Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad explores his book "Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe" hosted by Makiz Ansari. ISRA Academy ,Australia , June 16,2022

YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/Z8tkzr8tYhk

This conversation was held as part of the inaugral Sydney Muslim Writers Festival organised by ISRA Academy in 2022. The festival aims to provide a space for Muslim writers and thinkers to discuss and share their experiences and celebrate the growing literature of the Muslim community. Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad explores his book "Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe" hosted by Makiz Ansari. Abdal Hakim Murad, is an English academic, theologian and Islamic scholar who is a leading proponent of Islamic neo-traditionalism. His work includes publications on Islamic theology, modernity, and Anglo- Muslim relations, and he has translated several Islamic texts.

Book: "Travelling Home : Essays on Islam in Europe." A forceful study of Islamophobia in Europe, considering survival strategies for Muslims on the basis of Qur'an,Hadith and the Islamic theological , legal and spiritual legacy.

How should we react to the new Islamophobic movements now spreading in the West? Everywhere the far right is on the march, with nationalist and populist parties thriving on the back of popular anxieties about Islam and the Muslim presence. Hijab and minaret bans, mosque shootings, hostility to migrants and increasingly scornful media stereotypes seem to endanger the prospects for friendly coexistence and the calm uplifting of Muslim populations.

In this series of essays Abdal Hakim Murad dissects the rise of Islamophobia on the basis of Muslim theological tradition. Although the proper response to the current impasse is clearly indicated in Qur’an and Hadith, some have lost the principle of trust in divine wisdom and are responding with hatred, fearfulness or despair. Murad shows that a compassion-based approach, rooted in an authentic theology of divine power, could transform the current quagmire into a bright landscape of great promise for Muslims and their neighbours.

Reviews:

“Dust off your dictionary and dive in! Travelling Home is a wild, invigorating and delightfully erudite ride through the political, social, psychological, theological and semantic landscape of European Islam as it is now. Pitched at a Muslim readership, this collection of essays forms in aggregate a brilliant and incisive analysis of the position of Muslims in a Europe ‘surging rapidly in a nationalist direction’ with their indigenous Muslim populations ‘viewed by increasing numbers as a Dark Other fit only to be securitised and stigmatised, and perhaps, in the dreams of some, banished from Europe’s walled garden.’

More importantly, the book proposes a new, constructive approach. The author, who has been on the frontlines of Muslim affairs in Europe for the better part of thirty years, makes a forceful and nuanced argument for a return to a ‘traditional Islam’ which employs, ‘the cumulative wisdom of the Muslim centuries in all its amplitude’ in an attempt ‘to devise an uncompromising theory of Islamic belonging in the European homeland of the late modern melée’.

In the process he takes aim at, well, just about everyone, and he takes no prisoners. European Islamophobes in ‘an already confused Europe’, Islamists, Muslim extremists redefined as tanfiris – those who make Islam repellent, ‘the continued prominence of race-temple Islam in [ethnocentric] community leadership’ and Muslim leaders ‘whose highest ambition is to have their photograph taken beside an MP’ are all taken out in this scathing and witty take down of the real barriers to positive change. In practice, he posits, Muslims need to replace a ‘reactive identity-religion with its desire for status and revenge driven by ego’ and an externalised Islam, with a revival of the awareness of the ‘presence, power and compassion of God’ in the profound and quintessential tradition of Islamic spirituality.

Travelling Home is an essential and exhilarating read.”

— MICHAEL SUGICH, author of Hearts Turn and Signs on the Horizons.

Source: https://quilliampress.com/book/travelling-home-essays-on-islam-in-europe/

Available at Amazon :https://www.amazon.com/Travelling-Home/dp/1872038204