The City and the Tower
My blogs
| Gender | Female |
|---|---|
| Industry | Education |
| Location | Saudi Arabia |
| Links | Audio Clip |
| Introduction | This blog is the primary space in which I share my honest reflections, joys, frustrations along my journey into, around, inside and through Islam. I base the title of this blog on Genesis 11:5, as a reminder of God's perception of our feeble human effort. |
| Interests | I grew up in the Church of God, the Evangelical Pentecostal Christian church. During college, I became especially interested in the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition, and transferred to Goshen College in order to be more heavily influenced by this peaceful Christian tradition, which I highly admire to this day. I have a Bachelor's degree in Bible, Religion and Philosophy from Goshen College (Goshen, Indiana USA), which I completed in December 2006. In the years following my Bachelor's degree, I also seriously explored the Greek Orthodox Tradition for 2 years. Ultimately, I did not convert to Greek Orthodoxy because I had serious concerns about the Orthodox church's view and treatment of women. In 2009, I completed a MA in Refugee Care at the University of Essex (Colchester, England) and the Tavistock Clinic (London). My degree is in the therapeutic and psychoanalytic care of refugees. My dissertation was entitled 'the Role of Religion in the Experience of Refugees.' My first memorable exposures to Islam were during my first several years as a Bible major at Messiah College (Grantham, Pennsylvania USA). It was at the time of the US invasion of Iraq that I began to hear positive remarks about Muslims and Islam. A Christian professor told me: "If I were not Christian, I would be Muslim." I began writing essays about the significance of desert geography in the development of Christianity and Islam. I was first intrigued by the Islamic view of Jesus (peace be upon him) in the spring of 2008, when my younger sister returned from a semester in Cairo, Egypt. I began intentionally exploring Islam (by studying the faith and befriending Muslims), primarily for political reasons, in the fall of 2008. Within 1.5 years I learned and memorized enough of the Arabic Quran to implement the 5 daily prayers in Arabic into my life. I first fasted Ramadan in its entirety in 2011. I said Shahada and reverted to Islam in 2011 at the London Central Mosque in England. |
| Favorite books | The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler, Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner |