The monogrammed towels, vanity license plates, and sloganeering tote bags would follow - a lifelong parade displaying one's own distinctiveness. I'd never thought of Show and Tell as baby's first building block of individualism, but seen through Sumaiya's eyes, it suddenly seemed like an early foray into the culture of the self. It starts so early, she marveled: 'Even in nursery, in Show and Tell, there's a sense of 'Look what I've got.' There's all this emphasis on the fact that it's your thing and you're showing it off.' But like him, she was conscious that people needed limits, and she was skeptical about the culture of indivualism that dominates Western life. “Like her father, Sumaiya believed that everyone has the right to make individual choices. If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran He does not want people to be proud of belonging. Religion hasn't come to give people an identity! Its purpose is not so you can say, 'We belong to this group.' But at this moment ninety-nine percent of Muslims treat religion as identity! But God does not like identity. We have got the law, but without the hikma - the wisdom - behind it.

'We are carrying the body of Islam! We don't have submission. 'Why do Muslims have so much suffering, all over the world?' he demanded.

'At the end of the day, people are carrying around a dead body, with no soul.' The outer aspects to become more important, while the soul inside is forgotten.' He paused, shook his head, and gazed mournfully out a the crowd. It happens like this in every culture, every faith. 'So the faith becomes like their identity. “Modern Muslims often simply cling to the external signs of their faith: 'People are busy worrying about their beards, or their headscarves,' he observed.

If the oceans were ink by carla power