Questioning Faith?

Hello friends,

Last week, two friends of mine messaged me and asked me if I ever felt as if I have everything in life but still there was something missing in life. I told them 'all the time!' They were relieved to know that they were not alone in feeling this way, and this got me thinking: are there more people out there who are scared to expose the real them for fear that others may think differently of them?

I know while growing up in a Pakistani-dominated culture in Saudi Arabia, the tendency is always there for parents/ relatives/ older cousins/ grandparents to shut the kids up if they are crossing the line, especially with regards to religion, namely Islam.

I remember one of my first question to my mom when I was a kid was: If God created us, where did God come from? Surely, as a young kid with an inquisitive mind, this question got me no answer. Instead, I would be told to not think along this line, and to accept whatever I was born into. We would have an imam come to our house to help me and my elder brother read the Quran, and I would ask him two question several times: Why do I have to read the Quran in Arabic since I don't know the language? and Why do my five times prayers have to be Arabic when I would rather pray/ communicate with God in Urdu or English? Again, the answer I would get even from the imam was basically to shut up and accept what I was born into.

I was never the kind to just shut and accept what I was born into, but growing up in Saudi Arabia, I had no choice to search for answers elsewhere. There were no internet, no emails, no online encyclopedias; the encyclopedias we had was censored and blacked out, and so my only time where I could do some research was when we would travel abroad. In London, the bookstore WHSmith became my best friend as I would spend hours in there reading the information I wanted to know.

My mind certainly opened up and my horizons were definitely broadened. Growing up, I could never find any answers to that missing part of my life. I gave up on God for a mere few months because He wasn't there for me. I didn't want to pray in Arabic; I wanted to pray in English. I would be scolded by others if they caught me reading my Quran in English and not in Arabic. I was scolded by some when they saw me highlighting and underlining passages in the Quran. And I would most certainly be scolded and reprimanded for asking some of the more daring questions that Muslims generally like to brush under the carpets. I would wonder why they would do that?

Maybe they are afraid to know something about their faith that they don't want to hear.

I had one amazing long conversation with a friend here last week, and that only confirmed to me that generally, while a lot of us lot would be happy to be born into the faith we are born into, questions and doubts arise, and only a few are brave enough to question the meaning of their life.

As for me, I am still searching for my answers, and no one has been able to answer them. Some people give me answers, but they delicately, cleverly, creatively avoid my real dilemma and gloss over the reality of my dilemma.

Mansur