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“It is not only belief I would be giving up. It is Ramadan, the congregation, the people who came when my father died. I do not know who I would be without it.”

1 min read

What you are describing is not a weakness in your reasoning. It is an accurate account of what a religion is.

Islam is not only a set of propositions to be assented to. It is a calendar, a body of practice, a language for grief, and the people who arrive at the door when someone dies. Anyone who tells you that leaving is simply a matter of updating a belief has not thought about it seriously, and neither has anyone who tells you that this belonging, by itself, settles whether the belief is true.

Hold the two apart, because they come apart. The question of whether the deen is true is one question. What it would cost you to lose the world built around it is another, and a real one. People do leave and rebuild a life; people also stay for the belonging and find the belief has quietly gone. Neither of those is what this site is asking of you.

What it does ask is that you do not let the fear of that loss stop you from examining the belief itself, honestly and without hurry. If the belief holds, the world around it is not a consolation prize; it is the point. If you are not sure yet, then you are not sure yet, and there is no deadline. Uncertainty is a place you are allowed to stand in for a while.

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