Letters to a Young Muslim author Omar Saif Ghobash talks career, identity and tackling Islamophobia

Photo: HE Omar Saif Ghobash / Courtesy Emirates Airline Festival of Literature

In a recent review for The New York Times, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar described Omar Saif Ghobash’s Letters to a Young Muslim as a book that “may help us return to those glory days when Americans weren’t so frightened and could see the world as more than just Us Versus Them.”

Published in January, Omar’s debut publication, which My Salaam first highlighted here, discusses the issues associated with Muslim identity and just what it means to be a good Muslim.

“It was [inspired by] the early 2000s, the Arab Spring, the failure of the Arab Spring, the promise of Arab and Muslim youth, and the lack of narratives coming out of the region,” he told My Salaam on the sidelines of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature, in which he was a participant. “Then there’s the theology of hate that I recognised at the age of 13 continuing until today.”

That theology, he explained, was triggered by reading about a text that “consisted of 800 pages on the rules of Jihad”. His instant reaction was: “Wow. Somebody actually spent all that time figuring out precisely the mathematical rules of when and how we should go about attacking those who we differ with.”

He continued, “I thought, that couldn’t be an expression of Islam; that had to be a projection of this particular person’s warped view of the world. So I thought, if that’s the problem, then maybe we, even before referencing the texts of Islam, should begin to look at life in the first place.”

A REMARKABLE RESUME

Literature isn’t Omar’s full-time role. He is the UAE’s ambassador to Russia, a role he has held since February 2009. He studied law at the University of Oxford before gaining a second degree in mathematics at the University of London. Currently in his mid-forties, the Emirati is the founder of one of the GCC’s first contemporary art galleries, The Third Line, as well as The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. If that’s not enough to make you think twice about your personal achievements (we know we have), Omar also sponsors the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and is the founding trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. And he’s a polyglot, fluent in five languages: Arabic, English, Russian, French, Italian and Spanish.

So how did a series of his writings over the years make it into book form? “A friend of mine met the head of Holtzbrinck Publishing. And he gave him my text. The next thing I know, I’m invited to Stuttgart for dinner! We had dinner. We discussed the book. And I was really honoured that this guy, who owns Macmillan, Picador, and a whole bunch of other publishing companies, actually read my text himself and essentially said, ‘Let’s do this.’”

Feedback has mostly been good, something that has surprised Omar. “Most [of it] has been really positive, I’m surprised,” he said, referring to the messages he receives via his Twitter account. “I’m getting a lot of messages from young Muslims saying, ‘This is really wonderful, thank you.’ It is one of the things that I really would like to get out of the experience; to interact more with youth, and to hear from them, their issues.”

He feels that one of the biggest of the issues that Muslims face today is the “incredible range of perspectives”. “It causes massive confusion. So, you can say, ‘I’m incredibly insecure, I’m just going to shut out all the other voices and pretend mine is the only one that makes sense,’ or, you can say, ‘I’m going to boldly and confidently go into an area of immense uncertainty. But I think I will be able to see how I can pull all of these different strands together.’ That becomes much more of a personal quest for greater understanding between different sects.”

Nevertheless, with the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the West, many continue to struggle with their identity. But as Omar says, hate shouldn’t motivate individuals.

“But I’d also say, let’s not define ourselves by the Islamophobia. We need to be a little more generous in our reading of our own lives. I’m not a Muslim just because somebody hates me. Don’t get caught up with the idea that everybody is against you. Don’t fall into the trap of having to react to attacks.”

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