The Butterfly Mosque

In the memoir The Butterfly Mosque, published by Grove Atlantic in 2010, author G. Willow Wilson writes on her experiences crossing cultures and embracing Islam as an American girl raised in an atheist home in Denver, Colorado. Wilson tells the story of her first experiences with Islam at Boston University, and how they lead to her eventual move to Cairo and romance with a Muslim man, her now husband Omar.

Wilson's memoir offers insight into the themes and characters that appear in her other works, which focus on fairly representing Muslim, Muslim-American, and Middle Eastern characters for Western audiences. In 2014, Wilson published Ms. Marvel, a popular comic staring Kamala Khan, a Muslim teenager from New Jersey, which was acclaimed because it is one of few comics to feature a Muslim girl as a protagonist. Wilson also published Alif the Unseen, a fantasy novel that explores Middle Eastern folklore and current events. The Butterfly Mosque was named a Seattle Times Best Book of 2010, and Wilson's works have achieved her a Hugo Award, a World Fantasy Award, and the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity, among others.

Wilson begins her memoir in America, where she is studying Islamic and Quranic Studies at Boston University. Her experience in her first Islamic Studies course sparks her fascination with the Muslim faith, but it isn't until later that an illness prompts her conversion to Islam. Because of her upbringing in a staunchly atheist household, she keeps her conversion quiet from her friends and family. She writes about the bias she experienced growing up, both her parents' bias against religion and America's cultural bias against Islam that she experienced after September 11, 2001. She explains that “religion was taboo in my family, and Islam was taboo in my society—these pressures are not easily shaken off, and I sometimes felt as guilty as if I had committed a crime.” Still, she gives in to her religious leanings and decides to apply for a teaching job in Cairo, where she can continue to practice her faith and study Islamic and Middle Eastern culture.



Wilson is 25 years old when she accepts a teaching position in Cairo in 2003. She is immediately struck by the stark cultural differences between life in America and life in Egypt. The people of Cairo are poor and the city is polluted and dirty. The amenities and luxuries that Wilson had experienced growing up in America are limited or entirely unavailable. She is overwhelmed and uncertain. Soon after she arrives, she meets Omar, a fellow instructor at the institute where she is teaching. Omar is Egyptian, a native of Cairo, and Wilson is amazed at his knowledge not only of Egyptian and Middle Eastern literature, but also of Shakespeare and the Western canon. They fall in love and become engaged soon afterward.

As she describes her romance with Omar, Wilson also makes note of her position as a woman in this unfamiliar country. Her descriptions of Muslim women often contrast stereotypical Western views. She describes a Middle Eastern woman as “…far less free than a woman in the West, but far more appreciated.” She writes also of meeting a Sheikha, a female religious leader, highlighting the prominent religious and spiritual roles that women have historically held in Islamic countries.

After her engagement, Wilson writes on her fear about meeting Omar's family. She is surprised to find his family, including his mother Sohair, incredibly welcoming. Omar's family's acceptance of her only deepens Wilson's faith and devotion to her life abroad, though she still often feels like a stranger even among her Egyptian friends and family. Though she rejects the community of Western ex-pats living in Egypt, Wilson writes often of missing her home in America and the sensation of belonging that comes with being in your native land.



The book closes with a description of a wedding ceremony by the Nile, where Wilson takes Omar's hand in marriage and chooses to build a permanent home in Cairo. However, her union with her Egyptian husband doesn't diminish the challenges of straddling cultures and countries. It is the straddling that is the most important take-away in Wilson's work. While she doesn't shy away from the challenges and anxieties that she faced in her romance with Omar and in her adoption of a new country, she also doesn't allow familiar Western ideas to cloud the beauty that she finds in her life abroad. Instead, Wilson works to reconcile both the good and the bad aspects of her new faith and her new country and begins to find some peace in the balancing of both worlds.

Though some reviewers felt that Wilson didn't spend enough time discussing the feelings behind her religious conversion or developing the other characters in her book, The Butterfly Mosque offers a unique look into explorations of faith, family, and love. The book is regarded as significant because it offers a nuanced depiction of Muslim womanhood and adds to a growing canon of books that provide a more complex portrait of Muslim women and the Islamic faith as a whole.