Being a Muslim

It is a difficult task, being a practising Muslim, to read a book by another Muslim about the ‘Muslim experience’ and to review it. There are things that arouse anger, things that you would like to stand up and deny, times when you feel like clarifying to the huge, unknown masses out there reading that book.At times like these, you have to remind yourself, that there can be no such thing as a global ‘Muslim experience’, or for that matter, Hindu/­Christian/­Sikh/Indian/Bangladeshi experience. Being a part of a community does not ensure shared experiences. Since no two people would see the world through the same eyes, so no two people would experience it alike either. Not in a country, nor a community, not even a family. My experience of living in India would differ vastly from, say, a woman in a shanty on the outskirts of Delhi, or from Nita Ambani in her 27-storey home in Mumbai. That, however, does not make any of us less Indian than the other. It’s just that as individuals, we have different experiences, with different lives, different loves, beliefs and ambitions.Same is the case with a person who would share my religion. The way we perceive religion, the importance we attach to it, and the way we incorporate it into our lives will be different. What is ‘liberal’ for one may be ‘immoral’ for another, and what is ‘pious’ for one, may be ‘orthodox’ for another. But the membership of a community makes us somehow possessive of it, imagining that ours is the only way to be a part of it, ready to argue with someone else’s impression of it. That does not change the fact that as much as your experience is real for you, the other person’s experience is real for her/him. And that, actually, is the essence of being a good human, whether Muslim or Hindu or Indian or American — that you understand the diversity of human experiences and, however difficult it may be, accept and respect them for what they are.