{"id":87710,"date":"2013-05-20T14:03:47","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T08:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=87710"},"modified":"2013-05-22T01:48:10","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T20:18:10","slug":"islam-is-not-a-monolith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/islam-is-not-a-monolith\/","title":{"rendered":"Islam Is Not A Monolith"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Mohsin Hamid<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are more than a billion Muslims in the world, each with an individual view of\u00a0life. So\u00a0why are they viewed as a unified group, asks Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2007, six years after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, I was travelling through Europe and North America. I had just published a novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and as I travelled I was struck by the large number of interviewers and of audience members at Q&As who spoke of\u00a0Islam\u00a0as a monolithic thing, as if Islam referred to a self-contained and clearly defined world, a sort of Microsoft Windows, obviously different from, and considerably incompatible with, the Apple OS X-like operating system of “the west”.<\/p>\n

Read more in the Guardian<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n