Desperately Seeking Paradise by Ziauddin Sardar
A Faithful Muslim Makes a Personal Journey of Discovery a Good Read
Aug 18, 2009
Believe not the blurb because if ever there was a book ruined by the blurb its this one.
What we have here is a story, highly relevant to our times, that is so badly packaged and yet so informative it deserves as wide a readership as possible.
Actually its two stories. On one level it’s the story of Ziauddin Sardar, a British Muslim who at the tender age of twenty was pressed into missionary work by Muslims more observant than himself. Luckily they didn’t make him reject his faith or lead him into a fundamentalist cul-de-sac.
Stories from the Muslim World
Making him question his faith but in a productive way is the journey that is recounted in this book but a writer of Sardar’s skill and it must be said on occasion length, uses that to tell some of the other stories of the Muslim world. And what stories they are.
This is one of the great strengths of the book that inside the narrative of one man are essays sometimes brilliant sometimes too long, he does have a tendency to go on a bit, of various aspects of Islamic history and belief.
State Religion Of Saudi Arabia
For example his time in Saudi Arabia which he recounts with dry humour, as befits the desert Kingdom, allows him to makes several insightful comments about Saudi Arabia. Whats more the essay that he wedges in here on Wahhabism, the state religion of the Desert Kingdom, is one of the best both in terms of content and its implications.
Its maybe not the best way to recommend a book that it offers speedy insight of a topic so vast but in this case its true. The other topics that he covers well in this context are Pakistan and Shariah law and less so Iran and Malaysia which at one point he feels is the key to the muck talked about Islamic Revival.
Middle Ages Muslim Spain
Where the book falters is that this last section, that on Malaysia is too long, a recurring problem but not a fatal one, and too cross referenced with the experience of Muslim Spain of the Middle Ages.
But the section on Malaysia underlines another problem that this is too personal an account. Well maybe is the answer to that one.
Whilst the pen-portraits of some of the people he has met along the way are interesting to the more serious they are distractions and on occasion, rare it must be said, it does feel like reading the account of student days too much is the detail provided.
Yet those misgivings aside this is a worthwhile book. Light in touch and leavened by a strong human side it is a handy introduction of the Muslim world for first time readers and a useful reminder to other of that world’s complexity and relevance.
