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and re: the cultural category thing – i mean that i offer it up if people want to know that kind of ‘thing’ i.e. what’s your ‘background’.. i don’t feel it has any relevance to me personally, i just don’t think in those terms. if anything, what i realised when i’ve been reading lots of ‘muslim’ blogs is that i just don’t feel the same ‘defensiveness’ muslims seem to feel about things like the Cartoons, the prophet, and ‘islam’ in general. i dont feel its mine to defend. but an interesting corollary here is that on the net, with a name like sonia, i do point out that i have a ‘muslim’ background/family/origin to deflect the ‘you western islamophobe’ charge, which usually means dismissal of what one actually is saying. which has made this whole thing much harder to talk about openly i must say.

good question. let me first say that labels were always a bit meaningless to me and one of the reasons i have never liked ‘revealed religions’. to be honest, because i was brought up as a ‘muslim’ i still think of myself as a ‘muslim’ as a cultural category if you will – but not as a ‘religion’. ( i would posit that for most of my family, excluding someone like my dad who actually thinks, they believe because it is our culture to ‘believe’ not cos they’ve actually thought about anything. i don’t think i accept the idea of a theistic God and ‘revealed religion’.. for me, what was a problem since i was little ( this is the topic I was thinking i will write on for my next post) and definitely what i am thinking about now – is that Abrahamic religions -are highly anthropocentric. i don’t buy the worship thing, and so no, i don’t buy into the idea of an Abrahamic God deity figure, who sends ‘memos’ to the Arabian desert ( of all places) and all of which then justifies all sorts of empire building ( well in the case of Islam straightaway) or injustices. I just don’t buy this idea of God. I don’t think we can know either way so that probably makes me some kind of agnostic. i don’t know if i’m an ‘atheist’ but i don’t feel i accept theism either. it’s a metaphysical question – i’m up for the fact that there are lots of things i know nothing about. and i don’t think any of that matters to my system of ethics – so frankly, i’d rather not believe in Allah or ‘God’ especially this Hellfire business. I’d been scared for a long time while i lived at home, so much so that i just didnt want to think about it. Seeing as i was never religious at home ( i found praying very bizarre, like some sort of ’stage show’ so i’d never done it.) it was something far from my mind later. although when i was at uni in england and i met lots of british asian muslims i was really surprised how ‘religious’ they were and how they talked about a ‘khilafah’. i was like, but your parents aren’t around! you can go to the pub.’

but i think still deep down there was a lot of guilt – that i was being made to feel by my co-muslims, if you see what i mean. you know, being made to feel that i was lacking somehow, and that i wasn’t living an ethical life etc. etc.
anyhow, this jan. i stumbled across some ‘muslim’ blogs and some mentions of slavery and concubinage. which fanned the old flames and i remembered this hadith. and all this came out of that. i think im much happier now and i feel ‘free’ – i probably still will refer to myself as a muslim, don’t think ill tell my family anything apart from not feel guilty when they try to get me to pray – and also ask them about slavery, and why no one talks about these things in a family context. i certainly shan’t be bringing up my kids as Muslims thats for sure.