Convictions

It's no longer the religion that takes issue. But the concept itself that has taken it's toll more than ever. One could debate this all day and get nowhere and I'm not going to start. It's not hard to see though, why religion today is no longer fashionable.

Some may argue that the word religion is too rigid a word - for in Islam the arabic word 'din' is used which roughly translates to a 'way of life' or 'the path' or 'the way'.

My thoughts return to one afternoon in the library where someone who I barely knew had approached me to talk about serious matters of life. I suppose he was struck by what seemed to him, a serious hitch in my situation. His frustrated words still ring today, "Why should there be religions? There should just be harmony."

I have good friends who have been disillusioned by their own religion and some who have left their practices and even beliefs. Some communities would frown greatly upon them and cast very harsh moral judgements. I suppose I can't speak for other societies except the one I was born to, which is the Malay community.

I've never forgotten the hadith about the woman and the dog. A woman, who had lived her life as a prostitute had met a dog that was dying of thirst. She then filled her shoe with water so that the dog could drink from it. She was granted Paradise based on that one act of kindness to an animal. The point is not that she was a prostitute and had been granted eternal paradise, but that moral judgements are not for humans to make. And on a side note, to be kind to all animals, dogs and cats alike.

I cringe when I hear people cast their moral judgements so easily and so harshly . It is so easy and human to do so. The worse judgement is rendering someone so ill-fated because they have swayed from the path or are not of the path i.e. foreign to one's cultures and beliefs.

Too often I read and hear very negative offhanded remarks about people in the modern, western society often pertaining to booze and sex. I wonder, if one day, that person embraces your religion, how would one feel when one greets and welcomes that person knowing all that was once thought of them?

People have their own ways of interpreting what happens in this world and the root causes for it, and more often than it should, religion somehow makes its unwanted appearance. Maybe it is easy to blame the obvious. But perhaps humans, not religion should take the blame.

If I was not too affronted by the depth of the question this person had asked me, I would have probably replied to him this:

"Once upon a time, there existed a harmonious society where different religions coexisted and flourished. But it was not long before human factors threatened this and eventually such an idea seemed impossible. Maybe that's the test for you and me. You, to see that my convictions do not cause disharmony. And me, to stick to my convictions and be in harmony with you.

And if there be a disparity, we have only ourselves to blame, not religion or the lack there of."