Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim
By Ziauddin Sardar
Granta Publications, £8.99 (pbk), ISBN 1-86207-755-X
I confess I had never heard of Ziauddin Sardar, who has published over forty books and a vast amount of journalism, and has been active in many social enterprises. He is the British-educated son of Pakistani immigrants, born in 1951. He writes with both passion and clarity, and I found the book fascinating. It is the story of his search and struggle, constantly thwarted, for what he sees as the true values of Islam, and their practical implementation. The story is one of incessant travel, both physical and intellectual, and of his interactions with a host of scholars, thinkers, and activists, of all shades of opinion. I take the account to be essentially veracious, with (perhaps) a little literary license when it comes to detailed conversations. What interested me was, first, getting a view of Islam in the modern world from the inside. Islam is still, perhaps, seen by some as monolithic, and often now as extremist. In fact it is, and always has been, highly variegated, driven by factions, and (especially now) in an intellectual, political and spiritual turmoil. It is sometimes said that Islam is in need of a Reformation. Sardar rejects this, arguing that it has already had several. But then so did Christianity before Luther. And the second thing I find interesting is the impression I get of a (in some ways) mediaeval world. The Islam Sardar inhabits seems much like the Christendom of Bede or Chaucer. There is incessant debate about the true meaning of the Qur’an, the revealed word of God, and how to implement it. But there is no hint that the word might not be true at all. Sardar, at least in this book, encounters no non-Muslims, and Islam is accepted like night and day. There is an outside world, but it is intrinsically less civilized and potentially, often actually, hostile. He ends, in the midst of the disasters of the 21st century, with yet another journey:“Paradise awaits”. One might dare to suggest that what is needed is not a Reformation but an Enlightenment.
John Radford
