Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Peace With All
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

From a review of my friend Akbar Ahmad's new book, Journey Into Islam, from www.dawn.com.

Akbar’s field study of the Islamic heartland is pegged like a tripod, surveying the three most defining models of Islamic thought and action: the Sufi model of total devotion to Allah and peaceful co-existence — Sulh-i-kul (peace-with-all) — with His creations, epitomised by Ajmer, renowned for the shrine of the great saint and mystic Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti Ajmeri; the Aligarh paradigm steeped in modernity and liberalism of Islam and the Deoband template anointed by an orthodox and atavistic interpretation of Islamic dogma and ritual.

Akbar’s painstaking and innovative research clearly establishes the fact that partisans of all three models are, by and large, inclined to co-exist in peace and harmony with the West and cannot be stigmatised — as is currently fashionable in the West — for being hotbeds of radicalism. All three, however, have this strong sense that there’s little effort in the West to understand Islam and its followers, which isn’t the way to peace or bridge-building among universal faiths.

Akbar S. Ahmed’s Journey into Islam is, no doubt, a labour of love. Akbar has made a sterling contribution to the inescapable need for a rational, cool and un-phlegmatic dialogue between the denizens of the Islamic world and their western detractors. His is a voice of reason and rationality. However, the question remains: is anyone listening? Is this moderate voice going to be heard or will it be drowned in the cacophony of jingoistic shibboleths baying for the blood of Muslims? Take your own pick for an answer.

Labels: Islam

Posted by B Feiler at 7:00 AM
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