Tuesday, December 8, 2009

An alien in my own land

I am back in Pakistan visiting family right now. Though doubts have lingered in my heart since a very long time, this is my first time visiting family after thoroughly but privately renunciating Islam. Religion is pervasive in Pakistan and as a result, I can't help but experience a feeling of being an alien in my own land this time.

Though I have been forced into behaving like a good old muslim out of respect and concern for my parents, it has been an interesting experience observing the rituals and practices I once myself participated in as an outsider. Its been amusing seeing the almost hypnotic state of people as they go about performing their daily rituals, chanting the duroods and aayats in acts of communal devotion and praise. Its been amusing seeing the khateeb shout at the top of his lungs during the juma khutba, almost as if he can drown out the whimsy logic of his arguments by the sheer loudness of his voice. Its been amusing observing how the entire structure of religion and religious life which once seemed so commonsensical and matter-of-fact can come crumbling down once a few basic beliefs vanish -- beliefs which are so vulnerable to an honest and critical inquiry; beliefs which are hammered into us since our birth and held in place more by societal pressures and conventionality than any merit and coherence of their own. Its fascinating yet fearful to see the conviction and faith people have in such fantastic claims -- claims supported by a foundation far too fragile to support the enormity and implication of the structure it supports. It all seems so out of proportion.

I still have about a month left before I head back to Canada. I hope to be able to survive through all this with my sanity and those of my loved ones intact.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

An epiphany

I have been passing through rather tumultuous times lately. Things have been uncertain and they have tested my inner strength and resolve. There were times when I was scared. There were times when I was down. There were even days (though luckily only a few) when I was so depressed that I didn't even come out of my room most of the day.

Going through this whirlwind of emotions naturally drove me to find a solution -- to make some sense out of this mess. And luckily I did have an epiphany. I found an answer which put a lot of perspective on things, which made me feel better, which seemed obvious in hindsight but which still caught me off guard.

The main source of my anxiety and fear was an unhealthy focus on myself. The surprising aspect to all of this was that I have never considered myself to be a self-centered person. Perhaps the only self-centered aspect of my behavior was my desire to succeed and be successful. Society often idolizes successful people, narrates their success stories and there is an implicit pressure on us to be successful. As we grow up, we often state our desires in terms of being successful in this or that, and that is all considered acceptable social behavior.

So, why is this desire to be successful an unhealthy one? For one, and quite obviously, it is not potent enough to get us through the tough times. Secondly, and much more importantly, this desire is mostly accompanied by an ugly and paralyzing companion: the dreaded fear of failure. And when things aren't going in our favor, when we are forced out of our comfort zone, that fear of failure can be absolutely crippling and debilitating.

The funny thing is that I have been working on a personal project all this while and I was actually excited about that project. In spite of that, the uncertainty of not having a regular job and the fear of failure often got the better of me. Even though I dreaded feeling that way, it was very hard not to feel that way every once in a while.

It was a relief when I finally found a way out. I had to stop focusing on myself and stop stating my goals and ambitions in terms of myself and lose and consume myself in what I was passionate about. As simple and obvious as that sounds, it had become less and less obvious to me as I had grown up. It took an uncertain situation and a very real possibility of failure to drive this point back home.

Living a self-centered life is one of the most boring and depressing ways to live one's life. While no one wants to live such a life, what was surprising to me was how I was partly living such a life without even realizing it. Now that the realization has been achieved, I can finally start to nurture the child within me. The child who is least concerned about himself and who is lost and one with the world he finds himself in.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

The handshake of susceptibility

A friend narrated an incident recently where a bunch of people came up to him inquiring about the best place for currency exchange. The interaction started conventionally with a warm handshake. Then -- almost as if he had gone totally crazy -- my friend took out his wallet and handed over Rs. 7K to them upon their suggestion. A part of him resisted, sensing which they handed him back 3K but left eventlessly with the remaining 4K. It was only after they had left did he realize what had just happened to him -- in his own words, it was almost as if he had just 'woken up from sleep'.

Naturally, I listened to his story with a deep sense of skepticism as it sounded too fantastically absurd to be true. A little bit of searching however revealed that a mere handshake can in fact lead to momentary hypnosis of a person (here are some details).

If it weren't for what happened to my friend, I would have dismissed similar such stories as hogwash but apparently the human brain does appear to be *that* vulnerable and suggestible. And, the potential ease with which it can be pulled off is outright freaky and discomforting.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Yahweh

I have been listening to this song almost all day today. It gives me hope for a better world and strengthens my faith in humanity and the healing power of love.
Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist no
Take this mouth
So quick to critisize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

...


Monday, August 17, 2009

Reflections on the grief of death

Growing up, the death of a loved one was something I always dreaded and preferred not to think about. It was extremely hard to imagine life without someone you had loved and known since birth. Death to me was this horrendous but undeniable opposite side of life; it was extremely hard to even accept let alone develop the courage to face the potential death of a loved one. The promise of an eternal life and the possibility of a reunion with those loved ones was the only thing that gave me solace and comfort.

Fortunately, I haven't experienced the loss of any family member or friend that is dearly close to me. My parents however have had to face the death of their parents and several of their close family members. While their loss was my loss, I don't think I was completely able to relate to their pain as I hadn't developed the same degree of love and connection with them like they had. I was saddened each time however and did weep in sorrow along with the other family members. While the pain of separation is always deep and intense, I expected the notion of an eternal life and the promise of a future reunion to ease the pain, but it apparently never did. Now that I think of it, deep inside of me, I was always unsure of whether the notion of an eternal life had any grain of truth to it. It was only the violent event of death that managed to stare my precious fairy tales right in the eye and left me feeling skeptical and unsure. As an ironic result, my beliefs which should have made me feel better ended up making me feel much more sad and disillusioned than I would have been if I would have accepted the impermanent nature of life with an open heart and mind.

While embracing the impermanence of life has taken effort and reconditioning on my part, I do hope that it will enable me to accept the future death of my loved ones with more grace and dignity than I would have had otherwise. I do hope that it will make it a little easier to look back, embrace and cherish the lives of the ones precious to me and prevent me from nurturing potentially hollow hopes of a future reunion just to quench the thirst of separation.

Disturbing statistics

The Pew Global Attitudes Project recently released a report on the views of Pakistanis on extremism, the war on terror and related matters. The report highlights a healthy trend of more and more Pakistanis seeing the Taliban and al Qaeda as negative elements. What prompted this post however were the alarming statistics on people's views on the punishments suggested by Islam. From the report:

One of the ironies in the survey is the extent to which Pakistanis embrace some of the severe laws associated with the Taliban and al Qaeda, even as they reject Islamic extremism and these extremist groups. The new poll finds broad support for harsh punishments: 78% favor death for those who leave Islam; 80% favor whippings and cutting off hands for crimes like theft and robbery; and 83% favor stoning adulterers.


While these statistics shouldn't be very surprising given that most Pakistanis are rather conservative and deeply revere Islam, they still managed to come as a very rude shock.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Rational Smörgåsbord

I have been watching clips of A Bit of Fry and Laurie lately. While the clips are quite hilarious and gripping in and of them self, what makes them even more interesting is seeing Hugh Laurie (of House's fame) speak in his British accent.

I stumbled across the following video containing a series of clips of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (though mostly Stephen) talking about their views on religion and science -- part tongue in cheek, part serious. Have fun watching.


Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Fortuitous happenings

Its the little things that help strengthen people's belief in God and the unseen.

I had a series of fortuitous and not-so-fortuitous events recently that gave me -- well -- a pause.

I was in Ottawa for a talk I had to give and was scheduled to leave Ottawa for Toronto at midnight. The talk finished at about 3 in the afternoon and I had the rest of the day to myself. A friend who lives in Ottawa but was in Toronto for vacations, suddenly and unexpectedly decided to come back to Ottawa the day before thus allowing me to recharge and catch up with him.

I left for Toronto from Ottawa at midnight. My experience with Toronto's transit system was just plain horrible. It didn't have an online trip planner and was full of other annoying little quirks such as the ticket only being valid in a single direction and having different transit companies operate in the surrounding cities which meant that I couldn't use the pre-paid tickets I had brought earlier in those cities. I was asking around on how to get to my relative's place when I stumbled across a kind couple (a Pakistani guy married to a gori (a white girl)) who offered to drop me near my relative's place. They easily saved me about a hundred bucks that I would have had to give to the taxi cab otherwise. Not only were they kind enough to drop me off near my destination but even served me lunch at their place. It was pleasant, even if not totally unexpected, to see his gori wife make roti and chai.

The fortuitous streak ended when I realized that I had forgotten my relative's exact address and phone number at the couple's place. I roamed around the streets a bit, scouting for wireless internet so that I could retrieve her address from my email account. I was able to spot a mall where a guy agreed to let me retrieve the address and I finally made my way to the destination after about an hour of roaming around.

While such events can be explained off as statistical occurrences, they sure mean heck of a lot to the person whom they happen to, which is perhaps why it is so hard to label them off just as mere statistical occurrences.

Cultural muslim

I still make sure that the meat I eat is halal. I don't drink wine. I don't engage in sexual activities. My religious upbringing has a lot to do with that, but I believe that I don't indulge in these activities as I genuinely consider most of these activities to be unwholesome.

Its mind boggling to see how many different facets of your life are touched by religion -- from birth, to daily activities, to marriage and eventually death. While its easy to let go of certain rituals and practices as an individual, letting go of communal rituals and practices is a little harder to do. The coming ramadan will probably be the first (since growing up) in which I will not fast though I will probably celebrate eid -- not as a religious festival but as a cultural one.

I confessed my present state of belief to a friend recently. I had had extensive discussions with the same friend last year as I was drifting further and further away from Islam. Even though it was patently obvious to him that I did not believe in any of the fundamental tenets of Islam, I was surprised when he mumbled -- almost in a state of confusion and disbelief -- that I was still a muslim. It might have been that he genuinely believed that I was still a muslim at some level or it might be that being a muslim has got much more to do with your cultural values and traditions than a mere set of beliefs and that I was a muslim in the former sense if not the latter.

Officially muslim

My official religion is still Islam. I haven't made any efforts to change that either as I haven't talked things through with my family. I am also concerned about the legal repercussions of leaving Islam while being a Pakistani citizen. Has any of you readers ever considered renouncing Islam officially? Do you know of the legal repercussions? Can apostates legally be sentenced to death in Pakistan?

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Godless comedy

This one gave me a good laugh.

Defiling the sacred

We hold values of love, honesty and universal justice in high esteem. Honesty seems better than dishonesty. Love and compassion seem better than indifference or hate. Being just seems better than forgoing justice in the name of practicality.

These attributes matter to me. I am pretty confident that they matter to an overwhelmingly large majority of the human population. What bothers me is the alleged universality of such attributes. These attributes might appear universal to us because all humans, and perhaps most animals share the same cognitive machinery.

Why are these attributes significant? Why do they matter? What if their significance lies just in the way our brains are wired? What happens, as we gain the ability to alter our genetics and construct new life forms, we create a world where the things that we consider so sacred to life can be defiled with just a switch of a button, with the re-assignment of a variable and the rewiring of a bunch of neurons?

Will we want to create such a world? Will we want to live in such a world?

Update: I am usually optimistic and hopeful about the future -- it has its due share of challenges but it also offers exciting opportunities. I am feeling particularly disharmonious and agitated today, and your overall mood affects the thoughts that come to mind. I do consider the points I raised to be valid so I will leave the post as is but just note that I am rather hopeful that we will figure things out along the way.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Silent night

Just found this little gem on Butter's blog.



The song truly is a spiritual experience. It almost made me lose sense of time, freeing my soul and making me feel calm, peaceful and warm inside. My eyes were mostly closed the first time I heard it. I didn't know what it was about -- it didn't matter. I read the lyrics at the bottom of the screen the second time around, and the wordings and imagery, though beautiful, made me a little uncomfortable. Perhaps we need another set of metaphors and images, not associated with any of the major religions when talking about spiritual experiences.

I have always found the three part Christian conception of God to be utterly confusing. For the first time however, I realized how the father son relationship can evoke feelings of love and compassion in a way that a single God perhaps cannot. Our most potent experiences of love and warmth are associated with the relations we build and nourish with other humans and it is not surprising to see humans externalizing those relations when constructing notions of a loving God. This provides an emotional explanation of why most Christians stick with their beliefs even when it apparently makes no logical sense.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The power to create

Freaky, funny and provocative at the same time.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Evolution and intelligent design in Pakistani schools

I came across this article talking about Pakistani schools integrating a strong religious component into their curriculum.

What prompted me to write this post was a mention of how to deal with evolution in the curriculum. From the article:

To their dismay, the book begins with a description of the evolution of man. ‘We need to give them the facts,’ says one teacher. ‘They need to know that Darwinism is just an opinion.’ Some teachers recommend books and videos by Harun Yahya, a controversial Islamic creationist, as a classroom alternative. ‘Our students should first learn the truth as stated in the Quran, and then learn about these other versions.’

I feel for the poor students whose minds will be filled with this pseudo-scientific nonsense as part of their curriculum. The evolution/intelligent design debate has been a very controversial one in America but America at least has a well established and respected body of scientists which can intervene and talk some sense into people. That is hardly the case for Pakistan. We certainly don't need an army of educated people who get their scientific 'facts' from the likes of Harun Yahya and the Quran. In the longer run, the Quran might very well shoot itself in the foot because of its claim of being the final and immutable word of God, or perhaps we might see an imaginative acceptance of evolution similar to Catholicism.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The human loss

Reading the story of the sad demise of Captain Omerzeb over at Pak Tea House made me somber. His tragic demise on the birthday of his fiance made my heart heavy. The bonds of love that bind us together can so tear our existence apart when they are snatched away like that.

While we glorify and praise all those who die fighting for Pakistan, it is very easy to de-humanize all those who we perceive to be the 'other' in such a situation. While I am not a bit sympathetic to the cause of the Taliban, that shouldn't make us forget that they are human too. Their deaths send very similar waves of agony rippling through and tearing apart their families. Then there are all the civilian casualties in this unfortunate war on terror. So many lives have been so adversely affected because of it; so many ties of love have been so ruthlessly broken apart.

While religion is only one of the sources that has fueled human conflict through the ages, it has been one of the sources nonetheless. It almost makes me very angry at all those supposed prophets of God whose teachings formed the basis of all this hatred, deceived so many and provided fodder for conflict for so many years to follow after them. How irresponsible of them.

All this makes one pine for a time when we will learn to resolve our differences through dialogue and discussion instead of mindless use of force and violence. It makes one pine for a time when human life wouldn't be so cheap and readily expendable.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Letting go of God

Came across this talk by Julia Sweeney in which she candidly and rather hyper actively narrates her de-conversion story. Nothing particularly unique about what she has to say, but enjoyed it nonetheless.



You can find the latter parts of the talk on youtube.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Do Saudi textbooks teach hate?

This is somewhat related to my previous post. The Quran contains several verses inciting ill-will towards the non-believers. The Quran and Sunnah had to define the Islamic identity in contrast to all the other existing religions, so its not very surprising, though sad and unfortunate, that they contain such verses.

Embedded video from CNN Video


Update: Found a selection of excerpts from Saudi textbooks here (look at the end of the article). They seem dangerous at one level, yet so familiar at another level so as to almost seem innocent. Disturbing.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Dreaming of a better future ... in heaven

I came across this article discussing the role Bush's religious beliefs might have played in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The prophecy in the Old Testament reads as follows:
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle … and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."
Bush is said to have told France's president Jacques Chirac:
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
It is disturbing to see the president of the world's sole super power exhibit such delusional thinking. Bush is not alone. I was talking with a friend from Iran last week and he mentioned how Ahmadinejad often says that he has the backing of the Imams when justifying his decisions. Most of the Imams are dead, and the last one, Imam Mehdi, is prophesied to come when Christ returns. Its hard for any sane person to take him seriously if he openly goes about making such claims.

Most religious people, save the most die hard literal fanatics, would probably balk if their leaders profess such opinions. Yet, prophecies are part of most religions, and as true Muslims, Christians, Jews or whatever, believing in those prophecies is a required tenet of faith.

The depiction of the end times in the ahadiths has always disturbed me. They paint a picture of such doom, gloom and death and destruction -- and with such assurity and certainty. As disturbing as the details of those prophecies are, even more disturbing is the fact that large swaths of human population believe in such utter crap with unflinching faith. Its scary.

You have to dream before you build. You have to get inspired and see a better future before you go about working for one. Religious belief can mentally handicap and paralyze one's imagination by forcing its ghastly version of the future upon oneself. Not only does religion erect divisive boundaries between humans, but its teachings have the potential to subtly influence human decisions and actions, steering humanity on a path of mutual death and destruction.

I once shared these concerns with my mother. Her reply was innocent, though disturbing. She told me not to worry -- after all, everything will be fine in heaven.

Monday, May 11, 2009

May the master be with you

Certain experiences can totally catch us off guard -- I happened to have one today.

On my way back home on the bus this evening, a caucasian guy sitting besides me asked me about the spelling of 'beneath'. He appeared to be a drunk junkie from his disheveled appearance, and his inability to spell 'beneath' only strengthened my suspicion. I spelled it out, taking a quick peek at the text he was writing. The writing was far from neat but I could make out references to 'love' and 'heart' from the little I was able to peek at. It appeared to be some sort of a love letter.

A few moments later, he inquired where I was from. Upon hearing Pakistan, he mentioned that he was a poet and in fact had read many of the poets from that region. He mentioned Kabir and Rumi among several others and inquired whether I knew about any of them. Most of the names were alien to me, other than Rumi, and the guy seemed rather surprised at that, rightly so perhaps, exhorting me to read more about my culture and heritage. He also appeared rather concerned, almost a little angry, when talking about the present situation in Pakistan, rhetorically asking about how one can put a life back once its taken.

My stop was near when he volunteered to read aloud his poem. I reluctantly agreed. I don't remember most of it as I was still taken aback by the suddenness of the experience and the anxiety of my stop arriving, but it did sound very beautiful and spiritual -- ending with 'beneath your feet'.

He mentioned sos.org several times during the conversation -- turns out that its a spiritual organization led by a Sikh guy. From first impressions, it seems to be have a low fishiness to usefulness ratio.

My stop finally arrived and I shared my first ever fist bump goodbye with him along with the parting expression: "May the master be with you".

Its not everyday that you get to have such eventful and novelty filled bus rides :-)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The strange thing about writing


"SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, that's the strange thing about writing ... they seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever." -- Plato: Collected Dialogues, 1961

While writing has allowed the transmission and preservation of valuable information and knowledge through the ages, it does suffer from the fact that it is a very static form of knowledge. Every piece of writing is written at a particular place, at a particular time and with a particular frame of mind. Debate, argument and conversation are necessary if we are to harvest useful and pertinent knowledge from the written text.

The supposed word of God, by the very nature of its alleged source, is supposed to be infallible, full of wisdom and immune to critical analysis. Lacking the ability to argue and debate, it has the potential to intellectually paralyze entire societies, hold them hostage and stunt their intellectual and moral growth.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Scientific research

I had been rather busy lately as I was wrapping up my masters thesis which I finally handed in last week. It has been an insightful and rewarding experience, even if a bit painful at times.

This was my first experience conducting serious research and I learned quite a few lessons through the process.

I started out with a rather complex design which just didn't make for a coherent and neat story in the thesis. I had to go back to the whiteboard several times before I came up with the final design that my supervisor was satisfied with. Upon some reflection, I realized that it is easy to hide sloppy and incomplete thinking behind a facade of complexity, and that simple and beautiful designs demand a lot of clarity and completeness in thought.

The second surprising lesson I learnt was the difficulty of precisely saying something that is intuitively clear. To rehash a cliche: the devil is in the details. It took me many rounds of phrasing and rephrasing to finally say what I wanted to say.

Ironically, while science has the potential to increase the effective grasp and control of humans over nature, the scientific process has the opposite effect: it tends to make you much more humble and aware of your limitations. It is inspiring to see what one can achieve when one starts out with a humble and curious attitude, in awe of all there is but knowing that one doesn't know much of what there is to know.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Being in the moment

Our minds have a tendency to loose track of the moment and worry about the past or the future. All that is needed to find joy and peace and be whole is to reunite our thoughts with our bodies and truly be present in the miracle that is now.

I came across an old quote by Eleanor Roosevelt today which conveys the same message in a very short, simple and playfully humorous way:

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift, that's why it is called the present."

Enjoy the present.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

An animate God

I have been reading Sherry Turkle's wonderful book 'The Second Self' lately. She talks about how computers are challenging and changing the very notion of what it means to be human and how children, teenagers and adults relate to computers in different ways.

The section on how children interact and relate with computers in particular, and with the world in general, is quite fascinating. She compares children to philosophers -- young philosophers -- hypothesizing about and categorizing the world into shifting and changing categories. She terms computers as 'evocative objects' -- objects which are neither living nor non-living but which sit tenuously at the boundary of being alive and not-alive in the minds of young children. I heartily recommend the book if the above introduction piqued your interest. However, in this post I want to discuss some thoughts I had which are only tangentially related to the book but which were triggered by the material in the book.

She claims that one of the first categories that the children divide the world into is between living and non-living things. This categorization also makes evolutionary sense because anything that is living is potentially hostile and thus demands more attention. As is to be expected, children treat nearly everything as animate and alive in the beginning -- to paraphrase her, in a child's mind, a rock falls down a slope not because of gravity but because the rock "wants to get to the bottom". On a personal note, I was surprised to see my 3 year old cousin terrified of the water when I went to the beach with him and his family last year. One possible explanation might be that he considered the water to be alive and having a will of its own, wanting to suck him into itself, thus causing the fear I saw in his eyes. His behavior seemed to suggest that this was the case.

Now I want to relate this primal instinct to classify things into living and non-living things with the preference for an animate as opposed to an inanimate God.

We humans have a tendency to construct objects out of everything we think about. In fact, the very act of thinking about something requires that something to be perceived and objectified. We need to give the totality of all that we experience a name if we are think about it as well; and God seems to be the name most people give to that -- this perhaps explains why the notion of God being everywhere is common to nearly all religions. Now, God is not the only contender for this coveted spot. The physical laws can potentially also describe the totality of all there is, and some vague notion of a 'universal force' might satisfy some people too. Such laws and forces have a cold and calculating nature however. People don't associate the same warmth and love with laws and forces as they associate with an animate God. Perhaps, maybe, our unconscious evolutionary bias towards understanding the world in terms of living animate things -- most of which we learn to 'de-animate' as we grow older -- might have something to do with our preference for an animate God.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Death, love, life

Tears rolled down my eyes today after a long time ... and it felt good.

The emotions were triggered by a song at the end of the latest episode of House. One of the characters dies in the beginning of the episode and the other characters are shown dealing with his death through the episode. The episode ends with a juxtaposition of powerful images, gestures and symbols set to a beautiful song in the background. You can find the later part of the song below (while it lasts):



Death can be such a moving experience. A very close family friend of ours died last time I was in Pakistan. His son is rather young, not older than 11 I think. He dealt with the death of his father in such a graceful manner that it left me in total awe of his strength and stamina. The only time I saw tears in his eyes were when people were covering up the grave of his father with mud. It made my heart melt and my eyes well up with tears.

Death also puts our lives in perspective. It gives us a chance to celebrate the life of the one who passes away in a way that we rarely do when the person is alive. It makes us think about our own lives -- of the reasons and emotions we want others to remember us by with.

It makes us realize the beauty and potency of the feelings of love we have for our loved ones. How those feelings manifest themselves through an outpouring of tears when people are separated. All humans, irrespective of culture or religion experience them. Humans commit atrocious crimes as well, but it is these feelings of love and sympathy that give me hope.

The emotions the song triggered and the tears that resulted were cathartic. I suddenly had this longing to pray because that is the only way I know to express myself spiritually. I did pray. Whatever little Arabic I knew, I was careful not to recite the verses talking about Muhammad because I don't believe him to be a prophet. I was careful not to recite any verses I knew the meaning of and that I disagreed with.

Humans need ways to express themselves spiritually. Religion provides them with such ways. Most religions go ahead and add in a healthy dose of supernatural stuff and doubtful and fishy claims as well. But they do provide the masses with means to express themselves spiritually. I haven't really given much thought to finding out new ways to do that for myself. I guess its about time that I did.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Old enough

This quote put a smile on my face this morning.

"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better."
- Anonymous

Friday, April 3, 2009

Disgusted and disturbed

Came across this very disturbing video today:



Here is a verse straight from the Quran:

(from http://www.jannah.org/qurantrans/quran24.html)
024.002 The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.

The lashes being meted out, no compassion in the hearts and faces of people, and the momineen standing around watching: looks like a scene straight from the Quran!

Now, the woman wasn’t accused of rape, so these verses don’t exactly apply to her, but we know how easy it is to twist and turn such verses and use them for your own version of justice. EVEN IF she had committed adultery, how many of you would be OKAY with such a punishment? I know for the life of me that I wouldn’t. I am repulsed to my very core with this barbarism.

I realize that most muslims are decent people, but it is important to realize that Islam (like Christianity and Judaism) isn’t a decent religion. It contains humanistic teachings but sprinkled with such utter barbarism. Lets not cherry pick verses from our religion and stop pretending that such barbarism is totally unwarranted according to Islamic teachings.

People are repulsed by the tactics of the Taliban, but as I said here, the Taliban might very well be following the true literal word of the Quran but most people might not be able to see it because they are blinded by their own moderation. It can be very hard to accept this other gory and ugly part of religion when you consider your religion to be the eternal source of peace, joy and happiness. For once, lets try to see religion as it really is and try to grow out of our infatuation with it.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Disabled or super-abled?

We live in a fascinating time. Its easy to loose track of the breathtaking advances we as a species are making in technology in the mundane affairs of day-to-day life.

Tools have played a critical role in enabling humans scale greater and greater heights over the ages; from the ability to make impressions on stone, the ability to carve materials into useful objects, the ability to disseminate information through books, making cars and ships and shuttles to make traveling great distances possible, curing and healing our bodies to reduce suffering to making long distance communication cheap and pervasive, the depth and breadth of our achievement as a species is truly awe-inspiring.

We stand at a unique point in our history in that the most likely next evolutionary leap for our species might not be made by natural selection but by our own collective intelligence. The appearance of the first transhuman might not happen in our lifetimes, but I am optimistic that it won't take a very long time either. The possibility of going beyond your limitations and of even defying life and death itself makes you wonder what being human is all about.

What triggered this train of thought was something much more humble and mundane in comparison: prosthetic legs.

Aimee Mullins is an athlete, actress and fashion model whose legs had to be amputated when she was just a year old. Her story is one of courage, strength and the promise of human potential. Her talk at this year's TED made me look at prosthetic legs in an entirely different light: not as mere aids for a disability, but as potentially beautiful tools that push the boundaries of what is possible.

Prosthetic legs are a far cry from the futuristic vision of post-humanity I was thinking about, but they do serve as a simple, tangible example that clearly feels as part of the self. They serve as a stimulus to the mind for dreaming what the future might hold.

I wouldn't be lying if I said that I had thoughts of amputating my legs and having them replaced by super-cool even more powerful ones several times during the presentation.

Have fun watching.


Saturday, March 21, 2009

Separating God from religion

God and religion have been deeply and inextricably intertwined through our human history. You either believe in the God of this religion or the God of that religion but belief in a God without religion is alien to most people.

This deep and pervasive conflation of God and religion leads to a number of interesting side effects and consequences.

Firstly, since people solemnly believe their religion to be the literal word of God, any attack on religion is seen as an attack on God. Religions are full of inaccuracies, contradictions and commandments which at times go against our intrinsic human morality, but when these are pointed out, people start taking them as arguments against the existence of God which they clearly are not. People fail to see the faults in their religion because they consider God to be faultless. Only if they could separate their God from their religion can the light of awareness and clarity shine upon them.

Secondly, all religious people can clearly see the absurdity and fallacies of all religions except their own. Asking ourselves why can shed a lot of light into the nature of religious belief.

We are able to see other religions for what they really are because we don't have any emotional and spiritual ties with the God of those religions. We are blinded to the imperfections and fallacies of our own religion precisely because we have built emotional and spiritual ties with the God of our religion. It is not difficult to see how it is the notion of God that binds followers to their religions and yet how this notion can bind people to any religion provided that they are indoctrinated with its beliefs since early childhood. The ties we build with the God of our religion effectively blind us from objectively and critically evaluating our religion.

If you really care about the truth, and don't just pretend to, then the above should give you a pause. It should make you self reflect and question your deeply held beliefs. It should make you realize that you can NEVER honestly evaluate your religion unless you separate your God from the God your religion talks about. Until and unless you make that subtle but critical distinction, you will be swept away by your own emotions and bias and won't be able to think straight. You owe this separation to no one but your own self -- after all, self-deception is the worst of all forms of deception.

In addition to this personal lesson, separating God from religion can also be a good strategic move for humanity. The human species has come to associate a lot of reverence, awe and respect with the God word over the ages. People have wildly different notions of who or what God is but everyone associates it with the highest and purest of virtues we as humans can aspire for. It will serve all those arguing against the absurdities and fallacies of religions to refocus their efforts on refuting the religious beliefs and the particular God(s) talked about in those religions rather than the notion of God in general.

Throughout our human history, religions have hijacked God over and over again and used him for their own purposes. They have hidden their fallacies and absurdities behind the facade of a beautiful perfect God. It will serve humanity well to rescue the God word from the clutches of religion.

The notion of an irreligious God might be alien to most of us, but I believe that it is what is needed to save humanity from the collision course between religions it is headed towards.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Swastika


You are constantly surprised by how much you can learn by interacting with people from other cultures. A Bangladeshi friend recently introduced me to the Swastika, a symbol traditionally associated with well-being and good luck, and a symbol I had grown up associating only with the Nazis.

It turns out that the symbol has been in widespread use both in the East and West by innumerable number of religions and cultures. The symbol was adopted by the Nazis because of its association with the Aryan civilization from which the German nation has been conjectured to have descended. The wikipedia entry says that the Nazis claimed that the early Aryans of India, from whose Vedic tradition the Swastika sprang, were prototypical white invaders. It also says that the Indian caste system might have been created by those Aryan invaders to preserve their "racial purity". Quite interesting, if there actually is any truth to it.

Its fascinating to see how one symbol has come to stand for goodness as well as pure evil over the last century. Given that I never came across this symbol in its older historical context in Pakistan, it surprises me as to how far we have drifted away from our Indian origin.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Evolution and religion

Beautiful streams of vapor rise from the hot comforting cup of tea on my side as I sit in front of my computer today; the controversial topic of evolution and religion preoccupying my thoughts.

We celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin this year. No theory has shaken the foundations of religious belief as much as the theory of evolution. On the surface, the theory of evolution is a benign theory which beautifully explains the diversity of life on this planet. Its beauty lies in its utter simplicity -- simplicity which leaves the mind in wonder and stupor as to how it could give rise to all that we so deeply cherish and revere: life.

But simplicity has been the hallmark of all great scientific theories, not just evolution. Newton's laws of motion were utterly simple but they managed to explain an astoundingly wide variety of natural phenomena with astonishing accuracy. Those theories didn't disturb us because they didn't contradict so deeply with our religious beliefs.

Charles Darwin himself was raised a religious man. He believed that there was a God who created the world and life around us, and who was responsible for its smooth functioning. I am left in complete awe, admiration and respect for the intellectual honesty of Darwin when I contemplate how he had to grapple with the uncomfortable evidence which pointed in a direction opposite to what he wanted to believe in. His wife remained a devout Christian. I almost found it innocently cute when I read how his wife expressed her concerns on how his honest doubts might cause them to be separated in the hereafter.

Each one of us has to go through a similar spiritual struggle that Darwin did when confronted with the evidence for evolution. While accepting evolution doesn't mean you to have stop believing in some sort of higher power, it does mean that it will be dishonest of you to say that you believe in evolution and still think that your religion is nothing but truth. Nearly all religions make claims about the origin of humans, and their demise, and thus the beef with evolution.

Humans invented religions to serve as anchors and guides for leading a good life; to help people make sense of the world, even if that meant believing in elaborate accounts of supernatural beings without a shred of evidence. There are reasons why evolution scares so many people. One reason is that it points them to the troublesome evidence of their religion not being the True and Right account of Reality. The other reason is they might be troubled by the gruesome and brutal way natural selection works. The fittest survive. There doesn't seem to be a room for morality and kindness. But from that gruesome brutal fight for survival, we have evolved feelings of kindness, niceness and love because they provide an evolutionary advantage to us as a species.

I remain hopeful. If our ancestors could come up with the set of religious beliefs and practices that helped them lead lives of righteousness, honesty and loving kindness, even if it required believing in superstition, I am hopeful that we can do a better job, now that we have a better grasp on the actual nature of this universe and life within it.

I came across this interesting documentary last night which answers some questions that people have regarding evolution and its interplay with religious belief. I particularly liked the following line by Dawkins when he was discussing the menace of social Darwinism:

"We humans are the first and only species that are able to escape the brutal force that created us: natural selection. "

There is hope for a gentler, kinder, loving and more spiritual world. Hope that doesn't require us to run away from and reject the truth and hide away in our little comfortable imaginary cocoons but which exhorts us to embrace the truth and work for a beautiful and loving future for our descendants.

Have fun watching.




Or click here to go to youtube's playlist so that you don't have to manually select each part.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Allah to Ole

Came across this beautiful presentation today on creative genius.

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how artists of all sorts have this sudden flash of insight and inspiration when everything comes together and works in concert to produce a brilliant piece of work. She talks about the unpredictability of such flashes of brilliance and inspiration, and how this puts undue pressure on the creative artists.

Today we have this notion of someone "being" a genius. Elizabeth mentions that the Greeks didn't believe that genius was something intrinsic to a person, but was something that came from the outside. You were not a genius. You had genius with you for a short duration of time. Genius was something external to you, that visited you for a while.

This is a fairly odd way to look at things, but I can understand how this can take a lot of pressure off of the creative artists when they mentally separate that sudden flash of inspiration and brilliance from themselves. All of this should have neurological explanations, but its still interesting to see how previous civilizations coped with ways to deal with the unpredictability and magnificence of such flashes of insight.

Another interesting tidbit. She mentions how people in Northern Africa used to chant Allah, Allah, Allah when they saw a beautiful, almost transcendental, dance performance. They saw that performance not as a work of man, but as a manifestation of God. When the Moors invaded Spain, they took this tradition with them, and this chanting of Allah, Allah, Allah changed to Ole, Ole, Ole that is so synonymous with Spanish music today. Interesting.

Have fun watching the presentation.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Scared of my own thoughts

I don't interact a lot, and mostly stay within myself. There is plenty to preoccupy my mind with. But as of late, because a few things didn't go according to plan, I was feeling uncertain of the future. Suddenly, there was nothing comforting to preoccupy my mind with. Uncertainty can be a very unsettling feeling.

I talked about my state of mind to a friend of mine to which he replied that perhaps I was scared of my own thoughts. The place where I found comfort and refuge had suddenly become a scary place to be at. That was a profound realization. He was partially right. I needed someone to save me from myself. Someone external to me.

Talking to friends and family, and realizing the source of the problem helped me a lot. That also got me thinking about the utility of believing in a God. This perhaps explains why people have always wanted a God, someone external to them, someone to turn to in times of uncertainty and need.

I still think that I have all the resources to deal with such conditions myself, but that is not always my first response. I am still learning. It takes effort and practice to build internal strength. We humans always turn outside for help. We can be so desperate that we can hold on to all manners of absurdities just because we want someone external to cling on to. Or perhaps its because we are always taught to look outside for help instead of inside.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

A case against the religious moderates

Today I want to share a thought provoking speech by Sam Harris.

Some people are offended by the arguments atheists make for the implausibility of God and claim that they don't really understand the kind of faith that most religious people have. Those people have a point. After all, we don't take God and religion to be the forces of evil that atheists seem to suggest.

Most religious people argue that its a reasonable philosophical position to believe in the existence of God, if not a reasonable scientific one. I won't argue against that. However, belief in the existence of God does not entail the truthfulness of the entire baggage of extra beliefs that define us as Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Jews. Most religious people don't have solid arguments for why all those other set of beliefs are a good set of beliefs to have -- beliefs in angels, heaven and hell, and getting 72 virgins when you die fighting in the way of God. Most religious people don't have good reasons for why they are Muslims or Christians or Hindus other than the fact that they were born in a culture where that religion was followed and blind faith.

Most religious people allege that atheists take the religious texts literally whereas most religious people don't. I agree. However, their religious moderation blinds them of the religious fanaticism of the minority that does take the text literally. The major religions of the world are mostly incompatible, and this makes it a really alarming situation.

Sam Harris spends most of the latter part of the lecture making a case against religious moderation. Religious moderation is no doubt MUCH better than religious extremism, but Sam Harris' points are thought provoking and worth listening to, even if controversial.

One line that I particularly liked from the speech:

"There are spiritual experiences that human beings can have, and there are ethical truths. Whatever is true about that, has to transcend our cultural differences."

I couldn't agree more.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Marasi


Marasi is a derogatory term used to refer to musicians in Pakistan. Even though television, film and music are quite popular among the Pakistani masses but actors and singers have always been looked down upon by the more religious circles of our society.

Music is forbidden in Islam. Some people say its not, but it is a controversial topic of debate. Why is it forbidden you ask? I have heard various explanations but none of them made any sense. At the end, the debate is closed by saying the catch all phrase: God knows best.

The ban on music is an interesting topic of discussion in itself but I don't want to delve in to that in this post. What I want to discuss is the schizophrenic attitude of our society towards the fine arts.

Most of us listen to music, watch dramas and films yet these professions are still not considered respectable in our society. It is believed that going in to such a profession is a sure ticket to hell fire.

A friend of mine commented that he was surprised to see how people got emotional when Shoaib Mansoor's film Khuda Kay Liye (In the name of God) came out. Shoaib openly professed that he didn't believe that music and painting were haram and the film contained arguments for that. My friend commented that he hadn't realized how many people actually believed music to be haram, even music buffs.

The change in the attitudes of our society will be a slow and gradual process, but as individuals, its better that we either clearly state that something is wrong and stay AWAY from it, or we get our thoughts and beliefs sorted out so that we do what we say and be less hypocritical. Its a tough journey either way.

I realize that the human state is full of contradictions, and we often times do things we consider to be wrong in principle, but I do think that each one of us owes it to himself to at least try to walk his talk.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Steven Weinberg & Richard Dawkins

I recently stumbled upon this fascinating discussion between Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg, who won the Nobel Prize along with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow. The discussion contains a segment where Weinberg discusses Abdus Salam's religious beliefs as well. Its a rather long discussion, slightly over an hour, but worth every minute of it. The discussion touches topics ranging from physics, string theory, evolution and science to religion. Have fun watching.



Or click here to go to a page containing youtube's play list so that you don't have to manually select each part.

Too much work

I frequently have these discussions with my roommate in which we both agree that religion has done quite a lot of harm in addition to the good. We both agree on how its immoral of any religion to condemn non-believers to hell. We both agree that people usually believe in the truth of their religion because it gives them spiritual fulfillment and comfort, but since that's true of every religion, its not a criteria for determining the rightfulness or truth of a religion.

In all of these cases, my question to him is that if you recognize the harmful and divisive nature of religion, if you realize that the reasons you follow your religion are more of an accidental than an essential nature, then why do you still follow it?

His reply always is that its too much work to leave my present religion and find another set of values and beliefs. He seems perfectly okay with following his religion despite knowing its weaknesses and contradictions. He is content with his religion because it provides him with comfort and is generally useful to him.

While this attitude makes personal sense, I am not sure it is ethical. If you realize and recognize that the values you profess to follow are causing harm in the world, then it does not seem ethical to just close your eyes and pretend nothing is wrong. You have to call a spade a spade, at least at a private individual level, if not a public social one.

Friday, February 27, 2009

The 'oneness' of God

Growing up as a muslim, the idea of more than one God seemed absurd to me. Who in their right mind could believe that there could be more than one God controlling the universe? This is an appealing idea. The Quran also says something to the effect that if there were more than one God, chaos would ensue in the universe. The belief that God must be 'one' was useful to me in that it allowed me to rule out a lot of apparently 'false' religions. But upon deeper reflection, there are problems with the notion of 'one' God.

There are several arguments through which we can justify the notion of more than one God as not being out rightly absurd:

1. We tend to anthropomorphize God -- we attribute humanly qualities to him, and we don't have any justification for that. The statement that the Quran makes assumes that Gods have human like qualities, that if there were more than one, they would fight for power, like humans do. This seems like an unreasonable assumption to make.

2. If no one has seen God, then every one is basically entitled to whatever he wants to say about God. We don't have any way of deciding who is right or wrong. Whether that God has three parts, or he manifests himself through hundreds of different ways, or is just one, we don't have a reasonable way to decide.

3. The notion of 'one' implies that something is a unity -- a single being. We treat many different things as 'one' in our daily lives, such as the chair you are sitting on, the table you are working on, and yourself. But none of these things are truly 'one'. They are made up of many many different parts. We just happen to treat them as one because treating them as a unity is a useful mental abstraction. We tend to treat ourselves as one, but our brains consists of millions of neurons, which change their patterns of connection from moment to moment -- something that you can hardly treat as a unity.

4. Given that nearly none of the things we encounter in our daily lives are true 'unities', and are always made up of different, even opposing parts, the notion of multiple Gods, such as in Hinduism, might actually make a lot of sense. There is a God for war, and a God for peace, a God for hate, and a God for love, and they all work together to balance out these different forces.

The point of these arguments is make you rethink about the 'obvious' and 'evident' truth of your position. It is to make you realize that the other positions aren't as absurd as you might have originally thought. Given that all of these positions can make sense, it becomes very difficult to decide which one is the right one.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Condemned to be free

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

The realization that there is no rational reason to believe in God is quite a liberating one. The realization that the reasons we usually use to justify a God are logically hollow is comforting and reassuring. They make you feel free and light.

Freedom doesn't come without a price though. You start to feel this immense sense of responsibility. You, and only you, are responsible for your actions. There is no God to whom you can conveniently put the blame on when things go wrong. Things aren't as God meant them to be, and not everything happens for the best.

Suddenly, the meaning of your life isn't something you are given, but something you have to ask and determine yourself.

Humans want freedom, but I don't think humans equally want the responsibility that comes with it. It is as if humans want to be controlled, to be ruled over, because that makes them responsible for less. This perhaps explains part of the universal fascination with super natural and controlling Gods.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Worldwide web of belief and ritual

Humans have a strong need for emotional and spiritual fulfillment. The need to revere, respect and to be in awe of the sacred is an age old human desire. We need to make sense of life, to build bonds of love, and to cope with the inevitable change, loss and suffering that life brings. We all feel the need to answer the question: "What does it mean to be human?". Through out our rich and varied history, humans have answered this question, not in one or few, but as much as in 6000 different ways.

While this clearly points to the need and place for the sacred and spiritual in human life, we can also clearly see that the humans are vulnerable to falling prey to believing in unreasonable things without any evidence. Humans are highly susceptible to conflating the spiritual experience with religious beliefs. Because something gives us spiritual and emotional comfort, it must be true -- nothing can be farther from the truth.

I want to share this beautiful presentation by anthropologist Wade Davis in which he discusses a few exotic beliefs and rituals from different parts of the world.



This should make you realize that the spiritual and the sacred are not the domain of any one religion. They are fundamental experiences that humans yearn for. It should also make you stop and realize that you should not conflate and mix genuinely spiritual experiences with unreasonable religious beliefs. Sure, humans have usually had such experiences with the help of religious beliefs, but these experiences don't depend on the nature of the religious beliefs -- they are independent. This should make you stop and think whether you too are committing the mistake of regarding your religious beliefs as true, just because they give you spiritual fulfillment, as humans have done for years and years.

Its about time we start seeing the repeating patterns in our history, and stop having unreasonable beliefs. There are other ways of having experiences that we yearn for. The answers lie inside of us -- we just have to quieten our minds and listen to ourselves.

Location dependent truth

Our religion and faith depend heavily on where we happen to be born. Sure, we all have our arguments of why our religion is the right one, but if we honestly take a deeper and objective look, they can easily fall apart. Being a muslim, I believed that my religion was the "one true religion". I will be discussing why those arguments were very subjective and weak in the coming posts.

Here I want to share a short clip in which Dawkins contrasts the nature of religious and scientific knowledge.



If your version of reality is strongly dependent on where you were born, then be skeptical .... be very very skeptical!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

God and me

All of us with religious inclination build deep and meaningful connections with God. That connection slowly becomes a part the core of our existence -- it is the one thing that remains solid and permanent while everything may change around it. It gives us strength, courage and hope. It stands for all the goodness we see in this world, for all the goodness we want to see in the world, and stands in direct contrast to everything that is wrong with this world. It has the power to move us deeply; it has the power to move entire societies in to the service of God. It has the power to make us cry, to make us leap with joy, to make our hearts melt with compassion, to make our souls rise with hope. That sacred relationship is a living testament of all that is good and noble about the human race.

I had a strong and deep connection with God. I knew I was weak. Very weak. So thoroughly dependent on his sustenance and forgiveness. Every success came from him, and so did every failure -- as a test of my faith. The world was a dark place; unpredictable, uncertain, chaotic, painful. But I was hopeful. So very hopeful. No matter what misery came, I knew I could always turn to him for strength and hope.

Such was my relationship was God. The one thing I was sure would remain constant in the face of all the change. It defined me and I was defined by him.

Its a beautiful relation. I don't mean to take anything away from its beauty. Its a sacred feeling that everyone should experience. It has a beauty similar to the love of a mother for her child -- perhaps more intense.

Doubts started to appear in my heart regarding the existence of God. Some of a factual nature, others of a moral nature. I knew the God I loved and prayed to, but his commands didn't always reflect the picture I had of him. All loving and just -- as I had envisioned him to be -- but his written word didn't always reflect that. I saw contradictions. Parts of it felt morally and ethically wrong. A part of his creation was condemned to his wrath -- I happened to be the lucky one who was born in all the right conditions to help me lead a life he apparently wanted me to lead. I can go on and on about what caused doubts in my heart, but thats not important right now. What is important is what I did about those doubts. I could have rationalized them away, but I knew that if God was anything like I had envisioned him to be, he would not want me to rationalize them away. After all, I associated values of truth and honesty to him, and I was just being true and honest to myself.

I was in internal confusion; in internal turmoil. I knew God would help. He did. The God I knew came to my rescue. I instinctively knew that I had to separate the God I knew and loved from the God I was having doubts about. Strange as it may seem, it seemed like the perfectly right thing to do. The God I loved was defined by the values I cherished, and the God I was having doubts about didn't share all of those values. I knew God would show me the right path. This separation of my personal God, the one I prayed to, the one I loved, helped me think clearly; it helped me stay sane and objective.

Time passed. My doubts grew. My religion, or any religion for that matter, did not make sense. There was a period when I felt lonely, very lonely. I felt dirty. I felt betrayed -- ironically by the very God I loved and prayed to. I wanted everything to be alright again; I wanted it all to make sense again. I wanted to forget all about it and go back running to my God. But my love for truth, humanity and justice didn't allow me to. I knew the values I stood for. In my hearts of hearts, I knew that the God I prayed to didn't stand for those values. It was sinful to indulge in wishful thinking; to pretend that things were right the way they were, when I knew they weren't. Intellectual and emotional weakness in the face of mounting evidence and arguments was a sin I wasn't ready to commit.

Then, gradually, but surely, I realized that the God I wanted, loved, and prayed to was still with me. He was still very much a part of me. He always had been. He defined me, and I was defined by him. Only this time, instead of being "out there", that God was "in here". The values of truth, honesty, compassion and beauty were values that were intrinsic to me. They defined me as a human. I wasn't dependent on a super natural being for what was an inseparable part of my core. This realization was a transformative one. It instantly transported all the properties I attributed to a super natural God right in to the very fabric of my existence. I knew I will always have moments of weakness, but I also know that I have all the supply of love, courage and indomitable hope I will need right inside of me.

There is a famous line in Genisis:
"God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him"

This line reads much more truer when its reversed:
"Man created God in his own image, in the image of man, he created him"

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

My story -- in brief

I will be discussing some of the reasons that caused doubt in my mind about religion. There were many things that kept me loyal to my faith, and I will be listing out some of those, but I always felt that I was ignoring the things that disturbed me. I never got satisfactory answers to them, and they remained in the back of my head.

There were many many reasons to believe. Religion plays such an important role in our life. Sure, it talks about super natural things, like angels and heavens, but most of us don't give it a second thought. Who cares? God says so, so it must be. We are taught, and in fact, to a large extent, religion does, give us values which help us differentiate right from wrong. Religion gives us a path way through which we connect with God; satisfy our need for spiritual fulfillment. In addition, if you live most of your life in one country, the truth of religion is the last thing you question, similar to how the last thing a fish notices is water -- its everywhere!

Religion provided me with immense comfort and security most of my life. I believed because I wanted to believe. I was honest in my belief. I had questions, but I had faith that God was all powerful and just, and he doesn't do injustice to anyone.

I believed because I was convinced that my religion was the right religion; the final word of God.

I believed because the notion of a higher power provided me with security and comfort. He was someone I could turn to in times of need and despair.

I believed because I could not explain the sheer beauty and magnificence of the world around me. I attributed all of this beauty and elegance to a creator which must be much more elegant and beautiful.

I believed because my beliefs were generally useful to me. They provided me with an island of certainty and serenity in a sea of uncertainty and chaos. They helped me make sense of this world. They provided me with comfort that everything will be alright in the end, that good will triumph over evil, that no good deed will go unrewarded and no bad deed will go unpunished. They helped me make a spiritual connection with a higher being, a tether I could latch on to in the face of winds of uncertainty.

So why did I feel the need to question my beliefs?

Many reasons. They never bothered me up to a certain age, but I really started questioning things a couple of years back, and these things became more and more troublesome.

I was bothered by how religion makes such ridiculously detailed claims about the nature of the universe, and expects you to believe them without any evidence. Islam, and most other religions, claim an entire different realm of the super natural, with a God, with angels, a devil, a heaven and a hell, a heavenly chair on which God resides and a host of other super natural baggage.

I was bothered by how followers of every religion followed their religion on what essentially amounted to blind faith. Religion, by its very nature, was not amenable to rational thinking and argumentation.

After interaction with people from various other faiths, I was convinced that they too were convinced of the truth of their religion. That was a scary realization. I realized that the arguments I used to justify the rightfulness of my religion were very weak and subjective.

I was bothered by how religion colored the perceptions of its followers, and how that had the potential for immense social harm; people could believe in anything they want on the grounds of blind faith. They were accountable to no one but God.

I was bothered because I didn't find any seriously good reason to be a muslim if I weren't born in a muslim family.

I was bothered by the fate of most non muslims, who were condemned to hell based on effectively where they were born.

I was bothered by the fact that some of the teachings of my religion were in conflict with what science had to say about the world. The more I appreciated the scientific method, and the pains that the scientists and scientific community goes through before making a claim, the brazen certainty with which religion states facts, which often times contradict with science, became more and more unsettling to me.

Science doesn't answer, or not yet anyhow, answers to some of life's most pressing questions. Why are we here? Is there a purpose to life? How did this all come in to being? How will this end? My religion did provide me with answers to these pressing questions, but I realized that those answers were hardly answers; they begged more questions than they answered.

In the face of these arguments, I found it highly dishonest of me to continue to profess that my version of reality was the right one.

The most difficult challenge for me was my personal relationship with God. I had become emotionally addicted to the notion of a caring and loving god. It was amusing, yet unsettling, to realize that people of all religions experienced the same connection with a higher being, be it Allah, Jesus, Vishnu, Zeus or Thor. The religion didn't matter. The nature of God(s) didn't matter. Regardless, the emotional ties I had built with God were in danger -- this disturbed me to no end. Humans have a need for emotional and spiritual connection. People fulfil those needs through human connections, and by praying to and worshipping to God(s). Given all the arguments against the veracity of my religion, I had to be courageous and question my blind belief in God. I do think that most people are disturbed by facts and contradictions in religion, just like I was, but their connection to God is so strong that they don't dare question it. They rationalize all of it away.

The relationship with God was one of the most difficult parts in renouncing my faith, and I believe this is the sole reason, or the primary reason, that keeps most people loyal to their faith despite knowing its weaknesses and contradictions. This is an important enough, and broad enough, topic that I will be discussing more of it in a future post.

I don't have answers to everything, but I feel content and satisfied, emotionally and intellectually, knowing that I don't say or believe in anything whose veracity and morality I cannot convince myself of. I feel like I have been released from the shackles of my own thoughts and desires. I feel relieved. I feel free.

The following sums up my feelings quite well:

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." -- Carl Sagan

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Welcome

Hello visitor,

I am a 20-something desi who hails from Pakistan. I have been a devout muslim most of my life, but I started questioning things about three years ago. Like most religious people, I was content and sure of the veracity and truth of my religion, and never once thought I could question it one day. It provided me comfort, guidance, values and, what I initially thought, a comprehensive way to look at this life and universe.

Over time, to my utter surprise, my faith has been shaken and dismantled to the extent I never thought possible.

I thought I had answers to everything, but it was humbling to realize that I knew very little. Over time, I have found it extremely arrogant of religion to make so many claims about our world with virtually no evidence. Letting go of the values and beliefs I was raised with has not been an easy experience. It has taken a lot of courage to doubt the certainties I was raised with; certainties, which even though appeared absurd and immoral at times, were re-assuring nonetheless.

This difficult journey has been a very personal one for me. I plan to share my experiences and tribulations through this blog; to help people in a similar dilemma as I was, to have meaningful conversation about religion and belief, and lack there of, and to persuade people to honestly re-evaluate the basis of their deeply held and cherished beliefs.

I have also been disgusted with the rise of religious extremism and intolerance in my home country -- Pakistan. I dream of a secular and free Pakistan, where it wouldn't be tabboo to hold any religious belief, or no beliefs at all, and a Pakistan where all humans will be treated with equality, dignity and respect irrespective of their faith, color or creed. A Pakistan where the ideals of equality, freedom and opportunity will unite and bind us together instead of narrowly construed religious dogma. A Pakistan based on humanistic values of love and compassion instead of one based on the superiority of one religion over the rest.

I hope to have meaningful conversations with my readers; conversations which enlighten and inform me, as well as enlighten and inform you, and at the very least, make you consider the possibility of a world free from all forms of superstition, discrimination and intolerance.

Happy reading!