Muhajababes: Meet the New Middle East—Young, Sexy, and Devout

Two-thirds of the Middle East—a quarter of a billion people—are 25 or younger, a demographic as large as it is unrepresented in Western media. With aplomb and scads of self-deprecating wit, journalist Stratton, herself 25 years old and a self-professed naïf about the Arab and Muslim world, plunges into youth culture in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Kuwait. Her findings are epitomized by the book's title; the term muhajababes (coined by one of Stratton's interviewees) describe veiled young women who combine traditional piety with a secular sensibility, wearing tight jeans with their head scarves and following pop stars and religious leaders with equal devotion. “My methodology was to talk to everyone... who seemed my age,” Stratton writes, including men and women, religious visionaries and artists, revolutionaries and small-business owners. In visiting pockets of the Middle East seldom seen in the Western media (a Kuwaiti student union, a Damascus newspaper), she skillfully renders the frequently downplayed differences between the countries and their shared effort to integrate centuries of history with an avalanche of modern influences. The book's lacunae are not unimportant—Stratton doesn't step beyond urban population centers or speak with any local experts who might have helped analyze the tumble of information—but her genuine and frankly affectionate engagement makes Muhajababes an entertaining addition to the shelf of anyone hoping to actually understand, rather than stereotype, Arabs and Muslims . (July 1)