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Holy shit, Muslim punk house! This book rules. I mean, I can't really speak to the central message of 'Islam must evolve, maybe,' because I'm not in charge of Islam at all. I CAN speak to the folks who blurbed it The Catcher In the Rye for Muslims, to whom I say: oh, fuck off. You lose a hundred points every time you call a book the catcher in the rye of or for anything. The Catcher in the Rye is about a privileged kid with no tools for dealing with the fact that most of the world isn't as privileged as he is, and that sucks, but he has no tools to do anything about it so he whines all the time. The Taqwacores is about a kid who doesn't really know which way is up, what to do about it, what he thinks or wants (except that his character development is 1. doesn't masturbate 2. does), but sees all these folks around him who seem like they do. Only he's not sure about how right they are, but thinks probably mostly. Maybe. And doesn't have anything to say about it except 'this is going on' and doesn't end up breaking down and going to a mental hospital- he ends up moving back home, which is hardly the same kind of situation. So I guess it's kind of like the Catcher in the Rye? Except if the narrator were more starry-eyes, had more options, and came from a more precarious position. EG NOTHING LIKE THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

The Taqwacores is rad because- y'know how Michelle Tea or Mattilda Sycamore Bernstein's novels never really have a plot or anything, and then nothing ever gets resolved but you don't really care because you just wanted to read them talking about stuff that happened? This book isn't really like that- there's a plot, about putting on a show, and a subplot, wherein young Yusef Ali learns to masturbate- but you kind of want it to be. Street poet grody punkers talking about their culture, talking shit, singing along to old punk stuff, and praying four or five times a day, then feeling bad sometimes that it's only four or five times? Gimme some more. So I didn't really care about the plot, I cared about the writing, which I think is the secret to making me like a book a lot.

Somebody else was complaining about all the Islamic in-language and how that made them feel like they weren't allowed in, but it didn't feel that way to me. It felt natural and, like, sure, this is a lot of language I don't know, but it's a story that I *do* know, and it's a good one. So I didn't feel stressed about it. Dude. Plus. Muslim Punk House.