When I listen to devout believers of all faiths arrogantly and passionately preach how their particular deity, dogma or doomsday prophet is superior to all else and those on the 'other side' are just arrogant or idiots and wonder to what extent they really believe in what they are saying. I have never had a religion or spent any significant amount of time with very religious people to get an answer to this.
Are they just simply as lost in delusion as they seem to be or do they go to bed at night wondering to themselves if they have devoted their life to nonsense.
I was lost in delusion. I was completely and utterly consumed by belief, as if by flame. It was my only focus, my obsession, my first and last thought upon sleeping or waking. I jumped to my prayers, I did not miss one. Not one. I read nothing, listened to nothing, but religion, for years. A self-brainwash. I knew it was not nonsense. It was the only truth, and I capitalized the T on that word, as if it were another name for Allah.
I prayed in rain, snow, offices, stores, fields, cars. I loved to hear the Adhan. I was sorry for anyone not Muslim. Profoundly sorry.
It was a delusion. Sometimes delusion is easier. You have all the answers, you have a guarantee, why look further? It is the easiest way out. The lazy way out.
But if you learn enough about Islam, and, as a convert, you find your way past the English apologist literature, you see what is really going on in the original texts and you sober the hell up. You push past the lies, when you get a grip on your Arabic terminology and start reading old and varied translations, in my opinion.