Muslims between Integration and Introversion

[mariam.]

Muslims between Integration and Introversion by Amr Khaled

When you live in a society that is different from yours, immersed in a culture that it is unknown to you, you might go to either one of two extremes, thinking that there is no third way to do it. One: you shut your doors on yourself and your family and live cooped up in your own shell. Or two: you open all your doors and windows and dissolve completely till you wake up one day to the realization that you no longer recognize your own language, your own features or your own identity.

This book is a word-to-word translation for a lecture that was given by Amr Khaled in Germany. In it he tells his audience that there is indeed another way to living in new society and dealing with a new culture. The way of Islam has always been, and will always be the middle, “and thus We have made you a middle nation”. But do we know how to achieve this “middle”? Or is it just a theory that we read about in books and papers but find it so hard to put into practice?

In this book Amr Khaled explains what positive integration is, in his own understanding. He also explains how to achieve it and how, through it, societies can attain advancement and development instead of clashing with hidden – or exposed – feelings of hate and disdain.

This is a book for Muslims and non-Muslims. For Muslims, so they know a stable view on how to achieve this critical balance of integrating without dissolving. And for non-Muslims, so that they know that even though some Muslims could be well accused of living closed upon themselves, once they move into foreign societies, it is an undeniable fact that this is neither a feature of Islam, nor does it come as a teaching from the prophet of Islam.

This book will put between the reader’s hands different spectrums of Muslims living outside their original societies, both first and second generation Muslims. It will show the Muslim readers how to be effective in any society they live in and how to rectify the image that certain wrong practices have brought upon a whole nation called “Muslims” and a whole faith called “Islam”.

[snakelegs]

this sounds like an excellent book and i hope it is widely read.
like so much else in life, the issue is balance.
thanks for posting.