Monday, January 5, 2009

Religious Confusion; Are You Shia or Sunni? Muslim; a True Muslim?? Hindu, Jew or Christian??


Uff there is so much religious complication, so many sects and groups; one may wonder which one to follow. It is so common that follower of one Muslim school of thought may not attend religious congregation in the mosque where followers belong to other/different school of thought. You may find the difference in the color of turban, and rituals. This all makes me wonder, its one religion and so many complicated minor difference making people disintegrated rather than united. However, someone lately asked me one question; either I am Shia or Sunni? My reply was that I am a Baloch. Guy was taken aback to hear my reply, frankly it has been 5,000 years we are Baloch, just 1,400 years, we are Muslims . It may take me one minute to change my religion but I can not change from a Baloch to a Dutch, Irish or Chinese. On broader sense my understanding of all Semitic religions “Islam, Judaism & Christianity” has basic similarities. When someone bogs down into rituals than small differences pop out and make everything complicated. I am completely off as far as rituals are concerned; to me it is important to follow religious crux or core that is to be good human being. Frankly when I look at Jewish Ten Commandments I don’t think any follower of Semitic religion would disagree ‘except to remember Sabbath’. Here are Ten Commandments, God handed over to Prophet Moses on Mount Sinai; “I am the Lord your God, You shall have no other gods before me, You shall not make for yourself an idol, You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God, Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, Honor your father and mother, You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, You shall not covet your neighbor's wife & You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor….” We as Pakistani society are too much bogged down into rituals and confused in small self created superficial differences, we are hypocrite, we lie, we don’t pay taxes, we love backbiting, we are dishonest in our conduct, we disrespect women……… I see mosques full of people yet on the other hand social values are crumbling down…..making me more skeptic of Pakistani society. We are an emotional, irrational and illogical society living in dark ages; I can easily relate Pakistani society with European dark ages. I can only hope for a renaissance…….

3 comments:

Liz said...

For me it's about living a good life and treating people the way I would want to be treated. I never found that in my religion (Catholic). I find religion to be very hypocritical. Personally I find the Ten Commandments trite. What about never hurting children or animals? There are a lot of things they don't cover. I also find the Bible extremely irrelevant to day to day life.

Imran Baloch said...

Liz at times one question comes in my mind...do we really need religion....

Anonymous said...

Hello 'dude',

Little knowledge or information is much dangerous than having no knowledge. Stop abusing Islam to 'feel' moderate. It's just your dellusion. This is what is happening to self-calimed educated lot these days after reading a book or two or watching some illicit islamic 'scholars' on tv; you start questioning? It isn't a calculus problem that you can solve after writing a paper. It's all about faith. If you have trouble being born in an Islamic family, then leave it and change your name and top it all; stop being a hypocrate.

Declare yourself an atheist. If you dont' have faith in Islam, leave it and stop whinning but don't degrade it. This is really absurd, unethical and immoral thing to do. Nobody's holding a gun against your head to be a muslim.