAITH CLUB. I TOOK A
DEEP BREATH, WILLED MY
BEATING HEART TO SLOW, AND
DESPERATELY HELD ON TO WHAT I
HOPED WAS A WARM, EMPATHETIC
SMILE AS I BIT DOWN MY
MOUNTING PANIC. I WAS A
SEASONED PUBLIC SPEAKER BY