Postmuslim

An intimate and expansive book exploring what it means to be Arab-Muslim in the twenty-first century

'Postmuslim' is Youssef Rakha's term to describe an attitude that embraces the fullness of Muslim identity rather than its essentialized, idealized, or distorted versions. Impassioned, erudite, and playful, this book traces Rakha's intellectual and spiritual transformations across three decades alongside significant moments in history.

Rakha describes 'losing his religion' as a teenager in Cairo before moving to Britain as a young student, yearning for freedoms denied to him in his middle-class Egyptian milieu. But what he sees and comes to understand about Britain and the West eventually disenchants him as well. This book is a record of Rakha's attempts to create an identity for himself from out of the resources of two cultures about which he feels ambivalent. Along the way, he explores subjects such as boxing and democracy, addiction and the great ninth-century poet Al-Mutanabbi, recent Egyptian history rewritten in the form of horror film tropes, and a bold proposal to revitalize Arab-Muslim culture via the surprisingly multicultural lifeways of the Ottoman Empire.

Postmuslim tells the story of Islam's relationship with the West in the last thirty years from a perspective rarely available to the Western reader. This is a vital book for anyone negotiating their own relationship to alienation, inheritance, intersecting identities, and the hypocrisy of those in power.