About Living With Shia Muslims & my Closeness to Shia Political figures
October 19, 2016 at 11:37 am
(This post was last modified: October 19, 2016 at 11:39 am by Defender.)
This post will reflect my long life with Muslims. I’ll add to my introduction some more information about my experience or should I say painful suffering with the Muslim community. I’ll explain a lot of details related to the Shia Muslims specifically.
In reality being born to a Shia family wouldn’t make any significant difference than if you were born to a Sunni family. The difference is negligible, both have the same criteria and view of life from an Islamic perspective. What differs is related to some rules that govern them, something we don’t want to delve into. This post is a reflection of Islam from my life with Shia. Note, I’ll unwrap here very important details, details with political significance. Yes, in fact I come from a community where the prominent Shia clerics that are highly respected by Shia reside and live there. These clerics are highly engaged with the Iranian revolutionary regime and personally I met them during my childhood and adulthood.
Radicalism or really Islamism aren’t distinct concepts I believe. I talked about this point briefly in my introduction. Muslims generally follow what they hear and know from their imams or clerics whatever we label them. Technically, those imams actually author books to interpret and answer different cases to guide Muslims. Islam is very strict, my family for instance questioned every case through Islam not through their minds. They would go back to Sharia law to solve the most ridiculous problem they face. Being Shia means you have to follow the excessive life of rituals. Certainly Shia perform rituals almost day by day, they have this story where Mohammed’s son was killed in Karbala. They cry unbelievably and they even humiliate themselves; they believe through doing this they’ll reach the gate of heaven. The case can be represented by their beliefs in miracles, I heard them mentioning how windows were shaking as they were performing rituals, how sick people got healed, how poor people got rich and all of that is done through these rituals, that’s what they believe. It’s not whether they perform these rituals or not, but when these rituals become intrusive in your life this what we call extreme. Children are indoctrinated by those rituals. To me this is another North Korea with a different color. I hear children yelling these sentences: (“Allah Akbar”, “There’s no God but Allah”, “Mohammed is the prophet of Allah”, “Death to America/Israel”). You hear them shouting these words unconsciously. Girls below the age of 9 wear Hijab over their heads and the most important goal for the family is to keep their girls’ virginity, because if she loses her virginity these means she committed adultery. Being at this closeness of a society that advocates the Iranian regime isn’t as safe as it might sound to you and makes my life fragile.
You might wonder how close I am to these clerics and their importance to the Iranian regime. I’m so close to them that high ranking Iranian military officials defended these Shia clerics with their own published words. For example, one of these clerics which was mentioned by an Iranian military official (I guess he’s a general) and the supreme leader of Iran in numerous occasions, his grandson was my colleague in the 6th grade. I describe his grandson as being rude with teachers, violent and he engaged in weird behaviors. For instance, before he eats chips he would pour the whole hot sauce bottle on his food, his food becomes like a curry. He would also in some occasions drink the hot sauce itself. He was absolutely violent and incapable of being a good student. He used to slam the door violently during our science class and he just abandons the class after he slams the door. I saw his grandfather every Friday prayer at that time (the prominent Shia cleric), he gave speeches about politics and religion and after that we would pray behind him. There’s no doubt this cleric has absolute power of the local community here. If he commands them to kill me for instance, in a matter of seconds I’ll die given their closeness to me.
My deepest fear today is how far this society will go with its radical approach towards life. Given my highly vulnerable political and geographic location, safety became a concern. If a child is fed those words that fuel hatred towards others, what would happen to the next generations? A question that’s certainly needs to be presented today as things are escalating. Children are told about Jihad and the beauty of dying for Allah and this includes my home. My mom noticed my behaviors to change, I stopped praying, she told my little brothers to call me an infidel. The simple act of neglecting your prayers labels you as an infidel. Or during Ramadan when I went on with my life to eat, I was abused verbally by the family. Absolutely, I do appreciate such autocracy when it comes from people that support one of the most oppressive regimes on earth that annihilate anyone that disagrees with it.
If we speak about education, the truth is there’s no education. How will children attend their schools and they’re pushed to attend rituals? And the core question of the matter here, what will they teach them in the first place? Critical thinking? During high school I had a philosophy teacher, he’s not specialized in this field. One day our topic was about proving the existence of God, it was a very primitive topic and he lost the argument. Next class he came to me and said that he began to read books about the issue. I’m glad that he just realized he needs to add some toppings on his blind belief. To sum it up, undoubtedly they favor religion over anything and everything.
Ask my any question...
In reality being born to a Shia family wouldn’t make any significant difference than if you were born to a Sunni family. The difference is negligible, both have the same criteria and view of life from an Islamic perspective. What differs is related to some rules that govern them, something we don’t want to delve into. This post is a reflection of Islam from my life with Shia. Note, I’ll unwrap here very important details, details with political significance. Yes, in fact I come from a community where the prominent Shia clerics that are highly respected by Shia reside and live there. These clerics are highly engaged with the Iranian revolutionary regime and personally I met them during my childhood and adulthood.
Radicalism or really Islamism aren’t distinct concepts I believe. I talked about this point briefly in my introduction. Muslims generally follow what they hear and know from their imams or clerics whatever we label them. Technically, those imams actually author books to interpret and answer different cases to guide Muslims. Islam is very strict, my family for instance questioned every case through Islam not through their minds. They would go back to Sharia law to solve the most ridiculous problem they face. Being Shia means you have to follow the excessive life of rituals. Certainly Shia perform rituals almost day by day, they have this story where Mohammed’s son was killed in Karbala. They cry unbelievably and they even humiliate themselves; they believe through doing this they’ll reach the gate of heaven. The case can be represented by their beliefs in miracles, I heard them mentioning how windows were shaking as they were performing rituals, how sick people got healed, how poor people got rich and all of that is done through these rituals, that’s what they believe. It’s not whether they perform these rituals or not, but when these rituals become intrusive in your life this what we call extreme. Children are indoctrinated by those rituals. To me this is another North Korea with a different color. I hear children yelling these sentences: (“Allah Akbar”, “There’s no God but Allah”, “Mohammed is the prophet of Allah”, “Death to America/Israel”). You hear them shouting these words unconsciously. Girls below the age of 9 wear Hijab over their heads and the most important goal for the family is to keep their girls’ virginity, because if she loses her virginity these means she committed adultery. Being at this closeness of a society that advocates the Iranian regime isn’t as safe as it might sound to you and makes my life fragile.
You might wonder how close I am to these clerics and their importance to the Iranian regime. I’m so close to them that high ranking Iranian military officials defended these Shia clerics with their own published words. For example, one of these clerics which was mentioned by an Iranian military official (I guess he’s a general) and the supreme leader of Iran in numerous occasions, his grandson was my colleague in the 6th grade. I describe his grandson as being rude with teachers, violent and he engaged in weird behaviors. For instance, before he eats chips he would pour the whole hot sauce bottle on his food, his food becomes like a curry. He would also in some occasions drink the hot sauce itself. He was absolutely violent and incapable of being a good student. He used to slam the door violently during our science class and he just abandons the class after he slams the door. I saw his grandfather every Friday prayer at that time (the prominent Shia cleric), he gave speeches about politics and religion and after that we would pray behind him. There’s no doubt this cleric has absolute power of the local community here. If he commands them to kill me for instance, in a matter of seconds I’ll die given their closeness to me.
My deepest fear today is how far this society will go with its radical approach towards life. Given my highly vulnerable political and geographic location, safety became a concern. If a child is fed those words that fuel hatred towards others, what would happen to the next generations? A question that’s certainly needs to be presented today as things are escalating. Children are told about Jihad and the beauty of dying for Allah and this includes my home. My mom noticed my behaviors to change, I stopped praying, she told my little brothers to call me an infidel. The simple act of neglecting your prayers labels you as an infidel. Or during Ramadan when I went on with my life to eat, I was abused verbally by the family. Absolutely, I do appreciate such autocracy when it comes from people that support one of the most oppressive regimes on earth that annihilate anyone that disagrees with it.
If we speak about education, the truth is there’s no education. How will children attend their schools and they’re pushed to attend rituals? And the core question of the matter here, what will they teach them in the first place? Critical thinking? During high school I had a philosophy teacher, he’s not specialized in this field. One day our topic was about proving the existence of God, it was a very primitive topic and he lost the argument. Next class he came to me and said that he began to read books about the issue. I’m glad that he just realized he needs to add some toppings on his blind belief. To sum it up, undoubtedly they favor religion over anything and everything.
Ask my any question...
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