Publisher: Melville House Publishing

In Muhajababes: Meet the New Middle East, twenty-five year old BBC journalist Allegra Stratton traverses the Middle East in search of the answer to several questions: What are young middle class Arabs like in the 21^st century? Are they strictly and oppressively devout? Do they live and think in ways completely foreign to those unacquainted with the Middle East? Or are they more like their Western counterparts than we would guess? Stratton records her candid conversations with young Arab men and women not only from various walks of life but also a smorgasbord of political and religious stripes; the result is a fresh and thought-provoking picture of a Middle East that Westerners would do well to understand better. 

Stratton begins her travels in Beirut, then moves through Amman, Cairo, Dubai, Kuwait, and Damascus; all along the way she meets up with artists, musicians, political activists, teachers, and students, sometimes through email-arranged meetings set up by acquaintances, sometimes completely serendipitously in a taxi or a café. From each, she gains a deeper—if sometimes contradictory—understanding of what life is like in the modern Middle East for media-savvy, intelligent, college-educated young people.

In Beirut, she watches auditions for “Superstar,” (think “American Idol,” Lebanese style) and speaks to rappers who believe they are tapping into ancient Lebanese poetry with their raps (who knew?); in Amman, she is introduced by a friend to the phenomenon of the “muhajababe”: a girl who devoutly veils but dresses in the height of JLo style. Stratton continues to see girls of this sort throughout her travels, including a young woman, Zina, in Cairo who veils to show she is devout but smokes (strictly forbidden by the Muslim religion) in order to show that, although she may be Muslim, she isn’t a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Everywhere Stratton goes, she runs up against the paradox that lies at the heart of the book—how are modern young Muslims managing to pull off Western-style dress and ideas while simultaneously being devout? Stratton discovers that there is a good deal more than meets the eye in Islam, including Muslim groups that are more concerned with being a political force for change than coercing the masses into sharia law, and popular young imams who have managed to bring Islam out of the Dark Ages and made it hip and personal through open, modern discussions and television programs.

Her main discovery was that of the muhajababe—young women (and men) who are forming the spearhead of a new political and religious force in the Middle Eastern countries. They are devout but interested in Western ideas; they want more freedom, but still cling to many of the most traditional tenets of Islam, such as veiling; they want more political freedom in their respective countries but shun the social corruption they perceive as emanating from free Western societies.  

Muhajababes is at once thought-provoking and entertaining; Stratton’s writing is straightforward and witty. While much of the Byzantine details of Arab politics and history that Stratton delves into will fly over the heads of anyone not devoted to the Middle East, even a casual reader will enjoy Stratton’s unique perspective.

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