Young Americans are picking up the Qur’an ‘to understand the resilience of Muslim Palestinians’
Readers find themes that align with their values as they seek to ‘grow empathy’ for a religion long vilified in the west
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.
Photograph: Courtesy Megan B Rice
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.”
Nefertari Moonn described herself ‘spiritual’ before she began reading her husband’s Qur’an. Photograph: Nefertari Moonn
Because
of this, Moonn also decided to take the shahada, becoming a Muslim
revert (a term some Muslims prefer for joining the religion).
“I
can’t explain it, but there’s a peace that comes with reading the
Qur’an,” she said. “I feel light, like I came back to something that was
always there and waiting for me to return.”
Misha
Euceph, a Pakistani American writer and podcast host who studies
progressive interpretations of the Qur’an, has held her own Qur’an Book
Club Instagram series since 2020. She says certain themes in the text
align with the values of young, left-leaning Americans.
“The
Qur’an is full of nature metaphors and encourages you to be an
environmentalist,” Euceph said. “The Qur’an also has this
anti-consumerist attitude, the sense that we’re all stewards of the
earth who shouldn’t establish an exploitative relationship with the
world or fellow human beings.”
In the Qur’an,
men and women are equals in the eyes of God, and Rice and other TikTok
converts say their interpretations of the text back up their feminist
principles. It also engages with scientific explanations for creation,
with verses in the Qur’an covering the big bang and other theories.
“Usually,
we’re so used to the religious community combating science,” Rice said.
“Now I’m seeing a religion embrace science and use its holy texts to
back it up.”
Sylvia Chan-Malik was in graduate
school after 9/11 amid a surge in hate crimes against Muslims and
xenophobic language used in the media. “I was very interested in what
was going on, comparing it to the history of Japanese Americans after
Pearl Harbor,” she said. “I started to look into it on my own, meeting
actual Muslims, and I was floored when I did my homework on Islam.”
Along
the way, Chan-Malik converted to Islam. She’s now an associate
professor at Rutgers University whose research focuses on the history of
Islam and Islamophobia in the US. “I had a very similar experience to
what’s happening on TikTok now,” she said. “At the time, I wondered why
the people I met who were Muslim were so different than what I heard in
the news. I’d never experienced such a vast disconnect between popular
perception and the truth.”
Misha Euceph at the Shah Jahan mosque in Thatta, Pakistan, in January. Photograph: Misha Euceph
Grewal,
the Yale professor, believes that people often begin reading texts
hoping to back up the worldview they already have. “Just as racist
people are looking for verses to confirm their racial biases, people on
the left are looking to this book to confirm progressive messages,” she
said. “Every scripture is complex and invites multiple readings,” and
TikTokers “are coming to the text looking for what they hope to find”.
Growing
up in the shadow of 9/11, Rice said, she rejected Islamophobia and
discrimination that made targets out of Muslim Americans. “As a Black
woman, I’m used to the American government spreading harmful stereotypes
that lead to misconceptions that people outside of my community have on
me,” she said. “I never believed the stereotypes that were spread about
the Muslim community post-9/11, but it wasn’t until I started reading
the Qur’an that I realized I sort of internalized those misconceptions,
because I believed that Islam was a very severe or strict religion.”
Reading
the Qur’an began as a way for Rice to show empathy for Palestinians
trapped in Gaza. Now, it’s become a major element of her life. It
doesn’t have to be that revelatory for everyone. “I would say that it
doesn’t matter what your religious background is,” she said. “You can
grow empathy for someone by learning the most intimate parts of them,
which includes their faith.”