The First Sin

Often, the first thing someone is asked when they discover the truth and embrace Islam is the question: Why Islam? Here, an American revert-to-Islam answers that question. The author, K. Sherman, writes: The beauty of Islam is probably the best-kept secret in modern times; it is about time it was revealed. This is the sentiment of a majority of people who are discovering the truth about Islam every day. My first exposure to the religion was through a perusal of a fifty-page booklet titled Towards Understanding Islam (written in 1932). It explained to me everything that twenty years of life and fifteen years of education could not. After the initial sense of relief, I suddenly felt cheated. I was consumed with rage. Why? I could not fathom how people could know about this phenomenal way of life and not speak out and inform others. This book is my personal take on the beauty of Islam, backed up by relevant and authentic references. I am convinced that humanity direly needs it and it is my duty to speak out.

The theme of this book is relief after hardship, or as the old proverb has it, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’ The author, Sameh Strauch, explains this concept, describing, with evidence from the Qur’an and the Sunnah, why we are subject to trials and tribulations, and how, when adversity is at its worst, relief is near. He uses as examples the stories of the prophets and the trials they endured. Strauch then proposes measures to be undertaken to attain relief from difficulty, and explains the importance of tawakkul (depending upon Allah), the benefits and wisdom derived from the concept of hardship and relief, and much more. If you have ever been stricken by calamity and wondered why it happens, this book has the answer.

The secular mind had a grand plan, to establish an earthly paradise, a utopia of the here and now, a modern civilization governed by human reason, rationality, and the triumph of progress. Whilst ideals are one thing, the means to realize them is something else. Away from the hype, emancipating humanity from the shackles of God and religion has proved no easy matter. Mapping the Secular Mind critically examines issues of reason, rationality, and secular materialism, to explore how these mental perceptions, or ways of mapping the world, have affected human interaction and sociological development. It does this by comparing and contrasting the ideas of Abdelwahab M. Elmessiri (1938 2008) a leading Arab intellectual, and Zygmunt Bauman (1925), one of the world s foremost sociologists. In the last few decades, an emergent Western critique of modernity has inspired Muslim intellectuals to develop new ideas, images, terms and concepts that state their positions towards the tendencies of secular modernity, its transformations and consequences, and how it manipulates perceptions of reality. The book challenges foundations of secular ideology to argue that its aspirations have deeply transformed human consciousness and man s sense of self, leaving him a creature of purposeless consumption, wearied by the search for fulfillment, and controlled by materialistic laws governing physical phenomena. It also offers a more darker thesis, that Fascist Germany and the Eugenics movement were a form of Social Darwinism taken to its logical course. These were not an aberration from the principles of modernity, Ali argues, but a consistent outcome of the modern worldview, with the seeds of self-destruction being woven into the very fabric of the philosophy.