The Condescending Spiritual Snobbery of Muslims and Christians
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
22 December
2022
"You have a limited time left to repent
and make amends. Make good use of it or keep doing what you have been doing in
which case you wrong yourself and it is not Allah who wrongs you. Allah may
have sent me, Unknown, Faiz and Chamlija to correct you and make you see
reason. Do not be like the people described above. "
(A Muslim zealot admonishing Mr Ghulam Mohiyuddin)
This is
what I call brazen and shameless condescension of a believer towards a sceptic,
agnostic or an outright atheist. This is downright spiritual snobbishness which
I've found only among Christians, esp. the missionaries, and Muslims who try to
proselyte others.
Preachers
from Tablighi Jama’at also talk and frighten you in this disgustingly
pontificating manner. This is outright exasperating and can be called the
religious equivalent of that English racist Sir Rudyard Kipling's pejorative
phrase, ' A white man's burden.'
Only those
who're pugnaciously resistant and belligerently repugnant to the very idea of
liberal thinking and who think that their way is the truest way, can threaten
others like this. The concept of Hidayat (prudence) bestowing upon those
whom Allah considers as chosen ones is integral to Semitic faiths. Let a person
remain a doubter or even a rejecter. Is your Allah as fussy and finicky as you
and your cohorts?
A Shia
girlfriend of mine in Iran would speak the same language and try to dissuade me
from my atheism until she realized her blunder by leaving Islam and all faiths.
Once when she became a complete non-believer and absolutely godless like me, I
asked her what made her behave in a religiously haughty manner when she was a
practising Muslim. Her reply stayed with me, “My stupid Islamic religious
upbringing and useless Quranic exhortations” (though all in Persian, I've
translated that into English). Those who're Muslims or Christians take upon
themselves to show you the path. It's contingent upon them. This gets my goat.
Towards the
fag-end of his life, the great Persian mystic Anwari started doubting a great
many tenets of Islam and the veracity of quite a few Quranic verses. Someone
told him that he'd be burnt in hellfire for daring to doubt and question the
relevance of many verses. The taciturn
Anwari calmly said, " If a rejecter's fate is hellfire and eternal
damnation, I'm all the more eager to invite Allah's wrath, so that I can bring
him down to the level of lesser mortals and prove convincingly that he's no
better than us. And if Allah is all love, he'll laugh my transgressions
off."
----
A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul
is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He
has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several
languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/spiritual-snobbery-muslims-christians/d/128683
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