Alhamdulillah, I have published my first book. It is entitled The Beautiful Surrender: Islam as a Path to be Walked and is available in paperback ($4.99) and on Kindle ($1.99).
The reason I started writing it was because a friend asked me if I could recommend a book on Islam to her sister’s non-Muslim fiancé, in hopes that he might choose Islam for himself. I could not, and so I felt obliged to write something in response.
In the process of writing, I came to realize that I was also articulating something fundamental about my own faith. We all wonder how it is that some people choose Islam and others do not. We know Allah is the Only Guide (al-Hadi), but we also realize that there are causes (asbab) in the created realm by which Allah guides people. For many in the United States, for example, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of those causes. For me, the fundamental cause was the translation of the Qur’an I had bought in the summer of 1997.
I received further clarity as I was writing by means of a lecture from Imam Zaid Shakir in which he made a distinction between “real da’wah” and “false da’wah.” He described the former as the process by which Muslims call those of other worldviews to Islam, whereas the latter is the attempt by Muslims to call other Muslims to their understandings of Islam.
And so my intention became to write a book that is meant to call people to Islam in a way that is true to my experience of being a Muslim. I wrote it in a way that is authentic to how I think and feel, while also trying to make it as accessible as possible (in terms of content, size and price). Lastly, I choose to publish it in this holy month of Ramadan because it was the Qur’an that brought me to Islam, it is the Qur’an that is still the foundation of my faith, and it is the Qur’an that forms the centerpiece of this book.
May God accept.
