Bakri biography

Can you tell me a little about your upbringing? Have you always been a religious person?

There is almost a tradition that every Syrian family chooses a child to go and study Islam exclusively in order to be a scholar.

So, my father chose me from among my 27 brothers and sisters – he had three wives and a lot of family – and devoted me to God.

He was very rich, which helped my studies a lot. I followed the old system for studying Islam, where you live with a scholar and not only study with him three or four hours a day but observe how he sells, how he buys, how he deals, how he talks, so that in your small group Islam becomes a way of life.

I do not believe in religion.

All thats left of you

Islam is a din, an ideology, which is what you believe in and live by and die for, from which emanates a whole way of life. Everybody has got a din. You believe in the Trinity and live by the Christian way of life and you would die to defend that belief.

Does it trouble you that y