CT Cover to cover



	Cover to Cover Book Review December 2008 Where the streets had a name Author:Randa Abdel-Fattah Publisher:PanMacMillan Australia, 2008 “I can smell the air of her village, pure and scented. I can see her village as though it were Bethlehem itself. I can smell the almond trees. Hear my heels click on the courtyard tiles. See myself jumping two steps at a time down the limestone stairs. I can see Sitti Zeynab sitting in the front porch of the house. I only have to remember that walk through her memories and I know I can make my promise. I’ve already lost once. I refuse to lose again. ‘Stay alive,’ I whisper. ‘And you shall touch that soil again.’” Readers may be familiar with the two previous novels by Randa Abdel-Fattah – Does my Head Look Big in This and 10 Things I hate about me; both of these books covered themes around growing up Muslim in Australia. The new release, Where the Streets Had a Name covers much less familiar territory as it follows the story of Hayaat, a young Palestinian girl, as she embarks on a quest to save her sick grandmother. With her friend Samy, she sets out to travel from Bethlehem in the West Bank to her grandmother’s ancestral home in Jerusalem (Al-Quds). The reality of what happens on the way will surprise those who have never been to Palestine and be all too familiar for those who have. Randa Abdel-Fattah describes herself as an Australian-Egyptian-Palestinian, she has travelled in Palestine and has first hand knowledge of what such a journey entails. Apart from this first hand knowledge she has included scenes based on documented cases of interactions between soldiers of occupation and Palestinians. Despite this serious side to the book, there is enough humour to make it engaging and highly readable. If you want to know what happens in the end, you will have to get a copy and read it yourself - it will open your eyes to the ongoing suffering faced by Palestinians just trying to go about their day to day lives and it will give you a glimpse of the courage, strength and humour that somehow makes these lives more bearable. Umm Safiyah Cover to Cover Book Review November 2008 The Jihad Seminar Published by: University of WA Press August 2008, Author: Hanifa Deen Rating: interesting but requires perseverance I actually went into the bookshop to “have a look” but, while the attendant was totaling the cost of the books I had somehow picked up, I noticed this book sitting on the politics shelf near the cash register. I picked it up, paid and hurriedly left the bookshop before any more books could accidentally add themselves to the pile. The book tells the story surrounding three Muslims who attended a seminar in Melbourne run by Catch The Fire Inc, a Christian organisation in March 2002. The three who attended the seminar Jan Jackson, Domenyk Eades and Malcolm Thomas, were all Anglo-Australian Muslim converts and they blended in seamlessly with the other members of the audience. Apparently all three converts individually decided to attend this seminar, referred to as The Jihad Seminar, without any prompting by any outside agency. The seminar was titled “Insight into Islam” and was run by and aimed at an audience of Evangelical Christians. It seemed unlikely that such a lecture could have anything new to say to three Muslims who had all come to Islam after taking the time to educate themselves about the principles and basis of Islam. They were however to be surprised, shocked and frightened by the treatment Islam received at the hands of the lecturer Pastor Daniel Scot. What they heard led them to inform the Islamic Council of Victoria and a complaint of religious vilification was subsequently made against Catch the Fire Ministries . The Jihad Seminar attempts to tell the story of what happened next. When I picked up the book I was naively expecting to find a story with a beginning, middle and an end - with a satisfactory conclusion where everyone (well maybe not everyone) lives happily ever after. The Jihad Seminar is not that book. Instead it is a meandering tale of the case and the people involved that ultimately reaches no satisfactory conclusion – much like the case itself. This is partially related to the difficulty of writing a book about a legal case when some of the participants are not willing to talk to you, and partially a result of the long drawn out process that the case became. The focus was well and truly off the original three complainants by the time the case was concluded in June 2007. In the “Author’s Note” at the start of the book, Hanifa Deen, expresses her own feelings about the case: “Five years later I was still shaking my head: bemusement became frustration – frustration led to self pity – where was my closure?” There was to be no closure for author or for the reader. Would I recommend this book? It depends on what you want it for – if you want to find out what happens “in the end” this book won’t satisfy you. If you want to know what happened along the way, it’s all in there. The story of what happened when Muslims took up their rights and spoke out against the treatment Islam was receiving - most likely it won’t encourage you to take the same course. The most interesting parts of the book for me were the times the author refers to her own background and experiences growing up in Western Australia as a third generation Australian of Pakistani Muslim ancestry. Perhaps there is another book there, waiting to be written?

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