Product Description

Ziauddin Sardar, one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals in Britain, learned the Koran at his mother's knee in Pakistan. As a young student in London he set out to grasp the meaning of his religion, and, hopefully, to find 'paradise', his quest leading him throughout the Muslim world, from Iran to China to Turkey. Along the way he accepts that he may never reach paradise - but it's the journey that's important. At a time when the view of Islam in the West is so often distorted and simplistic, Desperately Seeking Paradise - self-mocking, frank and passionate - is essential reading.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182200 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 354 pages

The Independent
‘Everyone even half- way concerned about the place of faith in the modern world should read it. Witty, learned, curious’

Glasgow Sunday Herald
‘There are other introductions to Islam but few are as intimate as this’

The Guardian
'Fascinating account… a refreshing insight into the historical and cultural diversity of Islam and its interpretation'

Customer Reviews

Desperation indeed!
Sardar is a deeply religious, indeed a passionate Muslim. He repeatedly excoriates secularism, of which he gives a highly subjective and partisan definition, and his account of its history (pp.249 to 251) is deeply flawed. He accepts the Qur'an as a revealed text (p.341), albeit one that has to be understood metaphorically rather than literally. He reveres Muhammad, and describes how emotionally shattered he was by Salman Rushdie's treatment of the Prophet in The Satanic Verses: "I felt that every word, every jibe, every obscenity [in it] was directed at me - personally" (p.281). Yet, as a liberal, he was equally horrified by the Ayatollah's fatwa calling for Rushdie's death.

Our media do not often tell us that there are religious Muslims who also espouse modern knowledge, pluralism, and the principles of western democracies; so it is good to see in the book of this prominent Muslim journalist that such Muslims do exist, and we need to hear a lot more from and about them than we do. But it must be said that the picture which Sardar paints of most of the contemporary Muslim organizations, whether they are sects or the states he has visited, will provide ample evidence of how widespread is the rejection of modernity, pluralism and democracy in the Muslim world. Sardar sees all these as a perversion of Islam, as cases of rigidity and of arrested development and as a betrayal of the spirit of its golden age under the early Abbasids (roughly from the 9th to the 12th century) and from which the West learnt so much.

In the course of his Search for Paradise Sardar engaged with one Muslim sect after another and visited one Islamic country after another. He paints a devastating picture of almost all of them. Even modern Sufism, to which he felt most attracted, has strayed from its original nature and tends to go in for the unquestioning cult of the local Sufi sheikh. Here, as elsewhere, he found a disturbing authoritarianism at work. Besides, he was troubled by the mystics' belief that a state of grace could be found only by withdrawing from the modern world, whereas for him the challenge was to bring a state of grace into the modern world.

The Iranian Revolution obviously failed to provide the paradise Sardar was looking for; and the atmosphere in Ba'athist Iraq and Syria was equally oppressive, though in a different way.

Sardar's devotion to Islam can be deduced from the fact that he had five times made the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Each time he was more distressed at what was happening to Mecca: sacred old buildings were being torn down to make way for six- or eight-lane roads and new concrete buildings, out of the construction of which the Bin Laden family made huge amounts of money. These physical changes and the mass-tourism technology which was applied to these sacred areas, Sardar thought, increasingly destroyed the centuries-old rhythm of the hajj. "The Saudis," he writes, "approached technology as though it was theology. And in both, complexity and plurality was shunned", for of course the Wahhabi brand of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia is as narrow, intolerant and antiquated as the fanatical brand of Shi'ism which dominated Iran.

Disillusioned with all these experiences, Sardar was involved in setting up an institution and a journal devoted to working out an approach to a more liberal but still essentially Islamic approach to the intellectual disciplines of the modern world. They could make no headway against "Islamization", the name given to the attempt to force these intellectual disciplines into an Islamic straitjacket, and which Sardar describes as "an uncontrollable forest fire that consumed everything in its path." (p.213)

What depresses Sardar is the realization that in so many parts of the world the rigidities and cruelties of the Sharia cannot be said to be imposed on the unwilling masses by the mullahs. Even in countries like China, which do not have Islamic governments, it appears that the desire of most Muslims is to be governed by the Sharia: they see it as defining their identities as Muslims.

Only in post-Kemalist Turley and in Malaysia does Sardar find Islamic governments that accept pluralism, though he implies that in Malaysia it is under threat after its leading exponent, Anwar Ibrahim was forced out of office on trumped-up charges, imprisoned and tortured.

Sardar is frequently depressed by the current state of the umma of which he cannot help but feel a member, and his book must be equally depressing for those readers who would like the efforts of the like of him to succeed. His book unfortunately confirms the impression of today's Islam which is presented to us by the media and which many of us would so much like to dismiss as illegitimate stereotyping. He presents himself and the little group of intellectuals around him as a gallant minority struggling against overwhelming odds (p.331) to shape a gentler, more tolerant, more pluralistic and above all a more intelligent Islam. If he is right, the outlook for convivencia, for a peaceful coexistence between Islam and the West, is bleak indeed. But perhaps he over-dramatizes: perhaps there are millions of devout but tolerant Muslims like himself. Perhaps especially in the West, many devout Muslims, just like devout Jews and devout Christians, have absorbed its respect for pluralism and a democratic society. But they would need to speak out, to assert themselves vigorously and openly against those who preach narrowness and intolerance. And if and when they do so, our media must report it, if only to give the lie to the vicious idea floated on p.311, that the West has a vested interest in demonizing Islam.

A Brilliant Critique of the Role of Religion in Society
As an atheist, trying to understand the world of Islam, I can't imagine finding a more engaging and informative text. There are many great histories of Islam, but this book brings the subject up to date in a way that is personal, analytical and entertaining.

In Desperately Seeking Paradise, Ziauddin Sardar connects with the reader as a modern Tintin, with almost every chapter launching into another adventure amongst the movers and shakers of the Islamic world. But unlike Herge's adventures, this is real, and without prejudice.

This is a book that has changed my view on the world.

a must read
Allah is our objective/ the messenger is our leader/ the quraan is our law/ jihad is our way/ dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. This is the slogan Sardar used to chant when he was a member of the federation of students of Islamic society (FOSIS) in the UK. The problem with chanting slogans is that a person has a fairly blinkered view of the rest of the world and the ideology that they preach, but thankfully Sardar begins to question each lines of the slogan he chants particularly the one on "dying in the way of allah" and so begins his journey in the search of paradise.......
Desperately seeking paradise is a semi-autobiographical, travelogue through the Muslim world over the course of 30 years. Sardar opens his account in London in the early 70s when he is a probing twenty something. His journey begins when two bearded men knock on his door trying to save his soul from eternal damnation, asking him to join in tabligh- travelling the country, bringing disillusioned Muslims back into the fold of Islam. This they tell him is the road to paradise. This is the first of many spiritual, thought provoking, enlightening journeys throughout the UK and the Muslim world. We learn that while Sardar is in Saudi Arabia working at the hajj research institute, the Bin laden family with its construction company in conjunction with the Saudi royal family has changed the traditional city of Mecca, the pilgrimage site for Muslims into a metropolis city of skyscrapers and congested motorways, in essence stripping the spiritual pilgrimage of hajj itself. Sardar visits Iran during the revolution of the ayatollah, Iraq when Saddam Hussein is a despot deputy and Pakistan to catch a glimpse of public enemy number 1 Osama Bin laden lurking in the shadows of various tribal meetings, deciding the fate of Afghanistan, these are among the many famous faces Sardar meets along his journeys.
These journeys allow Sardar to become the role of observer, participant and commentator as he attempts to see how his knowledge off different parts of the Muslim world supplements his understanding of Islam. More revealing is the fact that Sardar admits which many Muslims don't acknowledge which is that the Muslim world is in a mess. The religious scholars and the self proclaimed reformers he encounters disclose themselves as always deteriorating back to the crudest form of literalism in their interpretation of Islam. Sardar eloquently explains that any attempt to read or interpret the quraan with strict literalism is to be intentionally blind. This is one of many fascinating, enlightening discussions he has with his group of intellectual friends calling themselves the "ijmailis"- all of them worried with the global predicament of Islam and its turbulent intellectual decline since the golden age.
One thing special about this book is that Sardar does not preach; he seeks people to debate with, learn from and laugh with, and there are plenty of laughs along the way. Sardar casts himself in a valiant mould, torn between his faith and his questioning, but ends up providing fascinating insight into the Muslim world. I found myself immersed in the scholarly debates, and intoxicated by his journeys. A thoroughly thought provoking book which is a must read.