More than any maulana, my morality is a by-product of a dark elf named Drizzt Do'Urden. Surely most do not know the name; nor can they be expected to. Drizzt is not a man. He is not even real. He is, in fact, the main character in R.A. Salvatore's legendary Fantasy Series for The Forgotten Realms.

Drizzt is Plato's allegory of the cave become elf. Drizzt is exile. Drizzt is immigration. Drizzt is assimilation. Drizzt is self-hate. Drizzt is victim of racism. Drizzt is brilliant. Drizzt is accomplishment. Drizzt is what Bigger Thomas wasn't; what Malcolm X was but for a moment; and what Muhammad is not permitted to be. Drizzt Do'Urden, the Dark Elf, the 'drow', is honor.

When I first read Drizzt in the Crystal Shard, defending his friends with his double scimitars, fighting pirates, trolls, orcs, and the nefarious assassin Artemis Entreri (he with the soul sucking dagger), I only saw Drizzt as a warrior. I remember it was my cousin's birthday at a mosque and we were supposed to be reading portions of the Quran in celebration. But I placed the Crystal Shard under the rehal (Quran Holder) and went seafaring with Drizzt and his friends: Cattie-Brie, the red haired archer; her adopted father Bruenor, a blacksmith dwarf; and Wulfgar, the Norse Barbarian, armed with the glorious warhammer, aegis-fang (crafted from Mithril). Yet the more I read of their brawling, their troll-killing, their dragon slaying, their unicorn saving, the more I realized (that I was a nerd), and that their fighting was just a metaphor — for righteous struggle. The point was not that I came to aspire to become an expert level fighter with dual scimitars (though that would be dope), but to fight in the cause of righteousness and good with such bravado, such belief, that others might call you a warrior. But there was far more to Drizzt that drew me to him — specifically, the mirroring of his personal history with mine. Oh yeah, I kid you not.

Drizzt grew up in the Underdark; an underworld city called Menzoberanzan, amidst the dark-elves, called the drow. The drow had once been serene forest-dwellers, but having lost their empire had been forced underground, where their skin turned the color of night. Their hair turned white. Their eyes turned lavendar. They shrank in size. They became evil and succumbed to the meanest of tribalism. Menzobaranzan came to worship a violent double-L named goddess, Lloth. Their city was organized by houses — which were ranked in power according to how many acknowledged killers each possessed. It was a place given to violence, tyranny and dogma. Drizzt was born to the ninth house, which by a stroke of breeding fortune, and much machination, was ready to topple (murder), many of the houses before it. Drizzt (and his father's) expertise at swordsmanship and stealth had set him up to be an instrumental component of the future plans of the Do'Urden house. But Drizzt could not come to commit one of the heinous deeds assigned to him. A little thing called morality sprang up in him. Not pity; plain honor. He was immediately exiled into the Underdark, where he was alone and preyed upon, until he finally resolved to leave the Underdark and come up to the outerworld despite the age old taboo of a dark elf not being welcome. During the time the drow had been pushed into the Underdark, great myths of their destructive powers, of their demonic fury, had spread in the world. They were feared and reviled and no one wanted them around, because no one believed they could be good.

When Drizzt emerged to the sun his skin couldn't bear it and he had to shield himself with layers of clothes. When he came upon people he was insulted. Others simply fled from him or plotted against him. Yet alone in a new world he withstood his adversaries and their simple-minded racism, and the rest he won over with his demeanor, intelligence and friendship. Still, he realized that he wouldn't find complete acceptance in the urban centers and he took to the far away mountains called The Spine of The World, where he was befriended by a grumpy old dwarf, his adopted daughter, and he began to live with the outcasts of the world.

In my eyes what always set Drizzt apart was the fact that he was not satisfied with a pacific life. He longed, even in a world which called him 'drow' as an insult, villified his entire race, and treated him spitefully, to be, putting it mildly, relevant. He learned their language and spoke it better. He traveled among them and learned their customs such that the ladies of Silverymoon invited him to their city. He shielded those that needed help and rose up defiantly against assassins — both of the body and spirit. He went to the Sylvan Elves, his ancient cousins, and helped them revitalize their forests (because Drizzt was a Ranger, and therefore, an environmentalist).

In short, Drizzt taught me all I needed to know to be an immigrant in a strange land. It cost me nothing monetary to befriend him. He waited for me at the library, ready to impart his wisdom — which wasn't theoretical or pedantic, like the sermons at the mosque. It was actual; manifested in behavior. A morality that was living, walking, talking.

Muslims love to recite hadith about Muhammad in order to teach youth the proper way of daily behavior and moral righteousness (while themselves abnegating from behaving duly). Such lessons usually begin cryptically with the assertion "that Muhammad was the walking Quran" and ending in an altogether disinterested youth. This has to do with two different problems.

The first is that Muhammad is not presented by way of literature. The hadith are the jurist's handmaiden; not the adolescents cup of tea. And the books of Sirah, those biographies of Muhammad, that do exist, never expose, or permit him, to have normalcy: no childhood, no flaws, no sadness. Muhammad is made into insan e kamil, the perfect man. Sure, but a hero that doesn't make him. A hero isn't he who begins or ends in perfection; a hero is simply he who struggles with life. In fact, a hero struggles with life more than the average man. As Camus said, we love literature because in literature the men find culmination. With the Prophet, his struggles are never appreciated; only his error-less actions are recited (which means he was a god and the entire premise of Islam is fucked). Permit me two examples of this. The first is from the Sirah. In Martin Ling's biography of Muhammad, which is some 40 or 50 chapters, Muhammad is married by the 5th or 6th! And probably two of those meager first few chapters are about the political landscape of Arabia. Pardon? What use does a 14 year old have for what happens to a grown Muhammad? In fact, all this does is enforce the idea that childhood is either irrelevant, or unworthy of treatment. This creates the condition for children to loathe their current state of childhood and aspire to be adults sooner than they are psychologically capable. They seek to do things to prove their adulthood. Stupid things. Their psyche is not adequately prepared to engage in politics, to discuss Islam, and it is no surprise that they are unable to resist when the oligarchs tell them that Islam is about killing infidels.

Those few pieces of literary trash that do exist in Arabic and Urdu detailing the childhood of the Prophet should be burnt. I'm all for burning boring books. These books start with the anecdote that when Muhammad was a child walking in the sun, a cloud perpetually hung over him to keep him cool. This is immediately followed by the anecdote that at the age of 8, two angels came down at night, cut open Muhammad's chest and washed his heart with milk from Paradise so that he became purified. This literature is so intent on demonstrating Muhammad's uniqueness that it makes him irrelevant. Muhammad comes to be someone who never told a lie. Well of course not! He had his damn heart washed by angels. A child's logic is exquisitely simple: since no milk has purified me, I don't have to stop lying. At an age when it is more important to know what explorations Muhammad had with the girls he hung out with, I came to see Muhammad as the goody two shoes who would tell on you in the schoolyard.

Many parents realize that their children have no interest in such literature, so out of obligation — "well, we have to do something Islamic" — they just put the youth in a room full of hadith collections. Why not? A hadith is a narration by Muhammad, right? Nevermind it is only a narration *ascribed* to Muhammad. But hey, if the youth is reading hadith it's like he is listening to Muhammad. Hell, podcast the damn hadith. Ah, but the problem occurs: the hadith are as complicated as American legal case-law, with as much diversity, error, and chaos. Hadith about being just are set along hadith relating to inheritance laws. Thanks for the lesson, I'm an expert at apportioning Islamic wills at the age of nine. One again the youth has to conclude that real living takes place as an adult and for a child, Muhammad again becomes, you guessed it: irrelevant.

Given all these problems was it any surprise that I opted to become a fan of a pointy eared purple eyed freak named Drizzt Do'Urden?

It was far easier to make and be friends with Drizzt than with Muhammad. So what if Drizzt didn't have a bleepin flying horse or couldn't take you to see God? Fact is, Drizzt was the better friend. You see, because when parents taught you about Muhammad, they made him a tool of their enforcement as well. First you were told to love Muhammad, and then, assuming you were willing to fake that, because you loved him you had to confess all the stuff you did wrong! And then, when you got beat up by your dad for admitting to peeking into the servant girl's shower, you had to take your punishment the way Muhammad proscribed it in the Quran: without saying so much as an 'uff' as you are beat. What kind of friend was this? First he led you to be beat up, and then you could not even cry? It is impossible for a child's friend to be the same person as the parents' law giver. There is a huge conflict of interest there that Muslims have not realized when it comes to raising children.

In conclusion, it is my suggestion that when you have children, give them Drizzt Do'Urden (and also Cadderly the Cleric — a cleric who talks to plants). Drizzt is moral and good and righteous and he knows how to negotiate a hostile world, and assmilate, and reject evil, and all this without having to theorize, or rhapsodize, or perform hermenutical gymanstics.

How is it that I am more moral than the next man? I read books that touched me.