Religion

Religion has always fascinated me; its origin, purpose and practicality are a constant ongoing debate in my mind. I envy those who can accept it at face value and find solace and comfort in practicing their faith, oblivious to any distractions.

Do you believe in God?

It's one question that most people I know eventually get around to asking me. I think its a very pretentious question. It's as if people think a simple yes or no will resolve all the complexities around this subject. I answer the question with a "yes" because I know that someone who has given religion and faith the deliberation it deserves would never ask that question.

Two things stand -

1. It's personal and only my business what I do and don't believe.

2. Believing in something is not the same as accepting it. They’re closely related, but never the same thing.

When I refer to religion, it's always in the broader sense. Not the religion I was born in, Islam. Most people have difficulty aligning with this perspective and I've learned over time that I can't change that.

What we know is that all religions aim to

• Make us better human beings.
• Teach us tolerance, acceptance and love.
• Guide us through the adversities of life.

I struggle to see any religion do this successfully. Failure to do this is often attributed to people, not the religion. It's as if one has nothing to do with the other. Success, however, has no ambiguity. It’s always the religion, not the person.

In my personal experience, some of the most despicable people I've met have been staunch believers in God and their lives revolve around it. On the contrary, some of the most beautiful people I've met, aren't. The best of them being, my very own wife.

She's not religious and might even be a closet atheist. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that in my mind. If your mind went down the judgement path when you read that, you might as well stop. You're not the right audience for this. If you haven't learnt by now then you will one day, that believing in God is not a determining factor. It's just one of many aspects of human behavior.

Entertain this tiny example for me. Islam has a long-standing story about how the Prophet once stayed in the kneeling posture (Sajda) for hours because a cat decided to sit down on his clothing during prayers (Namaz). It was only after the cat left that he sat up to continue his prayers. The story is supposed to exemplify patience and kindness toward animals. In my entire life, I've heard this story umpteen times and being a cat lover, it resonated deeply with me.

How many Muslims have I met in my personal life that show that kind of love and mercy to animals? Hardly any. Is there an Islamic animal conservatory? Not that I know of. On the contrary, I have seen my (atheist?) wife, who has probably never heard the story, sleep crunched up all night because our cat decided to sleep on her blanket. She wakes up complaining that her back hurts, but she couldn't get herself to push the cat off the bed.

Who taught her this love and kindness toward animals? Nature? Her own moral compass? I'll leave it up to you to decide.

That's just one of many examples I've come across in my life where the lessons preached by religion are often practiced by those outside of it. The so-called staunch believers are drowning in self-preservation and egos.

In my experience, religion does a few things very well -

• It gives you a self-righteous perspective on all walks of life.
• Give hope, a guaranteed perk universal to all religions. Nothing wrong with it and I know it's essential for humans to survive.
• Some have argued it gives us a community and a sense of brotherhood. I vehemently disagree! It does the opposite. It segregates humans into groups and inherently pitches them against each other. Religion has been the root cause of more killings and bloodshed in all of mankind's history than everything else combined.

I know I will continue to struggle with this for a very long time. I'm a big astronomy buff and when I put Earth and its inhabitants in perspective with the known universe, I have difficulty accepting that all of it was created or exists just for us humans.

On the other hand, I find it ignorant to believe that the universe with all its magnificent engineering and delicate balance came about without a supreme Creator.

I continue my journey looking for answers…

I picked this up at the airport on my way back from Hyderabad to Bangalore. About a couple chapters in and already loving it. It talks about religion from the same perspective as mine - globally across all religions and faith.