Looking back, I see no particular time or event that, in one stroke, severed my link with Islam. There was nothing nearly as dramatic as what reportedly happened to Paul on the road to Damascus transforming him from a rabid Christian persecutor to a devoted follower of Jesus. My alienation with Islam started as far back as I could discern things. More to the point, I never embraced Islam in the first place, although I was born and raised in a Muslim family. I believe in a modified version of Occam’s razor, popularly known as the law of parsimony. To me, an explanation with the fewest assumptions is either the correct one or the preferable one. The best answers, more often than not, are the simple answers. My search for answers has taken me on a journey of discovery in the competing, crowded, and confusing marketplace of ideas. I noticed a universal human need to believe in some power or forces beyond ourselves and beyond the finite and the corporal. If there were no God, we humans would make one up, it is said. In order to satisfy this seemingly innate need, three major contentions have emerged: Rejection-ism, characterized by dismissing any and all gods; Theism, positing a god who created the universe, set it in motion, and let it play out without interfering in it; and God-ism, with many gods, that demanded a super-god to sort them out. >>>
