Ziauddin Sardar

Ziauddin Sardar is one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals in Britain, author of more than 40 books on science, religion and culture. This is his account of his life as a restless believer.

Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim

Desperately Seeking Paradise

Gavin

Wanted a life of Muhammad to match the life of Luther, but the available biographies were credulous, downplaying his Machiavellian – or rather, since he was successful, his ‘Napoleonic’ – accomplishments and mercantile background. 

So, the ‘sceptical Muslim’ it is: Sardar has been everywhere, involved in every other big event in the Muslim world for 40 years. He gets beaten up by Iranian revolutionaries; sees Bin Laden in Peshawar in ‘85; is offered £5m by the Saudis to shut up; is at Anwar’s side in Malaysia; his nephew worked in the WTC in late 2001. 

He shows the full crushing procession of forces in Muslims’ lives – Western bootprints old and new, Israel locking up 1.6 million and scattering a million others to the wind, the former Ba’athists, the Brotherhood, the ‘simpleton’ Tablighi Jamaat, Saudi power soft and hard, and a dozen home-grown oppressions and gross inequalities. 

Sardar in the middle: willing the backward chaos to end, but recoiling from the resulting medieval theocracies. “But maybe paradise does not want to be found”. Bit aimless but I suppose instructive.

Desperately Seeking Paradise Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim

Reviews