Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman’s Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim

Sabeeha Rehman has met successive challenges in adapting to modern America since marriage brought her to New York from her traditional Muslim Pakistani family in 1971. Her memoir reveals how she became a guiding light for other immigrant Muslims seeking a place among often ignorant and unwelcoming surroundings. When her physician husband’s career and her young sons’ schooling enabled her to continue her studies, she become a hospital administrator and found time to develop cultural and social ties for the initially small Muslims community on Staten Island.

The book, compelling on several fronts, shows how much energy she expended, holding tight to her own religious practices while helping to organize a mosque for Muslims who immigrated from countries beyond her own homeland, launch a newsletter for those keen to stay in touch with their traditions while adapting to an American lifestyle, stage a children’s play show-casing famous Muslims of the past, and taking a seat on several organization boards. Each challenge is described with a sense of fun as well as achievement, none more enjoyable than the Muslim Fair held on Mother’s Day when women competed for a raffle prize, circumventing the Muslim ban on gambling by allowing free entry.

The segments switch back and forth from her early years to the present, each clearly identified to allow no mistake about the what and where of the events she describes. Threading My Prayer Book will inevitably receive plaudits, and hopefully many will mention Rehman’s astute, witty, and endearing style as she tells a story that began with a lastingly successful arranged marriage.