Daughters of Another Path: Experiences of American Women Choosing Islam [Paperback]

Carol L. Anway (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Daughters of Another Path: Experiences of American Women Choosing Islam reflects Carol Anway's experiences as a mother whose daughter became a Muslim convert and the journey of reconciliation and acceptance of her daughter's change in tradition. Daughters of Another Path includes portions of stories from fifty-three American born women who have chosen to become Muslim. Why and how they came to Islam; what their lives are like as a result of that choice; How non-Muslims can relate to Muslims that are relatives, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. -- Midwest Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 215 pages
• Publisher: Yawna Publications; Edition Unstated edition (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964716909
• ISBN-13: 978-0964716902
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #521,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Islam > Women in Islam

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book I'd like to give my mom, April 6, 2004

By 

H. Browne "UmmNoureen" (Massachusetts, USA & Cairo, Egypt) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Daughters of Another Path: Experiences of American Women Choosing Islam (Paperback)

One review called this book "SAD", another "INACCURATE" and I think what is truly sad and inaccurate is the attitude that these reviewers displayed. It is clear to me that the problem they have is not with this book but with the religion.

The point of this book is to show how families of women who converted to Islam have been affected by their daughters' choices. It is not meant to justify or criticize these choices - just to present them as food for thought and discussion. I think it is the author's hope that her book will open doors of understanding between those daughters and their families so that they can do what families do best - give each other unconditional love and support.

A particular strength of this book is that the women who responded to the survey represent a broad sample of women converts to Islam. I think this is an important contribution because it helps to break the stereotype that women converting to Islam do it only because of their husband's coercion or because they are "lost souls". The book shows that between the two extremes there are many intelligent and open-minded women who have independently chosen the path of Islam.

The only reason I did not give this book 5 stars is because I felt there could have been more input from Muslim women in the *analysis* of the responses. At times it felt like the book was kind of a cut and paste job, with the author's comments here and there.

I think it would also have been a better book had Anway gotten a broader range of input from Islamic scholars on the doctrinal information that she included. I felt that she presented Islam as having a rather narrow/definitive system of beliefs - and those familiar with Islam know that there is a great deal of variation among the scholars and the believers. In fact, the responses to her survey clearly show that the "other path" chosen by these women is not one path, but many paths going in the same direction.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and valuable with minor flaws, March 8, 2005

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Daughters of Another Path: Experiences of American Women Choosing Islam (Paperback)

I'm not Muslim myself, but I have long had a lot of love, respect, and admiration for Islam and Muslims (growing up in the Eighties and early Nineties, my family were even friends with a wonderful Iranian family who had fled the Revolution). It answers a lot of questions and concerns of not only the loved ones of women who have become Muslims but also of people who just would like to know more about Islam, particularly modern womens' role in it and why so many American women are choosing to become Muslims. I'd like to consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the faith despite not being a member, but I too ended up learning things I hadn't known about before. It's clear that the women who responded to the survey sent out by Mrs. Anway and her daughter Jodi are very happy in Islam, feel it empowers them instead of, as the media would have people believe, oppresses or represses them, have wonderful marriages (although there were a few respondents who reported having had bad marriages, it was clear that that was the fault of the "men" they had had the misfortune of marrying, not because of the nature of Islam itself), feel very in tune with spiritual matters, and in many cases are happier about themselves and their lives since choosing Islam. It saddens and upsets me to see reviewers giving this book low ratings not because of the content but because they apparently dislike Islam anyway and seem to not believe anything positive about it. Are all of these women talking effusively about how they feel more liberated in hijab than in the type of clothing most American women wear, clothing which causes them to be looked at as a sex object and not a person, how well their husbands treat them, how warmly their in-laws welcomed them, how many rights women have under Islam, just brainwashed liars? That insults everyone's intelligence to claim that this book isn't telling the "truth." The truth is what these women experience and have chosen to share, and if that goes against what you believe about Islam, I guess nothing can convince you that, despite what the media portrays and how certain men in certain cultures have kept their women illiterate to keep them from reading the Koran and learning how many rights women really do have under Islam, Islam really is a religion of love, moderation, and respect and rights for women.

As others have mentioned, there is a cut and paste feel to the text; it would have been even better had there been more scholarly information on Islam, like in-depth explanations of the marriage rituals, the pilgrimage to Mecca (which women btw ARE allowed on, despite the allegations of another reviewer), giving to charity, the various holidays, what's in the various sections of the Koran, types of Muslim schools in the United States, and if it's usual to have a little ceremony or celebration after taking shahada (becoming a Muslim), and if so, what the celebration consists of. And as others have pointed out, a lot of the women surveyed seemed to have become Muslim primarily because of their husbands, or the men who later became their husbands. As a Jew by Choice myself, I share that complaint when reading books about conversion to Judaism; despite popular perception, a lot of people convert to another religion (Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) for themselves, while single, finishing the process while still single, not marrying for some time afterwards or even ever. Conversion is always stimulated by much more than a romantic relationship.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Quite What I Expected..., August 3, 2001

By 

"berwynne" (Freeport, Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Daughters of Another Path: Experiences of American Women Choosing Islam (Paperback)

When I purchased this book, I was surprised to find that it read more as a personal account of one woman's struggle to come to terms with her daughter's conversion to Islam from Christianity, then as a collection of essays by Islamic women about why they chose to convert. While this aspect of the book exists, I found the excerpted nature of the material, along with the author's piecemeal (and rather non-committal) commentary to leave me flat, wishing for more details about the individual Muslim women and their stories. This book is interesting, but not compelling, and I would recommend it more for people facing the same situation as the author -- committed Christians who are trying to come to terms with a loved one's conversion to the Islamic faith -- than I would to anyone striving to gain a deep understanding of what Islam means to those who have converted.