My Isl@m
How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind and Doubt Freed My Soul
By Amir Ahmad Nasr
St. Martin’s Press (2013)
In his honest, provocative, and courageous debut, Amir Ahmad Nasr—a popular Afro-Arab Sudanese blogger—steps out from behind the curtain of anonymity and emerges as a voice of a new generation of tech-savvy liberal Muslims. Set in war-ravaged Sudan, oil-rich Qatar, multi-cultural Malaysia, the United States, Turkey and the new frontiers of cyberspace, My Isl@m is a poignant, honest, and uplifting memoir of how blogging and the internet opened the eyes and heart of one young Muslim man to a world beyond his religious fundamentalist upbringing.
Working with Ellen has not only been highly fruitful, but a profound and transformative experience as well. Her warmth, genuine care, and impeccable experience inspires a lot of confidence and will bring out the best in you if you do the work. She is extremely sharp and she delivers. I can’t recommend her highly enough.
“Displays the charm of a good blog: irreverent, nonchalent . . .
. . . open to fresh ideas, generous to other writers, ostentatiously unpretentious and secretly grandiose. Mr. Nasr appears to be convinced that his own intellectual trajectory from medieval-style Quran-memorizing to thoughtful dude, digitally loquacious, reflects a deep trend in world history, with the Internet as prime mover. . . The possibility that he may be right imparts to his pages an electric glow . . .”
―The Wall Street Journal
“Structured wittily around a love affair with Islam . . .
Nasr’s account is straightforward, fluent and full of lively allusions for further readings. A candid, cosmopolitan look at the experience of Islam in the digital age.”
– Kirkus Reviews
“Seamlessly blends memoir with political thought . . .
The book smoothly follows his journey out of a simplistic understanding of Islam, through rationalism and semi-atheism, towards a conversion to Sufism. Personal history . . . is the book’s strongest aspect, delivered in Nasr’s casual, conversational tone. . . A valuable and enjoyable read.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Find My Isl@m at these online retailers
