Desperately Seeking Paradise by Ziauddin Sardar

Desperately Seeking Paradise by Ziauddin Sardar (2004)
Read: December 2010- January 2011

Despite being about the length of most books I read, it felt like I was taking an age to read this one. I didn't get much read over the Xmas break, so maybe that's why it feels longer, but for some reason I really wanted to finish this book - and not in a totally good way.


I bought this book in BookSpot which is an expat second hand bookshop here in Maadi. I go in there occasionally, but don't often buy things as recent books can be overpriced it seems. Even though you can sell back any book you buy there (for half the amount you spent on it). This looked interesting and was a good price, so I went for it.
The title of the book is "Desperately Seeking Paradise", with a subtitle of "Journey's of a Sceptical Muslim" with a picture of signposts pointing to Mecca on one side and Hackney on the other. The blurb suggests too that the Muslim author is on a journey that starts in London and takes him to Mecca and beyond in his quest to find meaning in Islam.
Sounds V Interesting, no? Especially as Hackney is not far from my home in London and we're living in a Muslim country I thought this would really shed some light.
But gosh it was far more than that. So much more dense and intense.
The author isn't just a bloke finding his own meaning in Islam, or what Islam means to him, but more an academic - who spends the book moving between various Islamic Research Centres - pondering and lobbying on how Islam should be re-interpreted in this day and age and in seeking to establish true Islamic states.
There were some engaging sections of the book that I enjoyed and found educational. These were on definitions of Knowledge in the context of Islam (I teach a course on Knowledge), discussing how disciplines could be reinterpreted in the context is Islam (an interesting suggestion that sciences, for example, should focus on addressing issues specific to Islamic nations, such as bilharzia in Egypt), responding to Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses and addressing why the Muslim community was so abhorred, but also why the author felt that a fatwa was not the right response, finally reading the responses to huge events such as the fall of the Berlin wall, 9/11 and the first Gulf War. I enjoyed reading fragments of Arabic in the book too; although I didn't recognise all of the words, some of them are those that I have learnt as Egyptian colloquial.
However the majority of the book I found to be a heavily detailed CV following the movements and writings of the author and their friendships and enemies.

Will I sell it back to BookSpot? Probably not now, as I am a hoarder of books, and now a hoarder of books related to where we live. Maybe when we leave and I realise how much I've got to take on!
Will I recommend it to others to read? Not recommend, but I am interested to know what a Muslim here in Egypt thinks of the author and of his opinions on Islam. It seems that he is quite well known - possibly. So I would like to have someone else read this, student or colleague, and find out what they think and whether this take on Islam, and certain issues within it, is common, or not.