Standing Alone In Mecca

As President Bush is preparing to invade Iraq Wall Street Journal correspondent Asra Nomani embarks on a dangerous journey from Middle America to the Middle East to join more than two million fellow Muslims on the hajj the pilgrimage to Mecca required of all Muslims once in their lifetime. Mecca is Islams most sacred city and strictly off limits to nonMuslims. On a journey perilous enough for any American reporter Nomani is determined to take along her infant son Shibli living proof that she an unmarried Muslim woman is guilty of zina or illegal sex. If she is found out the puritanical Islamic law of the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia may mete out terrifying punishment. But Nomani discovers she is not alone. She is following in the fourthousandyearold footsteps of another single mother Hajar known in the West as Hagar the original pilgrim to Mecca and mother of the Islamic nation. Each day of her hajj evokes for Nomani the history of a different Muslim matriarch Eve from whom she learns about sin and redemption Hajar the single mother abandoned in the desert who teaches her about courage Khadijah the first benefactor of Islam and trailblazer for a Muslim womans right to selfdetermination and Aisha the favorite wife of the Prophet Muhammad and Islams first female theologian. Inspired by these heroic Muslim women Nomani returns to America to confront the sexism and intolerance in her local mosque and to fight for the rights of modern Muslim women who are tired of standing alone against the repressive rules and regulations imposed by reactionary fundamentalists. Nomani shows how many of the freedoms enjoyed centuries ago have been erased by the conservative brand of Islam practiced today giving the West a false image of Muslim women as veiled and isolated from the world. Standing Alone in Mecca is a personal narrative relating the modernday lives of the author and other Muslim women to the lives of those who came before bringing the changing face of women in Islam into focus through the unique lens of the hajj. Interweaving reportage political analysis cultural history and spiritual travelogue this is a modern womans jihad offering for Westerners a neverbeforeseen look inside the heart of Islam and the emerging role of Muslim women.