26 Ramadhan, 1446
For the last couple of years my choices of Islamic-themed materials for reading in the Holy Month have gone well. I'm on track for finishing Ziauddin Sardar's excellent Reading The Qur'an ahead of Eid. There's been at least one penetrating idea on every page and often more. It's another example of my re-reading of a text I thought I knew quite well being quite startling in terms of the 'freshness' of the experience.
And I found reading Isa Kamari's Pilgrimage, an English translation of a selection of his poems related to his experience of the Haj in 2001, equally fulfilling - and helpful in my appreciation of the Malay language as the originals are published alongside Harry Aveling's deft translations. In this case I wouldn't characterise the poems as 'penetrating' in their evocations of what it's like to fulfil the demands of Haj; rather their lean simplicity and sincerity conjure that singular yet shared experience in a way I found deeply sympathetic to my own rather less articulated feelings.
And now I'm off to do some actual reading as opposed to just prattling about it.
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