Ziauddin Sardar, one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals in Britain, learned the Koran at his mother's knee in Pakistan. As a young student in London he set out to grasp the meaning of his religion, and, hopefully, to find 'paradise', his quest leading him throughout the Muslim world, from Iran to China to Turkey. He finds himself torn between rage at Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and disgust at the fatwah, and is horrified by the events of September 11 2001, but his irrepressible curiosity compels him to search for a middle, humane way between western secularism and Islamist certainty. Along the way he accepts that he may never reach paradise - but it's the journey that's important. At a time when the view of Islam in the West is so often distorted and simplistic, Desperately Seeking Paradise - self-mocking, frank and passionate - is essential reading.
