Dr Akbar Ahmed has been described as “the most distinguished and versatile Muslim scholar in the English-speaking world today,” by Lord Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and Master, Magdalene College, Cambridge

 

Kudos for Dr Akbar Ahmed’s ‘The Flying Man’

Dear Ambassador Ahmed,

I am a friend and colleague of your daughter Melody, with whom I have the honor of working at National Cathedral School. I am writing to thank you for writing The Flying Man, a copy of which you were so kind to inscribe to me before Melody gave it to me a few months ago.

I have relished every page of this book. Every time I sit down to read it, I get the same feeling I have always gotten any time I have been privileged to sit at the foot of a master. I have been lucky to have experienced that a few times in my life, and somehow you have replicated that in print here. The deep understandings, the breadth of connections, the conversational tone, the personal anecdotes -it is such a gift to be able to learn in this way.

I have spent my adult life trying to unlearn the biases I internalized as a child and to cultivate a cosmopolitan perspective, and yet this book was still a revelation to me. How could the same age have been called ‘Dark’ and ‘Golden’ at once? Somehow, despite all my education and training, I had still not fully confronted nor grasped the insidiousness of that contradiction. That and so many other insights of The Flying Man seemed to locate and

weed out the last remaining vestiges of delusion from my early education (can they ever be fully eliminated?)

I often recommend to my students Tamim Ansary's Destiny Disrupted, Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and Angela Y. Davis's Women, Race, and Class as correctives to the biased history so many of us are still taught. I have added The Flying Man to that list.

I hope millions of people read this book, no matter their background (since I know even those who are Muslim may not fully appreciate their own heritage, due to the legacy of colonialism). I hope that it contributes to a sea-change in the way everyone views world history and the history of ideas. I also hope it may be a model for them to reexamine all their received ideas, so that we can better prepare the next generation to fully respect and appreciate the contributions of every culture, both religious and secular.

Thank you for all your invaluable work on behalf of humanity!

Shukriya, shukran, and As-salamu alaykum

Justin C. Maaia

603 North Armistead Street

Alexandria, VA 22312

(Justin Maaia teaches religious studies at the National Cathedral School and consults for the Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education (CSEE) in Washington, DC. He has recently completed a book, Starting Points for Teaching World Religions: Content, Skills, and Habits of Mind for Understanding, Relationship, and Self-Awareness, forthcoming this spring from CSEE.)