My Contemplation of Religion
By Yezen Hashem
I’m torn and overwhelmed; I don’t want hours of research to go to waste. I just have to step back. This was the build-up from my thoughts when I was sitting alone at my rough, brown wooden desk, contemplating deep subjects in a zoned-out state, not knowing that I was starting a whole new chapter of self-discovery. You see, I was born a Muslim, my family was Muslim, I went to a Muslim preschool, and I thought everyone was a Muslim just like me.
Since joining Synapse, I discovered that everyone has different religious and spiritual beliefs, and that’s ok. Coming from a background of only Muslims, it was an eye-opening experience to see all of my peers get along just as humans, regardless of personal beliefs. Synapse has since taught me how to speak respectfully when people talk about their beliefs, and I have had multiple debates with friends about different religious topics.
When I was in 5th and 6th grade, I was hearing from all of my different friends about their religions and what they believed in, and they all sounded lovely! These religions sounded like they had great values and morals, and I just wanted to know more about them! I would always ask my friends questions like:
“What message does your religion try to send?” and “What does your religion believe happens when you die?”
Every time I asked a question, I got a different answer. This showed me what was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to religion, and made me start to think about if the one I followed truly was right for me.
One day in 5th grade, I was talking to one of my friends.
“Why did you choose your religion?” I asked.
“I don't know, I just practice it because my parents want to,” they said. I still remember to this day the exact feelings I felt when they said this, a sudden rush of doubtfulness in everything that I had believed in. I didn’t know if anything I regarded as true was right anymore. For the rest of the day, I could only think about what I would say to my parents when I get in the car. How would I ask them if they just forced me into my religious beliefs? It felt taboo, so I kept it to myself.
Throughout the next week, I would do the same routine every day. The moment I came back from school and had the opportunity to be on my computer, I would look up different queries that I had come up with throughout my day relating to religion, checking websites like Quora and different religious forums. Seeing that other people had the same questions as me from all around the world was relieving, to say the least.
All was doing was asking the same questions over and over again. I was just, confused. Everybody I talked to had different answers to the same question, and what at first made me curious, became something I despised. I always thought that everything had an objectively right answer, and finding a question that doesn’t have one broke me. At some point, I was so stressed that I had to just take a break, and zoom out. I wasn’t getting any headway by trying the same thing.
“Why isn’t this working?” I thought. When I broke it down, I recognized that maybe my interpretation of the answers wasn’t wrong, but the question itself was. My whole mindset changed, my question went from, “What does your religion do?” To, “How is your religion different than mine?” My newfound basis from which I asked questions shed new light on the subject, and I finally felt confident in talking to my parents about the subject. One day, when I came home from school, I asked my parents to sit down at our light mahogany kitchen table and started a debate that would change my view on religion altogether.
“Mama, Baba, why are we Muslim?” I boldly asked, with no clue what their answer would be.
“Because it just feels right,” they replied in a way that was almost as though they were happy that I asked that, almost that they prepared for this conversation. “You are most likely too young to understand these thoughts, but we encourage you to discover new religions on your own, and see if one feels right to you. It should feel like you belong in a community in a way that you will have never felt before.”
With my parents’ approval, I felt more confident in what I was thinking about, knowing it wasn’t a taboo act that should be frowned upon, but instead an enlightening process that should be celebrated by all of the person’s friends and family. My parents helped me through this stressful time of mine, lifting the weight of my worry with only love and compassion. How my parents navigated this situation in a way that I admire, by staying calm and allowing people to discover themselves. Through the easier time I had researching, I quickly realized that most of the religions I was researching had a similar set of morals to my current religion of Islam, and by connecting to any religion and being close to it, you can end up with the same set of good morals regardless of your practice.
These beautiful realizations of being able to find inner peace in many different ways spoke to me because, as I mentioned earlier, I like having objective answers to things, and I had finally found my answer: Any religion worked.
In the end, through months of research and debate, multiple changes in my mindset, and lots (and I mean lots) of stress, I have finally discovered which religion I identify with the most, which was Islam.
The religion that I doubted at first was the one I questioned the least. When I noticed that, if you get close to a religion, it ends up with the same set of morals, I realized that I am closer to Islam than any other religion, and if it is this set of good morals that I seek, why wouldn’t I stay with Islam? Through lots of thought, I never came up with a way to dispel this question, it was right in the end. I had no reason to leave Islam and all the reasons for me to get even closer to it.
Since this life-changing experience, I have become a more actively practicing Muslim, and I started praying every day. On top of this, I always converse with my friends and family about religious topics. My young questioning spirit has never gone away, but nowadays when I’m talking about religion, I go into the conversation with the idea of trying to help the other person who could be going through the same thing I did. If I could make the experience easier for even one person, maybe that was what the set of good morals taught me all along.
