by Jamaal Anthony Green, Christchurch, NZ.
Many thanks for the chance to read your book. You have packed it with a great deal of your own practical experience and it offers something that seems to me unique. I don’t know of anywhere (online or in hard copy form) where this kind of material is referenced or discussed within and for the Muslim community. Clearly it’s not a field that I have operated in and yet it would be a delusion if we assumed that Muslim males and females don’t need this, or that they live in some kind of perfected world immune to the issues or challenges you deal with.
As you know (or as you sensed) I had my misgivings about the book’s title – it seemed a bit “in your face” – but for me or for anyone else offering that response, a decent invitation would be to say, “OK. If you object, what can you offer that would deal with the very significant issues we’re dealing with?” You discuss many real-world examples (some of them sad or very unjust) that Muslim couples experience.
These are not easy times to live in. The wider, global, secular world dismisses the spiritual and faith traditions. Yet faith (and in our case the faith of Islam) offers us a profound shape of love and honour and mutual respect to operate in. Islam is not an escape from the world: it’s a way of being in the world, as partners whose support is the sacred. To be constantly reminded of that and shown ways to that in every aspect of our lives must surely be a blessing.
Enon and Osman 