The Journey to Deism from Islam

I have an attraction on my mirror stating, “Life is not about finding yourself – life is about creating yourself.”, “commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw". This is my statement I live by.
Many people do not understand the meaning of Deism and why I am saying it, or maybe the first thing that jump in their mind is Atheist. These two believes are totally different; Atheist is unbeliever whereas Deist is about believing in God who is identified through nature and reason. In Deism our reason and belief become happily united with the wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes.

It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures with that beautiful unique complexity, teaches us our duty toward each other by forgetting and feeling mercy.
I became who I am today after long journey of questions, wonders, confusions. In fact, I was born in Muslim society where questioning religion is forbidden and my parents are westernize and open minded as well. They believe on Education and knowledge. I was naughty boy who liked to ask a lot of questions that put me sometimes in trouble with others. However, I had a lot of argument about Islam in the things that never made any sense in my head; music was one of this things. I believe that music as like the language for everyone no matter who you are or where you come from or what language do you speak we all enjoy it. I love music and dance since my childhood, It was my passion with no tensions or no confusions but where I came from I was told all the time in school and public, listening to music, dancing are prohibited and celebrities are demons. I was wondering and asking myself how music that make people happy, make us fly with our emotions can be prohibited.

One time I got brave enough to ask our Islamic teacher at school some questions such as: why do we believe in Allah (God), he got angry at me and said, “Your question is stupid. You know you shouldn't ask these questions. We should believe in Allah as a Muslim without questions, Quran said that and it's our faith." I asked him again, “Did Quran say we can't ask, and how we know is Islam the only right religion, why not Christian?” He looked at me with wide opened eyes and full of anger, said "If you don't stop asking these questions I will punish you, put you failure in this subject and tell the school director to kick you out of the school." I was scared because my parents would be upset.
Since then, I tried to search by myself looking for convince answers for my questions but I couldn’t find any satisfied answers, all I found is that religious scripts to obey and follow. I couldn’t find answer for my questions though I tried to watch T.V religious series, read Islamic books publications and did a lot of searching on the Internet. Since then, I knew Islam is not what I want to believe, as God give me brain to think and that definitely for reason. I am not going to follow these people who want me to shut up my brain and mouth to follow them like a goat without questioning, though I was forced to act like them and keep my thought for myself because I knew if I talk much they won't hesitate persecute me or harm my family. I felt scared and at the same time fed up to act like someone who not I am.

My parents started to worried about me because I started to express my thoughts about religious issues with some friends by some local religious figures in my community. Therefore, they sent me aboard to study, I went first to Germany and end in China where I got my bachelor degree. At that time, I felt relief and be myself though the previous question still wondering on my mind looking for answers.

Couple of years later I decide to study and read about religions from different perspectives as we say 'think out of the box'. I started reading, watching different documentaries and historical researches of religions such as: Islam, Christian and Judaism, but every time I dig deeper in each one I face a lot of questions. I felt like I am flying in black whole with no end. During my studies I arrived to the conclusion that religious through time been political more than faith. It's about having authority or power to control people, because logically you cannot control people thought or force them to do what you want unless you have high power or authority that make people follow without argument or rejection.

On Oct.1st 2012 I received a call from my mother telling me that my Grandpa Dr. Ali Seif was murdered in Yemen by AQAP which is terrorist group under AL-Qaeda’s Ideology, that news killed me. I loved my grandpa so much, he was my Idol. He was well educated and a great guy who used to help a lot of poor people and did a lot of nonprofit surgeries for them. When he retired in United States where he grew up, study and practiced plastic surgery, he went back to Yemen hoping to make some changes and teach them some of his knowledge on medical and plastic surgeries but at the end he was killed just because he was an American citizen nationality. According to Muslim stupid mentality on their believe who would agree to kill an innocent old man because of his nationality, this incident affected me a lot and made me believe that I was right about Islam.

I decided to follow my brain that lead me through this life till the day I started searching on Google website, "I believe in God, but I don't believe in any religion." There I found a webpage shows that somebody had already asked the same question. He was told that he's a Deist, and that's how I learned about Deism. I was very impressed by it, it's clear concepts about the right of freedom to think and believe on what I was always searching for. I have read about core Deism principles and I found that in Deism God gave us the reason and conscience to develop our own moral and ethical principles. Additionally in Deism all human beings should be free to find, know and worship God in their own way. At the same time all beliefs or views should be respected as long as it doesn’t cause harm or oppress others, those principles relieved me and helped me find answers that match my own way of thinking.

In my opinion, no need to practice or commit for religious rituals and customs by praying, fasting or any other kind of rituals to be a good person. I think practicing civilized human values are more logical and wiser than believe in religious rites which from my point of view collide with reason and human civilization. I want to be myself, have freedom to read, write and express myself, live my life peacefully with myself listen to my favorite music, felling content and the inner peace.

Written by Sami A. Qasem. Reviewed and approved by Dr. Ben Johnson, Doctor of Divinity

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This is What Deists Believe About Forgiveness

I have always believed in forgiveness, (or at least I think I always thought I had - at the very least as a civilized value). To believe in a value, however, and to practice it are two entirely different things as I came to find out. Ultimately I came to practice it because I was forced to face the harm that was done to me when I was abused as a child. This was forced upon me by a mental breakdown and it made me realise that I needed to heal from what had been done to me. I found the only way I could do that was through appropriate therapy and ultimately forgiving. As a result I became a social worker and then a therapeutic foster mother for severely abused children, three of whom I adopted. I thought I had always believed in forgiveness but that turned out not to be the case. Or at least not in the way I now understand forgiveness to mean. I came to believe in forgiveness because for me it was the only way out of my mental torment. It was the only choice I had. To give up the anger and hatred and let it go. Let go of the bitterness and the wish I had to hurt the people who had hurt me.

I think here we need to define what I mean by forgiveness. For me it means simply that the desire to take revenge against the event/person who hurt you has been let go of and that the event/person you are forgiving ceases to dominate your life. It means in that sense that you regain your own power again and that you are in charge of your life - not the event/person who hurt you. It means you are free to go forward with peace of mind and not let your life be dominated by hurtful events/persons from the past. It means you still retain the capacity to love.

Most of all you forgive to help heal yourself - not to set the other person free. The only person who can ultimately free that person from their own guilt, (if they feel any), is themselves. It may help them if you let them know that you forgive them and there is nothing to stop you from doing that, (providing you do not get re-abused in the process), but in my view it is not necessary for your own healing. Neither is it a moral imperative.

It is important for me to establish that, for me, forgiveness can never be considered a moral imperative. I believe forgiveness is preferable in the sense that it is a gift you give yourself to help you heal - I believe it is the ultimate gift of love to yourself and in that to the world. However I believe it can never be mandated. It cannot be something that any outside agency tells you you should or must do. That would simply be cruel. It would be putting yet another burden on someone who is already broken and hurting. It is also psychological nonsense. People heal at their own pace and will forgive if, and when, they are ready. It cannot be forced.

Also, forgiving the other person does not mean that you absolve them of any responsibility for what they have done. It if did, what would there be to forgive? It doesn't mean you need to be high and mighty and judgemental either - how can anyone say for certainty that if they had walked in that hurtful persons shoes that they would not have turned out the way they did? I say no-one can say this truly.
It also doesn't mean that you should be high and mighty about the fact that you can forgive when others can't. If anything, the fact they cannot forgive means that they are still hurting. Surely the most loving response when anyone is hurting is to show them compassion? If you can forgive it means you are fortunate, not morally superior.

Forgiveness does not mean that the other person cannot be punished or should not be rehabilitated for what they have done - or that you cannot desire this outcome. That is a desire for justice and not revenge. It would be a poorer world if there was no justice in it.
I think a lot of confusion comes about concerning forgiveness because of the Christian, (and perhaps other religious views), on it. In this I will concentrate on the Christian perspective because it is the one I know best.

A lot of the moral revulsion I think that many people feel concerning forgiveness, (and they do), comes into play because of the Christian take on forgiveness. It leads people to think that forgiveness is what goody two shoes type of people do. To waft around with ones hands in the air saying "I forgive you" to people is morally repugnant and the height of insufferable arrogance. Some-one said this to me recently and I commented, "Good for you. I hope it feels good because I do not need your forgiveness. The only forgiveness I need is the forgiveness I give to myself". The man concerned was a fundamentalist Christian and his attitude made me feel physically sick, to put it bluntly. If he had told me that his God forgave me, I think I would really have put him right. That is because I am a Deist. While I believe there is a Cosmic Intelligence, (or what some might call God), who created the world, he, (for want of a better word), has absolutely no interest in forgiving me or not. That is because he created me with intelligence and Reason by which I could work out that psychologically it was better for my mental health and my life if I did forgive. I have no need of a supernatural agency to forgive me.

I was brought up a Christian and as such was taught the Lord's Prayer. The bit where it says "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" could, in my opinion, be replaced with a more Reasoned Deist understanding and this would be it: "We acknowledge that we cannot expect to live in a world where other people try to live with love and practise forgiveness if we are not at least willing to try and do this ourselves." Note I suggest the intention to try and do these things. People's capacity to love and forgive are variable because of their own situation but at least a willingness to try cannot be expected if we are not willing to try it ourselves.
My commitment to forgiveness was tested to the limit when on the 7th July 2005 I was on the platform of a tube station when it was bombed. I was severely injured and still to all intents and purposes I cannot walk to this day. (I can hobble a few feet in pain and with assistance). I am effectively confined to a mobility scooter when I go out and a wheelchair when inside and am in constant but variable pain. The bombings of the 7th July 2005 also ultimately killed my husband who I loved very much. It also injured a close friend of mine who is now my principal carer. But could I forgive?

I have to admit it has been a long and hard struggle but I finally have come to know that I forgive my attackers. And I know it for the simple reason I would never wish what happened to me to happen to them or anyone else and it has made my commitment to non-violence, except in situations of self-defense, absolutely resolute. I would not wish the pain I felt and still feel even on my worst enemy. And for me that is my understanding of forgiveness. I am at some sort of peace now. And my physical pain eases when I forgive and am not full of anger.

I have come to learn though that forgiven is not a static state. It is a dynamic state. It is not a destination. It is a journey and on my journey I explored reasons as to why what had happened to me actually did happened to me. What was the ultimate meaning of it?
On my journey to find answers to this question I went on a spiritual quest and investigated most of the world's religions and belief systems and I rejected them all. I was not bombed because it was my "karma" and had been bad in a previous life. I had not been bombed because my soul required "lessons" and I had "attracted" it. I was not bombed because of Satan being in the world, (he doesn't exist by the way), and I had not been bombed because it was an act of God. Why would a loving God want me to be bombed - to strengthen my character as some religious people suggested? Would any loving parent deliberately hurt their child so their "character" got strengthened? My Reasoned answer would be no.

No, the reason I got bombed was because there are evil people in the world and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the bombs obeyed the laws of physics. Laws that had been put in place by our Creator and had been misused by people with warped minds. How could anyone claiming to follow a religion "revealed" by God plant a bomb to maim and kill ordinary people just going about their everyday life? (And in this I am not singling out Islam. All the three so called "revealed" Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam have a history of bloodshed and violence - so no-one in this respect is historically morally superior to the other).
However, it made me think there must be a problem because if the God of love, (which I trust our Creator is), could not be found in the "revealed" religions or in any of the other belief systems, all of which have their own superstitions of faith healing, miracles and supernatural entities etc., where could he be found?

I loved and marvelled at Nature. I also believed in Science. I tried to become an Atheist because, truthfully, I had met some marvellous and loving Atheists who helped me in my healing from the bombing and losing my husband. I knew because of them that belief in religion and supernatural entities were not needed to be kind and loving. It seemed to be an inherent, (if somewhat collectively underdeveloped), quality of human nature. Yet where had that human nature come from? Why didn't conscious beings, if they were just collections of chemicals subject to physical laws just turn out to be violent, self - centered and aggressive? Also why were these conscious beings endowed with Reason? Where did that come from? A collection of chemicals does not need to develop either consciousness or Reason. Also, I still saw an Intelligence in Nature. Nature did not create itself. So there must have been behind all that a Creator of some kind.

It was paradoxically whilst reading the book "The God Delusion" by the famous English Atheist Richard Dawkins that I first came across the concept of Deism. That lead me to the Internet and the World Union of Deists. And I knew I had come home. That's what I was - I was a Deist and the rest, as they say, is history.

I knew that God had given me Reason that had lead me to work out that forgiveness was the way out of my mental hell caused by the bombings. And Reason, that caused me to be able to garner my emotions and rise above my baser instincts, was my evidence of God. It was also in the science and evidence based conventional and complimentary medicine that was helping to heal my physical pain.
So now, still, every day I am on the journey of forgiveness but I know that my God given reason will help me through. That then is what forgiveness is for me as a Deist. A function of Reason. Our Creator's most precious gift after life itself.

It was given to us by our Creator to help us heal, not given as a moral mandate. Forgiveness was given to us as a gift to, through Reason, help heal us. But only we, including Deists, can choose whether we make use of that gift or not.

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