My “spiritual” Journey, Part 1 (Marxism)

As a young child raised within a Muslim household and community, the notion of non-belief is regarded as high treason or more appropriately, apostasy. Luckily for myself, when I was younger, I rarely (if ever) gave any thought to religion. It was simply one of the constants of my life. I was far more interested in cars, cartoons and sports. I was never truly opposed to the idea of Islam either, in fact, I can specifically remember joyfully fasting during the “holy” month of Ramadan, and more over, I genuinely equated Islam with morality and decency. I can now look back and laugh at how horribly wrong I was about Islam and just how much the exact opposite was true.

I remember when I was around the age of 7, my mother had paid for a Mullah from the local neighborhood mosque to come and teach my siblings and I the Qur’an. I personally did not like this instructor very much as his presence meant less time for me to play video games or other fun activities. Now that I look back, he was quite harsh and really there really was not any positive qualities about the man. Though, these few years of religious instruction were cut far shorter than my mother would have liked them to be. Unlike my cousins and other relatives, there was quite the strife in my family between my father and mother on the topic of religion. My mother, coming from a background of extremely devout and generally decent people was and still is quite religious, as is much of her family. My father has been a lifelong liberal in just about every aspect of life. He did not really follow any sort of rigid ritualistic aspect to Islam, as he regarded such behavior as the antithesis to an intellectual person. As a young man, living in the extremely religious climate of Pakistan (a nation primarily established for religious reasons) he stood out like a black sheep. He wrote poetry that was often rejected without a proper reading simply due to its provocative nature. He also had a great deal of friends amongst the huge Marxist (or in other terms, young intellectual atheists) though one could not quite describe my father as full Atheist or a Marxist, rather a Deist and a Socialist. Looking back, this difference in my parents religious views seem to be the early roots of my current non-belief.

Well, this sort of cultural Islam and continued for many years. I never really gave religion a second thought, it was just there and the notion of it ever leaving were just not conceivable (nor desired). This period of time finally ended at the age of 13. I remember walking with my grandfather (from my mothers side) to the local mosque one day. He said to me, “Now that you are reaching an age of maturity, it is time for you to take religion much more seriously.” So, I almost immediately acted upon his words and began the shift from a cultural Muslim (essentially, a Muslim by no choice of their own) to a practicing Muslim. I began to read the five daily prayers, and reread the Qur’an in Arabic. I tried to live my life as closely to what I thought a proper Muslim should, which is quite difficult living in the Western world. As you may already know, I am not one for half-measures. I may begin with moderate stances, but rarely do they ever remain. They often become more and more extreme, until they really cannot go any further. By the age of 15, I was quite the religious fellow. I read the daily prayers, had completed the Qur’an in Arabic countless times and I even annoyed my father until he would finally drive me to the local mosque. I remember feeling a sort of hatred for Western culture as it was becoming more and more anti-Islamic (this is post 9/11). The odd thing about this time of extreme devout belief was that my father actually attempted to take credit for my religiousness (some sort of bizarre logic that basically said that his lack of harsh instruction led me to love Islam) and my mother also attempted to take credit for this “blessing from Allah” as she put it.

Around this period of time, I began to research my country of birth, Pakistan, and its leaders. This study led me to the discovery of Zulifkar Ali Bhutto. A man that was the idol of my father (though I had never known until I mentioned him to my father). Bhutto was quite good friends with another leader in the Islamic world, Muammar Al-Ghadaffi. Ghadaffi, a self described “Islamic Socialist” is another interesting figure. Ghadaffi stood for essentially, anti-West, anti-European principles, and this was very attracting to a young liberal Muslim. I was quite knowledgeable on the Islamic aspect of Ghadaffi, but not the Socialist aspect. This is when I began to research Marxism, Communism and came to a startling discovery. For the Marxist worldview, god was dead and more accurately, god was never alive. I tried to reconcile this notion of Marxist/Liberal thought which I had now come to favor with my belief, but it was impossible. Atheism is a prerequisite for Marxism, and if any of the two had to go, it was most certainly going to be my religious belief. Even though I was a very devout believer in Allah and Islam, I was also very much more inclined to the notion that political and economic change in societies is far more important than the religious belief. Though, letting go of faith and belief is far more difficult than just that. Even though I tried to move forward and reject god for the sake of consistency, Marxism really only ended the cultural and ritualistic aspects of Islam that I followed, not my belief in god. To remove that, I would need something much more powerful than Marxism, science.

I had attempted to write this down before, but, I want to give it another go. Part two (science) of three, coming soon...

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