Sex, Drugs, and the Quran

A revolutionary vision of Islam and Muslim identity, revealing a religion that isn’t just compatible with progressive ideas about sex and politics, but which actually got there first—and got erased for it.

Did you know the Quran granted women the right to divorce in the 600s? Or that it treats sex as a form of worship? And even that it warned against exploiting the environment centuries before “sustainability” became a hashtag? 

In Sex, Drugs, and the Quran, Misha Euceph redefines this 1,400-year-old spiritual text for the 21st century, turning the pages of the Quran to show its relevance for all of us. From Prophet Muhammad’s fight against the oligarchs of his time, to Islam’s reverence for nature, to the belief in the interconnectedness of us all, this memoir and manifesto sets the record straight on the world’s most misrepresented religion by tracing its impact on the author’s own life. Through one woman’s journey from girlhood to motherhood, from a childhood in Pakistan to an adolescence in Los Angeles, and from calling herself “culturally Muslim” to simply calling herself Muslim, Sex, Drugs, and the Quran shows that this ancient faith can serve as the blueprint for a kinder, more equitable world.

• “At once a spiritual coming-of-age story and a radical act of reclamation, Sex, Drugs, and the Quran is funny, fearless, and deeply moving. Misha Euceph takes us from Karachi to California as she strips away centuries of received wisdom to ask a deceptively simple question: what does the Quran actually say about the things that truly matter in our day? This is a book about the courage to question what we inherit in order to discover what might have been there all along.”
  Reza Aslan, author of No God But God and Zealot