What can make a person believe? A pamphlet? A YouTube video? A blog post? A chat in the street? A profound experience? For some, any of these. For others, none at all. I don’t really think it’s as easy as that. You may be briefly persuaded by an argument or claim, but there’s no guarantee …
The truth of the matter is that most people haven’t a clue what it is that we believe. Indeed, even many of Muslim heritage don’t have a clue either. If I think back to the first Muslim acquaintances I made at the age of sixteen, neither of them could (or were prepared to) tell me …
For the seeker and convert alike, it is imperative that they understand that Muslims are just people like anyone else, as diverse as humanity at large. They are buffeted by the same forces that affect all people, influenced by histories, culture, politics, wealth, power and their personal circumstances. Amongst the Muslim there are those who …
I encounter spiritual folk, seeking. You can see their passion and sincerity in their search for truth and light. But they would overlook our path, because all that they have seen of it repulses them. I don’t blame them. Much that is perpetrated by those professing our faith repulses me too. In our practice of …
Proofs take years, if not millennia, to discern. Why did the redeeming saviour of mankind came so late in the history of our species? The last 2000 years in which he has supposedly reigned king is a mere 1% of human history. I was an atheist too, then an agnostic, then a theist, following a …
A friend of mine — possibly beyond crisis-of-faith mode and now savouring full-blown rejection — regularly sends me videos featuring the idiocy of presumed scholars, past and present, as they mangle religion and make a mockery of it with absolute sincerity and conviction. His contention, I think, is that their lunacy is proof of the …
There is the lived faith and the intellectual faith.
So the tables have turned. As I approach my fifth decade — the hallowed middle age — I find myself in the role of those unwilling advisers I castigated in my youth for their answers to questions of belief and doubt. From my mid-teens to early twenties I would demand guidance from my elders, be …
Do not rush into anything. It is still very early days and there is still much to learn and discover. If you find yourself veering towards atheism or agnosticism, you’ll be aware that there is no urgency to believe in either position. Nothingness does not require a testimony of faith, or commitment to a way of …
In my days as a wavering agnostic, when searching after the truth, I used to say to myself and others, “I must believe with absolute certainty.” Later, in my early days as a Muslim when simplistic apologetics appeared persuasive, I would continue to talk of my faith being about conviction and certainty. To my youthful mind it …
Many years ago when still a searching agnostic, I wanted others to convince me to believe as they believed. I used to lament that neither Muslims nor Christians would reach out to me or answer my questions.
I understand and can empathise with almost everything you have said, as someone who went through a similar period of searching at around the same age as you. There are clear parallels between your experience and mine: the period of agnosticism, the concerns about being true to yourself, being open-minded and determined to read different …
