Pakistani-American Ayesha Mattu met her future husband minutes after she vowed never again to date outside of her Islamic faith. She was heartsick after failed relationships with non-Muslim men. Then, along came Randy: white, agnostic and utterly irresistible.
Mattu, a San Francisco human rights consultant, chronicles their courtship in "Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women" (Soft Skull; $15.95), a collection of essays about love, flirting, dating and sex.
The anthology, which debuted Valentine's Day and is among Amazon's Top 200 books, is making a splash in and beyond the Islamic community by shattering stereotypes of Muslim women as oppressed and submissive. On their book tour, Mattu and co-editor Nura Maznavi are greeting standing-room-only crowds eager to hear them and the 23 other contributors share real-life stories of lust, heartbreak and soul mates.
- Co-editor Ayesha Mattu of "Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women" (Soft Skull Press, $15.95) hosts contributors as they share their stories.
- When: 2 p.m. March 4
- Where: Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St., San Francisco. www.birdbeckett.com.
From chaperoned dating and matrimonial websites to college flirtations and a whirlwind international romance, "InshAllah," which means God willing, unites gay, straight, pious and secular stories of love and longing among ethnically diverse Islamic American women of all ages.
"It's a first and long overdue," says Zahra Ayubi, a visiting scholar and expert on Islam, gender, and ethics at Stanford University's Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. "And it's an important milestone in terms of the level of frank conversation and discourse regarding Muslim women."
Reflecting the diversity of the nation's estimated 8 million Muslims was important for Mattu and Maznavi, who came up with the book idea five years ago over coffee at a Union Square cafe. Maznavi, a civil rights attorney now living in Los Angeles, had just seen the movie "50 First Dates" and wondered what the Muslim version would look like. Under Hollywood's control? Likely not accurate.
"We felt there was a prevailing image of Muslim women as silent and submissive, and that wasn't reflective of us," explains Mattu, 39, via phone from New York. "Most of us are highly independent, funny and opinionated. We thought it was time to tell our story in a more honest and individual way."
At first, rejection
After a dozen publishing houses denied their pitch because it didn't fit into one category, such as religion or chick lit, the women's agent dumped them.
"It was pretty demoralizing," Maznavi, 33, recalls in a phone interview. "So, we moped."
Then, in 2010, Mattu and Maznavi won the nonfiction round at San Francisco's Pitchapalooza, the "American Idol" for budding authors. They scored a new agent that night, then received a contract with Soft Skull Press, a small Berkeley publishing house.
Their national call for submissions via Facebook and Twitter yielded more than 200 entries from women around the country, such as Tanzila Ahmed, a pink-haired Bangladeshi teenager from Southern California who fell for the frontman of a Muslim punk band. Or Najva Sol, a writer who came out to her Iranian Muslim parents at a Maryland coffee shop. Or Lena Hassan, the pen name for a Pakistani computer science major who found her husband on an Arabic website and accepted his marriage proposal over email.
Universal issues
Many of the issues, such as interracial dating or challenging parental authority, are universal. That's one reason Jittaun Batiste Jones, of San Jose, loves the book. The 33-year-old African-American is a convert to Islam and has been married to her Indonesian husband for eight years. She says it is refreshing to see issues of sex and intimacy discussed so openly among Muslim Americans.
She sees the same openness and emerging dialogue in her own community, particularly when it comes to marital issues. In other words, not just finding love but sustaining it.
"The community has been evolving over the years," Jones says. "There weren't frank discussions about sexual needs or what you're supposed to do when resentment and problems can affect love and affection. But the second generation (of Muslims born in the United States) has pushed the need to address these issues."
For instance, the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara that Jones frequents recently recruited an Egyptian Muslim marriage and family therapist to work with couples. He helped her and her husband, Farid Alhadi, rekindle their spark and improve communication, she says.
Some criticism
Still, change can be slow, especially about hot-button topics, such as premarital sex and homosexuality, both of which are considered haraam, or forbidden. For that reason, there has been some criticism of "Love, InshAllah" from religious leaders who believe these topics are un-Islamic, Mattu says.
The editors didn't set out to create a religious book, but to share love stories.
"These topics are challenging for the community to talk about, but people are rising to the occasion," Mattu says. "Muslim women in particular have been waiting a long time to talk about these things. We're hoping the religious leaders will work with us as partners to help make Islam a living, breathing thing relevant in all of our lives."