American History is not about Americans

My friend G. Willow Wilson has her new book, Butterfly Mosque, excerpted in the NY Times. Lives – Engagement in Cairo – NYTimes.com. Marwa, a woman a year or two older than I, began reciting a prayer for her grandfather’s soul. The other girls cupped their hands in front of their faces. I did the same. It’s a strange feeling, praying into your hands, filling the air between them with words. We think of divinity as something infinitely big, but it is also infinitely small — the condensation of your breath on your palms, the ridges in your fingertips, the…

I've written before about my admiration of the work of Sufi Comics. They do outstanding work engaging with Muslim spirituality in a modern context. In fact, I have an academic article about their work on Imam Ali coming out in an anthology on Muslim Superheroes.   They now have a new collection of Rumi stories out, and they are making sure that Rumi is not divorced from his Muslim roots. As in the previous volume, the story is end capped by a verse from the Qur'an and quote from either Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) or Imam Ali (AS). Unlike in the…