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12. Faisal A.
- University of Arkansas Press
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T W E L V E Faisal A. And the servants of (God) Most Gracious are those Who walk on the earth In humility, and when the ignorant Address them, they say, “Peace!” —QUR’AN, AL FURQAN (THE CRITERION), : O ye who believe! When you go abroad In the cause of God, Investigate carefully, And say not to anyone Who offers you a salutation: “Thou art none of a Believer!” —QUR’AN, AL NISA (THE WOMEN), : [35.153.106.141] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:06 GMT) Theissueof Faisal’snamecaused me way more internal debate than a name ever should. I was sure that he was just as perfect for the book as Faisal R., but I was annoyed by the unavoidable reality that they happened to share the same name.How could I have a table of contents with two Faisals?It would just look so much better if one of them had a different name. But then again, I guess it would just look so much better for a lot of us to go by different names. And I guess that’s why some of us do. And the reasons for this are generally better than satisfying some obsessive-compulsive writer looking to create a more aesthetically pleasing table of contents. Although I can’t say that other reasons for adopting different names are all that much better. Usually, it’s just for the convenience of others anyway—mainly,to make it easier forAmericans or Egyptians or Zimbabweans to say your name, depending on what country or culture you’re in. PeopleoftenassumethatI’moneof thesepeople,andItendtotakeoffense at that assumption, not just because it’s false but mostly because it implies that I might be somehow trying to hide something about my background or my identity. Not so for me or for anyone else in this book. If there is any one characteristic shared by all of the diverse individuals profiled here, it has to be that not a single one of us is ashamed or afraid or even just annoyed at the prospect of being him- or herself. None of us has picked a more socially or culturally acceptable name. No matter what society or culture we find ourselves in, we aren’t about to change our names or our selves for mere convenience. In this respect, we are all take-it-or-leave-it propositions: we’re not going to adjust or modify ourselves for acceptance.We’ve all, through completely different paths, come to at least one identical conclusion: we’d rather others hate us, than hate ourselves.And as it turns out, I’ve found that when you don’t care what others think,whenyoufollowyourheartnomatterwhattherestof theworldistelling you,when you don’t bother trying to fit in,when you save your energy and just tell the truth, you’re much easier to get along with anyway. So there was no way I could expect either one of my Faisals to go by a different name. Their refusal to do something like this was exactly what had attracted me to them in the first place.Having realized early on that I was compiling more questions than answers in the process of writing this book, I knew better than to expect that there would be some neat and easy way to tie everything up with a simple and symmetrical bow. Some way so that no people so different from each other could have the same name, some way so that no one might get offended, some way so that everyone would understand, and some Faisal A. way so that everything would make perfect sense. I knew much better than to expect something like that.Of course,there would be no neat and tidy ending, or categories, or table of contents. Life just doesn’t work that way. That’s what fiction is for. Just as two highly different individuals can easily share the same name, many highly different individuals can and do call themselves Muslim, and that means a great many different things to a great many different people.For Faisal A., otherwise known as Faisal Alam, being Muslim means facing the truth no matter how messy that promises to be. It means taking on a burden that others are too weak or afraid to bear, speaking out when others are too shy or nervous to speak, and graciously accepting and embracing unpopularity in exchange for honesty and humanity. I first found out about Faisal whenAsra was...