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  • Time Period contains "Contemporary"

As background to the locations described in Dreams of Trespass, the memoir of Fatima Mernissi's childhood in Morocco, readers can view and download a map of Morocco from the United Nations Cartographic Section website in pdf format.

adhan Muslim call to prayer. ahl al-bayt literally, “people of the house,” referring to members of the household of the prophet Muḥammad. ahl al-kitāb literally, “people of the…

1947 British colonial rule ends with partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan and East Pakistan. Pakistan and India dispute boundaries of mountainous region of Kashmir.…

As background to Leila Aboulela's novel Minaret, readers can link to and download the United Nations Cartographic Section maps of the Sudan and South Sudan as pdfs. Note that the Sudan and South Sudan were not yet divided during the period in which…

1871-1874 Turkish and Egyptian forces conquer the territory of today’s Sudan. 1881-1885 Muhammed Ahmad declares himself al-Mahdi, or awaited guide, and begins reconquest of Sudan. Mahdi’s forces capture…

550-330 B.C.E. Achaemenid dynasty rules the first Persian Empire. The city of Persepolis, was founded in 518 B.C.E. 1914-1918 Iran declares neutrality during World War I. 1923–1926 Reza Khan is named…

Raised on a site sacred to three great faiths, the Dome of the Rock is an elaborate, architecturally significant domed shrine built over a large rock believed to be the site from which Muhammad ascended to heaven during the Night Journey, ca. 621 CE.…

A young U.S. Muslim is leading a global interfaith movement. In a memoir on the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation Eboo Patel relates how he embraced an ecumenical…

Information on the more than 2,000 U.S. mosques is provided in The American Mosque 2011. Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky, has surveyed American mosques and their communities with the support of the…

The Butterfly Mosque is the memoir of an American woman raised in a secular family who discovers the value of religion during her travels. Interested in history, art, and literature, G. Willow Wilson takes a teaching job in Cairo. She meets the…

Western discussions of Muslim women’s public attire seldom take into account what women themselves think about this issue. In the past decade, the Gallup Organization has been polling intensively in Turkey and other Muslim countries. A Gallup…

Is veiling is oppressive? It’s not quite that simple. Offering insightful and often surprising analysis, Harvard professor Leila Ahmed has described a mostly unheralded trend among Muslim women: choosing to wear head coverings and concealing…

“There is a passage in the Qur’an that says if you memorize the Qur’an and teach it to others, you will be successful in this life and the next life.” In Koran by Heart, the young scholar who says this has already committed…

This electronic resource features more than 3,000 reference articles and chapters by leading scholars and specialists in their fields are linked below. Qur'anic studies resources include two Oxford World's Classics translations of the Qur'an, linked…

In this memoir, Eboo Patel relates his journey to faith-based activism with American youth. Patel, a native of the Chicago area who was born of Indian immigrants and raised in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, recounts the challenges he faced straddling multiple…

From Nobel Prize–winning author Orhan Pamuk, the novel Snow paints a fantastic picture of daily life in Kars, a dreamlike town in the mountains of far eastern Turkey. Following an exiled poet who becomes stranded in Kars during a weeklong…

The Story of the Qur’an begins with an accessible account of the origins of the Qur’an that places Muhammad, the Muslim holy book, and the first adherents to Islam in historical context. Ingrid Mattson, a professor of Islamic studies,…

“The truth couldn’t be kept away, it was cunning, sly-natured, seeping through at its own indifferent pace.” In Hisham Matar’s debut novel, a Libyan boy must come to terms with difficult truths about Libya, loyalty, and truth…

Pakistan was created as an independent nation in 1947, carved from predominantly Muslim regions in the east and west of India after British colonial rule ended on the Indian subcontinent. Ever since, Pakistan has struggled to be Islamic yet secular,…

In the Qur’an, Muslims are instructed that at least once in their lives they must take part in the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the spiritual center of the Islamic world . Over the centuries, artists, craftspeople, and others have…

From the late New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid comes a chronicle of his quixotic efforts to restore his family’s ancestral home in Lebanon. While House of Stone is a memorable tale of the ups and downs of house renovation, it is also a…

Edward E. Curtis IV places a treasure trove of information about Islam in the United States at the reader’s fingertips. The primary sources that make up this collection are arranged chronologically: from the early nineteenth century to World…

Highly symbolic and often misunderstood, Muslim women’s wearing of the veil sometimes evokes passionate responses, from other Muslims as well as from non-Muslims. In this insightful and often surprising analysis, Harvard University professor…

Leila Aboulela’s novel Minaret follows the spiritual journey of a young woman exiled from her home in Sudan and forced to invent a new life in London, far from the comforts of her privileged childhood and secular education. She supports herself…