Excerpts from "The Conference of the Books"

Excerpt: "...But for me, and may God forgive me, your Sunna is a moment of unadulterated beauty spent in your love. Your Sunna is your beauty, and beauty cannot be mimicked. It must be felt and loved. All the descriptive manuals of the world cannot teach an ugly heart about beauty. And all the reports and transmissions of the world cannot teach the obstinate heart the Sunna of the beloved."

Excerpt: "...Yet another woman attracted to the religion and repulsed by the followers—validated by the Qur’an and voided by Muslims. “When I first visited the mosque, believe me, I was dressed modestly. But a man ran yelling at me,” she insists. My first lesson in Islam was that men have bodies, women only have ‘awras (private parts). In fact, I am nothing but an ‘awra."