Young Americans are picking up the Qur’an ‘to understand the resilience of Muslim Palestinians’

Source: The Guardian

Readers find themes that align with their values as they seek to ‘grow empathy’ for a religion long vilified in the west

By Alaina Demopoulos; Mon 20 Nov 2023

Megan B Rice loves reading. She started a romance novel club on the instant messaging platform Discord and posts book reviews on TikTok. Last month Rice, who is 34 and lives in Chicago, used her social media accounts to speak out about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“I wanted to talk about the faith of Palestinian people, how it’s so strong, and they still find room to make it a priority to thank God, even when they have everything taken away from them,” she said in an interview.

Some Muslim followers suggested she might be interested in reading the Qur’an, Islam’s central religious text, for more context on the faith. So Rice, who did not grow up religious, organized a “World Religion Book Club” on Discord, where people of all backgrounds could study the Qur’an alongside her.

The more Rice read, the more the text’s contents aligned with her own core belief system. She found the Qur’an to be anti-consumerist, anti-oppressive and feminist. Within a month, Rice took the shahada, Islam’s official profession of faith, bought hijabs to wear, and became a Muslim.

Rice is not alone in wanting to experience the Qur’an. On TikTok, young people are reading the text to better understand a religion that’s long been vilified by western media, and to show solidarity with the many Muslims in Gaza. Videos under the hashtag “quranbookclub” – which has a modest 1.9 million views on the app – show users holding up their newly purchased texts and reading verses for the first time. Others are finding free versions online, or listening to someone sing the verses while they drive to work. Not all the people reading the Qur’an on TikTok are women, but interest overlaps with the #BookTok space, a subcommunity where mostly female users gather to discuss books.

Zareena Grewal is an associate professor at Yale who is working on a book about Islamic scripture and religious tolerance in American culture. She said that this TikTok interest wasn’t entirely unprecedented.

After 9/11, the Qur’an became an instant bestseller, though at the time many Americans purchased it to confirm biases they held about Islam being an inherently violent religion. “The difference is that in this moment, people are not turning to the Qur’an to understand the October 7 attack by Hamas,” Grewal said. “They are turning to the Qur’an to understand the incredible resilience, faith, moral strength and character they see in Muslim Palestinians.”

That’s what made Nefertari Moonn, a 35-year-old from Tampa, Florida, pick up her husband’s Qur’an. Moonn considered herself spiritual, not religious, and described her husband as a non-practicing Muslim. “I wanted to see what it was that made people call out to Allah when they stared death in the face,” she said. “Seeing passage after passage resonated with me. I began to have such an emotional attachment to it.”

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