When A Madrassa Scholar And Jewish Reporter Become Friends
It’s important to listen to the quiet men and women who are showing us a humane Islam, says author.
As a journalist for Newsweek and Time, London-based American journalist Carla Power, author of If The Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship And A Journey To The Heart Of The Quran, covered hotspots like Afghanistan and Egypt. Her frustration with the media’s depiction of Islam as a violent, repressive faith led her to seek out a madrassa-trained scholar and researcher at Oxford University, Sheikh Mohammed Akram Nadwi. In a series of conversations spanning a year, they studied the Quran together, discussing everything from jihad to nail polish. What she discovered upended many of her, and our, preconceptions and showed how violent organisations like ISIS have perverted the truth about Islam. Talking from Brooklyn during her book tour, she
