Books, Life and me

Today was a great day since it involved books! Glorious wonderful books, I'm not even close to be done with book searching, but for today it was enough.

I bought Muhajababes, I remembered someone –who I found out I really disliked after just a few encounters- told me about it. It intrigued me because I want to know what it was about. Though after I got all the 5 book-filled heavy bags to the apartment, I lost interest, mainly because I didn't feel like going into a book that was like the girls of Riyadh, one that would make me angry or trash-talk my people. After watching Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day on Paper view with my parents I was off to my bedroom and the books where piled on the floor and Muhajababes caught my eye. I held in my hands for a few moments flipping it over my mind going over what it would contain and the fact that it originally cost 29.99 dollars and I got it for 5.99 dollars from this great shop called (Dymlocks) which was having a cool sale – made me think of my own bookstore-slash-library which I intend to open in July 2010, then decided to give it a go, put in mind that it was almost 3 am and I wanted to wake up for Fajr, so I opened it of and randomly flipped through it, reading the titles flashing on the top of the pages, when I reached to the end I saw Epilogue, and decided to read that, going against my rule which was : "never read the ending of a book first" but tonight, or today was an exception, and I absolutely LOVED it! It was AWESOME!

Giggle!

First I read the last paragraph of the epilogue and it was fantastic, I am not joking or being exaggerative it was really insightful, made me see the other point of view. She was basically talking about AK (her abbreviation for Amr Khaled) and Moez Masoud (who she just plainly calls Moez) well she goes on about Moez here's her exact words : (add them here) and it made me grin so wide I wanted to crack up, because at where I am in life now made what she wrote extremely comical, I feel the same way about what she wrote, maybe it'll wear off someday, but now what she said makes perfect sense. Are we trying as Muslims, leaders or just the people to make Islam cool? So that people would like it better? Accept it and stop considering it as the religion that creates terrorists? Which it totally isn't but that's not my point. My point is, are we bending the rules, Photoshop-ing the image to be closer to the world's comprehension? Yes, Islam is the religion of peace and is simple and is clear, but why is it that we need to decorate it, candy flavor it so that it's easier to swallow? It is already EASY TO SWALLOW! It doesn't need a spoonful of sugar to help it go down. It doesn't need artificial sweeteners or anything like that!

I understand that AK and Moez want the world to be a better place in their own way, Moez with his American accent and Abercrombie and Fitch shirts and smart mouthed comments that always involve long words that need dictionaries or thesauruses to understand, and he does use "dogma" A LOT! I realized that after she said it. It's not a bad thing though; we all have words we say all the time! oh well back to what I was rambling about, I thought about her comments, tossed them around in my head and stood in front of a mirror inside my mind, seeing if they related to me in any way, and they did, which isn't a surprise since I did have Moez Masoud as a role model for me too, but then it wore off as I grew up and realized I was a different person.

That was written while I was in Aussie 16/8/2008 5:44 am to be exact!

To continue, I believe that role models aren't people we want to become, they are people we put as our standard for goodness and rightness, Moez Masoud is really my role model because I want to be able to do what he does, not come on TV, no I want to be able to say what I think and feel in a way that'll be understood and spread the message of Allah to reach everyone's hearts, I want to become calm, reassured and answer back without whiplashing my words by talking with the voice of reason.

I am reaching there faster – in my opinion- than many of my peers basically because I believe in learning from mistakes, never tripping on the same step twice, I am growing, and soon I'll be as good as or even better than Moez but why am I comparing myself to him when I am a totally different person? So I believe I'll be the best me there is.

Back to Allegra's book, it was maybe the only book that ever opened my eyes to see how we, the youth of the Muslim and Arab world are perceived. She didn't get to Saudi Arabia, but I'm pretty sure the picture is the same or at least a bit similar.

I haven't finished the book yet, though I'm more than halfway across is, I have to get interested again, that's me with books that aren't novels!

May Allah's mercy and love be upon All of you.

With all my love

IslamzReviver