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    If the oceans were ink by Carla Power Summary

    If the oceans were ink
    Carla Power
    4.12 (2041 Reviews)
    SocietyPhilosophyPolitics
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    Overview of If the oceans were ink

    A Pulitzer finalist exploring Islam through friendship, "If the Oceans Were Ink" follows journalist Carla Power's year studying the Quran with Sheikh Akram Nadwi. Praised by Fareed Zakaria as "the conversation that needs to be taking place around the world."

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    Best quote from If the oceans were ink

    “

    Islam is not an idea, it is a history.

    ”
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    What happens when a secular American journalist sits down with a conservative Islamic scholar to study the Quran? In a world quick to draw battle lines between East and West, Muslim and non-Muslim, religious and secular, Carla Power's friendship with Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi shouldn't make sense. Yet their year-long journey through Islam's holiest text reveals something far more interesting than conflict: the messy, beautiful complexity of faith in practice. Power, raised Jewish-Quaker and shaped by feminist ideals, found herself spending weekly sessions in Oxford cafes with a man who seemed her opposite in every way. But the Sheikh defied easy labels. When asked if he was Salafi, liberal, or conservative, he simply replied, "I'm not this, I'm not that. I'm just Muslim." This refusal to fit neatly into boxes would become the theme of their entire relationship-and perhaps the most important lesson about understanding Islam in our polarized age. Sheikh Akram's independence had a way of unsettling people on all sides. He'd stand before conservative congregations and declare that prayer caps were merely South Asian custom, not Islamic requirement. He'd tell traditional audiences that women could cut their hair short based on examples from the Prophet's wives. These weren't provocations for their own sake-they emerged from his meticulous research into Islamic history, which revealed a faith far more flexible than modern practice suggested.

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