Sweetness in the Belly

Today is the last day of November so I am assuming that you have all finished the November book club pick. If not then skip this post and come back when you are done, lol. My daughter is still wading through hers and having some interesting conversations with her classmates ie explaining to them what the Kaaba is and where Mecca (Makkah) is. First of all I'll start off with what I like about this book. I like that its about a white girl/woman going through an historically charged time in Ethiopia so that we see the world through her eyes and feel that we can relate more closely. Usually we have a tendency to shut out the world and see things as happening to those people over there. What I didn't like about the book was the fact that the story is based on the sufi practice of Islam rather than Sunni which can really leave non-muslims confused and at times disgusted. She does point this out though but overall I still think they would not really understand why these muslims are doing things that are so unislamic including the cultural things they are doing like chewing qat (drugs). I also didn't like that in a couple of spots there was some haram intimate moments mentioned. For a muslim its an interesting read to see how misguided some muslims are in the world but I wouldn't recommend this book to non-muslims or they would have a very poor estimation of the islamic religion.