Mr Nasr used his Western freedom to do something that he could not have managed if he were still living in the Islamic heartland. With disarming humour, he described his own spiritual path in a successful book with an almost self-explanatory title, “My Islam: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind and Doubt Freed My Soul”. This recounts how he went through a phase of believing not only in Islam's literal truth but in the duty to despise people outside the tent of strict Sunni orthodoxy, and then his evolution through many stages into what he calls himself now: a cultural Muslim and spiritual humanist.
Until very recently, this 31-year-old public intellectual had every reason to expect that his home in western Canada would be a good vantage point for lectures and book tours in the United States. But thanks to President Donald Trump's travel crackdown, that hope has for the forseeable future been dashed. He feels horribly let down: “I understand there are real security threats facing the US, but this sham of a ban will not do anything to make America safer. It will validate the vile and deceitful narrative peddled by ISIS: that America is waging a war against Islam.”
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