the inevitable

With Matt and Taryn, due mostly to their social graces, we have made some friends with Adenis all seemingly named Muhammad. They espouse extremely gracious hospitality and have taken us around the area on various excursions. Most notably, finding Matt and I a place to study Arabic for free, finding Taryn a family to study with since the Islamic Center is for men only, and taking us (and a Spanish backpacker I met who was sleeping on our couch that weekend) on a boat trip to secluded beaches complete with meals on the beach. Matt and I chose not to study Arabic just yet because the timing is bad this term with our training at the school. And also, Matt has this fear of/ interest in being converted to Islam, which somehow always manages to come up into conversation at least once whenever we are kicking around with the Muhammads. One of the pillars of Islam is to talk about your faith with whomever will listen, not proselytizing or evangelism, but informing the interested, as far as I can tell. This led to them going way out of their way to arrange for the three of us (along with whomever else would go) to attend an evening prayer at a mosque followed by a discussion with the sheikh and a few elders from the school. We all agreed to go and Matt flaked out last minute which I probably won't ever forgive him for.
Taryn, dressed in abaya out of respect, and I watched the prayer from one of the classrooms in the school with a teacher. The mosque was pretty, but not very inspired. After the prayer and recitations from the Qur'aan, Taryn and I met with the sheikh and other imams in a room to have a discussion which was probably one of the most awkward and uncomfortable couple hours of my life. This meeting never would have occurred without Matt shewing interest in/fear of Islam all the time; they wouldn't have arranged it for Taryn because she's female, and I could really care less about religion in general much less Islam specifically. Not to say that I won't listen or learn about it, but I'm not going to go out of my way, nor allow other people to go out of their way, so I can know more about it.
The sheikh wanted to discuss the tenets of Islam and I wanted to talk about politics. I asked him how viable he though it was for countries to base their political system on religion in the midst of globalization, to which he replied that there won't be a problem when the rest of the world reverts to the natural state of Islam. Clearly. Then I was told I shouldn't ask questions about politics. So we talked about media bias and how everybody in the middle east believes that everyone in America thinks that everybody in the middle east is a suicide bombing terrorist. To which I responded that I certainly don't know a single American who believes that all middle easterners think exactly like bin Laden because nobody is stupid enough to believe that, just like how I've yet to meet a single middle eastern person stupid enough to believe that I think exactly like GWBush simply because I'm American. We're all just people, after all, and almost all of us are too busy living our lives to complicate things with malice. And yes, it sucks that there are fundamentalists and extremists like Al-Qaeda and the Westborough Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas that have tarnished the public images of religion. Well Islam could easily have good press if American media wasn't run by "the Jew," after all, Americans hate mice but they love Mickey Mouse. Right, but that Scandinavian paper made the prophet Muhammad into a cartoon and Islam got all butt-hurt about it. So maybe media isn't an even topic either. The third conversation choice was, of course, personal faith.
Islam, as I have understood it, is about a deeply personal relationship with Allah that is not mediated by a priest or pope or idol or what have you. This is partly why Muslims are not overly evangelical, because ultimately, faith is up to the individual. Taryn, wisely used her gender to just not have to talk about any of this as it devolved into an interrogation of my faithlessness.
No, I don't believe in God.
No, I'm not an atheist.
No, I don't think about what will happen to me when I die.
No, I don't know how I was created and that's not relevant anyways.
No, I don't know my purpose in life I don't wonder about it either.
No, I don't feel empty or lost or that something is missing.
Yes, I am perfectly content with my life in general.
At this point, they were dumbfounded and salivating. I explained as simply as I could, that I'm just not compelled for religious belief. I'm not interested in taking a leap of faith; if I can't by definition know, then I why I should care to find out is beyond me. I said I wasn't trying to be difficult and graciously, the sheikh said it was getting late.
We shook hands, I thanked them for their time and for going out of their way to accommodate Taryn and I, they gave us some books on Islam and some perfume, fed us, we went home, and I told Matt I converted.