What's Right with Islam? Everything!
Muslimwakeup.com, June 5, 2004
By Inas Younis
Although I am a fanatical reader, you will never find me or my children
frequenting the public libraries. You see, I do not just read books; I
consume and digest them. I mutilate their wisdom filled pages with
fluorescent highlighters and scrawl notes on their narrow margins. My
toddler, neither old enough to read nor to have graduated from his oral
fixation phase either, has been known to be more literal in his ingestion of
books. But literally or figuratively the damage to public property and the
fines we have incurred have made purchasing books a more cost effective
alternative to borrowing them. And while the intensity of my life's passions
can be measured by the extent of care they are afforded, the degree of
infatuation for my books can only be determined by the extent of abuse and
battery which befall them while in my custody, with the exception of the one
book which at present lies floating and water logged in my toddler's
bathtub. My son, like his mother, apparently did not find it fit for
"consumption" and has opted to make soup of its pages.
Comparatively speaking, I have an inordinate number of books either on Islam
or written by Muslims, books which I will now confess were not purchased to
satiate my appetite for information or knowledge, but were acquired to
assuage the guilt I have developed over the financial contributions I have
made to spiritual, new age and secular books. These titles have generated
enough inspiration to quench my thirsty soul and have made reading Islamic
books seem more like an act of penance than an intellectual exercise.
So consequently my books on Islam are very well kept, with their crisp
covers and jackets still attached. However, I am not discouraged, for with
every new guilt-inspired purchase, I have the heart-ignited hope that
contemporary American Muslim writers will not disappoint me and will
eventually earn their rightful place on my book shelf right next to the
books of Karen Armstrong and Scott Peck, whose books have survived
highlighters, bathtubs, coffee mug stains, and time served on my cookbook
holder, (which incidentally has never held a cookbook).
I have read my share of books on Islam, from Bernard Lewis's The Crisis of
Islam, to the Two Faces of Islam, The Trouble with Islam, The Heart of
Islam, Why I am a Muslim, and of course, Why I am Not. The tremendous surge
of books about Islam being churned out to meet rising demand has bankrupted
more than my wallet; it has impoverished my mind as well. And the liberty
with which so many have capitalized on this fashionable trend to crucify my
faith before the altar of book sales and academic pursuits, not to mention
the marketing machines which drive them, has weakened and bankrupted my
heart more then wasted dollars and brain cells combined.
But Thank God I had enough brain cells at hand to make one last good faith
purchase, which proved to be a worthy expenditure. I have finally found a
book that has qualified to become the next velveteen rabbit of books.
The Velveteen Rabbit is a story, you may remember, about a rabbit who,
because of the love of a child, became so tattered and shabby that he could
barely preserve his stuffing. But with every tear and stuffing lost, the
rabbit got one step closer to becoming real. The moral being that if you
love something enough, it will become real. And for a book lover, the
manifestation of that love would be the actualization of its message. So
halfway through this book, I‹in an act of love‹gave it an honorary stamp of
approval with my coffee mug. Three days, one pink highlighter, a donut ring
and a drool mark later, my love affair was over. The velveteen book I am
referring to is what's right with Islam. No, I mean it is titled, What's
Right With Islam by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
What is right with Islam, you ask? Everything.
But with only three hundred pages, everything had to be condensed into one
forward, by my favorite ex-nun, an introduction titled "Cordoba Lost," six
chapters, and a conclusion titled "On Pursuing Happiness." And Happiness, it
seems, lies not in Cordobas lost, but in the Cordoba yet to be discovered.
It puts forward a new vision for Muslims in the west, and has at last
furnished them with the intellectual arguments necessary to renounce the
either/or thinking that has made it impossible to reconcile the cognitive
dissonance of the supposedly divergent credos of Islam and democracy.
Abdul Rauf, along with his equally talented wife, Daisy Khan, have together
embarked on a love affair of their own which has culminated in their life's
devotion‹ASMA. No, Asma is not the name of their love child. Asmasociety.org,
is a not-for-profit Islamic cultural and
educational organization dedicated to bridging the chasm between Islam and
the west. And if the Asma society is an organization of peace, then this
book is its mission statement.
It is a mission with a truly integrated voice that is not only objective,
but so refreshingly fair as well. Abdul Rauf has managed to write with a
voice that has genuinely internalized its identity as an American and a
Muslim, a voice which refrains from the schizophrenic gravitations that have
become a feature of so many culturally enthused writings and that give one
cerebral voice more representation than the other, depending on which voice
has served it best. And while these books may make for interesting reading,
they lack a certain objectivity that is so necessary if we are to move the
present dialogue beyond conversations on identity crisis.
I have no problem with personalized stories that obtain their authority to
disparage and criticize my faith, using the flexibility that personal
experiences permit. But I have always resented the political prostitutes of
this industry who use their membership cards as license to give their
arguments credibility without the benefit of historical or theological
substantiation. Subtle and not-so-transparent intellectual irresponsibility
challenges my commitment to free speech more than the worst form of hardcore
pornography
Abdul Rauf makes a case for freedom, pluralism and a strain of Islam which
celebrates these ideals, using both research and scholarship. And he did not
have to pull rabbits (velveteen or otherwise) out of a hat to make it
work‹it just does.
Reading it was a minor mystical exercise for me because unlike the many
books that I approach with defensive wit, I was forced to suspend my talents
for selective perception and for once trudge through this book with a level
objectivity and openness to embrace its wisdom as if I were a culmination of
its entire audience‹Muslims, Americans, Christians, and Jews. The common
thread and theme of this book which connected me to that entire audience was
the simplicity embodied in the Abrahamic ethic.
It is no longer adequate to regurgitate Islamic ideals of pluralism and
tolerance without an explanation of the great disparity between the ideal
and the reality we are witnessing. Nor is it tolerable for western democracy
to espouse those very same ideals while simultaneously upholding foreign
policy decisions which seem to be in direct conflict with those standards.
Abdul Rauf holds east and west equally accountable and approaches our
current predicament not as if it were a clash of two civilizations, but as a
challenge for modern civilization. By understanding how the situation has
evolved to its current state, we are forced to deal with it, minus the
agendas which arise when there is concealed ill will and anxiety over the
motivations of the "other."
The question of whether this book will be embraced and acted upon is really
a question of whether we truly believe the world would be better served in a
state of peace. It is a question of whether people are really motivated by
goodwill or by the empowerment they gain from sustaining a categorical
posture of "Us versus Them." Armed with the history and wisdom that this
book provides, I have gained my own form of empowerment which I will use to
embark on a genuine dialogue, using this book as its 101 text.
Although he writes with great authority, Abdul Rauf is most effective and
heart wrenchingly honest when he departs from the clinical and gives license
to his intuitive voice by making the following appeal:
I can only ask my reader, whether you come from a Western or Muslim culture,
to suspend you immediate judgments as you read this section and to try to
put yourself in the shoes of someone from the other culture (pg.153)
And so we are called to do just that.
I recommend this book as a alternative attitude to the ones adopted by the
litany of books that are calling for either an extreme return or departure
from purist interpretations. This is a book whose intent is not to sing the
praises of the purist morality of the past, but a book which will grant us
the tools and necessary instruction to discover it in light of our modern
world. In addition to its invitation to transcend and embrace our respective
cultures, it can serve as a how-to book and a to-do list as well.
This book has earned its place on my shelf, right between my favorite Jewish
author, Halevi, and my favorite Christian author, Huston Smith, who once
said, "I get my main nourishment from Christianity, but I am a strong
believer in vitamin supplements." I feel nourished by What's Right With
Islam, the book and its answer.
Now if you will excuse me, I must place What's Right With Islam on my
favorite authors bookshelf and go fish Bernard Lewis' The Crisis of Islam
out of the bathtub, because what is right with Islam is that the "crisis"
can and should be averted.
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