I Am Malala

One didn’t hear much about the Taliban before the infamous events of September 11th, 2001, even if one was relatively informed and kept up with the news.  Here and there, they made the news as they continued to make living in Afghanistan less and less desirable, but they weren’t an every-day item.  In my mind, they were most famous for blowing up the Buddhas of Bamyan.  With al-Qaeda’s attacks, though, things changed and changed quickly.  Afghanistan became a military target for the U.S., putting the Taliban in the crosshairs.  With the interconnectedness and fluidity of the region, it was easy for many Taliban members to cross borders and blend into society elsewhere, including Pakistan, where they had already had a small presence since the mid 1990s.  After September 11th and as the Taliban went international, they were in the news every day, and when Taliban gunmen shot a girl named Malala in Pakistan, both the Islamist Taliban and the girl became household names around the world.

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (ISBN: 978-0-297-87092-0) is the story of the schoolgirl from the time she was a little girl to the beginning of her recovery in England.  The book starts with her young childhood and takes the reader through day she was shot in great detail.  Interwoven into her discussion of cricket with friends, friendly competition among classmates, and trips to ancestral villages to visit extended family are brief lessons on Pakistani history and geography, which adequately set the stage for Malala’s life and what would become important to her as she got older.  Far away from the bigger cities where more liberal attitudes existed, life in the villages of Swat went on much like it had for centuries, following traditional Islamic custom.  Malala’s father was a trend-setter in many ways and surrounded himself with others who wanted to see progress in the field of education.  He believed everyone should have an education.  He also didn’t have a lot of use for many of the traditions that prevented women from freely moving about, going to school, or otherwise expressing themselves.  His oldest daughter followed in his footsteps and was nationally prominent by the time she was of junior high age, having won a few national awards, having met with various Pakistani dignitaries on the way.  She enjoyed school, enjoyed learning, and wished everyone had the same opportunity.  She saw how the lack of such opportunities negatively affected others in her community, including her own mother, who was illiterate.  She and two others were shot by Taliban gunmen in 2012, and because she needed long-term intensive care and was under continued threat, she and her family were evacuated to the UK, where they have lived ever since.

I was unsure how I would react to this book.  It was wildly popular a few years ago, but I was reluctant to read it, thinking it would push either Islam or women’s rights in an overbearing fashion.  It did neither and was refreshing in its agenda-free message.  I didn’t know that the Taliban shooting was not indiscriminate.  She was a very specific target thanks to her involvement in Pakistan in trying to get women and girls more involved in education.  (If nothing else, it rubbed off on her mom, who had begun reading lessons near the end of the book.)  While I got the impression that Malala was and is a devout Muslim, she seemed to have a “big-tent“ mentality, simply explaining and never criticizing (other than Taliban policy and actions).  Women in burqas and bazaar dancers were equal in her eyes.  In a world where many in the West are looking for the moderate Muslim voice, this may be one of them.  Her same level-headedness came through in her discussion of women and girls and schooling.  She saw the advantages that it afforded and wanted all to be able to participate.  Neither poverty nor tradition should stand in the way of those who wanted to go to school.  Such a concept seems so basic to Westerners and one that fits well into the idea of equal opportunity, but stories like this show that there is much to yet to be done in spreading these basic norms around the world (and not forgetting them at home at the same time).

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The Qur’an

I had never thought of Islam in any serious way before the infamous attacks of September 11th.  After that, I had a short unit on Islam in a comparative religion class at BYU (to this day, it remains my favorite religion class at BYU).  It wasn't until living in Sarajevo, though, that I had any substantial contact with Muslims.  Bosnia's brand of Islam is, in the mainstream, moderate, and there's a standard joke among many of the Americans that Ramadan for Bosnians is the detox month.  My interpretation of Bosnian Islam is that Muslims in Bosnia are like a lot of Christians in Europe.  Christians in Europe and Easter-and-Christmas Christians; Muslims in Bosnia are Ramadan Muslims.  In the meantime, the more extremist flavor dominates the American headlines.  I figured it would be interesting to make my own, somewhat more informed, opinion about the religion that claims well over 1 billion adherents.

To do that, I read the Qur’an (ISBN: 978-0-19-953595-8), translated by Abdel Haleem.  The Koran (there are lots of possible spellings for this) is Islam's holy book, purported to be a recording of revelation given to the prophet Mohammed (lots of spellings for his name, too).  It focuses on the nature of God as the only God, as opposed to idols, pantheons of pagan gods, or even God as Christians know him, the Father of Jesus Christ.  The Koran talks about Mary and Jesus, but Jesus is not God’s Son.  It talks about Muslims’ duties to the poor and orphans.  It discusses the afterlife and the resurrection.  It warns evildoers against their course of action.  There are some details about domestic life, finances, and there is the well-known injunction to prayer, which results in the call to prayer that happens five times a day wherever there is a functioning mosque.  There are some instructions regarding Muslims’ dealings with non-believers, or infidels.

I was very interested in reading the Koran and am glad I did.  However, it was often slow going.  I found the book to be extremely repetitive.  The discussion of God as the only god and the lack of any other gods and the renunciatin of the false practice of worshipping idols was repeated ad naseum.  I read the book looking for two things.  The first was some of the more controversial passages about women, jihad, and relations with the infidel.  The second thing I looked for were doctrinal differences or similarities with the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The doctrinal aspect of the read was interesting.  As I already knew from discussions with Muslims, there were some similarities.  God’s existence being the most basic and fundamental.  It was interesting to read about the resurrection and various injunctions to help the poor, be fair to orphans, and in general help others.  The prohibition against alcohol and pork remind one of the Word of Wisdom.  There were discussions of the afterlife that included seven degrees of heaven that seemed awful similar to the Mormon three degrees of glory with a celestial kindgom divided into three of its own degrees.  There were other similarities, too.  The biggest difference has to be the denial of Jesus as the Christ.  I found it odd because the Koran repeatedly says the prophets of the Old Testament, such as Moses and Abraham, were true prophets, so since those men all testified of Christ’s coming, it seems there was some misunderstanding of the Old Testament.  As for the controversial passages, I found them to not be too inflammatory, although it was easy to see where the more extreme interpretation comes from, but I was reminded of Glenn Beck’s analysis in his book about Islam in which he explains that ultimately it doesn’t matter what we think the Koran says and it doesn’t matter what Islamic scholars say the Koran says; what matters is what the extremists think it says because their interpretation is the one that drives them.  Finally, a note on the book I read.  I was disappointed in the translation.  It was meant to be accessible to a modern reader.  There were many instances of my reading it and translating what I was reading in a more King James style, which I thought read a lot better.  I think I would’ve appreciated a more traditional translation.  There were many passages that included Arabic metaphors that the translator often tried to explain, but with which I struggled.  I tried to be fair to the Koran and admitted my unfamiliarity with it, but in the end, I realized that one of the big reasons there were struggles to understand it were not translation problems, but the simple fact that the book is not inspired scripture in the way the Bible and the Book of Mormon are.  Those books contain similar Old World metaphors, but I usually get them.  Part of that is familiarity and a lifetime of study; part of it is the fact that when you read inspired scripture, your understanding is influenced by the Holy Ghost.  The Koran was well worth a read, especially if one is trying to understand those around oneself, and also provides Christians a chance to look inside themselves, explore their own beliefs, and come away stronger.

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It Is about Islam

Ever since September 11th, 2001, Islam has been a big part of what America thinks about.  As with most things in modern American culture, the general American has been content to let a few blabbermouths on his favorite 24-hour news channel serve as his source of information regarding a religion that claims nearly 1.6 billion adherents.  I am not fully free from this sin.  Having lived for some time in Bosnia & Herzegovina and having spent a couple months in Azerbaijan, I like to think I’m not as clueless as the next guy.  What I do know tells me that there are certain people who believe that Islam teaches them to do horrible and disgusting things to people.  I see that line of thought as a threat to America, to the West, and to liberty in general.  Overall, the religion, schools of thought based on the religion, and the culture, like all things foreign, are intriguing, especially since they have a real influence on the world today, and I enjoy the chance to take in something new that touches on many areas of interest at once.

In It Is about Islam (ISBN: 978-1-5011-2612-3) by Glenn Beck, part of Beck’s “Control” series (although I’m not entirely sure because it doesn’t fit the government overstep discussion that is so central to the other two books in the series), the reader is given a crash course in Islam, then typical media and government lies about Islamic extremism (Beck uses the word “Islamism” for this) are discusses and exposed, and then Beck gives a couple basic suggestions on how to move forward.  Based on my own understanding, the background information was solid.  I was intrigued to learn about the contact early Americans had with Islam and the process they went through to properly educate themselves about it.  The “Lies” section was good.  It was likely easy for the research team to gather the material.  There was no need to go into statistics or anything like that.  Simply gathering material from the Koran, the Hadith, and the words of the extremists themselves, did it and showed just how the extremists come up with what they believe.  Finally, there were a couple suggestions on how people should arm themselves with real information and not be willing to be stuck with what the media and politicians try to feed the American public.

I really wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this book.  I know a lot of Muslims, largely because I have spent (at the time of this writing) nearly two years in a country that has a majority Muslim population (~51%, but still a majority).  Bosnia & Herzegovina, though, is famous for being a Muslim lite country, although that has changed a bit since ISIL came on the scene.  I know that the nuts believe they are carrying out the will of God according to the Koran.  I also know some really solid people who are Muslims and don’t live anything like the extremists.  In the end, I ended up agreeing with Beck’s argument that while there are many Muslims that don’t agree with the extremists, it doesn’t really matter because we’re not worried about them; we’re worried about the extremists because they themselves believe they’re engaged in a holy war and that they themselves are carrying out God’s will according to the Koran.  It doesn’t matter what regular Americans think or what elites think or what non-extremist Muslims think.  What matters is what the extremists think, and it would behoove us to call it what it is so we can actually move forward against what is a real threat.  I was probably most disappointed by the section at the end of the book because it lacked any real, concrete suggestions.  The other book in the series have, but this was a bit fuzzier and just asked readers to be educated (one thing I hope to do is read the Koran even though Beck quoted from the Saudi-approved English translation).  I agree that’s important, but in our very literal world today, I think that most people need to be given the step-by-step guide.  My advice would be to not swallow the lines the politicians are always giving us along with doubting just about anything one hears in the media.  Once one figures out the real story, wield the truth and demand justice and common sense by getting vocally and actively involved in local politics.  The book gives the example of some city in Texas having a local sharia court.  If more people who believed in the Constitution stood up, that wouldn’t be happening.

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American Sniper

I am pretty old.  I don’t always feel it, but I am.  There are a couple ways I can tell this.  First, in high school and college, I played a lot of basketball and volleyball.  The first year home from my mission I played a lot of basketball.  I remember playing for hours on end on the courts at BYU’s now-demolished Deseret Towers.  I could do that every day.  Nowadays, on the rare occasion that I even get to play decent basketball, my skills have atrophied and I feel the effects of a couple hours of running around when I wake up the next day.  Second, I remember sometimes running around the neighborhood with friends carrying plastic machine guns.  We were often policemen or soldiers as we stole around a corner or pushed or way through low-growing brush in an empty lot.  Nowadays, guns kill people, not the person pulling the trigger, and helicopter parents everywhere try to keep their kids from touching anything even remotely gun-like.  My current, mundane desk job is a far cry from the excitement imagined as a kid on the NBA hardwoods or as an elite soldier racing down a zip line suspended from a helicopter in enemy territory, but sometimes it’s interesting to re-visit those day dreams.

American Sniper by Chris Kyle (ISBN: 978-0-06-223886-3) is a book that does just that.  It also visits, in a very personal way, the other realities of being a soldier, such as separation from friends and family, and the stress that comes from that and from always being in such high-adrenaline situations in war zones.  The book is the first-hand account of a Navy SEAL and his experiences throughout his time in the service of his country and his fellow man.  It follows him from high school to his helping form a company to train other security professionals once he got out of the military.  Most of the details in the book come during his time as a sniper in Iraq.  He explains how the American soldiers went about their business in the hostile areas where they operated.  He explains what goes through a soldier’s mind before, during, and after action.  He goes through the extremely painful process of losing a friend in battle.  The book also describes the heroic efforts of those who were seriously injured to work hard to overcome their new disabilities and make something of their lives.  Readers are let in, to a certain degree, to the psyche of the author as he describes, mostly in general terms, his philosophy on life and on some of the things he did while in the Navy.  There’s a little fun along the way, but the journey is mostly hard work, a lot of sweat, and quite a bit of blood, too.

I remember hearing about the book a couple years ago, but not being super interested at the time.  Then someone decided to make a movie.  Books are always better than movies, so I got a copy of the book.  For the most part, it was pretty gripping.  It’s pretty much all action all the time (and includes all the typical foul language of a modern soldier’s memoir).  Even the parts where Kyle tells about being at home and dealing with his wife and children have an edge to them because he was on edge and not always dealing with his struggles in the best way.  In the end, he learns a lot from what he goes through and definitely becomes a better person, especially in his family life, and that was neat to read.  The war sequences are very interesting.  They are fascinating to me because I have never experienced anything like them.  Kyle makes a simple case for his belief that what he and the rest of the U.S. military were doing was right, and that was interesting to read, too.  It really had only two points.  First, by engaging America’s enemies on their home turf, they had little to no opportunity to engage us on ours.  Second, the people America was fighting against were people who wanted to kill Americans and subject others to their will.  The soldiers felt they were protecting Americans and helping the Iraqi people be able to live according to the desires of their consciences.  It was really that simple for him.  It’s that simple for us, too, and I am thankful that men like Chris Kyle were willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of us.  It is a sad subscript to the book that Kyle was killed a few years after writing the book by a former soldier he was trying to help, using his own experiences as something to learn from, re-adjust to civilian life.

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My Name Used to Be Muhammad

“I never thought I’d cry when my father died, but I wept like a baby.  I miss him terribly. What I really miss is what we never had.  I would have spent another fifteen years in prison in exchange for the opportunity to be close to my father as a boy. I so badly wanted to please him.  I wanted to hear his praise.  I wanted to kick a soccer ball with him. I wanted to paint him a picture and have him tell me he liked it.  I wanted to tell him I met a girl and fell in love.  I wanted to ask him for advice. I wanted to talk to him about something other than religion.  I wanted him to say something to make me laugh.  I wanted him to put his hand on my shoulder and tell me about a time when he made a mistake as a boy.  I wanted to see him miss my mother. I wanted to be his boy.   Most of all, I wanted him to want me.”
— Tito Momen
One of the most fascinating classes I took in college was a comparative religion class.  This was arguably my introduction to Islam.  I had run into some Muslims while on my mission in Russia, but my understanding of their religion was superficial at best.  It was in my world religions (I think that was its actual name) class that I learned more about the religion that claims more adherents than any other on our planet.  Since then, my travels as well as the events that have often taken center stage in the news have increased my knowledge of this fascinating religion.  As a staunch member of my own church, I find conversion stories to be miraculous, inspiring, and simply interesting.  Islam is known — rightly or wrongly is up for debate — for being extremely harsh in dealing with those who turn against it.  Conversions from the strong traditions of Islam to the all-encompassing doctrines of Mormonism are especially interesting from this standpoint.

Tito Momen, in My Name Used to Be Muhammad (ISBN: 978-1-60907-710-5), told just such a story.  His background was one of utmost Islamic piety in northern Nigeria to accepting Jesus Christ as his Savior and embracing the other doctrines and scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The journey was an interesting one, often wrought with peril.  Momen’s childhood and teenage years were fairly typical for boys in the area where his family lived.  His father was extremely strict, occasionally abusive, and based everything he did on his religion.  His plan for young Momen involved formal schooling with the ultimate goal of becoming part of the Islamic clergy.  Momen wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea, wishing to please his father and rather enjoying his schooling.  The only thing he didn’t really get was the lack of an outlet for his natural talents and the lack of room in his culture for questioning those in authority.  At a college in Damascus, Syria, he tired of abusive, extremist professors, eventually getting in a physical altercation with one that he despised the most.  While having the potential to be a real disaster, it ended up putting him on a path toward his eventual conversion.  He was able to go to Cairo, Egypt, to continue his schooling.  There, he met a very diverse group of people, including within the faithful Muslim community.  He learned that the northern Nigerian brand of Islam wasn’t the only one, and that many of those people were still good, faithful members of the faith.  He also ran into those who weren’t.  This diverse crowd led him to think a lot about his faith, and while he admits to making some choices that were not becoming of him, his upbringing, or really anyone, the process of change was something very foreign to someone coming from a background of total, blind obedience.  Eventually, he was kicked out of school in Egypt, too, having written an essay questioning Islam.  A French friend had converted to Mormonism in the meantime and introduced Momen to the Church.  After his conversion was complete, there were troubles with some of his former friends and acquaintances who were considering violence as an option for dealing with the apostasy from Islam.  An attempt to leave Egypt on a fake passport landed him in prison, where he languished for fifteen years before miraculously being let out.  Like the conversion story, the story of Tito Momen getting out of prison showed that God loves us, cares about us, and is involved in the details of our lives.

The book was, as I expected, incredibly interesting.  I know relatively little about the part of the world in which these events were set, so learning about them was neat.  Momen’s conversion story was, of course, incredible and displayed an incredible about of faith and humility.  His is one of those stories that makes a person think something like, “If this guy could go through all that he did, of course I can get through my middling problems.”  It’s an inspiring story that held my attention throughout the book.  The only thing I think could’ve been improved on was that his life story was told in decent detail, but maybe there could’ve been a little more detail given to his conversion to Mormonism.  I realize that it’s a deeply personal thing and that the impressions, thoughts, and feelings we have as we seek answers to our earnest prayers are personal and hard to describe.  Still, they are real, and there are events and thoughts associated with them that would be of interest.  It would firmly be rated PG-13 were it a movie, but it all accurately depicts life in North Africa and the Middle East.  I’d recommend the book as one of general human interest and religious interest that I really enjoyed.

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Volatile Borderland

Russia is a huge, multi-ethnic country.  I only vaguely grasped this during my time in Russia as a missionary; we sometimes ran into Muslims on the street (incidentally, they were usually much more willing to talk to us for a few minutes than the Russians), we bought watermelons from Azeris, I knew an Armenian missionary and Armenian members of the Church.  The Second Chechen War had a very indirect impact on me because all apartment buildings were put on lock-down for a few hours after the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999.  We walked around the streets of Pskov not knowing much and wondering a little bit about our safety.  Since my mission, I have continued to be intrigued by the many ethnic groups living in Russia, but the romanticism surrounding the Caucasus has also exerted a certain pull, even though it is usually far from the modern-day truth.

The collection of essays contained in Volatile Borderland: Russia and the North Caucasus (ISBN: 978-0-9830842-1-1), edited by Glen E. Howard, is an attempt at shedding some light on the movers and shakers of the Russian North Caucasus, what the future holds, and what is driving current reforms, repressions, and realities.  The authors are experts on Russia and the Caucasus, all either professors, journalists, or similarly qualified experts and policy advisors.  Chechnya, Dagestan, Krasnodar, and Sochi and the various peoples that inhabit them are prominent players in the analysis, but exotic-sounding places like Adygeya and Kabardino-Balkaria also garner significant attention because they form a buffer zone between the explosive and more Islamic eastern North Caucasus and the rest of European Russia.  As with most places in the world where high unemployment, Islamist thought, and rampant corruption have mixed, the North Caucasus is a tinderbox.  The Russian authorities have tried a mixture of ridiculously high federal subsidies and oppressive, totalitarian-style control, which seems to be tenuously holding things under control, but most of the essayists agree that this situation could go at any time.

The book was interesting because it touched on a subject that doesn't normally get a lot of ink.  There were a few differing opinions, but there was a definite trend in the thinking, largely anti-Putin and anti-Russian.  Interestingly, on the few occasions when an author decided to stray into foreign countries' policies or responses to the North Caucasus situation, it was typically anti-Western and definitely anti-United States.  I found the journalists' essays to be the least coherent and least informative.  The scholars' essays were much more well argued and could provide someone with a basis for formulating a policy.  Overall, I was disappointed with the lack of policy and over-abundance of dossiers of North Caucasian officials, most of which was set in the mid-2000s, which is kind of old news by now, with much of what was being discussed having already been overtaken by more current events.  I was also disappointed by the obvious lack of a proofreader that resulted in typos, mis-set type, and other distractions.  If one is interested in the topic, the book will still prove interesting, but is otherwise quite skippable.

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Not without My Daughter

Kidnapping is a subject that was terrifying as a kid.  I can honestly say that at times I have figured that any social awkwardness I may experience and discomfort when placed in the company of new people can be traced back to my early childhood and a visceral, albeit somewhat learned, reaction to all things stranger.  Of course, in the world of my childhood, kidnapping was carried out by strangers.  Maybe the 1980s were just a simpler time and people were more upstanding and that's why I didn't know about how in the U.S., most kidnapping is carried out by someone the victim knows, usually a family member.  Or maybe I just had a simplified view of the world around me?

No matter my view of the world, a gripping story of international intrigue, raw, primordial bravery, faith, and patriotism, is told by Betty Mahmoody and William Hoffer in Not without My Daughter (ISBN: 0-312-92588-3), a memoir of Mahmoody's experiences when her husband took her and their daughter to Iran and then forcibly kept them there.  Mahmoody starts with her flight to Iran from America's heartland, where she spent her entire life and moved from her blue-collar beginnings to entertaining and comfort of the upper middle class thanks to her Iranian husband.  She had various reasons for agreeing on the flight to Iran, but staying there indefinitely wasn't one of them.  That such a plan is her husband's plan is apparent within a week of arrival, and it's made worse by the fact that most of his family, and like most eastern cultures, family connections are extensive, is in on the kidnapping.  Mahmoody and her kindergarten-age daughter, Mahtob, endure the next two years under what amounts to house arrest in an unfamiliar and usually hostile foreign land where hatred for America is not only the official line, but something many citizens openly and actively agree with.  Eventually, Mahmoody is able to make contacts with various people, some simple shopkeepers, some foreign government officials, and others who are just the universal kind-hearted person you always hope exists out there.  She uses these contacts to organize a treacherous escape for her and her daughter, and through a few minor miracles, they are smuggled to freedom.

I vaguely remembered hearing about this or a similar case at some point in the news, so when I had the opportunity to read this book, the opportunity seemed very interesting.  The book didn't disappoint.  The bottom line is that the story is a good one — it's an enjoyable book.  I was appreciative of some other aspects of the book, too, though.  I was appreciative of the authors' descriptions of the big city, the lively markets, and sights, sounds, and smells.  I was intrigued by Mahmoody's return to the faith of her childhood even as she came to better understand and appreciate the faith of those around her, including those causing so much grief and pain in her life.  Unlike some critics, who have claimed Mahmoody's description of Iran and Iranians is calloused and even racist or bigoted, I found nothing of the sort in the book.  First of all, she wasn't trying to paint a picture of all Iranians or the whole country; she was writing a memoir, which by its very definition, describes her — and only her — thoughts and experiences.  Second, she pointed out that there were many kind and generous people in her life while in Iran, including those in her husband's family that she came to respect and to a certain extent, love.  Finally, I appreciated the patriotism.  Mahmoody is one who has experienced other cultures and other lands.  While the circumstances obviously bias her, she was remarkably even-handed in describing the things she saw and experienced.  Through all that, though, she came to appreciate her homeland, the USA, even more than ever before because of the real freedoms that we do have and others, sadly, often do not.

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