A Conversation with Asra Nomani

I have several things I want to be sure and mention up front about Asra Nomani, because I don't have much time to write at the moment -- but I don't want to delay this video's posting, because Nomani is such a clear, passionate speaker about the need for moderation and integration in Islam.

This is one of my favorite interviews, because Nomani, the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Fight for the Soul of Islam, speaks directly from her heart. Yet she is also a professional journalist whose Georgetown University Pearl Project was successful in finding out the real killers of her friend and colleague Danny Pearl, murdered in Pakistan in 2002 after being kidnapped from Nomani's Karachi apartment. Nomani applies her professional standards to her personal search for meaning, and the result is a book with uncommon integrity.

It's also a story of uncommon interest, as Nomani -- born, raised, and educated in the United States of Indian parents -- is a lifelong, devout, and moderate Muslim who is also the unwed and single mother of now ten-year-old Shibli Daneel Nomani (his middle name is a tribute to Pearl). Nomani is not a cookie-cutter Muslim; in fact, as she points out in our interview, bearing a child outside of marriage is punishable by death in extremist version of Muslim law. 

Nomani is, instead, an American, a woman, a professional, and a religious moderate struggling to understand where her love for her faith has taken her and what its current meaning is in a world turned upside down by terrorism. While she has addressed the topic on many levels, perhaps the most important to her is right at home, in the town where she grew up: Morgantown, West Virginia. "The Mosque in Morgantown" is the final episode of WETA-TV's "America at a Crossroads" series. It's the story of what happened when Nomani saw that her childhood house of faith had been taken over by men she viewed as extremists -- and she decided to fight back so that people of all genders, ages, and stages could worship together.

I hope you'll watch and enjoy this singular woman talk to me about her own convictions, doubts, and battles. Please let us know what you think! You can reach me any time offline at thebookmaven (at) gmail (dot) com.