ABSTRACT
Ziauddin Sardar notes in the introduction to The No-Nonsense Guide to Islam that as Muslim writers, the author constantly find ourself caught in a pincer movement. Our Western friends associate Islam largely with violence and bigotry, despotism and suppression. Our Muslim friends, on the other hand, emphasize that the very term Islam means peace; they conceive of Islam as a religion that by its very essence is about peace and justice. This chapter attempts to examine this on both sides, but by looking at the avenues by which a boy aspiring to become, and then becoming, a writer came to feel and be constituted as a 'Muslim writer'. The author has put Karl Marx, as against the various interpretations of his followers down for the sake of that boy who saw no difference between Hindus and Muslims. Finally, to provide children like him the space to define themselves determine the success or failure of larger events, such as the Arab Spring.
