This is the second essay in a series of three introducing the ‘Religion’ section.
Read the first essay in this series here.
Let’s begin with a little story here: as loving as my mother has always been, she was quite strict with me during my younger days when it came to my behavior with visitors to our house and my general conduct in public. There were set rules regarding how much to speak and when, and I won’t even venture into the consequences of breaking those rules (shudders). Our neighbors too made similar rules for their children, which included capping the amount of time they spent with friends such that their studies were not affected. As for me, I never had any such restrictions primarily because my parents knew I’d finish my homework before indulging in other activities. Two families, two different sets of rules.
Religion is no different
Religion is a collection of stories reflecting the ethos of our heritage, written by man in his endeavor to speculate the existence, form and tenets of the supreme power that runs this world and how to lead our lives in congruence with this power. It can simultaneously be viewed as a set of non-binding values that our forefathers drafted in order to provide a certain level of discipline to our lives. Given that no two individuals are alike, the vision that our ancestors had for our society and how they foresaw the future of their progeny was bound to differ from one civilization to another, akin to the previously cited example of how different families abide by different rules as per their choosing. But to imply that the ideals followed in one society are binding not only on everyone within that society but also on other (non-related) societies is not only intrusive, but it also reflects the extent to which this notion that was supposed to be confined to an individual as mere advisories has been misinterpreted as an edict to proselytize others by all available means, including decimating populations and plundering countries.
How can we categorically denounce hypothetical ideas from other communities/faith that are divergent from our own speculative notions? For example, if a society in Australia truly believes that Jack and Jill indeed went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, can it justify neutralizing the entire population of, say Maldives, which had never heard of Jack and Jill but believed that the Black sheep in the rhyme “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” was indeed posed the question whether it had any wool or not?
Putting it all in Perspective
To illustrate how we’ve unnecessarily complicated this institution of religion, I will try demonstrating that we are indeed capable of identifying and respecting boundaries in all matters non-religious, yet experience perpetual blindness by overstepping the same boundaries when it comes to religion, as if the glasses we see the world through simply fail to reflect the religious-colored rays back! Let’s begin:
Basic Etiquette
The rules made by my parents during my childhood were meant solely for me. It wasn’t their place to school the neighbor’s kids on how to behave. That was the job of our neighbors and my parents understood as much a.k.a. respect for boundaries.
Similarly, the tenets of our faith are meant solely for us to follow and believe in. It is not our place to impose them on followers of other faiths/non-believers, but we do it anyway. What boundaries?
To guess is to Sin?
I have been mistaken for an Egyptian, a Frenchman, a Spaniard and a Brazilian among others on more occasions than one. It does get hilarious at times when people simply approach and start speaking to me in Arabic or Spanish right off the bat.
Questions:
- Should I be offended by a complete stranger making assumptions about my background based on their prior experience(s) and mean no ill-will?
- Should a person mistaking me for a Middle Easterner be chastised by someone who assumed that I am from Spain, or does the one guessing my ethnicity correctly gets to annihilate those who assumed that I am a South American?
- If no, then why do we resort to violence on behalf of God towards people who have a different interpretation from ours of the almighty’s likes and dislikes? Aren’t all religions a set of assumptions anyway, attempting to construe the institution of God in their own little ways?
- Most importantly, if all the incorrect guesses about my background don’t sound offensive to me and I’m assuming they don’t to you (the reader) as well, then why would an inaccurate assumption about God offend God? In what world is making such assumptions offensive (to God) and killing people for the same reason in its name not?
To break from the pack is to Sin?
Like the majority of mothers, my mother is an excellent cook. She learnt most of her cooking from my grandmother, though also managed to pick up a few recipes along the way from her friends as well. Now, my grandmother did not disown her own daughter for learning new recipes from other places, neither did she feel insulted on days when my mother decided to cook something that was not from her cookbook.
On similar lines, how can listening to, learning from and/or liking stories from other faiths or simply foregoing those from our own upset the almighty when all of them are different interpretations of the same power itself?
Moving on, our parents decide between right and wrong for us when we are young. As adults, whether we heed their advice or not is a decision that rests solely with us, an arrangement that is agreed upon by both parties in the larger interest of the relationship.
It is no different from us deciding as adults whether we want to participate in faith-based rituals or not, or prefer watching cartoons on Cartoon Network versus watching sermons by cartoons on religious channels. Impinging upon this freedom to decide will only lead to unnecessary heartburn and violence.
Coexist
Time for another story: right before I left for the US, my mother and a family friend decided on visiting a local mosque to pray for my well-being. Given our non-Muslim background, my mother invited one of her Muslim friends over to help her style the scarf she intended to wear like a hijab. I dressed up appropriately myself and off I was to the mosque, flanked by two beautiful Muslim-looking ladies. On our way out of the mosque after offering prayers, we ran into an imam (a Muslim priest) who motioned us towards himself. He wanted to go over a few verses from the Quran with us and began by asking us seemingly basic questions from the book. Seeing the blank expressions on our faces, he probably figured that we were no good and let us go, all this while grinning to himself. But hey, we got to dress up and barring the part where we got busted, we had a really good time. 🙂
Point is, there is no limit to how much we can learn from our cultural differences. Our diversity provides us avenues to create new experiences and revel in them, which includes additional perks like wearing fancy clothes and relishing the tasty treats. Now, the choice between celebrating our heterogeneity and resorting to violence because of it should not be that hard to make, should it?
Conclusion
Society gives us enough reasons to discriminate against one another for reasons that are beyond our control, like our skin color, sexuality or even gender, unlike religion that comes with a ‘Made on Earth’ tag. For this very reason, it should be relatively easy for us to simply ignore or overcome our aversion to people of different faiths, much like other ‘Made on Earth’ articles like foreign cuisines. If we like a cuisine, we partake in it; if we don’t, we move on. Wouldn’t it be bizarre to neutralize an Italian chef just because he didn’t cook, say Indian, and in turn insulted the creator(s) of the Indian cuisine by daring to cook Italian because the Indian way is/should be the only way to cook and consume food the world over? If this is how we see/are made to see the world, then I guess it’s high time we get a new pair of glasses to adjust that vision.
Read the next essay in this series here.
