I imagine that reading the Quran in the United States must be much like reading Lolita in Tehran (although I have shamefully not read (yet) Azar Nafisi's memoir by the same name). I learned of Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad and his writings while perusing the online catalog of a Singaporean bookseller; there'd be next to no opportunity to learn of an well-educated, peace-loving, and politically powerful Muslim while here in the USA.

Three strange things have happened to me before I begin reading this book.

One, I removed the dust jacked. I normally remove the dust jacket, but in the United States I feel compelled ( socially at least ) not to advertise the fact that I'm reading a book about Islam. (Contrast this with the fact that, as I write this review, a young woman unabashedly, and completely coincidentally withteh first sentence of my review above, keeps a copy of Nabokov's Lolita on the table before her.)

Second, and with my sincerest apologies to the Prince, I had to verify to myself that Ghazi bin Muhammad is indeed a "real" prince -- and a "respectable" one at that. As if people go about calling themselves princes when they are not, in the same way certain Americans go about calling themselves successful businesspeople when, if you finally pin down a reliable definition of "successful", they are not.

Third, I clarify to myself -- and to the readers of my review -- that I am not a religious person. True, I am a member of a Unitarian Universalist church and attend services, but I'm not a believer in God or any gods or anything supernatural. As if that's all there were to being religious?

I look forward to learning from Prince Ghazi's studies and elucidations of Islam in hopes of countering my home country's increasingly insular worldview and toxic reactionarism. Simply obtaining and opening this book has been an important first step in understanding a part of the world kept forbidden from me, and perhaps even a part of myself perhaps kept forbidden from myself.