September 12, 2004

Afreen Siddiqi is working for a PhD in aeronautic astronautics at MIT. With a focus on satellites and spacecrafts, she is pursuing her childhood dream to become an astronaut. She has recently authored her maiden venture, The Sinless Sea, an account of her pilgrimage to Makkah

“I HAVE a lot of respect for books because they really are the primary reason for the civilization of the human society,” says Afreen Siddiqi. “And from the ahadith we find that the first thing Allah created was the pen. He told it to write and then the Loh-i-Mehfooz was written. This divine aspect to writing fascinates me.”

Recently Afreen picked up Muhammad (PBUH) by Martin Lings (Abu Bakr Siraj Ad Din). Chosen at her Halqa, a group of college girls who sit together and essentially share knowledge and talk mostly about religious themes, Muhammad was the best choice because the book is very famous and “We at the Halqa did not want any controversial reading material. I really liked it because it is written from a perspective that is very different from what you traditionally find. It is a very candid description of the Holy Prophet’s life and who he was. It is very reverential and positive and most importantly Muhammad has stories that you won’t find in most of the books on Islam.

For example, the story about how the well of Zamzam was discovered by Hazrat Muhammad’s grandfather is interesting. With a refreshing writing style plus the fact that the author has derived the material for the book from original 8th century sources lends credibility to it and sets it apart from most of the other available material currently present on the topic.

“For days and weeks I really had an impression of getting some sort of closeness with our Prophet because when you are reading about and discussing somebody for days, everything sinks in. In the end the benefit I got from this constant connection with the Prophet’s life was that it gave me ideal guidance on how to act and what to do in my life,” comments Afreen.

Afreen’s second current voyage into the world of words has been Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. An all time favourite read, Afreen picked up the book to refresh her memory before she plunged into its sequel. “I can relate to it because it’s about a woman, Scarlett O’ Hara, who is a daughter of an immigrant and it brings home a lot of issues that I as a foreigner often find myself involved in, in the USA. Things about cultural differences, love of the land and how immigrants feel about leaving their land behind are aptly portrayed.” Secondly, Afreen Siddiqi finds that Gone with the Wind is a lot about ambition and declares, “I’ve been ambitious ever since I can remember.” Therefore she enjoyed the thought that “Scarlett owing to her ambitious character does achieve a lot in the end, which is not necessarily happiness” which Afreen found “another thing” to ponder about. While living in the States, Afreen finds the book relevant because “it talks about civil war and it brings up a lot of issues that are still current in American society.”

Moving in American society Afreen Siddiqi finds herself observing the reasons why African Americans are still caught in the cycle of poverty. Through the book she finds herself understanding the “struggle of people” and “the cultural divide that exists between the southern and the northern states. And how the Yankees were hounded by the southerners and how this split still exists in modern American society.

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