I owned an orthodox Muslim with this question
OP - October 03, 2009, 05:27 PM
So I was talking with a friend I used to hang out with at university. He knew I had been close to converting, whoops, sorry, I mean 'reverting' a few years back, and we circled around the issue of faith for a while. Eventually the topic arose, beginning with me taking exception to some prejudiced things he said about Jews, and inevitably it took off into the typical kind of Dr Zakir Naik style hyper-ventilation and excitement that Muslims get into when the subject of Islam is broached.
I said to him (not wanting to hurt his feelings too much) that I don't think I could ever belong formally to any religion, and that there were just too many things in Islam in particular that I found morally questionable. Then I said that I admire aspects of ritual of all religions, but I dislike the actual ideology of formal religion.
What do you mean he asked, looking confused. I told him that I find private ritual quite moving, so the actual act of communion in Catholicism, for example, or the way that Catholics cross themselves, these things have something casually beautiful about them, because they are little gestures of a need for understanding in a universe in which we search for signs of significance.
He was still confused. So I said that even though I dislike organised religion, the small gestures of belief are quite moving. He still looked confused. So I gave him another example, and said that I liked the colourful variety of Hindu iconography and statues, and found them artistically interesting and nice.
This set him off. He ranted about Hindu pagans and idol worshippers. Well, I had had enough of not hurting his feelings, and asked him about the Kaaba in Mecca, the stoning of the devil ritual, and the bowing to a lump of black rock, and told him that these were all pagan rituals incorporated into Islam, and praying to the Kaaba is not all that different from praying to an idol. Its just a question of proximity.
The usual spluttering outrage occured. He gave the usual explanations. That this was the house of God, and so on and so on. But it was when I asked, what kind of religion says that God only resides in one tent in the desert. If God inhabits everywhere in the universe, shouldn't Muslims be free to pray towards all of his creation, the sky, the ground, the seas, the rivers, the forests, the animals, the statues? What kind of God only lives in a tent surrounding a lump of rock?
And he actually didn't know what to say.
Maybe I have planted that seed of doubt that will grow into a tree of life in his mind one day, its roots cracking through the concrete of his washed brain.
I kind of felt guilty after that, and laughed it off, but I felt happy to have owned him. It was fun.
"we can smell traitors and country haters"
God is Love.
Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.
Topic: I owned an orthodox Muslim with this question