It’s nearing 9 at night and with a weariness brought on by reading for hours, I slowly put my novel aside. Compared to the ridiculously long hours I spent reading in my childhood, this isn’t much but I get easily tired of books lately. My mind simply loses interest in the characters. Another reason maybe that I have started to get more judgmental about books and what kind of a message it delivers. I regret to say that in my teens I was an ardent fan of the Sweet Valley series and was oblivious to its negative effects on me. It made me crave their ‘free’ lifestyle and I wanted to be in their shoes literally. I wanted to live in their cozy American home, drive their cool jeep and be popular in their ever interesting high school. At present, I smile at that picture and mentally shake my head, wondering why I coveted their lifestyle…personally, that is living your life according to your whims and desires and I believe that never bring a real sense of happiness and tranquility.
The novel I read today with skepticism is ‘The Hindi-Bindi Club’ by Monica Pradhan. Lately, I read novels by asian muslim writers and all of it has left me appalled and disgusted. Everything about Islam has been written in a negative light, and with each sentence, my anger grows because I can refute all those issues these writers find demeaning and backward. What ‘gets my goat’ even more is there euphemism ‘culture’ for Islam. It’s almost as if they have created their own Islam, and bundled away all the things they don’t like under ‘culture’. First and foremost, I want these readers to look into their hearts and realise that they can’t change Islam and that they have to submit to Allah under all conditions which means accept all His laws. I wish there were more of the educated writers who could make the world more aware of how truly wonderful this religion is.
Coming back to the ‘Hindi-bindi club’ novel, I was pleasantly surprised. Although I am only halfway through, I find this writer’s reasoning and thinking very deep and profound. It’s about the early Indian immigrants who came to the USA and lived the American dream. Now it’s the third generation going and the novel talks about the differences in cultural and moral values between the parents and their second generation children. She has written in the first person for all the main characters and so we get to see both the sides of the story. Monica has given a fair account of arranged marriages, agreeing that it has a huge success rate and love does indeed happen after marriage. She has also touched on the issue of Hindu-Muslim conflicts in India. In Sri Lanka, we never learned in our history lessons about the Indian Partition and what the Muslims and Hindus would have gone through during those times of bloodshed and intolerance. Now I begin to get the drift and can imagine how it would have been. Although Monica is a Hindu, I noted with approval that she never blamed the Muslims for it but instead explained with diplomacy that each person would have a different story to it.
That is just a part of this novel, and there many interesting insights. I dearly wish there were books of this quality on diverse topics than the usual islam-is extreme-trash that give people the wrong information. Of the great things I got to know in this book is that Hindu women following the traditional culture behave in a similarly modest way to us Muslims. Whereas for us its religion, for many of them it is culture and thus easily changed. As always, I find that Islam will always be the greatest religion in the whole world.
Update: I read another good chunk of the novel and I am nearing the end. There were some Muslim characters in this novel [there again!] having a distorted view of Islam. The girl Saira doesn’t cover her head and looks every bit a non Muslim. Her views are falsely interpreted, claiming that she gets her opinion only from reading the Quran. I wonder whether the writer had actually met Muslims of this kind, and so I find it hard to criticise her. I believe she must get the benefit of the doubt because she is not a Muslim herself, and her sources could have been the ones to blame.
OMG! You’ve actually written something! after how long, only Allah knows! Nice topic, i agree with you too, its actually disgusting when muslim writers write so negatively and ignorantly, we can only pray that the readers wont misunderstand the concepts of Islam.
Hehe, I just love your reaction. I didn’t mean to start blogging properly or anything… I just felt like venting! Hopefully the readers don’t get a wrong view of our religion insha Allah.
Alisha, I just stumbled on your blog. I totally AGREE with you. I used to be a complete book worm, too…but I also haven’t read that much lately, at all. I’m also very skeptical of the “Asian Muslim books” for the exact reason you mentioned. I read one or two and found like you said that “Islam” was blamed with the pretense of culture.