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The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson A Study Guide for Concordia’s First-Year Students

Prepared by Drs. Jacqueline Bussie and Dawn Duncan, Concordia College -Moorhead, MN

Greetings, incoming students! We have selected this memoir for the Summer Book Read because it

complements this year’s Faith, Reason and World Affairs Symposium on “American and the Middle East: Local

and Global Dimensions.” Your first academic session of the year will take place during Orientation Week,

when you will engage with your class-club and professor in a discussion of the memoir. Please look over

this study guide, and then read the memoir for pleasure and learning. Critically reflect upon the questions

below and make note of any questions or comments that arise for you. Come ready to deeply discuss. We

can’t wait to see you in August!

1) “Choosing the way you live is choosing to live,” (64) Wilson writes. Do you agree with her? What parts

of her life-story and her tough decisions resonate with your own life and your own decisions? What are

some values that you and Wilson share in common?

2) Wilson remarks, “There are few things more overwhelming than love in hostile territory” (59). What are

the many factors that make Willow’s love for Omar ‘in hostile territory?’ Have you ever had an

experience of transgressive love or friendship in which you loved or liked someone (or something) in

spite of being taught or told that you shouldn’t? How did it change you?

3) Wilson quotes the Muslim poet Rumi, “For I am divided from myself, and yet myself” (73). In many ways, Wilson’s story is a struggle for identity and wholeness in the midst of divisions, for example, East/West, America/Egypt. How do you see these divisions playing out in Wilson’s own life? How does she reconcile her own identity as a Muslim and as an American? Have you ever struggled to integrate seeming opposites into your own identity?

4.) A good writer practices the art of showing (not just telling). Select a passage in which Wilson provides details that place the reader in the moment, using vivid and active word choices. What images are particularly striking? What is the relevance of this passage to the narrative? To you?

5.) In any memoir there is a narrative arc that includes elements of conflict (with self, another person, society/social environment, natural environment, supernatural). Choose an episode in which Wilson experiences conflict. What type of conflict does she experience? How does the episode move (backward, frozen in the moment, forward) the author within the narrative? ? Why does this appear in the narrative at this moment?

6.) Name two specific things that reading Willow Wilson’s memoir taught you about Islam that you did not

know before reading this book. How did you feel when you first learned Concordia was having you

read a book about Islam for your summer book read? How do you feel now? Don’t be afraid to answer

this question honestly.

7.) “I was not strange or abnormal: I was experiencing the world as people have experienced it for

thousands of years. This was what religion was to me.… Faith, to me, is not a leap but an affirmation of

personal experience. With Islam I gave myself permission to live in the world as I saw it, not as I was

told to see it.”(76) Discuss this quote. Have you ever had a similar experience in which you chose to

live in the world as you saw it, and not as you were told to see it? What effect did it have on you?

8.) Wilson states, “I knew almost nothing about what they [Muslims] believed, and even with a $30,000 a

year education, I had no idea Islam was the world’s second-largest religion” (10). At Concordia, we

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believe our students need interfaith literacy—a basic appreciative knowledge of the world’s major

religious traditions—in order to become responsibly engaged with today’s world. That’s why we require

every student to take “Christianity and Religious Diversity,” and why we are one of the only schools in

the country to have an interdisciplinary interfaith studies minor, designed to supplement any major.

Why do you think interfaith literacy might be important for citizenship in today’s world and for the job

that you will one day have? What negative effects does our lack of interreligious literacy—especially

when it comes to Islam—have on our culture, in your opinion?

9.) Wilson mentions the term “Islamophobia” on pp. 243 & 273. What is Islamophobia? Have you ever

seen or heard examples of it? In the book, when and how does Wilson experience Islamophobia? What

can we do to help overcome Islamophobia within ourselves and within in our own communities? What

does Wilson do and/or suggest we do to foster peace between cultures? (141)

10.) “Every day my life was affected by what had happened on 9/11; every day I have to get up negotiate the

boundaries between that tragedy and my religion. Every day.”(104) What does Wilson mean by this

statement? Have you ever considered how difficult it is for mainstream Muslims like Wilson who are

not extremists to be judged by the violent actions of Muslims who are extremist? Have you ever been

part of a group that was being judged by the negative behavior or belief of some of its members, and

personally been judged even though you did not even agree with those behaviors or beliefs? How did it

feel to be stereotyped, and how did you respond?

11.) According to Wilson, does Islam require women to cover their hair, or is it a choice? Why does Wilson

decide to begin wearing the hijab (headscarf)? What does wearing the hijab mean to her? (See page 99.)

12.) What is the significance of the book’s title, The Butterfly Mosque? What does the mosque symbolize for

Wilson? Use specific passages in the text to support your answer.

13.) “Why, then, should Egyptian men refrain from kissing women, or American men be afraid to give each

of the men? Cultural habits are by and large irrational, emerging irrationally, and are practiced

irrationally. They’re independent of the intellect, and trying to fit them into a logical pattern is fruitless;

they can be respected or discarded, but not debated” (79). Do you agree with Wilson that culture and its

practices and customs are largely irrational and cannot be debated? Why or why not? How should we

best engage people of other cultures?

14.) Wilson concludes, “I had discovered that both Islam and the Arab world were far from ideal– that the

religion I loved was becoming steadily warped and was the source of many excuses for violence and

ignorance and misanthropy. Yet I was not disappointed” (230). Are you a part of a religious or non-

religious tradition? What is the importance of being willing to critique our own tradition, yet still remain

within it, the way that Wilson does?