![]() ![]() ![]() With titles like "Western Materialism Menaces Muslims" and "Western Civilization Condemned by Itself," Jameelah became a best-selling author throughout the Muslim world and, as an ex-pat who freely abandoned the prosperity of postwar America for the fundamentalist vision of life in Lahore, Pakistan, a critical authority on the purported superiority of the devout and the dangers of the ungodly. ![]() ![]() A convert to Islam late in her twenties, Marcus changed her name to Maryam Jameelah and left the United States for Pakistan in 1962, where she would write a series of sweeping, fiercely polemical books denouncing the decadence of the West and extolling the virtues of life under fundamentalist Islam. Surely the tale of Margaret Marcus is among the more extreme. But if the form that stories of spiritual rebirth take is familiar to us, some journeys are longer and more fantastic than others. "The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism" By Deborah Baker Graywolf, $23, 246 pagesĬonversion narratives have been a staple of American writing since the Puritans arrived in New England. ![]()
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