Children Of Dust By Ali Abir Character Analysis

In life, we face many challenges, good and bad. Depending on how we act upon those challenges, we develop into a mature adult learning from those, or let those challenges take ahold of us, becoming weak. In Abir’s (Ali Eteraz) situation, he learned from these encounters and became the man he did. These challenges can be seen as social, cultural, geographical and/or political “influences”, specifically on Abir’s religious identity, influencing him in and out of the Islamic faith. With these, he experienced many stages in life, but he did not let them bring him down, he grew from them. These stages are seen in the memoir, Children of Dust, written by Ali Eteraz. Ali is the main character in the book with several changes to his name, however, in this essay I will refer back to him as Abir. In this book, Abir grew up with fundamentalist Islamic parents so from the very start there is a huge influence impacting his religious identity. Islamic fundamentalists uphold a strict adherence and literal interpretation of scripture and basic principles of Islam. These Muslims submit themselves to Allah and align their life with what Allah …show more content…
He finds out it was Islamic terrorists that hit the towers so he starts a new path in life now fighting against Islamic radical extremists. These Islamic fundamentalists have taken over. He struggles with trying to create a reform. He felt like he was losing this war against the Islamic extremists and decides he wants nothing more to do with Islam but more influences tell him to keep going and continue his fight so he goes back to the Middle East. Now there is a new influence, the social media revolution, which began against Islam. This really helped him spread his ideas against radical Islamic terrorists. He comes to terms with his religious beliefs and thinks he is changing his religion to become a religion of equality, peace, and