Reviews in Religion and Theology, 28:1, 55-57.
Letters to a Young Muslim, Omar Saif Ghobash, Picador,
2016 (ISBN 078-1-250-11984-1) xxi + 244 pp., $22.
It is rare
that one finds a book that is both courageous and beautiful in the area of
religion. Omar Ghobash’s Letters to a Young Muslim is such a book. Written as a series of
letters to Saif, his teenage son, Ghobash
mixes delicately yet powerfully autobiographical recollections, descriptions of
the beauty of Islamic religious life, a powerful critique of neo-fundamentalist
Islam, and a call for another way of living Islam in the modern world. The book
is so intimately written that one feels as if one has gotten to know both
father and son personally.
Ghobash’s critique of
Islamic society includes the following: Muslims are taught that Islam is
destined to dominate the world: “You
are told that it is inherent within our religion to be the dominant player. All
the rules that we know are written for an Islamic society that dominates others
… We will give you peace if you are peaceful, otherwise beware. Islam was
dominant from the time [of] the Prophet Mohammed …” (p. 9); 70% of
Muslims, about 840 million people, are illiterate (p. 34); bullying is the
style of controlling situations by those in power, including clergy (pp. 70-73); the “masters of extremist Islam” are “developing
an advance theology of death, destruction, and decay” (87); there are issues to
confront in the modern world such as: specific beliefs and truths that one is
taught, democracy as a mode of group decision making, freedom, sexual
identity including homosexuality and the mixing of the sexes; violence is not
the way (pp. 90-103, pp. 132-38); and modern Muslims easily slide into
“semiconscious self-censorship”:
I used to wonder why we
only read good news about ourselves. The real world around me abounded in errors,
ethical quandaries, political catastrophes, blatant lies, and imagined glories
… I understood that there were no written rules that told me and others what we
could or could not talk about. It was something in the way we had habituated
ourselves … a form of semiconscious self-censorship … The silence that develops
when you are silent within yourself for too long is a haunting emptiness. This
is the dumb silence that signifies an emptying out of yourself. (pp. 221-24)
But it is Ghobash’s call to a more
courageous Islam that is at the core of the book:
Islam’s truth expresses
itself differently in different cultures, in different geographies, and in
different times. Rather than thinking that there is only one version of Islam
that all Muslims should conform to, as some suggest, we should look around
ourselves and discover the multiple ways in which people take up Islam. Rather
than thinking in black and white, we should think with all the colors of the
rainbow and see Islam as a morally and ethically rich faith … Islam is not the
property of the Arab world. Islam belongs to all of us. (p. 76)
[W]e are
told daily that Islam is a religion of peace but that it is also a religion
that is under attack from non-Muslims, or the west, or imperialism, or Zionism,
or capitalism … Perhaps instead of
calling for war by all, in all places, and at all times,
we should call for trust, care, and generosity by all, in all places and at all
times … Peace is a state of being. Peace is a permanent stance toward the world
… I want you to grab hold of the responsibility of peace … as a reminder of a
great responsibility that you have toward Allah, toward others, and toward
yourself. (pp. 80-83)
The resort of violence
is a particularly unintelligent and unimaginative way to deal with matters … If
you want to take responsibility, use what you have to support artists, writers,
thinkers, filmmakers … When you bear responsibility, you raise your head, your
mind is focused, and you sense a certain kind of dignity – the dignity that you
should feel as a complete human being … If we do not like what the extremists
are doing, then we need to call them out on it. It is too easy to say that they
have nothing to do with us. They speak in Allah’s name. And they do so
convincingly … It is not enough to chant in public that Islam is not violent or
radical or angry – that Islam is a religion of peace. We need to take
responsibility for the Islam of peace. (pp. 90-103)
The question of violence
is going to be central in the lives of your generation of Muslims as well. Why?
The reason is the rising voices of aggressive clerics who portray Islam as a
religion of power through violence … Why, if you can write hundreds of pages of
text on the theology of death, can you not give equal attention to what we
Muslims can do with life? Why the intense focus on departing this world in a
storm of blood and anger? (pp. 132-34)
The warrior is one of
the sadder figures in our modern Muslim society. Sad because he thinks that he
is acting in a way that will bring him closer to Allah, and to the rewards of
the afterlife when, in fact, it is really opting out of the challenges of the
life that Allah gave him … Perhaps the modern Muslim warrior is one who
embraces life in its complexity and fights for social and economic justice …
Islam was never a one-dimensional army of fanatic recruits for war … (pp. 145-47)
Ghobash’s chapters on “What is
True Islam” (pp. 75-78), “Role Models” (140-50), “Free Speech and the Silence
Within Ourselves” (pp. 219-28), and “The Muslim Individual” (pp. 237-44) are
excellent and, considering the challenge all this poses to neo-fundamentalist
Islam, these are also very courageous chapters, especially the last chapter,
“The Muslim Individual.” At the same time, Ghobash’s
section on the meaning of the recitation of the Qur’an (pp. 16-18) and his path
into fundamentalism (pp. 119-29), together with the unflagging love that he
shows for his son, Saif, are intimate portraits of
his own life as a serious and spiritual Muslim.
As I write these lines, parts of the Islamic world are
opening up to an earnest relationship with the Jewish “other” while, at the
same time, parts of the Islamic world are turning to the beheading of the
“other.” The battle for how one truly imitates the Prophet and honors the
Qur’an and the holy traditions has been engaged.
David R. Blumenthal
Emory University