Faisal Ahmad is an author based in Toronto who obsessively writes books. His first book, the Shadow of Iblis, is a novel about the devils we face in our society. He is a Muslim and wants to represent Muslims in fiction, but also just wants to tell a good story with good intrigue, high tension and big fights. His work is heavily psychological and speculative. Shadow of Iblis is a modern fantasy, but the current book he’s writing is science fiction.
THE WRITER
Assalaam alaykum warahmatullah wabarakatuh. How’re you? It’s a pleasure to have you here, Faisal. I think it’s worth mentioning that at first, I mistook you for a female. For reasons unknown to me too. So, tell us about you. Who’s Faisal?
Faisal is a fairly common male Muslim name in my experience, but I’m sorry to have confused you! But yes, nice to meet you too. I’m Faisal Mukhtar Ahmad, a writer from Canada. I was born in the great city of Toronto and have lived here ever since. Besides writing, I also teach, manage my two cats and live an honest life. There’s not much to say about me besides that, other than the fact that I am pretty much the best.
Amazing. I love cats too, by the way.
When did you discover that you’re a writer? I’m assuming you must have been writing for a while, but when did that realization actually dawn on you?
There have been few moments in my life when I haven’t been writing a story of one kind or another. I think the first thing I ever wrote was some kind of Power Rangers knockoff thing, though even before I learned how to actually write, I would tell stories by drawing crude drawings on pieces of paper. It’s just what I do and I can’t conceive of a time in my life when I won’t be writing something.
I wrote my first novel when I was fifteen, which was a sword and sorcery affair involving a knight fighting an evil wizard that wanted to summon the powers of hell. In the time between then and now, I’ve written dozens of short stories and started (and didn’t finish) three more novels. Shadow of Iblis is the first novel I’ve sent out into the world for people to read, but I guarantee that it won’t be my last.
First novel at fifteen. Now I want to read that.
Islamic Speculative Fiction. I’m glad we have more writers exploring this genre. So, why Islamic Speculative Fiction?
The primary reason is that I enjoy writing speculative fiction and am Muslim. A writer pours a bit of his or herself into every word that goes on a page in a text, and since Islam is a part of myself, that’s going to show up on the page.
People talk a lot about representation in fiction and all that stuff, but that’s not really what it’s about for me. I’m not writing Islamic Speculative fiction because I’m trying to counteract cultural currents or fight white supremacy. I’m writing these stories because these are the stories that I have contained within my soul.
I see. Did you read a lot of Speculative Fiction growing up? What kind of books do you enjoy?
For the fantasy side of the equation, I grew up with guys like Tolkein, David Eddings and JK Rowling. I was first in line in my book store to get Harry Potter book 7 and had the thing read by morning of the next day. True story.
For the science fiction side of the equation, I was all about Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Dan Simmons, along with a little bit of Ursula LaGuin. Asimov in particular was always my guy though.
Cool, cool.
I’m usually drawn to stories about Jinns and the supernatural in Islam. Do you have a thing for them, too?
I first read a book about Jinn when I was around 10 years old. It was one of those 70-page ‘FACTS ABOUT THE JINN’ books that fill space in Masjid bookstores. It’s an intriguing concept of this entire society of beings that are invisible to the eye who are constantly up to no good and Shadow of Iblis is very much the product of decades of thoughts on the matter. The lore and mythology that exists around Jinns is quite incoherent and contradictory, but that in itself only adds to the mystique. There is an appeal to be found in the idea of truths that are beyond our understanding.
I get you.
Three books, three writers.
Patrick Rothfuss wrote the Name of the Wind, and I do believe it is the best work of literature written in the last century. That man’s skill is absolutely awe-inspiring.
Khaled Hosseini is someone I was quite ambivalent towards after reading the Kite Runner, though his later works have really been quite awesome. I especially liked And The Mountains Echoed. That was a really powerful work of fiction right there.
Laury Silvers is someone I just recently discovered and she wrote a Sufi detective novel called the Lover set in Abbasid Baghdad. That book was awesome because it isn’t an attempt to sugarcoat our past, but rather deal with the way bigwig Muslim clerics selfishly interpreted and enacted Islamic law. Extremely power reading there.
Great. Besides writing, what else do you do?
Well, I’m an English teacher for an Adult Day School in Toronto. That’s a special kind of school oriented towards adults who didn’t get their high school degree when they were kids for whatever reason (usually due to their being either immigrants or refugees). In terms of hobbies, I’m a cat enthusiast, a gamer and a bike rider.
THE PROCESS
Are you a plotter? Or do you write it as it comes?
I always have a direction that I want to go towards, but how I get there needs to be figured out as I hammer the keyboard. As a consequence, the real big climaxes or decisive moments or battles in a story are the points I have a much easier time of, whereas little scenes where two characters are getting a coffee might take me weeks to put together.
Can you walk us through your creative process.
I usually envision some kind of big scene, feeling or end point that I want to reach and then go backwards from there. It essentially is “Okay, in order to have a good story, I need to reach this end point. How do I earn this part of the story? What do I need to give to the reader so that they can experience this idea I have in my head in the way that I hope they will?”
I also typically envision characters in some detail. I will often have someone in my head that I would like readers to get to know and experience. As a consequence, I spend ridiculous amounts of time trawling through baby name websites and such as I try to map out what kind of person I am creating and what their background might be.
I’m curious. Do you find writing easy?
Writing is something I’m always doing regardless of anything else that’s happening in my life. Sometimes it’s a long process and I’m left leaning back in my chair, thinking of what to do next. At other times it’s just hammering on the keyboard nonstop until I pass out. Either way, it’s all just water flowing down a very long river. Sometimes it goes fast and furious, while at others it’s calm and soothing. Either way, it goes.
I’m of the view that writing Speculative Fiction might be a bit more of a daunting task. Am I right?
For me, it’s probably the opposite. I’m much more comfortable writing about Jinns, aliens or whatever than I would be making some kind of detective thriller or romance story. I imagine someone that specializes in romance writing might say that coming up with something involving Jinns is absolutely impossible, but that ain’t me.
I feel you.
What would you say is your definition of literary success?
I don’t know if I’ll ever get rich through my writing. Success for me are books that are complete and that are read by people. I am quite confident in my writing and do believe that anyone that reads my novels will inevitably enjoy them, and I shall continue to move forward with that confidence.
THE BOOK
I’ve been waiting to say this. I really loved the book! First, what brought about it?
I’m glad you liked it!
I don’t know what really prompted it, other than a result of meditations on the Quranic story of Iblis and what would cause him to rebel against God. The Quran tells us that Iblis denied Allah’s commands because of an assertion of superiority, where the being says that he is superior to the new man because he is made from fire rather than clay. Iblis is the enemy, the curse and everything like that.
But what is human history if not a long tale of one person or groups asserting superiority over another for all manner of dubious reasons? How often have we humans played the part of Iblis? Can many of us claim that we truly would have not made the decision that Iblis made during the birth of the world?
It’s those kinds of reflections that gave birth to what you saw in Shadow of Iblis.
Some people think we shouldn’t meddle with the supernatural, even by writing. Your thoughts?
I think that we, as Muslims, are commanded to fear nothing besides Allah, and I thus have little fear in attempting to decipher the unseen. Ultimately, I feel that understanding evil and understanding its root causes is something that we as Muslims need to do. I know our mothers tell us to just say au du billah whenever we fear Shaitan, but the stories of Iblis are in the Qu’ran for a reason. We are given multiple warnings about what Iblis does and how he operates, which is something that I try to capture within my novel at least a little. And besides, as a general principle, it is not serving us to avert our eyes from the world that is described to us within the Qu’ran.
3. You wrote about Iblis and sort of, made us see things from his perspective. Also, In a way, he was the victorious one in the book. Weren’t you scared? If I write something like that, I’ll be scared of going to hell, haha.
Hah! You know, without giving anything away, when I finished writing the last two chapters, I was wracked with a feeling that I had perhaps done something wrong or had somehow become some kind of Muslim Satanist.
But no. Let’s look at Qu’ran 38:79-85
(Iblis) said: “O my Lord! Give me then respite till the Day the (dead) are raised.”
(Allah) said: “Respite then is granted thee- Till the Day of the Time Appointed.”
(Iblis) said: “Then, by Thy power, I will put them all in the wrong, Except Thy Servants amongst them, sincere and purified (by Thy Grace).”
(Allah) said: “Then it is just and fitting- and I say what is just and fitting- That I will certainly fill Hell with thee and those that follow thee,- every one.”
There are a couple of things I glean from this passage. First, there is the fact that Iblis still speaks to Allah with reverence. The second is that God consents to the activities of Iblis. That respite is granted. We can then surmise then that whatever actions Iblis might take are intended to be a central component of our existence.
I thus am not particularly afraid. I don’t think that writing this book constitutes my following Iblis straight into hell, but well… I guess Allah shall be the final judge of that.
Haha, okay. Let’s talk about Talut. What inspired his character? Do you think they’re people who are like him?
Saul, aka Talut, is a character that does draw on a good chunk of my own life and experiences as a brown kid growing up in Canada. Second generation immigrants are in a unique position here in the west, with our parents pushing us in one direction and society in the other. Squaring that circle is the burden that we bear and part of Saul’s journey is meant to be a reflection of that.
So yeah, I do hope that people can relate to him. Fun fact: The incident at the beginning of the story with Saul skipping school to go see Rogue One is taken straight from my life, for in Grade 8 I too used a forged dentist note to go to the movie theatres and see Phantom Menace when that first came out. I wasn’t caught of course, but I still wanted to immortalize that incident in that way.
Do you have any words for writers who are just starting out?
For aspiring Muslim writers out there, I say this: Don’t just talk about the things they want you to talk about. Western culture wants you to write about terrorism, hijabs, conservative parents and all that kind of stuff. Don’t feel you have to fit into the mold.
THE FUTURE
Any other book(s) in the works? If yes, when should we be expecting it or them?
My next book is going to be my attempt to have a Muslima protagonist and concerns aliens coming to the Earth with the offer to fix all of our climate change problems. Said aliens present themselves as benevolent humanitarians and get to the work of fixing the Earth, but many have anxieties about the motivation of these creatures. I used to work with an NGO that was doing humanitarian work in Somalia, so I’m trying to bring some of the insights I gleamed from that into the work. Writing a female perspective is rather challenging, but I think it’s going well so far.
Ideally, I’d like to get this thing out by 2022 at the latest, but we’ll see!
Alright. As a writer, any other future plans?
Beyond more writing you mean?
Yes. Apart from writing. Some other thing.
I guess one thing I want to figure out how to do is create an interesting twitter account. I am routinely at a loss about what one is supposed to say on that thing. I’m working on it though!
By the way, follow me at @FaisalWillWrite !
Haha. No problem. Do you have any parting words?
I appreciate the opportunity. I’m glad you enjoyed the book (even if you thought the Iblis parts were a bit scary)! More shall be coming in the future.
Thanks so much for your time, Faisal.
Follow Faisal on Twitter @FaisalWillWrite.
Watch a trailer of The Shadow of Iblis here and read our review of The Shadow of Iblis here.
You can buy The Shadow of Iblis on Amazon.
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