Excerpt: The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali

In a review earlier this month, I said that I felt that The Muslim Next Door: The Qur’an, the Media, and that Veil Thing by Sumbul Ali-Karamali was an important book. From that review:

The Muslim Next Door should be required reading in the West at this time. Ali-Karamali clearly knows her subject both on a personal and professional level. Raised a Muslim in a country that didn’t at that time have a lot of Muslims in it, the author has a graduate degree in Islamic law from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and has served as a teaching assistant and research associate in Islamic law.

Now January offers up an excerpt from The Muslim Next Door, so that readers can experience Ali-Karamali’s lucid style first-hand:

My father tells a story of tea etiquette. In India, he says, if your host offers you tea, you must decline, because to immediately accept a cup of tea would show greed. If your host offers you tea again -- as he must, if he is at all hospitable -- you must decline a second time, showing your host consideration and a disinclination to be troublesome. But the third time your host offers you tea, as he will, because no host would willingly allow a guest to depart his house bereft of refreshment, then you may gratefully accept.

The full excerpt is here.