Haroon moghul biography

Haroon Moghul’s powerful new memoir, “How to Be a Muslim: An American Story” (Beacon Press), is not a how-to manual for religious practice — far from it.

Rather, it’s a searing, intimate portrait of a brilliant but troubled young man struggling with spiritual, psychological and physical challenges while trying to balance a commitment to his religion’s tenets and succeed in a secular society.

He happens to be Muslim, but his story is as universal in appeal as it is particular in its details.

At times funny and at times painfully raw, the book reads like a confessional — an extended exercise in self-reflection shared with the public as a cautionary tale.

I have come to know and admire Haroon, 37, since I spent a weekend in New York a couple of years ago with him and about two dozen of his fellow members of the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), a project of the Shalom Hartman Institute that invites a select group of A