With the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the subsequent oppression of minorities, it becomes imperative to undertake a critical retrospective on the origins of opposing ideologies, to attempt to debunk the myriad of propaganda with a sliver of truth, and to attempt wherever applicable to foster tolerance and co-existence.

This post is particularly important because 1) any attempt to understand Islam is also an attempt to understand my own identity and 2) all my prior attempts at understanding my own religion ended in failure or confusion or both. I must concede that even this post is not a complete answer that satisfies the original question of identity, rather it is an amateur’s attempt to supply the outlines of an answer where none exists. I must say that this post has given me many nights of anguish and turmoil of heart, nevertheless, we must persevere and ask hard questions, even if no correct answer exists.

Disclaimer: Before we dive in, I must preface that whatever follows is entirely my own personal views and interpretations. There is a tendency for Muslims to get offended before non-Muslims at thoughts like this to which I want to say two things. 1) I do not intend any personal insult, offense, or harm to any other human being, it goes against my religion 2) You may agree or disagree with the ideas presented and I am open to having a rational discussion around it, in fact I would implore such a discussion as God reminds us multiple times in the Qur’an that Islam is for “people who give thought”. My views are pragmatic, derived from experiences of observing the world, people, and phenomena around me like an engineer, a scientist.

There may be contradictions and incompleteness within the text and that’s fine - people still lived before Newton formulated the law of gravity. The goal is to have a workable, practical theory to get away with. This is where I take recluse from the scientific self and appeal to my engineer’s training. If it’s good enough, do not make it better or more crassly put, if it’s working, I do not change it. People may enjoy debating if Plato’s Forms occupy a Divine dimension or the practicality of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch but such debates appear to me as superfluous and hence of little interest. An engineer philosophises only as long as it suits him and no more. Phew, with that out of the way, let us begin.

What is a system?

There are effectively uncountable systems in nature. Out of small moving parts following simple rules, you see extraordinary structure and complexity arising. Cell functions, hurricane formation, economies, ant colonies, a city’s traffic system, biomes - all such arrangement of components that affect change as per their simple local rule and give rise to complex phenomena. Understanding systems is one of the most appealing (see Lorentz attractors). Who wouldn’t want to know what triggers epidemic outbreaks and what contains them? What if you could predict stock market bear and bull markets or business cycles? Unfortunately, it is also one of the most notoriously hard sciences. With the advent of computation, people tried to emulate such systems (Conway’s Game of Life is an introductory system exhibiting such behaviour). I remember taking the distributed systems course in uni and realised how hard it is to design “truly” distributed systems. Some of the most prominent algorithms at the heart of distributed systems (and hence cloud technology and hence underpinning modern existence) are centralised in spirit (see Raft and Paxos algorithms).

How does one even begin to make sense of how these systems behave, characterise them, and then predict its behaviour? There are principles that are essentially heuristics that people have found to hold true. I think these principles are projections of the incomprehensible mechanism that makes the universe tick. What are these principles? Principle of conservation of mass, for example. Or the second law of thermodynamics. These principles have been able to fool our senses for so long that they took the form of “laws”. However, violations have been observed at unconventional scales such as quantum where human senses stop making sense 1 . My guess is that whatever the “theory of everything” is, it can never be understood by humans simply because we are part of the system.

Enough digression, for all practical purposes, the laws are true and they are universal. In particular, it is the concept of entropy that we will continue to revisit. Isn’t it a wonder that life in general appeared in the first place? Look at rocks, they too disintegrate into sand and soil. Everything is broken down and debased. Except the human form. Somehow, lifeless atoms decided to fuse together in special sequences and form amino acids and then nitrates, and phosphates, and then memory carrying DNA. Out of an unimaginable possible history, we find these molecules forming cells and fusing together to form life. What a beautiful day it must have been when the first cell division happened on Earth. No wonder, so many people have tried to recreate “life” (and failed) (See Haldane’s theory and Miller’s experiments) but even though the biologist’s lose hair marvelling at the emergence of life, so does the physicist. Because from a system’s perspective, life locally reverses entropy. It is orderliness created from chaos. It is a contradiction of the most fundamental nature of the universe. Paint never unmixes but somehow cells organise and grow. How can nervous tissue come together to form memory and cognition? The very existence of the human brain contradicts its existence. It is no wonder that all our greatest stories and our greatest religions try to tell where humanity comes from and what its purpose is.

The purpose of religion

Look around you and you will find people who are different – both phenotypically and psychologically. Some are generally joyful, some are bad-tempered, some are greedy, some are kind, and so on. Imagine a civilization of greedy and generous humans, over time greedy folks would end up commanding more resources by hook or crook. Imagine a civilization with mischief driven humans or worst still, of rapist psychopaths who derive hedonistic joy by sacrificing their first born on the altars of their temples. The thing is, as marvellous as the emergence of life itself is, even more marvellous is the illusion of free will. Every man is free to do literally anything which quickly becomes a problem with a little thought. So, humans had to invent boundaries and limits and rules to avoid destabilizing society (The underlying assumption is that it is an implicit goal to survive, of course). I will continue coming back to this point because it’s really important to understand Islam and religion in general. Okay, we need rules so people don’t go around knocking any cute girl up and refuse to take up responsibility for the child, we need rules to make sure the weak also get their sustenance and so on. But why should man follow rules? Man is technically born free. Man follows rules only in two cases 1. If they look up to someone in awe, in admiration or 2. If they fear someone. Most religions present God as a supernatural being to fear and I think it is necessary to reign in man’s passions and wild nature, but it is equally important to appeal to man’s ability to respect things they admire and it is precisely this nature of God that Islam asks you to remember.

The two types of religion

History is replete with examples of men marching into wars and rallying under banners of God to fight crusades and holy wars or whatever. Religion gives men purpose ¹ and it is not this functional usage of the word religion that I mean when I use the word “religion” in the following material. For all it matters, I could gather a bunch of people and make them fight others by promising a whole bunch of mangoes if people cared that much about mangoes. Religion is just a convenience here, not a yardstick to measure religion itself.

What’s the other type of religion? The religion of the self, the one that we hold within us, the one that admires God and in that admiration aspires to become closer to God. The religion that nurtures kindness and mercy and appeals to the intelligent mind. The mind that forbids evil and falsehood and enjoins righteousness and honour ². And believe it or not, it is precisely this that Islam teaches. In fact, those are the exact words I took from the Holy Quran. It is a religion that professes the Jihad of the self - the striving of the self’s mind over the raw passion and unbridled cravings of the body. The word “Jihaad” itself translates loosely into striving or the act of winning over and not whatever is in fashion these days on Indian news channels.

But how does Islamic teachings help stabilize society? Isn’t the last time people tried to centrally plan economies did it fail magnificently? How does Islam reverse entropy? This is because Islam doesn’t only teach to worship God, or how to behave with others, it is a detailed manual for living itself with set rules ranging from personal hygiene to economic systems (Zakaat, for example). Many books have already been written on this topic and a detailed discussion will probably require another book so I will pick three points and try to elucidate.

Surrender to God is closeness to God

The central message of Islam is enshrined in one phrase, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger”. It is said that to believe this phrase is to become a Muslim but on careful analysis, one realises it is just an undecidable statement (borrowing a term from mathematical logic) - there is no way a mortal can prove its correctness in the strictest sense of the word. And in fact, the Quran says that even Prophet Muhammad has no idea when the Word and Promise of God (the Judgment Day) will come to pass 2 . Therefore, the choice to believe or not believe lies entirely with the human, it is an exercise of free will. There is no forcefulness, no compulsion in religion 3 . The very act of believing this one statement is to believe in the Quran, in the Hadith, the ways of the Prophet (Sunnah), the Islamic exegesis, the Islamic jurisprudence, and to accept the Islamic way of living. The choice is a voluntary human act of submission and the first step towards complete surrender to God.

As one begins to internalise the teachings of the Prophet, one realises what it really means. There is a well-known Hadith that when a sinful person came to the Prophet asking for guidance, the Prophet only asked him to stop telling lies. And really if you think, lies are the foundation for deceit and instability in society. Lies breeds more lies, sets false expectations, and undermines trust in society. Trust is the bedrock of families and business and hence, of society and economies.

Let’s delve deeper into the lives of great saints and Sufis who are said to have achieved Moksh or salvation. What does it mean to be in a state of eternal happiness? There’s the concept of Ishq-e-haqiqi (Love of the True Divine) which is similar to the state of being completely detached from mortal vestiges of humanly existences such as desire, greed, jealousy and others - a state when the mind truly and only craves the love and approval of the Divine. You may have also read how these small groups of people have to go through long periods of struggle (tapasya) to train their minds into frequenting such states (QUOTE). But what about the rest of us? Is there no way for the great mass of humanity to experience happiness? Yes and I think the answer comes down to that phrase - the first Kalma. It is the degree to which one believes in God that determines their closeness to God. And to be close to God is to yearn to acquire His qualities. What are God’s qualities? Compassionate and Merciful. Have you ever been wronged and struggled for revenge and when the time came, just forgave the offender? There was an attempt to create rife, to create disorderliness and you, as a human exercising free will had a choice and the opportunity, to continue that feud and let countless more suffer but you decided to forgive and show mercy and hence, restore order and stability and peace. That’s how you become closer to God. That’s how one experiences a slice of happiness. And, in my opinion, such happiness is not even accessible to great Sufis and saints.

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…”

Portia, The Merchant of Venice, Act 4 Scene 1, William Shakespeare

Islam and Wealth

Enough of the abstract, let’s talk about money. There’s a trillionaire in a world where half the population cannot afford basic amenities. How did this happen? If money represents value, are we, as a species, implying that one human is more important than 4 billion other humans? From an economist’s perspective, this is absurd. No human can create such value in society. Therefore, we come to the simple conclusion that money has been decoupled from value. Look closer into the valuations of these companies and you’ll see circular financing, leveraged buy-ins, speculative betting, and a thousand other practices that are designed by humans to inflate the perceived value of these companies. Is this good? Do you know what Islam did 1400 years ago? It anticipated all of it, banned all of it, and made it all sinful in the eyes of the Divine. The health of an economic system is not governed by trickle down logic of capitalism, it is governed by how equitably distributed wealth is within the society. In fact, the concept of obligatory charity is so central to the Muslim that it features along with the five obligatory prayers like a conjoined twin in almost all occurrences in the Holy Qur’an .

On Women

This one is a sensitive topic because any attempts to open a line of dialogue ends up in a chicken fight between men and women - men accusing women of following the sinful ways and women accusing men of being too controlling. Here are my observations: Remember we established that man has a certain nature - some are hedonistic, some are generous, etc. It turns out all men are lustful. That’s their nature, there’s no shame in that. Islam teaches men to acknowledge their nature and to strive against it. It teaches men to discipline their desires. It teaches men to leave behind their vestiges of mortality and to seek the qualities of the Divine. But what about women? What is women’s nature? If men are lustful, what evolutionary pressure birthed the women’s psyche? Think about it, if you were a woman who wanted to breed the next generation of Herculean kids, what would you do? Exhibit! Broadcast and announce your fine breasts and voluptuous body to signal capability to breed healthy kids for your husband and naturally you would seek the best, most athletic, tall, handsome man as your husband. If you think that the urge to dance in Instagram reels or to sell feet pics online are new signs of ignorance (Jahilliyah in Arabic), it’s not. Psychologists and marketers have studied it and used it to sell you all kinds of things (I mean what the fuck is even beauty standards?). And today, it is being amplified to sell false hopes and dreams through social media. It has been proven in multiple studies that social media leads to inferiority complex and all sorts of mental depression and disorders and why not? The human brain is not wired to process so many options, so many competing priorities. How can you expect marriages to be stable when men and women have 100x more options to choose from?

What does Islam say about women? You’ll be surprised to find out and I invite you to do your own research but in spite of all the propaganda that you hear about Islam, it was one of the first religions to grant women rights when the Western world was busy burning women at the stake. Islam codified women’s rights as divine and made it obligatory for men to provide, made it illegal to bear kids without responsibility, and allowed women the right to education and financial independence.

A lot of Islam’s detractors love to point to specific verses from the Quran, ridicule, and try to act all smart. It is nothing but a great show of ignorance and stupidity. One such verse is the verse of the veiled women. But I think nothing is more poetic than the fact that God commands man first (24:30) and then the woman (24:31), for the verse reads:

“˹O Prophet!˺ Tell the believing men to lower their gaze and guard their chastity. That is purer for them. Surely Allah is All-Aware of what they do.”

Surah An-Nur, 24:30, The Holy Qur’an

In my interpretation, the man’s obligation to lower their gaze is more binding on the man than the woman’s responsibility. And why to debate about the greatness of obligation at all if we have already established Islam as striving against the self before anything else – the reward or the punishment is only for the self, then what point is it to blame others or to argue whose obligation is more?

“Whosoever does righteous good deed, it is for [the benefit of] his ownself, and whosoever does evil, it is against his ownself. And your Lord is not at all unjust to (His) slaves.”

Surah Fussilat, 41:46, The Holy Qur’an

Another example is the verse of polygamy revealed at a time when women were treated as objects, abused, and exchanged at will. I sigh and wince when I recall how many of my friends are deluded about polygamy in Islam and the number of times I have had to tell them to go and read instead of just scroll Instagram reels and form their opinions and make it their whole personality. Islam limited the number of marriages to four acknowledging the nature of man and making exploration lawful by marriage whence it comes with responsibilities of a family. In my interpretation, exploration is not free of responsibility, it comes with a cost – a cost made obligatory by Divine law. When I look around, all I find are cheating couples, swapping couples, bored couples, and all kinds of unthinkable Jahilliyah and at the end of it all - misery, chaos, and instability. And I am forced to ask myself, what is better?⁵ Observe the checks and balances built into the verse itself. It is not a free pass, it is more responsibility.

“If you fear you might fail to give orphan women their ˹due˺ rights ˹if you were to marry them˺, then marry other women of your choice—two, three, or four. But if you are afraid you will fail to maintain justice, then ˹content yourselves with˺ one or those ˹bondwomen˺ in your possession. This way you are less likely to commit injustice.”

Surah An-Nisa, 4:3, The Holy Qur’an

Some folks will come to me and point out “Oh, but look what is the state of women in the Middle East and blah and blah blah”. Sure, but what about women anywhere other than the Middle East? Are they any better? Whenever I scroll news channels all I read are horrendous unthinkable crimes against women and little children. All I can think of is what the fuck is wrong with us? And then I wonder if free access to soft porn, hundreds of young girls dancing in skimpy clothes, and other unthinkable degradations of the human spirit play a role somewhere. Anyways, I often like to point out this analogy to those folks: Imagine an excellent teacher who is teaching a class, the backbenchers do not listen but the studious ones at the front learn and excel in the exam. The backbenchers naturally fail. Would you blame the teacher for the failure of the backbenchers?⁴

Similarly, Islam doesn’t impose. It invites and invites you to ask questions. If you listen, it’s for your own good.

“Do they not, then, ponder about the Qur’an? Had it been from someone other than Allah, they would have found in it a great deal of discrepancy.”

Surah An-Nisa, 4:82, The Holy Qur’an

Where is humanity going?

Finally, I want to quickly touch up on my thoughts on the second question I asked in the beginning of this discussion. Sure, we may have a somewhat workable pragmatic framework for man’s purpose in life but what about man’s destiny. Here are my thoughts.

We will all become extinct. Our rate of pollution and environmental degradation pushes the Earth’s natural biome beyond the tipping point - the point of no return and our ecosystem spirals into destruction, before we can develop technologies to save it. Seems highly plausible because capitalism never cares about collective good if it doesn’t align with individual enterprise ³. Some people have theorized an ecological reset where an Ice Age or a giant flood (sounds familiar?) wipes out humanity and life restarts again, or the Sun implodes into a red dwarf and engulfs Earth and the other planets, or some capitalist trillionaire figures out a way to send some human embryos to Andromeda. Who knows? The point is, I won’t be there so it doesn’t matter.

Footnotes

1: Although, I hold a slightly more nihilistic view of humanity. I believe there is practically no absolute purpose for mankind. There is no such thing as love. There is only practical convenience and each man is free to choose a purpose.

2: These are words that I am using without definition and it tears my heart. Trust me. Hearing these words it seems like we all kind of “get it” but these are such strong and potent ideas that philosophers have spent centuries trying to define them to no avail. I have not done any better job for myself and still struggle. Our justice system struggles to define such ideas and a lot of the modern struggle strikes directly at the heart of good and evil - whatever those words mean.

3: Don’t get me wrong, I am not a socialist or communist. Capitalism has given us modern wonders such as the internet and vaccines and porn served over high speed internet. Whether they are good for humanity is a different debate, I only outline the nature of capitalism.

4: If you study deeply, you will realise that the rules of Islam are so stringent, that barely anyone is able to follow all of it. Does it mean that no one is a true Muslim? Perhaps, yes. But what it means more is that instead of pointing fingers at others, one should focus on their own behaviours and actions and religion. The religion of the self.

5: I know some smart ass will point out specific cases and say “Oh but I know this and this couple, they are happily married” My friend, Islam is a religion, it doesn’t care about individuals – everyone is differently natured. Islam had to be designed to be widely applicable. Design for the 99%ile is a principle in design theory.