As intended in its purest form, religion was meant to forge a global alliance of goodwill and common humanity by encouraging diverse tribes to work together-a social construct to help define coexistence as a way of life. However, the creation of hierarchies and religious clergies converted religious texts into tools of division and judgment.In today's contemporary world connected through global frameworks, it is critical to reevaluate the nature of religious texts to understand the underlying importance of common good. The first volume in a series deconstructing the texts of the Qur'an without the interjection of religious scholarship, this book delves into the issue of accepting faith without being bound to ritual. Reviewing only the first two Surahs of the Qur'an, this book focuses on peeling back the layers of complex undertones and contexts behind each verse in an effort to empower the reader to do the same.
About the Author: Rashed Hasan has a deep faith in God and shares a deep concern about the welfare of the human race. He was born in a third-world Muslim country but was fortunate to have been educated in some of the finest institutions in the Western world. As he traveled throughout Muslim lands, he saw poverty, lack of education, rise in conservative thinking, and a lack of empowerment and self-governance on large scales. Yet, he was fascinated by the humility and God consciousness of the average person. As he traveled around the Western world, he witnessed vigorous intellectual discourses, unprecedented economic well-being, and awesome technological innovations but was dismayed by the absence of humility, lack of respect for human equality, and rise of income disparities to an alarming proportion. Rashed has a long career in industry, management consulting and technology entrepreneurship. He worked for premier management consulting firms such as Booz Allen & Hamilton and Ernst & Young. He had worked for and consulted major global corporations in automotive, healthcare, energy, media, pharmaceutical, transportation, building materials, etc. which included companies like Ford Motor, Alyeska Pipeline, Pfizer, Lucas Aerospace, CNN, Monsanto, Westinghouse, GAF, etc.. He had co-founded several technology companies in healthcare informatics and big data analytics. He has also established social ventures in Bangladesh in software and healthcare. Along the way he has also founded and led a number of faith based, grass root political, youth leadership and immigrant advocacy organizations in USA. Rashed recently moved to the Washington, D.C., area after spending many years in Pittsburgh, PA. He devotes much of his time to building a technology company and is actively involved in community dialogues and building relationships with his fellow men on professional, personal, and community levels with special attention to and interest in young people who question the world as it is and aspire to change the world to be a better place. While not working he can be found reading books, traveling, cooking a meal, and gardening (with limited success) with his wife, to whom plants are no less dear than her own children. Rashed has a BS and a MS in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, and a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Operations from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.