Review by Choice Review
Building on Rustomji's first book, The Garden and the Fire (CH, Jul'09, 46-6141), The Beauty of the Houri is a meticulously researched, elegantly written gem that offers much more than a survey of houris in the Muslim past. Drawing on sources from the Qur'an and Hadith, European poetry, and Islamist recruitment videos to US news items, Rustomji (history, St. John's Univ.) weaves analysis of texts with profound theoretical insights into gender constructions, changing eschatological expectations, text criticism, and contemporary US and Muslim politics. She argues that there is no one consistent representation of the heavenly virgins mentioned in the Qur'an in either Muslim or Euro-American perceptions over the premodern and modern periods. Instead, she explores how houris became vessels for the construction of idealized feminine forms that served to both stabilize and challenge gender norms. The six chapters--mysteriously titled "The Letter," "The Word," "The Romance," "A Reward," "The Promise," and "The Question"--take readers through an engaging set of considerations and reflections that are brilliantly woven together and defy both a chronological time line and a geographic separation of Muslim lands and Euro-America. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Juliane Hammer, UNC Chapel Hill
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian Rustomji (The Garden and the Fire) traces the contested history of the Muslim image of heavenly virgins in this revealing history. She opens with a letter found in the luggage of one of the 9/11 hijackers that mentions the houri (mythical promised virgins) before giving a history of Western awareness of the concept, such as 17th-century Europeans using the term to critique Islam's treatment of women. Nineteenth-century English writers, including Charlotte Brontë and Lord Byron, meanwhile, used houri as a term to idealize human beauty. Rustomji then shifts back to Muslim sources, excavating Koranic and classical descriptions of the houris before considering contemporary portrayals in conversion pamphlets and online sermons from, among others, Anwar al-Awlaqi. In the final chapter, she briefly explores the varied answers to what faithful Muslim women will receive in heaven to match the men's houri. While transitions between the wide-ranging aspects of Rustomji's argument can be abrupt, the overall sweep convinces. This comprehensive work will help scholars of Islam understand the evolving history of a powerful image. (July)
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Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
