Last month my landlord said that we should know each other.
And yesterday he came up with a bagful of books on Islam. Perhaps he wanted me to know about him by reading those books. I wonder if he has ever taken any pains to know something about me.
I asked him his opinion about the girl from Qatif, and asked what he has to say about Taliban. Quite an amiable fellow he is, he smiled amiably and said that there was an order in Afghanistan while Taliban was in power. And there was peace, and freedom too; in fact it was Taliban that freed Afghanistan from the clutches of Russia. After coming to power, they put an end to drug trafficking and stopped other corruptions prevalent at that time. When I showed him The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the book I have read recently, he dismissed the work as a false propaganda by the West.
As far as the girl from Qatif was concerned, he had little to say except 'there are some rules that must be followed'. Talking of the rules, he had seen a man publicly being stoned to death in Saudi Arabia, and he holds this practice as just since he thinks that this severity discourages others to commit similar type of crime. Well, right or wrong, he of course couldn't have denounced Sharia (system of devising Islamic law) which is based on Quran and Hadith (sayings and doings of Mohammad). He looked too old for that.
Well, I told him upfront that I am an atheist and I believe neither in Allah nor in his Prophet. I am young and no word can be harf-e-aakhir for me; and I don't respect too many things. Worse, I doubt and ask lots of questions. Till date, I have not felt any particular need for religion, and as far as Islam is concerned, I see it as something very alien and something very very suffocating.
Finally, I assured him that I will still read a few of these books to know each other.
And yesterday he came up with a bagful of books on Islam. Perhaps he wanted me to know about him by reading those books. I wonder if he has ever taken any pains to know something about me.
I asked him his opinion about the girl from Qatif, and asked what he has to say about Taliban. Quite an amiable fellow he is, he smiled amiably and said that there was an order in Afghanistan while Taliban was in power. And there was peace, and freedom too; in fact it was Taliban that freed Afghanistan from the clutches of Russia. After coming to power, they put an end to drug trafficking and stopped other corruptions prevalent at that time. When I showed him The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the book I have read recently, he dismissed the work as a false propaganda by the West.
As far as the girl from Qatif was concerned, he had little to say except 'there are some rules that must be followed'. Talking of the rules, he had seen a man publicly being stoned to death in Saudi Arabia, and he holds this practice as just since he thinks that this severity discourages others to commit similar type of crime. Well, right or wrong, he of course couldn't have denounced Sharia (system of devising Islamic law) which is based on Quran and Hadith (sayings and doings of Mohammad). He looked too old for that.
Well, I told him upfront that I am an atheist and I believe neither in Allah nor in his Prophet. I am young and no word can be harf-e-aakhir for me; and I don't respect too many things. Worse, I doubt and ask lots of questions. Till date, I have not felt any particular need for religion, and as far as Islam is concerned, I see it as something very alien and something very very suffocating.
Finally, I assured him that I will still read a few of these books to know each other.
4 comments:
Some people have a way of vulgarising their beliefs by trying to convince others.
Very well said Meenakshi. :)
Imagine this guy had heart to give someone a book called Why Islam Only?
Such people don't care who you are and what do you think. They follow a blind statistics - one of a hundred is a sucker; take him. They know they have nothing to lose anyway.
What was his reaction when you let him know that he was trying to bark the wrong tree?
He had come with a young kid (around 22 yrs). When I declared that I have no sympathy for Taliban and people like Bin Laden who talk of bombing US and India in same breath; and I'll rather break his neck if I ever get to find him, if he ever comes out of his rat hole, the young chap looked pretty cooked up. But the seasoned old man showed little agitation on my 'display of emotion'.
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