Advice for the young Muslim
Author says it’s all right to have doubts
ABU DHABI // It’s OK to be Muslim and hold doubts. That was the message Omar Ghobash, author of Letters to a Young Muslim, delivered yesterday to a packed audience in Abu Dhabi.
“Every child has asked their parent or a teacher, what does God want, how do you know God exists?” said Mr Ghobash. “We shouldn’t be afraid of very simple questions.” Mr Ghobash, UAE Ambassador to Russia, wrote the book for his sons Saif, 16, and Abdullah, 12, as they were starting to deal with some of the same questions he faced at their age. “I am also addressing the kinds of worries and fears that I had when I was 15 and I wish somebody had been able to tell me and I’m now telling my son,” he said.
“I think these issues are very common not only just to youth, but the region.” One of the key messages Mr Ghobash wanted to get across to his sons’ generation was “not to feel ashamed for being a human being who reacts with disgust to certain things and with pleasure at other things”.
Mr Ghobash said he also encouraged young people to think critically and ask questions.
“It is possible in this world to be a Muslim and to believe all kinds of things,” he said.
Too often, when adolescents reach their late teens and early 20s, they begin to swing on a moral pendulum from “very devout” to “very decadent” with no middle ground because of a strict culture in Islam.
“We’re allowing our religious scholars to promote this idea that faith is this kind of thick substance that passes all the way through your life. If at any point it becomes thinner, you must be punished for that.”
Under such strict interpretation, some young Muslims may be inclined to resist asking questions. “I watched some of these wonderfully intelligent and highly educated religious scholars talking about people like me, who haven’t got the traditional knowledge, as people who must be told what to do,” he said. “I think they need to realise knowledge has increased to such an extent that people like you and I can equip themselves with enough ethical knowledge, philosophical knowledge and psychological knowledge to engage at a higher level with the same religious scholars.” Mr Ghobash said he had great respect for religious scholars, our “vital partners in helping us to move forward”.
“If we had clerics in our part of the world who also accept there are other disciplines outside of the strictly theological discipline that they master, that can complement and inform their positions, then maybe we’re going to be at a better dialogue,” he said.
The idea that questioning authority is wrong, is out of date, he said. “Questioning leadership does not lead to breakdown of society,” said Mr Ghobash. “I think we should be talking about constructive criticism, how to take interesting situations, dismantling them intellectually and then rebuilding them in a more interesting fashion.”
A Vibrant Discussion with Omar Ghobash: On Life’s Challenges and his Vision of Hope was hosted by Tamakkan in cooperation with AmCham Abu Dhabi. The discussion was moderated by The National’s chief columnist Faisal Al Yafai.