Writing something down and processing it, sitting with a text and a story, editing and rewriting new drafts … - Haroon Moghul

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His administration apparently means to define itself as a television program instead of a government. . . I don't know if it can please both its sponsors and its intended audience.

Haroon Moghul

Writing something down and processing it, sitting with a text and a story, editing and rewriting new drafts - that entire process helps clarify something for myself. Depending on the person, the act of trying to tell your story helps you understand yourself better, helps you come to terms with something that happened.

Come, Drafts, Helping, Rewriting, Trying, Writing

Same Author Quotes

I think growing up, we always try to make sense of who we are, what we go through, and I grew up in a very religious household. I interpreted what was wrong with me through religious language and I concluded, probably because of a combination of forces around me, that there was something in me that God didn't like or was unhappy with. Since these problems were in large part congenital, that meant that I was doomed from the beginning. I didn't have a chance.

Chance, Combination, Concluded, Growing Up, Religious, Thinking

I have no expertise of other religious traditions so I'm not going to opine on them, but in Islam the more you know about the religion, the more likely you're going to go to hell. Many people will find that paradoxical because we tend to think of religion as a way of making ourselves feel better and a way of damning and excluding infidels or reprobates or heretics or what have you. It was very hard for me to find an Islam that belongs to me and doesn't feel like it's been imposed on me.

Excluding, Feel Better, Heretics, Islam, Religious, Thinking

When I was growing up, we often heard Islam in the form of a slogan: "Islam is the solution," but no one ever told me that Islam can be a burden. . . Very few Muslims write about Islam creatively because I don't think we're given permission to. I think that's the bane of modern Islam. It's been reduced to slogans.

Creatively, Growing, Growing Up, Thinking, Told, Writing

After September 11 there was feeling obligated to respond, and allow other people to set the terms of the conversation. There was this ritualistic condemnation of terrorism. I'm not saying that that's unimportant, but it became the case that the Muslim people in the United States or in other parts of the world were inclusively taking on responsibility for things that they had nothing to do with. Of course, it's very important that a community define its moral boundaries. A community also must acknowledge what it can and cannot control.

Community, Conversation, Nothing, People, Responsibility, Taking

There is a dearth of imagination and I think that's an understatement in a modern Muslim world. There is very little willingness to imagine different modes of existence and difference types of societies. On the American front, a lot of Muslims ask me, how do we respond to Islamophobia? What I say is, when you love someone or you love something, you put that thing or that person ahead of yourself. If you love America, then you put America ahead of yourself and you answer the question about Islamophobia, not in terms of how it affects you as a minority, but how it affects America at large.

Affects, Different, Imagination, Love, Societies, Thinking