I Came Across An Atheist

.

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.

3 thoughts on “I Came Across An Atheist

  1. 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.

  2. 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!

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