I read this with no expectations but it turned out to be just beautiful, touching, moving, and ultimately hopeful. I loved:
*the realism of the turmoil that Nida goes through on writing her poetry truthfully, very relatable as a writer
*the unapologetic nature of the whole book. The characters showcase their Islam and various cultures in a way that I've never seen before in fiction. The goat slaughtering to get rid of the evil eye, the mentions of memorizing quran and attending jummah, I loved all of it.
*the close-knit community may have actually been my favorite part. In so many books, nosy masjid-going members of the Muslim community are often a footnote, a punchline, or a problem and in this book they're treated with such respect and care.
*the truthful but often messy family relationships.
*poetry in YA is often hit or miss, the poetry here was pretty good though
*the lack of romance! Nida does have a friend and fellow poet in Jawad but it never goes further than that.
*and I hate politics but I did like the reflection on the fact that neither the Democratic or Republican political parties are truly for Muslims

I was just charmed by this book and can't wait for it to be released to a wider audience, or to see what the author writes next.

Hope Ablaze was such a great book. This was definitely a story that needed to be told and I'm just glad I got to read it before it comes out into the world.

Thank you netgalley for the arc, you’ve always been a real one.

Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin with this one. I think I’d first like to clearly define the viewpoint I’m speaking from, because due to the nature of the contents of this book, it’s clear that many of its detractors will be racist or Islamophobic. I am neither of those things. I’m a Persian woman living in America, the daughter of an Iranian immigrant, and culturally Muslim. I have a long, recorded history, of writing about the SWANAs (and adjacent Muslim regions) depictions in the media, the racism they’re subjected to in America, etc etc. Everything from my critiques of the cultural depictions in the Aladdin movie I wrote on tumblr when I was 16 to the recent reviews on my blog of ‘Fourth Wing’ and ‘Black Adam’. This is a topic I’m well educated on and have experience speaking about. Not to mention, as a SWANA person living in America, I’ve seen my fair share of Islamophobia.

I don’t know if the author would consider me as part of her community, but I’m one of the few people in this world who organically gives a shit without having to be told to, so I think that should count for something.

Listen, I could rip this book to shreds. I could point out every issue, every awkward scene or turn of phrase, every inconsistency, every bad argument. This is what I’m good at. But, it’s clear that this is what we’ve come to understand as the young author’s autobiographical debut novel, something extremely important and personal to her, and you can tell while reading it. It’s heavy, it’s impassioned, and it’s attempting to tell an important story. Her stance against Islamophobia and racism, and her love for her community are all admirable subject matter with clear fervor behind the writing. But there were issues about how the story was told.

This book is meant to take place in modern day. It dates itself with its slang and its technology. The Islamophobia depicted…. It doesn’t match up with the Islamophobia of modern day America. Maybe, if you’re in the deep south. Maybe, if this was immediately post 9/11. But today? In a swing state that roughly feels like the Midwest? In an urban area with a large enough Muslim population to be granted its own neighborhood? When the politician was described as an Afghan war vet, I immediately imagined him as Pete Buttigeg (the most well known democratic political candidate who was a war vet from the Midwest). When the main character has her interview with “Fifteen Minutes”, I’m imagining the woman sitting across from her as Lesley Stahl. With this context, this point of reference for the current American media and political landscape, the on-page depictions of racism come across as cartoonish. Grand exaggerations of the rhetoric Muslims typically face.

Now, I’m not here to police the author or say that these types of hate crimes never happen. But, I will say it’s a disservice to only show the most extreme form of bigotry possible. It’s easy for white people and racists to absolve their blame when you only depict the most extreme form of racism as racism. Microagressions can be just as hurtful, and are much, much more common. I suspect the exaggerated rhetoric was to set the main character up for more comprehensive, in depth comebacks. The bigger the monster is, the harder they fall. The bigger the battle, the more spectacular the show. But in failing to accurately capture the current reality of Islamophobic discourse, it’s a disservice to its victims. Sure, people say these sort of grandiose, hurtful things, but a democratic politician is not going to use the same words as an anonymous Twitter user hiding behind a pepe the frog profile picture. If they did, there would be no such thing as the culture war, but maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

Not only were some of the depictions of racism cartoonish, some of the conversations around politics came across as very afterschool special. The conversations the main character had with her community about participating in a two-party system sounded like they were ripped straight from a college poli-sci socratic seminar and totally unlike how people actually discuss the issue. In the book, even, it was made to seem as if the voters themselves identify with the two party system. This is not true. 49% of Americans identify as Independent. There is a clear disdain for the two party system, from both liberals and conservatives alike. (BTW liberal is the opposite of conservative, not progressive. Progressives are democrats on the far left, or even consider themselves farer left.)

Bernie Sanders shifted the public’s perception of progressivism considerably. The book speaks to the traps of the two-party system, but seems to fail to mention the ways it can be mitigated. Accountability is one thing after someone is elected, but more importantly, it’s the way people engage with the primaries. The role of third party candidates is to introduce new platforms and issues to the political conversation, and the primaries are the people’s way of showing their support for these causes, which forces the two party candidates to then grapple with them. This book had the opportunity to reflect on that system, but didn’t. Is it a good system? Is it an effective system? No. But it’s the current reality in America.

Instead, there was a particularly weird bit about how, since the main character spoke up against a democratic candidate, the right wing attempts to poach her as their mouthpiece. This would never happen. They would never platform anyone whom they would consider to have the politics of a Muslim radical.

As for the radicalism. In this book, the main character’s uncle is in prison after unjustly being convicted as a terrorist. He’s known as a part of the “Al-Rasheed Five”, the other four members having been sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Point blank, this shouldn’t have been in the book. The uncle in prison, sure, include it, but the aesthetics are dangerously close to the Central Park Five. That story, that case, those aesthetics, were not hers to poach. As for Guantanamo… mamma mia. Like I said, this circumstance was perhaps more believable immediately post 9/11. Per the center for constitutional rights, 30 men remain detained and they have all been detained for more than fifteen years. There is no one in Guantanamo Bay now who fits the profile from the characters of her book. Even if there had been, Guantanamo Bay is such an awful, horrid, terrible place that it really feels uncomfortable to have it name dropped in the book with nothing meaningful to say about it. It should not have been used the way it was. Tell the real stories of those trapped within, or don’t bring it up at all.

God this review is so long.

Other concerns.

There’s a point where the main character is defending if the hijab is oppressive or not. In doing so, she compares submission to Allah to a woman’s submission to society. This is a bad argument. Because, yes, if your argument that the hijab is not oppressive is “well women in the west choose to oppress themselves under the patriarchy”… it’s not the gag you think it is. High heels are oppressive, makeup is oppressive, but they are also choices women make to express themselves and their style and their values. It would have been more apt if she chose to argue that clothing is a means of self expression, and her hijab is expressing her devotion to God, but I doubt she would have, because she does not see wearing the hijab as a choice (something she outlines in her letters). That’s, of course, her personal interpretation and justification on why she wears the hijab, and I would never mean to say that it reflects oppression, but it is not logical. That’s fine. Religion does not have to be logical. In fact, it rarely is. So it puzzles me how the book attempts to make a logical argument that is so misguided, instead of defaulting to the fact that the decision to wear the hijab is something without parallel in the secular west.

Throughout reading this book, I asked my hijabi friend for some of her thoughts. I’m not gonna regurgitate all of them here, but she agreed with me that some of the sections regarding discourse about the hijab and peoples choices to or not to wear it were uncomfortable. I can’t really speak to that, because I’ve never chosen to wear a hijab, and I would encourage the author to reflect on how her perspective colors her rhetoric on the topic and adjust accordingly.

When the main character gets sued by the political candidate, I want to make it very clear that legally, he had little chance of winning if they were on equal legal footing. It feels a little irresponsible to mention how a political candidate could sue a teenager without bringing up New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) or actual malice. I just think it’s important that people are informed of their rights, and the book missed the perfect opportunity to do so.

Also, this book had one of the most depressing viewpoints on friendship I’ve ever seen. Not even because her white friend was racist, but it almost seemed like the main character resented making friends. She described it as exhausting. Friendship did not appear as something she cherished, but something she did to fit in. It was sad.

All in all, the points about orientalism and the west’s involvement in Muslim regions were correct and the message was powerful, but the sinew connecting them was weak. Even the prose of the novel was imbued with a very particular rhythm that was not conducive to modern day slang. (I know I wasn’t going to nitpick but what the hell is a “sneaker fit”. Fit stands for outfit. That doesn’t make sense. I searched twitter to see if that combination of words had ever been used before, and honestly it just seems like the author is misusing slang, slang that’s probably AAVE to begin with.) I had more gripes, but I’m constrained by how much I gaf and also the word limit and also how much time I’ve already poured into this.

If the book stuck to what it did best, family matters, mentions of actual Islamophobia, and the place of poetry when it comes to activism and the historical context of Islam, then it would’ve been solid. Unfortunately, it’s on rocky foundations.

Now, I was originally going to give this book one star due to the resounding and endless hypocrisy of the author, which boils my blood, but I don’t like shooting down new authors, especially when it comes to subject matter so close to their heart. But she is a hypocrite, and I do think she should be humbled to some degree.

The inciting incident in Hope Ablaze is when a Muslim hijabi is illegally frisked by the police and a democratic candidate is complicit. It’s about finding your voice, and learning to speak up for what’s right rather than comply with the status quo. Inspiring, right?

September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini was killed by the Iranian mortality police for not wearing a hijab. It sparked protests in Iran, of which the regime brutally fought back. People died. People were imprisoned. The government limited internet usage so that the truth about what was in the country could not break free. The only power the protesters had were their voice, and the regime knew that their greatest power was in their ability to silence them. The protesters went online and begged people to share the news, what was actually happening in the country, because without the eyes on the atrocities happening, the regime could continue to slaughter its people without accountability.

I am strictly opposed to American intervention in the Middle East. I know that often, politicians will use such atrocities such as Mahsa Amini’s death and the subsequent unrest as an excuse to introduce a military presence into the country, and I did not think that was the solution. But. When a nation of people is crying out for help, for exposure, to have their voices heard, the least you could do is listen and magnify it.

During the protests, Sarah Mughal Rana hopped on Twitter to say this: “I’m finally tweeting this b/c I’m just sad. I’m surprisingly seeing many writers who are rarely political tweet about Iran & hijab, but these are the same people who never tweet about India’s hijab ban, Islamophobia in Quebec, France, Switzerland. Their Islamophobia is clear.”

I have no doubt that there were islamophobes weaponizing the situation for their own gain, or even that there was unintentional islamophobia, people feeling that they need to save the women of Iran under the oppression of the hijab. But, the gag here is that, the reason people were more likely to tweet about Iran than the bans in India or Europe, is because the people in Iran were actively dying. They were being killed. On the streets. And their only ask of the west was to amplify their voices so they wouldn’t be killed on the streets. The lack of empathy here was staggering.

Sarah Mughal Rana also encouraged people not to fall for misinformation, as it could be used against Iranian activists. Did she, then, make an effort to find the correct information and spread it? Was she an ally to these Iranian activists? No. Those were her only tweets that I could find on the topic. An attempt to silence people who were just doing what the victims of an oppressive regime asked them to do. She cited that she did not “specialized in Iran” (despite bragging about reading a huge tome on Iranian history, calling her stories Persianate/Persian, and regularly bringing up how Iranian history overlaps with that of Pakistan’s), but that also did not stop her from writing a book explicitly about American politics as a Canadian.

I’m not mad about this because I’m an Islamophobe. I’m mad about this because I’m a Persian. I hate the term Persianate. It was invented 80 years ago by some white dude and hasn’t caught on because it’s too broad to reflect any real unifying culture. Sure, Pakistan does have a history with Persian Culture, but Persian culture isn’t something you place on a sliding scale, and are able to identify with as if there’s enough overlap between your culture and that of Iran’s. If Pakistan is Persian, so is India, and so is Bangladesh, and the cultural similarities begun to get lost in a wash of regional differences.

I hate how even those who consider themselves our allies won’t take a stand when they need to out of a fear of perpetuating islamophobia in the west. Quite literally, people died. I’m normal enough to put two and two together, to balance the west’s causality in the rise of these corrupt regimes while also using my voice to defend the victims of these regimes. And I suggest everyone do the same. Because it’s really, really infuriating to see an author who’s in love with our land, our poetry, our language, but refuses to hear our words.

In attempting to search if the author had a history of silencing people, I found a blog post by writer Fatima Al Matar, a Kuwaiti woman who was blocked by Rana for attempting to disagree with her about Islam. I don’t agree with all of her conclusions, but it’s clear that she’s speaking from a place of religious trauma, and Rana silencing her prompted her to write the blog post in a struggle to have her voice heard. Rana also has a history of minimizing the violence of Muslims conquests by insisting they were not colonizers. Well, technically they weren’t colonizers, but they certainly were not very peaceful. There’s probably more. It seems that she’s unwilling to engage with any context in which Muslims are the oppressors, which comes from a place of pain and an overabundance of caution from being oppressed for being a Muslim, but it does not give her the right to silence and minimize the experiences of others.

Such a wonderful and touching novel, a must read for everyone! The characters and feelings and setting were so real and raw. This novel shows how difficult life can be, and how resiliency is not easy. This book will never leave you mind.

A special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press & Wednesday Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.