The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman's Journey to Love and Islam

G. Willow Wilson

Hun 2010 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

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“In this satisfying, lyrical memoir,” an American woman discovers her true faith—and true love—by converting to Islam and moving to Egypt (Publishers Weekly).
 
Raised in Boulder, Colorado, G. Willow Wilson moved to Egypt and converted to Islam shortly after college. Having written extensively on modern religion and the Middle East in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine, Wilson now shares her remarkable story of finding faith, falling in love, and marrying into a traditional Islamic family in this “intelligently written and passionately rendered memoir” (The Seattle Times, 27 Best Books of 2010).
 
Despite her atheist upbringing, Willow always felt a connection to god. Around the time of 9/11, she took an Islamic Studies course at Boston University, and found the teachings of the Quran astounding, comforting, and profoundly transformative. She decided to risk everything to convert to Islam, embarking on a journey across continents and into an uncertain future.
 
Settling in Cairo where she taught English, she soon met and fell in love with Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of the Western influences in his homeland. Torn between the secular West and Muslim East, Willow—with her shock of red hair, shaky Arabic, and Western candor—struggled to forge a “third culture” that might accommodate her values as well as her friends and family on both sides of the divide.
 
Part travelogue, love story, and memoir, “Wilson has written one of the most beautiful and believable narratives about finding closeness with God” (The Denver Post).

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Willow Wilson was born in New Jersey in 1982. After graduating with a degree in History and coursework in Arabic language and literature, Willow moved to Cairo, where she became contributor to the Egyptian opposition weekly Cairo Magazine until it closed in 2005. She is a convert to Islam and her commentary often addresses Islamic and interfaith issues. An avid supporter of new and alternative media, Willow has also written for politics and culture blogs from across the political spectrum.