I enjoyed Asma Gull Hasan's other book and her essays on her website, and so I expected that this book would live up to the rest of her work. However, thought it was somewhat interesting and informative, it was overall fairly a disappointment.
Though there was no age recommendation written on the jacket, it seemed to be written for the middle-school level. Hasan seems to underestimate the intelligence and comprehension of her audience by not only making the language simple but also making the book itself a mere 174 pages in a relatively large font.
The book is organized into several chapters, each of which is a reason why she is Muslim; for example, the fact she was born Muslim, and the fact that Islam respects women. She used facts and citations for each point, but she also included anecdotes from her life. This could have been more interesting though, especially since some of the anecdotes did not seem to really relate to the material.
Another slight annoyance was that though she claims to speak Spanish, the phrases and words she throws in are egregiously wrong.
Had I not had higher expectations for this book, however, I would have probably enjoyed it more, and I would recommend it to someone who knows little - or much misinformation - about Islam. Some people may criticize her because she does not wear or believe in hijab, but Hasan provides an informative and easy-to-read perspective on Islam.
Instead of bashing the book, I would say that it's important for the Muslim community to have people like her speaking out. The significance of the title of her book may be a response to Ibn Warraq's rant against Islam, "Why I Am Not a Muslim." Though I honestly think Hasan could have done a better job than she did, at least she was more informed about Islam than Warraq, whose one-sided book criticizes quotations from the Qur'an completely out of context and judges the entire religion by the actions of some.
I guess if you are a pretty twentysomething Muslima who attended Wellesley and sees Islam as one day becoming as mainstream as the Episcopalian or Methodist Churches, you too will get your book hyped by publishers hoping to cash in on post 9/11 America's fascination for almost all things Islam --especially when your message is one that says Islam can and will accomodate moral relativity. To hear Asma tell it, if Muhammad were alive today, he would be a website moghul, loving all things American and promoting ecumenical love for all. Asma adores both her American nationality and her Muslim faith and while this is admirable, ignoring the obvious and trying to rationalise and put a spin on it all is not.
Ms. Hasan would like America's freedom-worshipping, consumerist masses to believe that Islam condones everything from feminism to individual choice to the homosexual agenda. This is simply not so, nor is it necessarily a bad thing about Islam either. Islam has rigid rules and absolutes. There are things which are Right and there are things which are Wrong. Too bad that we live in a world today where a faith which has such strong values needs an apologist like Asma to let us know Islam could become as "tolerant" as a mainline Protestant church.
Truly, Ms. Hasan's writing is at best basic and she simply is not knowlegeable enough in theology or history or modern-day geopolitics to write such a book as this. Ms. Hasan merely wants you, me and all her galpals from Wellesley and her present buddies at the San Francisco law firm she works for to know she is just another normal, funloving all-American girl who isn't like those hairy bad men we see nightly on the news. Guess what Asma? I believe you, because I know plenty of other patriotic, loving American Muslims similar to you. That being said, I also know that there is more to being a Muslim than just not eating pork and going to the mosque on fridays. There are some things which Islam will not --cannot-- ever accept from our over-secularized, hedonistic society. Both you and Manji (the Canadian lesbian "Muslim" feminist) need to realize this.
