Easy to Get Down About Islam

Whenever I hear stories about Muslims doing evil, I get a down about Islam (ex. murdering family members for disobeying the man, death penalty for gays, oppression of minorities, etc). I have also had negative experiences with multiple Muslim men who might not have been evil but who were doing things that are bad and linking at least part of their behaviour to Islam. And then I have experience with a lot of Muslims, mostly converts, who take Islam in a way that I believe is completely against its spirit. They become judgemental, negative people who are in no way flexible to the ways of life of others...

With all these things done "for" Islam or "because of" Islam, I feel sometimes like I don't want to be a part of it all. With all the things done for ANY organized religion, I don't want to be part of any of them to an equal degree.

I want to be a spiritual person, connected with God and connected with His creation in a positive way.

Being Muslim is important to me and my spiritual journey but it is not important to me socially. I'm closer to God when I'm away from other Muslims to be honest. That's not to say that I'm closer to God when I'm with non-Muslims because that's not true either... I'm just definitely not close to God when I'm around people who frustrate me with their views on Islam or people who are flat-out doing wrong in the name of Islam (which is just the worst thing) and I can't seem to find a community of Muslims that inspire me to be better.

I hope that someday I can find that but in the meantime, I feel the need to focus on my religion in a personal, private way.

What will be transmitted to my children will hopefully be that everyone is on equal ground. There's no automatic superiority because you can never know what a person believes or even what they do. That God knows everything, humans don't. That any effort to be good and do good is an effort worth making. That you cannot depend on others to always be responsible for you and that you are responsable for your own actions and beliefs in the end. That love and mercy are important.

I don't know what point I'm trying to make. I don't really have one. This is just a personal post about where I'm at right now in November 2012. Who knows where I'll be in another few months or years... It changes little by little and as time goes by I grow as a person. I stall too, but that's just the way it goes.

I have some issues I need to work out about this religion. I find it very easy to get down about it all based on what idiot Muslims do in the name of this beautiful, pure religion. It's sickening... I always come back to it: Is Islam more than what Muslims are/do? It has to be... Because if it's not, then I'm surely not a part of it.

Religion-Related Rant

So here's how it happened this week.


1) Someone who works with me makes a discussion about how there are rumours (that she feels are founded in truth) that the Muslims of my city are coming here, starting businesses, with the ultimate goal of taking over the city in 20-30 years. Frustrating that even me telling her I know these people PERSONALLY, have been in their homes, know their teenaged children  (ie the next generation), etc. made no difference.

2) I wrote a message about this ridiculousness on FB and when I got to work today, two of my closest co-workers who I also consider friends were kind of saying in a less direct way that they believe this to be true. Not necessarily that it's a big conspiracy, but that if we aren't "careful" about letting in so many Muslims, we will get our way of life taken over. Do they even know any Muslims around here? I don't like some of them and have personal issues with some of them, but they don't influence the way I live in any sort of way, even with them knowing that I'm Muslim. They just want to do their own thing.

3) Had one of my closest collegues, (in a very nice, respectful wa though) send me an email of something by an idiot person Nonie Darwish... And some horrible translations of the Qur'an about killing Christians and making war... With another part about loving verses of the Bible (turn the other cheek, thou shall not kill, etc). So frustrating since I don't want to be too defensive but at the same time I feel the need to be.

4) This one is conflicting. Shayma, the murder victim beaten in her own home, found with a note telling her to go back to her country... It was domestic violence and not a hate crime. I didn't want it to be a hate crime, but for it to be in the end violence by a Muslim man... Fuck, this really just makes me not want anything to do with Islam. It's a concrete example, one of MANY MANY MANY of what is wrong with the Muslim community. These things seem to happen all the time! There seems to be more hate and wrong from within the Muslim community than against it. At least they haven't come out with something saying that he based this murder on Islam yet like honour killings. In this way, it's easier to compare this violence to another murder that happens here by a Christian towards his girlfriend. Not religiously motivated, just man-motivated.

So overall... Not a good week between me and religion.