Losing My Religion

WARNING: Not suitable for sensitive viewers.
If you take offense, are intolerant, closed-minded, quick to jump to conclusions or judgmental: Save your time. You are in the wrong place. GET OUT OF MY BLOG.

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Over the past decade, the words “Islam” and “Muslim” have become correlated with bombings, terrorism, suicidal bombers, and violence.

Like any beings, there are good Muslims and there are bad Muslims. Unfortunately, we have earned ourselves a reputation, as Muslims, of being evil.

It's reached the extent that just for someone to find an Arab-looking person on the same airplane flight makes them break into a cold sweat!

I believe that just like anything in life, religion should be practiced by heart and mind. God gave us brains to use them. If, when He created us, He meant for us to follow blindly, He would’ve given us bird brains.

For some reason, following without questioning has become the only acceptable way of practicing Islam. People are being taught, as Muslims, that they have to take for granted what the Islamic figures teach them. Those who question are deviant strays, who are destined for hell.

Surely, I believe that the Quran is the essence of Islam. However, there are so many different categories of ‘teachers’ now who each translate the meanings of the Quran into what they see. Not just the Quran, but the Prophet’s (a7adeeth) speeches, who have been passed on from generation to generation. Some of them frankly don’t make sense. Some of them are too fanatical. Couldn’t it be possible, that, as these a7adeeth were passed from person to person, over hundreds of years, that they had been altered?

Of the Islamic teachers, there are the Saudi Arabian Islamic Sheikhs, the many modern ‘Sheikhs” by God knows whose seal of approval and “ostaz”, who also, God knows who gave him a license to ‘teach’ others. Does everything they say get filtered by an Islamic authoritative figure? I don’t think so. A lot of it sounds like bull to me.

Apart from those, there are the ‘other’ organizations, with agendas of their own. Politics. Power. Money. It’s a dirty game. They prey on the less-privileged, the weak, the ignorant, the lost. They lure them in, make them their ‘brothers’ and slowly but surely begin to infest their minds, filling them with hatred, envy, jealousy and vengeance. Thus, the vendetta launches into action, as deviously planned.

They convince them that they are the righteous, the chosen, those who must sacrifice, in order to rectify the world. They must eliminate sin and the sinners who commit them. They must rid the world of the infidels and the nonbelievers, even if it means to terminate them like cockroaches. They are brainwashed to believe it is their holy duty, one that will lead them to the divine afterlife.

Do they think God will be smiling down at them on Judgment Day? Don’t they wonder whether their wicked deeds actually sound like something God actually wants? Will they be able to confront God’s rage and anger?

So why is Islam an exception to using your brain? Why is it an exception to thinking for yourself and judging how God expects us to behave? Why is Islam an exception to question the disturbing Islamic teachings, especially about what our attitudes are supposed to be towards people from different countries, religions, or even about other Muslims who don’t practice Islam the way these people are trying to dictate- referring to them as “kafara” (atheists, nonbelievers, destined for hell).

Last Friday, at Friday prayer time, our neighborhood mosque was flaring the Friday preaching on its speakers. God knows who assigned the preacher, or what credentials he had to be preaching to people in the first place? Was he really a sheikh? By whose standards? According to whose teachings? How is someone declared fit to recite preachings at Friday prayer anyway?

This guy was clearly uneducated, and judging by his accent, a fala7 (peasant)! Not to mention, from the shit he was saying, he was completely disconnected with the today’s world and today’s people, and hadn’t the faintest idea about anything! Clueless. Definitely a graduate of the Predators’ Academy of Brainwashing. The perfect candidate: uneducated, ignorant, naïve and plain stupid.

This idiot loudly and audaciously claimed that:
1. Parents should never let their teenage boys out of the house unchaperoned. According to him, any teenage boys that are allowed out without their parents’ supervision, will surely and indisputably do drugs, and in turn, become a drug addict.
2. Not only this, but he will become a drug-addicted pervert who will rape his mother and sister.
3. To top off this very enlightening speech, it sickens me to even repeat what he said: “They will become like dogs and pigs, just like the Jews and Christians.”

Now I am neither Jew nor Christian, but I am a person who respects other people’s beliefs. I was profoundly offended.

Do you know what the worst part of all was? People continued listening. No one had the morality or guts to object and say, “Excuse me? Who allowed you to preach? Are you teaching people to hate an fester disgust at each other instead of love, kindness and giving? Shouldn’t you be preaching about how each person can influence the world by good deeds- to feed the hungry, charity to an orphanage, donating to the childrens’ cancer hospital, etc?

Welcome to the world we live in. Welcome to the new Muslim world; a world of ignorance, hatred, and intolerance; a very sad, sick world.

It’s no wonder I’m feeling alienated from Islam. I don’t doubt Islam. I never doubt God. It’s got nothing to do with either. It’s got to do with that the label “Islam” has been put in the hands of people who know nothing about it and are using it for their own goals. Islam is not a religion of terrorism, hatred, violence, aggression, brutality, and barbarianism. These people stand for just that. They have made it seem ugly.

What do you expect? Anytime you turn on the news, on any given day, you’ll hear of a bombing by an Islamic terrorist, or an Islamic suicidal bomber. I shudder as I turn CNN on, afraid to hear of who has been killed or what has been destroyed by Muslim terrorists. I hold my breath.

People were surprised when the Danish cartoons were printed in the press? Why? What else are Muslims doing besides killing and destroying? They’re giving the message loud and clear. We are terrorists. We are evil. And how do they handle it? How do they react? They burn down embassies, they send death threats. Nice. Very peaceful. Boy, we really showed them they were wrong!

Couldn’t we, instead, have educated people about Islam? Couldn’t we have released advertorials, if not allowed articles, in every newspaper, magazine possible give examples and prove how Islam is a religion of peace?

Not only are Muslims intolerant, but culturally ignorant. People could not understand how these cartoons were allowed to be printed. They cannot understand the fact, that away from these semi-communist Arab countries, in the west, people have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. They are free to say and believe what they want. Not that I think it is acceptable to make fun or wrongly depict our prophet, but I understand the culture. They make fun of Jesus, too. It’s a culture. It doesn’t shock me. Besides, I think Muslims should take that as a wake-up call. Time to reform. Time to change the image of Islam by action. Time to do good deeds around the world in the name of Islam.

But who’s listening? I feel so alone on this.