I Believe, I Believe, I Believe...Screw You, This Is What I Believe.

Every where I look people, many friends included, seem to be signing up for religious classes. That should be no big deal right, I mean they’re usually just hour long classes talking out issues that are admittedly ambiguous in Islam, no big deal. Then why am I terrified of the idea. That’s honestly the only way I can describe it, I’m shit scared. Every where I look I feel cornered in. It’s as if I’m walking briskly through the crowd with my beliefs clutched to my chest, looking left and right then left again lest someone should try and wrest them out of my hands. I’m perpetually terrified that any day now, I’m going to wake up and find that everything’s changed, that I can no longer drive because I’m a women, that I can’t vote, can’t wear what I want, can’t say what I want, can’t go where I want, can’t even surf the net the way that I want. I feel like I’m losing any control that I had over my own existence, I mean it’s already started hasn’t it. Some one invites me over for a dars and I have to lie and make excuses (or just shut up and go when I run out of excuses), I don’t have the guts to come out and say that you know what I don’t believe in this crap (I try from time to time but it usually ends with people deciding that I’m an atheist or something). I can’t really say that I don’t trust that the female sitting in the centre of the group is an actual scholar and not just the spawn of some politically motivated so called Islamic organization. I can’t say that I believe bringing in shariah laws are a bad idea, since we’re just not capable enough to ensure that they’re not misused. I’ve never been able to explain that I don’t think Allah works in absolutes, that I feel that what we believe and how we follow Islam should be personal, that instead of going into who’s doing what wrong and how, we should try to work on the few basics that are definite. That we should try and be what God expected we’d be all along, good and kind, and generous and modest and honest and just. Be decent human beings at least. We’re so worried about the little things, the nuances of our religion, that you’d think we’d already mastered the muslim part of being a GOOD muslim. Most of all I don’t believe that Allah or Islam are in those little things, I believe they’re in my soul, they’re in the fact that I always try to do the right thing, that Allah knows I try, that even when I slip up (and I slip up a lot) He doesn’t give up on me, that my belief in Him gives me comfort and warmth and no force can shake it. The institutionalization of Islam terrifies me mainly because, I feel, it’ll make me forget all this, it’ll make me forget how much I love Him, and instead (God forbid) make me resent Him even though it’s not the laws that are bad it’s how people twist them that is. I love my religion, I just hate what’s being done to it. I’m just grateful my parents were able to teach me to form my own opinions regardless of what everyone else said and make me realize that God isn’t some unknown force constantly looking for ways to punish us, but one whose constantly looking for ways to help us.