On Religious-ness

What is it for you?

I was watching this really cool series that sucked me right in, Orange is The New Black, where one of the most fun characters, Black Cindy, is trying to convince a Jewish rabbi to convert her into Judaism. The rabbi didn't understand her urge, since previously she had tried to make him declare her a Jew just so that she has access to the Kosher meal, where there's fresh broccoli, unlike the regular prison meal. It's very beautiful, I had this scene replayed at least 10 times, because I couldn't believe what just happened, my eyes watery, and the rabbi's question echoing in my ears: What is it for you?

I used to have a difficult relationship with my God. As a Muslim, I've been going to the mosque ever since I was a baby, even though all I could do was distracting my mother and sisters from their prayers. I had teachers come to my house to guide me reciting the Koran. And as an Indonesian in public school, for 12 solid years I had Islamic lesson as one of the mandatory classes and it wasn't always the easiest of the bunch. What made it hard, now I start to understand, was because I didn't know that it's not the saying that's important. It's the believing, that's essential.

I had a moment of thinking back in high school, where one of my Religion teachers didn't take the traditional method of teaching his pupils about Islam. He didn't make us memorize parts of the Koran. He didn't have oral exams for any new religious practices just to score us for the report book. What he did was telling us stories about what made him believe. He told us that it won't be easy to believe. There will always, always, be someone, or a time, or anything, that will test your faith. He told us that even him, who studied religion in college and came from a pretty religious family background, found a hard time arguing about his religion to the people outside of it. Because there will always be a blank space, in our understanding of the religion, that can be easily turned into something that becomes a boomerang for us. It would be too hard--impossible even--to win a debate about our religions to other people, especially the non-believers. Because apparently, we shouldn't be debating about faith. It's your faith. Anything you believe in is relevant. You should believe whatever you want.

So, he told us that the first and hardest step of developing your religious belief is having the faith, and only then, the commitment would start coming along. The commitment is not the hardest thing, see? The faith, the real faith, is the most crucial. The real faith being, this is it. It's not just a religion that you have because your parents chose it for you. It's not something that you have just so that you have something written in your administration documents. It should be something that you believe in because you believe it. Nobody paid you to do this. You're not getting anything out of it, except that you feel like you finally belong somewhere. It's ridiculous, and non-believers would find it ridiculous. But religions are nothing but ridiculous if you compare it to science. It has to be. If it's so believable, it should've been science.

I'm not exactly what you'd call religious, and you can see that clearly, because while my religion made it an obligation for women to cover their bodies, I'm complying to that call at all. I don't recite the Koran as much as I should. I don't say my God's name as much as other observant Muslims in the world. Well, I'm not even sure if I did anything in my religion right. But I have faith. And what it is for me, is the question that I chose to ask for the rest of my life.

If you ask me today, I guess what it is for me to be in this religion is because I have found many instances where it speaks for itself that not only does it make sense every now and then, it also always has the best of intentions for everybody. I like that my God makes sense. Most of all, I like that my religion has a very long history in the making. Consider it a job well done.

Here you might argue that you have read many verses from the Koran that the terrorists say before they committed their act and they're extremely violent. You might say that it's ridiculous, and outdated, and brings too much of a burden for its followers, especially for women. Hey, Islam is so non-feminist! What makes you think you're in the right team? And I agree, some of them sounds very, very violent. But what the world doesn't understand, is that you can't read a holy book from any religion by reading it word for word. It's not made to be a manual book for kids to read. It has its meanings, its own context, that regular people won't understand? Do I understand all of them? No! It's very hard to, and I'm not at that level yet.

Now, I only believe in one religion and one god, but I also believe that religions are fundamentally the same: it teaches mankind to believe. To have faith. And to be kind while you're at it. I don't feel the need to defend my faith because it is mine, and no one can take that away from me. If God is the most powerful, surely He can defend himself in the face of atrocity? I don't believe in a god who asks us to kill in His name. I don't believe in a god who teaches hatred for some groups of people. I think parts of religions are up to your belief, and my faith is against killing and discriminating LGBT and supporting feminism. Even if I was wrong about my religion, the best thing is that I believe in it, and even though it means that what I had was a stupid, blind faith, I didn't have to walk through this life having questions unanswered while feeling miserably alone. Because there is nothing wrong with having a religion, whatever it is, as devout Catholic Stephen Colbert once said while interviewing the notorious atheist Bill Maher, "If I was wrong, I'm an idiot, but if I'm right, you're going to hell."