Zachary Backes - CP 10

6/22/12

This is an interesting CP blog for me, mostly because it wasn't a planned meeting. I had been invited to Dhugal's "End of Summer B" party and myself, Mayowa, and my roommate Uri showed up around 11:00pm. After stumbling around the party trying to find people we knew we were saved by Ted who brought us back into Dhugal's room where all the cool kids were hanging out.

Abdullah, the guy who has attended more culture classes than anybody else at this point I think, was part of this group along with his roommate whose name I never got. We came in at an interesting point in the conversation. Abdullah's roommate was holding a copy of Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion" and him and Dhugal were in a pretty heated debate about organized religion. I sat down in a free space on the floor next to Abdullah and was intent to finish my beer and listen.

For the first few moments I was just playing catch up with the conversation, but once I started to engage it I was really excited to see where it would lead. Now Abdullah, being right next to me, started to respond to something I was saying and before I knew it we were off on our own little philosophical sidebar. I spent the next two hours locked in conversation with this kid. I come from a Catholic background, however I left the church after I turned 15 and it has been a point of contention with my extended family for some. I always felt like I had to defend my belief of not believing, as Dhugal put it I always felt as if I had "the burden of proof" placed upon me. I had to prove my opposition wrong in order to be right, which i never wanted to do because the main tenant of my belief is that "I don't know".

However, after talking with Abdullah for a couple minutes I noticed that same defensiveness. We both knew what it was like to be ostracized due to your personal belief system. And that is were we found our common ground. Where we differed however, was in the fundamental issue of faith. He was raised a Muslim and is pretty devout in his faith, as much as a young man in a foreign land can be. And just as I could never get any of my peers in Christianity to admit to the possibility of being wrong I knew I would never get it from Abdullah. And honestly I had no real right to ask it of him. something I learned through the years is that faith is not something you can contend with using logic, reason, or any other form of argument. people believe what they want to believe and fighting that is always going to be an uphill battle.

So I took another direction with Abdullah, I told him that I truly had no problem with his belief or anyone else for that matter. I only took issue when somebody would tell me that my way was wrong simply because it was not written down in a book somewhere. He was amazingly understanding, especially when I told him how in America a lot of times people only want a one-word answer for the question of "what do you believe". I told him that not everyone has a single word, like Catholic or Muslim, to answer with. My beliefs dont have a word, they take many in order to understand.

I asked him what he did when he came across something in his faith that he did not agree with, something that didn't seem right to him. The question was confusing and took awhile to explain, but he said that he saw it as his duty to change his opinion to match the faith. This kind of floored me. For years I had been thinking that if I couldn't subscribe to all of a Faith then I couldnt subscribe to any of it (not to say that I couldnt agree with some things and not others but just because I jumped out of a plane once doesn't make me a skydiver, I just like doing crazy stuff). But here was a guy my age who saw it as his duty to change himself in order to fit the faith. That takes a lot more strength in my opinion.

Now I could fill a book with everything we covered in those two hours but I've still got some more blogs to write. The main point I got from this interaction was calcified in a couple lines we exchanged.

Abdullah: "In the Qur'an there are more than a thousand words for Sword. This is why we do not back down and why we fight for what we believe."

Me: "well, what if there was a religion that had a book that a thousand words for Peace? would that religion be better than Islam?"

Abdullah: "If you can find me this religion, then I will convert on the spot. If you can prove Islam is wrong I will convert on the spot."

Me: "Yea, but I don't want to prove Islam wrong. It could very well be right, so could Catholicism or Buddhism, or Scientology. I just know that it is wrong for me. I don't want to live my life as a Catholic or a Muslim or anything else besides myself."

Abdullah: "But what if you are wrong and we are right?"

Me: "Then I'll be wrong in hell but ill be right in my heart." ( I was a few beers in a this point so bear with the corny-ness)

Abdullah: "haha, Ok my friend If we are both wrong then and the jews are right then we will both be worng in hell and right in our hearts."

Me: "I will see you there my friend."