The Muslimah Who Fell to Earth

Abstract

Prompted by a chance encounter with a colleague who had commented that Samia Hussain was the only Muslimah she knew – in a city in which about 12% of the population is Muslim –the author reached out across Canada to assemble an edited collection of autobiographical essays by Canadian Muslimahs: The Muslimah Who Fell to Earth: Personal Stories by Canadian Muslim Women. She asked them to “share their personal experiences relating to what it meant for them to be Canadians and Muslims, to tell readers details about their lives, their concerns, and their aspirations” (p. 2). Hussain made “considerable effort to reflect the diversity of Canada’s Muslim population” (p. 2), recounting at a book launch how she approached strangers on the street to ask them to contribute. This effort, which surely led to the inclusion of people who might otherwise have been left out, is also the source of my only minor criticism: Inviting women who are not normally writers to write their own stories gives the book a slightly uneven quality. I wish that Hussain had taken a stronger role as editor and tidied up those pieces that are a bit choppy, hard to follow due to missing elements, or end abruptly without a seeming conclusion. Of course, that is also the beauty of the collection, for writers normally already have some kind of public presence. Bringing out the voices of ordinary Muslimahs so that readers can “meet” women they would not otherwise meet is a gift of bridge building ...