Letters to a Young Muslim by Omar Saif Ghobash, Paperback, 9781509842629 | Buy online at The Nile
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Letters to a Young Muslim

Author: Omar Saif Ghobash  

From the Ambassador of the UAE to Russia comes a bold and intimate exploration of what it means to be a Muslim in the twenty-first century.

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Summary

From the Ambassador of the UAE to Russia comes a bold and intimate exploration of what it means to be a Muslim in the twenty-first century.

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Description

Omar Saif Ghobash was born in 1971 in the United Arab Emirates-thesame year the country was founded-to an Arab father and a Russianmother. After a traumatizing experience losing his father to a violent attackin 1977, when he was only six years old, Ghobash began to realize thesevere violence that surrounded him in his home country. As he grewolder, eventually being appointed as the UAE Ambassador to Russia in2008, he began to reflect on what it means to be a Muslim, establishing amoral foundation rooted in the belief of the hard grind that is the crux ofspiritual and practical living.This book is the result of the personal exploration Ghobash went throughin the years after his father's death. The new generation of Muslim's istomorrow's leadership, and yet many are vulnerable to taking the violentshortcut to paradise and ignoring the traditions and foundations of Islam.The burning question, Ghobash argues, is how moderate Muslims willunite and find a voice that is true to Islam while actively and productivelyengaging in the modern world.Letters to a Young Muslim will explore how Arabs can providethemselves, their children, and their youth with a better chance ofprosperity and peace in a globalized world, while attempting to explain thehistory and complications of the modern-day Arab landscape and how theyounger generation can solve problems with extremists internally,contributing to overall world peace.

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Critic Reviews

Letters to a Young Muslim is an honest and self-critical guide to the dilemmas facing young Muslims around the world. The book is full of brave questions and wisdom, and perhaps most important, it is a sincere father's heartfelt yearning for a son's generation to resist the rise of theocratic fascism. -- Ed Husain, author of The Islamist
Letters to a Young Muslim is much more than a father’s advice to his impressionable young sons. It is a call to a generation of Muslims to reclaim their faith from the bigots and assert their individuality. It is a powerful celebration of common humanity and compassion over religious particularity and hatred and deserves to be read widely by people of all faiths and none. The Sunday Times Book Review
Ghobash encourages the reader to accept a modern, enlightened path that embraces diversity, not just within Islam but among all religions . . . It is this sort of wisdom that creates hope for a world in which people are smart enough to work together toward a common good rather than claw at one another while slowly sinking in quicksand. -- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar The New York Times Book Review
A gentle, cautious work, which addresses thorny questions with a parent's compassion and a diplomat's delicate tread. Harper's
Ghobash encourages a search for nuance in a world consumed with a polarizing, partisan us-versus-them mentality. This is not another exhausting cri de coeur about why Muslims deserve sympathy. It’s something more personal and intimate than that: a collection of letters from a father trying to empower his son to challenge an aggressive Islamist movement while simultaneously navigating oversimplified narratives surrounding his religion. Slate
'I think that we need to look at Charlie Hebdo, and the Bataclan, and Orlando and ask ourselves if this is not precisely what some of us are taught by our religious leaders.' When an Arab diplomat has the courage to raise questions such as this, we must all pay attention and express admiration. To ask, as Omar Ghobash does, why the Islamic world in his lifetime has been so riven by violence, and to say that at least part of the answer lies within Muslim societies, is more than an act of bravery. It constitutes a clear step in the direction of a desperately needed social and religious reformation. Every Muslim, stands to gain from Ghobash's call for an improved and more individualistic approach to Islam. -- Niall Ferguson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
Thoughtful reflections by a Muslim diplomat about questions of faith, culture, and modernity. Letters to a Young Muslim is a personal testimony to the debate unfolding in the Arab world about the identity of the state and the role of the sacred in the private and public sphere. An informative memoir. -- Fawaz A. Gerges, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Omar Ghobash has written a timely and incisive book about the hopes and aspirations of Muslims beyond the headlines that have shaped Western attitudes towards Islam. Looking at once to both the formative traditions of the Islamic faith, and the challenges the modern world has put before young Muslims, Ghobash provides an empathetic and learned view, one that strives for understanding and balance. Addressing young Muslims, Ghobash provides an intimate and passionate view of Islam looking into the future. At a time when extremism threatens Islam from within and reaction to it isolates Muslims this book is a must read for Muslims and non-Muslims, young and old alike, who are keen to understand how faith binds them and their aspirations could bridge the divide that separates them. -- Vali Nasr, Dean and Professor of International Politics at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies
Letters to a Young Muslim by Omar Saif Ghobash is at once a cri de coeur, an honest critique of self and society but his insights can also serve as a road map for the future of Muslim societies. Drawing on his own life experiences, Ghobash in a series of beautifully written letters to his sons addresses some of the most pressing issues about Islam as a faith tradition in a cosmopolitan world. Unsurpassed in its candidness, Ghobash is a rare voice among Arab leaders who is confident and ready to tackle major challenges such as religiously motivated violence, democracy, freedom, faith, doubt and cosmopolitanism with wisdom and courage. A must read for anyone who wants to take the pulse of a crucial region of our world. Refreshing and effortless reading, filled with hope. -- Ebrahim Moosa, is professor of Islamic Studies and co-director of the Contending Modernities program in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame
This book is a rare treat in that it is intensely human whilst, at the same time, being an important work of philosophy, religion and life. It should be required reading in schools throughout the world. I am certain it will be beneficial and helpful for young Muslims as it addresses many of the issues they face growing up in today's world. It is also, however applicable to both non-Muslim youths as they look to the future, and to the general population as they try to understand the complex issues facing Muslim communities today. -- Henry Sweetbaum, Chairman of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence

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About the Author

Omar Saif Ghobash is the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Russia. In addition to his post in Moscow, Ambassador Ghobash sponsors the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and founded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in collaboration with the Booker Prize in London. Ambassador Ghobash studied law at Oxford and math at the University of London.

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Product Details

Publisher
Pan Macmillan | Picador
Published
12th January 2017
Pages
272
ISBN
9781509842629

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