{"id":115545,"date":"2023-11-23T08:27:47","date_gmt":"2023-11-23T08:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/?p=115545"},"modified":"2023-11-23T22:01:22","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T22:01:22","slug":"young-americans-are-picking-up-the-quran-to-understand-the-resilience-of-muslim-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/2023\/11\/23\/young-americans-are-picking-up-the-quran-to-understand-the-resilience-of-muslim-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Americans are picking up the Qur\u2019an \u2018to understand the resilience of Muslim Palestinians\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Young Americans are picking up the Qur\u2019an \u2018to understand the resilience of Muslim Palestinians\u2019<\/h1>\n
By Alaina Demopoulos<\/h6>\n
From The Guardian<\/h6>\n

Readers find themes that align with their values as they seek to \u2018grow empathy\u2019 for a religion long vilified in the west<\/h3>\n

M<\/span>egan B Rice loves reading. She started a romance novel club on the instant messaging platform Discord and posts book reviews on\u00a0TikTok<\/a>. Last month Rice, who is 34 and lives in Chicago, used her social media accounts to speak out about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to talk about the faith of Palestinian people, how it\u2019s so strong, and they still find room to make it a priority to thank God, even when they have everything taken away from them,\u201d she said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Some Muslim followers suggested she might be interested in reading the Qur\u2019an, Islam\u2019s central religious text, for more context on the faith.\u00a0<\/strong>So Rice, who did not grow up religious, organized a \u201cWorld Religion Book Club\u201d on Discord, where people of all backgrounds could study the Qur\u2019an alongside her.<\/p>\n

The more Rice read, the more the text\u2019s contents aligned with her own core belief system. She found the Qur\u2019an to be anti-consumerist, anti-oppressive and feminist. Within a month, Rice took the shahada, Islam\u2019s official profession of faith, bought hijabs to wear, and became a Muslim.<\/p>\n

Rice is not alone in wanting to experience the Qur\u2019an. On TikTok, young people are reading the text to better understand a religion that\u2019s long been vilified by western media, and to show solidarity with the many Muslims in Gaza. Videos under the hashtag \u201cquranbookclub\u201d \u2013 which has a modest 1.9 million views on the app \u2013 show users holding up their newly purchased texts and reading verses for the first time. Others are finding free versions online, or listening to someone sing the verses while they drive to work. Not all the people reading the Qur\u2019an on TikTok are women, but interest overlaps with the #BookTok space, a subcommunity where mostly female users gather to discuss books…<\/p>\n

To read the full article,\u00a0Please click on the link below:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2023\/nov\/20\/palestine-quran-islam-americans-tiktok<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alaina Demopoulos
\nFrom The Guardian
\n“After 9\/11, the Qur\u2019an became an instant bestseller, though at the time many Americans purchased it to confirm biases they held about Islam being an inherently violent religion. \u201cThe difference is that in this moment, people are not turning to the Qur\u2019an to understand the October 7 attack by Hamas,\u201d Grewal said. \u201cThey are turning to the Qur\u2019an to understand the incredible resilience, faith, moral strength and character they see in Muslim Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":115546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,45],"tags":[253],"class_list":["post-115545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-current-affairs-and-politics","tag-the-guardian","column","twocol","has-thumbnail"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115551,"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115545\/revisions\/115551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/khutbahbank.org.uk\/v2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}