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    Orphan of Islam
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    Orphan of Islam
    Unavailable
    Orphan of Islam
    Ebook284 pages4 hours

    Orphan of Islam

    By Alexander Khan

    3/5

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    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    “I've told you before, and I will tell you again, if you are unable to read the Holy Book you will be punished.” The teacher’s face was a mask of anger. “Understand?”

    Born in 1975 in the UK to a Pakistani father and an English mother, Alexander Khan spent his early years as a Muslim in the north of England. But at the age of three his family was torn apart when his father took him to Pakistan. Despite his desperate cries, that was the last he saw of his mother – he was told she had walked out and abandoned them; many years later he learned she was told he’d died in a car crash in Pakistan.

    Three years on Alex is brought back to England, but kept hidden at all times. His father disappears to Pakistan again, leaving Alex in the care of a stepmother and her cruel brother. And it is then that his troubles really begin. Seen as an outsider by both the white kids and the Pakistani kids, Alex is lost and alone.

    When his father dies unexpectedly, Alex is sent back to Pakistan to stay with his ‘family’ and learn to behave like a ‘good Muslim’. Now alone in a strange, hostile country, with nobody to protect him, Alex realises what it is to be truly orphaned. No one would listen. No one would help. And no one cared when he was kidnapped by men from his own family and sent to a fundamentalist Madrassa on the Afghanistan border.

    A fascinating and compelling account of young boy caught between two cultures, this book tells the true story of a child desperately searching for his place in the world; the tale of a boy, lost and alone, trying to find a way to repair a life shattered by the shocking event he witnessed through a crack in the door of a house in an isolated village in Pakistan.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJul 5, 2012
    ISBN9780007445172
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Orphan of Islam

    3/5

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    • 3/5
      This is not an easy read and, to some extent, stops just as the story starts to get interesting. It is a first person account of a Lancashore child, born of Pakistani father and English mother. As a small child he is taken to Pakistan and doesn;t see her again until an adult. His father dies and he is then in the care of his extended family. What happens next is child abuse, as sanctioned by the wider fmaily and using religion and culture as a means to justify he ill treatment. It is not an easy read. More disturbing is the failure of some of the family to step in and actually do anything about it. He experiences a madrassa, has a marriage arranged and finally returns to the UK. The story finishes at 16 with the author as a barely educated boy, no qualifications, no skills, working in the corner shop of a relative. How he gets from there is left unknown and that, to me, is the more interesting story, how you re-invent yourself, new name, new job, new wife, the works from a dreadful starting point is surely the more interesting story. Knowing that the author is now married and seems to have overcome his dreadful start in lofe made reading this more bearable. It was certainly a hard read, not relaxing or comfortable. Enjoy is not the word to describe the experience.I have concerns that this will only serve to reinfornce certain racial stereotypes, that of the honour killing, the religious extremeist, the uneducated minority. That left me somewhat uncomfortable. This book was provided as part of the Shelterbox Book Club and the author particiapted in the discussion. The follow on story is not necessarily the one we would want to read, no happy ending to this fairy tale.