.
I came across an atheist
who spoke with irony,
He asked me: “are you Muslim?”
I replied: “most certainly!”
He scoffed and cocked his eyebrow
regarding me with disdain
“how could you believe in” he said,
“a bunch of fairy tales!
That God, or is it Allah?
Made the heavens and the Earth
And He sent us all these prophets
Who were chosen at birth,
When now the body of science
Highlights what’s true and false
You can’t deny evolution
Chance is the way of course.
Your religion is just a reminder
Of how people used to think
To believe you must abandon
Your reason and intellect.”
Well I just stood and listened
And this is all I could say:
“Well you follow your intellect
And I’ll follow the spirit’s way
You see where your reason takes you
I’ll see where my spirit sails!”
“What a load of cobblers!”
He laughed in a great fit,
“It’s all stimulated brain cells
There’s no such thing as spirit!”
“Okay,” I said, “Why don’t you try it?”
“Okay,” he said, “let’s do.
I’ll prove all this hocus-pocus stuff
Is totally untrue.”
“Right,” I said, “You have to
Submit yourself inside
Empty yourself of ego
Subdue your blatant pride
Then say these words sincerely
As if you believe it’s right
When you say it with your tongue
Your spirit will take flight
It doesn’t feel like brain cells
Buzzing all around
It feels like some eternal
Wind has left you utterly drowned.”
“Okay,” he laughed, “I’ll do it,
“Just to prove to you
That spirit that you talk about
Is chemicals through and through.”
So the atheist closed his eyes,
He closed off all his thoughts
Just to prove his experiment
Would prove all he’d been taught.
He whispered the shahadah
He stood there very still
For a while he smiled somewhat
Then he shook as if with a chill.
He looked at me with wonder
But then with bitterness
“It’s all in your head” he said
“It’s all inside your head!”
But again he shivered
He tried to shrug it off
“That feeling is not from your heart
It’s just inside your head!”
“Ah I said, you’ve done it
You’ve done it now my friend
Once you give your ruh some air
The yearning will never end.”
“Ha, ha!” he said whilst trying
To veil his doubt with scorn
“This feeling is just cells inside
Don’t you make me yawn!”
“But how did it feel?” I asked him
“When you emptied your inside
When you said the shahadah
And banished your great pride?”
His smirk suddenly vanished
He looked as if recollecting
Something that he so wanted to do
But doing it was forbidden.
He left without an answer
Proclaiming reason had won.
I chose to follow the spirit
To submit to the Only One.
a beautiful poem 🙂 it would probably be just as unconvincing to these types of atheists as you might imagine,, but for muslims who have observed and interacted with them one can’t help but feel that it rings very much true. thank u for writing it.
y.
Assalam alaykum,
I think the poem shows without saying how pride stops people from accepting what their hearts know to be true.
Here, I was exploring the mindset of people who think spiritual awakenings are purely a cerebral experience..It might seem like that from the outside, but once it happens to you, like a near-death experience or a lucid dream, then the reality of the spirit is hard to ignore. Funnily enough, Dawkins said, even if he heard God speaking to him from the clouds, he wouldn’t be able to accept it, as there could be some trickery involved!