One of the reasons I came to Yemen was to learn some things about Islam. I have been consistently disappointed with this religion. It is the first one that I have looked into that hasn’t offered me anything at all. Jainism, Mormonism, pure land Buddhism, Soto Zen, Catholicism, everything I have ever looked into has given me something to think about. I get nothing, nada, zilch from Islam here in Yemen. A conversation I had with Matthew (a fellow student here and an incoming Cambridge student in their Islamic studies program) explained part of that to me. He pointed out that while Christians frequently engage in discussions or talks about the nature of God, Muslims frequently engage in discussions on the nature of piety. All of the Islamic thought and practice that I have seen is about what you are supposed to do instead of what it means. Most Christian thought revolves around salvation through faith and belief in Christ the savior as opposed to what you do. Not surprisingly, all of the muslim thought that I have encountered seems really shallow, and quite frankly, dull. I would never make it as a muslim (at least not in Yemen) because I would constantly be asking “Why?” Maybe my western biases are showing, but I need some mystery in my spiritual life. How can Jesus be God and His son at the same time? How could they be separated at the time of the crucifixion? Is Judas in hell? I know that these questions make a lot of people simply give up and figure that it’s all a crock. The trick is to assume that they are legitimate questions and explore what the ramifications of them are. Does Islam have questions like this? Do they encourage critical thinking about Mohammed (PBUH) and what the difference is between the teachings in the Koran vs. the cultural situation that the Prophet lived in? I believe that the answer to both of those questions for most people here in Yemen is “No.” I would love to hear about some of the “mysteries” of the Islamic faith and the kinds of spiritual depths that they can instigate. Nat, I’m looking at you:-) Do I need to talk to some Sufis for this kind of knowledge?<\/p>\n
One of the reasons I came to Yemen was to learn some things about Islam. I have been consistently disappointed with this religion. It is the first one that I have looked into that hasn’t offered me anything at all. Jainism, Mormonism, pure land Buddhism, Soto Zen, Catholicism, everything I have ever looked into has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my-yemen-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}