Thursday, June 7, 2007

Five thousand guys named Mo

by Ed Husain from The Guardian

Based on my travels in the Middle East, I see two approaches to using the name Muhammad. There is the Saudi approach that sees Muhammad as "just another bloke" - and from that stems a soulless, Wahhabi form of Islam. And then there is the Syrian approach, one that embodies love for the prophet ... I prefer the Syrian approach to Muhammad. It was in Syria that they refused to address me by name, Mohamed, preferring to rhyme it with other names and call me Mohanned, or Ahmed, or any of the other many indirect names that the prophet is known by. In contrast, in Saudi Arabia, they readily called street cleaners Muhammad as a form of general address.

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