Letters to Young Muslim

 

a series of letters written by Omar Saif Ghobash to his son, & to all of us especially the young muslims of 21st century. Ghobash is an Arab-Russian diplomat from UAE. his multicultural & multilingual upbringing combined with his education in UK exposed him to a diverse range of philosophies & perspectives, which he learned to appreciate while staying true to Islam. 

it's an honest, thought-provoking book that speaks the uncomfortable truth & has given me a religious perspective in a refreshing way. he stresses the importance of thinking critically & allowing room for good questioning in the process. questions like how much responsibility we carry, when will political leaders stop dividing & plundering, why are some of clerics still living in time capsule of glory days of Islam in the past, & why women are given lesser place in some countries. 

he holds the mirror up & the reflection isn't pretty. Ghobash is not making excuses for what's wrong with Islam today. he's asking us to stop accepting the order of things, to reflect, to study, to pause, to think & to engage with others. bcoz at the end of the day we do have a shared humanity & we owe it to educate ourselves, work hard & find answers to life's difficult questions. 

we gotta look beyond the binary world of black & white while welcoming the diverse opinions which are made up of all shades of grey. for a long time we've been told to follow the clerics & just accept the orders that it is what it is, without allowing a single doubt, uncertainty or curiosity, while ignoring the gray area of things. not many of us realize that as much as we stick to Quran & hadis, Islam also encourages questions & different opinions. 

my favorite quotes from the book:

"you can choose to live as a Muslim who insists that only Muslims are able to have knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Or you can choose to find knowledge, wisdom, and understanding in all cultures, literatures, and philosophies. You can choose to be locked into a particular world, or you can set forth into a world of human experience"