The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins, Feminine Ideals demonstrates how the ambiguous reward of the houri, mentioned in the Qur’an and developed in Islamic theological writings, has gained a distinctive place in the cultural eye from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century.

In this episode, we talk with Nerina Rustomji, an associate professor of History at St. John’s University and the author of The Beauty of the Houri: Heavenly Virgins, Feminine Ideals.