Disjointed Reality

Elders in my family have said that you never question religion because that makes you a ‘kafir’… Later this evolved to include not questioning whatever is being taught or told especially by those very elders. Gobbldegook! I’ve always got into trouble with people because I have a habit of questioning in an extremely loud volume. I am rather proud of the range my vocal chords have but I’m afraid it’s not very comfortable for whoever is in the vicinity of those queries. But now I wonder if somehow all those old schools propagating home schooling for girls and having old notions of accepting all like the proverbial dumb & mute puppet may not have had some significance and been grounded in actual logic.

Have you seen a broken mirror? The first thing you notice is your reflection is suddenly and painfully un-whole… And then you notice, that each shard or sliver reflects you individually, the manifestation in each portraying a different you. Technically, the mirror still serves its purpose of showing you what you look like, but the way you see it is altered. That difference in perception will remain even if the mirror is put together because you will still see where it shattered and those cracks through it will distort your mirror image. There are times, I feel as if those cracks have shifted from the mirror on to my reality. So, what do you do when you and others around you can see the disfiguration in you?

My life has been a rollercoaster these past 5 years, and my emotions have followed suit rollicking from pure unadulterated joy to the dismal pits where for a while I could sympathize with those who commit suicide. I went through a phase where I was not religious per se but I was following the regime of praying 5 times a day, reading the Quran and even offering the nafal salats of Chaasht and Ishraaq to today where I most unfortunately make up the most imaginative reasons to escape a single prayer. I have seen the horror and destruction of black magic and seen the healing, all encompassing power of prayer & belief which makes my present quandary all the more harder to bear. I have rocked between extremes of focusing wholeheartedly on my career, having each step mapped out with a strategy and time line to not knowing where entire months of my life have gone. I have had the utmost faith in the resilience of human emotions and relationships to rallying about the heartlessness of people. This time showed me home truths like your parents being your haven and shelter and reinforced the cold hard fact that one never truly appreciates them…I learned of my own arrogance and stubbornness but also ended up with unforgettable lessons in my own vulnerability and resilience…

But in so many essential ways, all these lessons have ensured that I am no longer the person I was and hence, do not serve me as perhaps they should. So many things that were acceptable to who I was, are now not even familiar. The pathways that I had marked out for me are obsolete and overgrown with unknown species of grass and crawling with creepy crawlies. However, had this doubt been limited to the way I related to people or even my professional development, I would not be so worried. What causes me so much apprehension is that I now at times question those principles that form the basis of our faith. Growing up in a family that for generations has been revered and respected in our home town because of “Saadaat”, religion played a pretty significant role in our every day life. And with it, the teaching of unquestioned conviction was drummed into us. Now, with what I see of Islam in practice, in our country and other Muslim states, coupled with the kind of Islam that is preached, I find myself reluctant to practice it and accept all I have been told. I have an issue when I try and resolve the religion as I know it with what I have read or researched from a number of sources. Honestly, my faith is right now limited to simply the statement of the First and Second Kalima, and beyond that everything is clouded in contradiction.

Who of us can actually say that Islam is as Islam is meant to be? Who of us can in all honesty say that Islam is being followed as it was meant to? Who among us actually knows what the postulates in our religion are? I can’t! And I feel I really would become an infidel if I listen to a Maulvi…!! I can’t help thinking that I will end up more confused and more puzzled and will end up losing whatever small bit of faith I have inside of me if I go to a supposed scholar…

So herein lays my dilemma… I am re-evaluating myself, my aims, my priorities but at the same time, I’m also questioning how my religion fits into who I am and what my divine purpose in life is. I don’t know anymore if the kind of life I want is compatible with what my religion tells me. Regardless of what people say, enlightened moderation is not a concept in Islam. Islam has definite structure and it has rigidity because it gives guiding principles for every aspect of life. One has to have unquestioned, indubitable, solid faith in its TRUE teachings and preaching, enough for you to allow compromised in your life, thought and action to adhere to them. Islam and its principles do not compromise and bend to the demands on your life; you are the one who has to do that. And how do you do that, pray tell, when you start to question teachings that have encompassed so much of your life?

Thinking I’m faithless is making me feel as if I’m adrift and I have nothing to hold on to. Even in relatively dark times in my age, I never thought that I would emerge from them feeling so disassociated with the Almighty.

If a conservative reads this, I will seriously be branded a ‘murtad’ but, I’m not questioning God, I’m questioning my recognition and association with Him. I am questioning the notions that we take for granted and their place in actual religion. I doubt the authenticity of what we practice against what we understand from the Quran and Hadith. My faith and my association with God is that one essential end that will help me to sort out where I figure in the grand scheme of things and I just need to find it to unravel this crisis of self doubt.

It is the pattern of these things in my life and my world that I am having problems recognizing. Like a jigsaw puzzle that you’ve spent your life putting together but even as it starts to make sense, you for some reason feel that it is not quite right. It seems skewed and disjointed and you start to take it apart to try and piece it together and suddenly have these large, gaping open spaces where there are pieces missing…

I know I’ll find them eventually and my reality will be complete once more, in spite of the imprint of shadows that will tell their own tale of my journey. My lust for being comprehensively me as best I can be and in part reaffirming the kind of faith that is untainted by this world will see me through.