Excerpts from "The Conference of the Books"

Excerpt: "...But for me, and may God forgive me, your Sunna is a moment of unadulterated beauty spent in your love. Your Sunna is your beauty, and beauty cannot be mimicked. It must be felt and loved. All the descriptive manuals of the world cannot teach an ugly heart about beauty. And all the reports and transmissions of the world cannot teach the obstinate heart the Sunna of the beloved."

From "The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books." Dr. Abou El Fadl delves into the controversy of the "beating verse."

From "The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books." A weighty, thought-provoking and thorough discussion on the moral approach to this and other versus, which call for a deeper understanding of what the Qur'an and Shariah demand to achieve a superior moral existence.

Excerpt: "...Yet another woman attracted to the religion and repulsed by the followers—validated by the Qur’an and voided by Muslims. “When I first visited the mosque, believe me, I was dressed modestly. But a man ran yelling at me,” she insists. My first lesson in Islam was that men have bodies, women only have ‘awras (private parts). In fact, I am nothing but an ‘awra."

A full discussion of the covering of women, and more specifically, how God's Book has been corrupted in the modern day to become a message of misogyny and injustice against women.

A chapter from "The Search for Beauty," which tells the story of a woman who wanted to take the Shahadah (the testament of faith to convert to Islam) but who was turned away because of the insistence by some that she needed to wear the hijab, or promise to do so, before she could convert.