Huff Post: I was a religious kid in a pseudo-religious liberal household — a rare breed. The notion of a wrathful God that was being instilled in my mind and re-affirmed every Friday sermon was steering me away from the path, followed by a deep sense of frustration.
As a child, I fell in love with that merciful God who was closer to my jugular vein — Wow! How’s that even possible, I often wondered — and that He loves me more than my mother.
The curiosity increased as I grew older, but the mullah always had a “thou shall never question” in response to my curiosities, in firm tone.
I’ll leave my story of finding God in New York as a student going to an ivy-league school, studying philosophy of religion and what followed for another occasion, and focus on my experience of teaching the un-cool subject that many students dread: Islamiyat.
It’s important for me to write this piece because the students I taught last spring at Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (Szabist), a private university in Karachi, Pakistan, were no different than the young Fahad, who was seeking answers to existential questions like, “What is the purpose of my creation?” “Where to am I going?” and so on and so forth.
Categories: Asia