I am now writing my
seventh book but of all the books I have written the first means the most to me
because it was written in Saudi. It is a tale about Saudi and its life style at
the time (1974) based on many of the things we experienced as described in Mike’s
Saudi.
At the time we felt
there was a big divide in the understanding of the expatriate and the Saudi’s
we were sent to teach. As we can see today Islam and Arabic culture is often
badly portrayed and misunderstood in the West, no doubt helped by the more
radical views of disinfected followers of the terrorist fringe. It was my
experience that these do not represent the views of most Muslims who now seem
to find it difficult to convince others of the true religion as written in the
Koran. By selecting abbreviated passages from any religious text it is possible
to support any view no matter how far from the true dedication of the text and
often read in a context often means the opposite.
In Inshallah I
tried to express in an unlikely love story of the normal family life of many
Saudis and their acceptance of Islam, not always as strict as the Matawa
(religious police) would like. However I tried to make it acceptable to the
Western mind set as possible without deviating too far from the facts as
actually experienced by myself. To me at that time they were friendly generous
people who accepted me into their families during the time I stayed with them I
wore purdah when we went out, and divided into separate rooms when none family
members were present. Life of course was different to what I was used to but no
worse for that.
I loved my time in
Saudi, no doubt things have changed now after all it was forty years ago. But
if as Christians or Muslims we stuck to the words of our Profits and didn’t
infect them with our own agendas the world would have been a much nicer place.
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