Reclamation

In Somalia, the Islamists have decided to kill anyone who does not say their prayers five times a day. A new Islamic law has been discovered that says that an individual who does not pray has to be killed.

We grew up believing in an Islam where prayer and fasting were an individual's choice. We were taught that if we prayed because we were forced to, or to please someone else, Allah did not "count our prayers". If we fasted when we were ill or against our wishes, Allah did not "count our fasts".

Our family remained a gathering of individuals with their own degree of religiosity, and remain so to this day. Our parents may have liked us to be stricter in religious observance, but it was always "to each his or her own", as each one of us is supposed to be "accountable for our own deeds" on Judgement Day.

I am not a practicing Muslim. I walk around in jeans, and my mother and sister accompany me in their 'ridas'. I'm a certain candidate for the gallows. But it is this growing fundamentalism everywhere, that makes me want to remember and publish the fact that I am Muslim, and that there are many other Muslims like me. Many, many other Muslims, and perhaps it's time to reclaim Islam from the fundamentalists.

For another view of Islam, read my translation Islam means