Imran Khan is well known to a generation of Kiwis and the captain of the Pakistan cricket team, but this book is not a review of his cricket history. Rather it is a history of his life and spiritual journey in the country of his birth.

He is now the leader of a political party in Pakistan and some pick him as possible future president. The history of that country is intertwined with the Islamic faith, as it was formed to allow Muslims from India to live in a country where they would not be swamped by India’s Hindu majority.

Khan outlines how the leaders of this movement, such as Liaquat Ali Khan, sought to create a country that while not secular was also not a theocracy. 

He relates how this vision was corrupted by both the military and the English-speaking elite, who sought to use government as a means to enrich themselves. He was told that the reason the military allowed Bin Laden to live unmolested in Pakistan was to ensure a continued flow of American aid to the military, much of which was siphoned off for personal use. 

Khan is afraid that this behaviour, and especially the military allowing America a free hand in its war against Afghanistan, has fostered a radicalised fundamentalist Islam within the country. The only solution he sees is the establishment of real democracy and social services in Pakistan and a quick withdrawal of America from Afghanistan.

He relates his own growth in an Islamic faith that gives his life meaning. He sees the only future for Islam in a return to practices of the Golden Age of Islam from around the mid-eighth to the mid-thirteenth centuries where philosophy and science were valued and a social welfare system existed to assist those in need. He views the Wahhabist fundamentalism of today’s Arabia as a perversion of all that is great in Islam.

I found it interesting to read about how a person of another faith seeks to integrate that faith in the political structure of his country. I also learnt a lot about Pakistan, which as the only nuclear armed Islamic state, holds the potential to radically affect the history of the region.

By Imran Khan
Bantam Press, London, 2011
ISBN 978 0 5730 67741

– David McLeod-Jones