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My dear
atheist friend,
I am
quite aware that you enjoy passionate dialogues and heated debates with priests
and pundits, maulanas and ministers and most of the times you win those debates
because you have all the intellectual tools in your kit to win any debate. You
are like a charming and aggressive sales person who can sell sand to the Arabs
and snow to the Eskimos. You smile when I say that winning hearts is as
important as winning arguments. You are right in your observation that I am more
interested in sharing my truth than proving the other people wrong. You wonder
why I avoid those angry dialogues and bitter debates. I am of the opinion that
we need to be careful in choosing our friends and more careful in choosing our
enemies because with passage of time we start adopting the characteristics of
the people we love and hate because of our emotional involvement with them.
You
are my new friend and I have a lot of respect for your honesty and integrity but
you do not know my past and you are not aware of different phases I went through
in my life. Since you shared some aspects of your life story, let me share with
you some of the highlights of my personal and philosophical journey.
There
was a time in my life when I was a religious person. Looking back now I can see
I was a religious fundamentalist (I did not recognize it then) and used to get
into heated debates with people of other faiths and no faith. I had read many
scriptures and remembered many passages to prove my point. I had a dream to
spread the message of God to the whole world. In those years I won many
arguments but not very many hearts.
Then
a stage came when I lost my faith and became an atheist. I completely changed my
ideology. Looking back now I can see that I was an angry atheist (I did not
recognize it then). Even in that phase I won many arguments but not very many
hearts.
And
then it gradually dawned on me that not only I did not win many hearts, I broke
many hearts and hurt some of my dear ones, the ones that loved me and adored me.
I did not appreciate their sincerity because they were believers as I had
developed an allergy to them. Now I can see that I was at war with them because
I was at war with myself. Some of them became the victims of my intellectual
attacks and emotional abuse. In that phase my rational and logical thinking was
the ultimate authority and I did not care about other people’s feelings. I
believed there was only one truth, the logical, rational, scientific truth. I
gradually realized that I had changed my ideology but not my personality. I was
still an angry man. I had just changed my positions and my opponents. First I
was angry with non-believers and then I became angry with believers. First I
thought all atheists were misguided and then I believed all believers were
ignorant and narrow-minded. It was a major breakthrough in my growth to
acknowledge that there are as many truths as human beings and as many realities
as pairs of eyes.
Gradually I became a Humanist and realized that human beings were more important
than God and religions and ideologies, whether of the right or the left. I
learnt to respect human beings from the bottom of my heart even when I disagreed
with them. I gradually realized that a caring and compassionate heart is as
important as rational and logical mind. Gradually I realized that for me
developing a humanist personality was as important as acquiring a humanist
philosophy. I learnt from Socrates that human beings are rational beings and
from Freud that human beings can be rationalizing beings when they are dealing
with emotional dilemmas and crises. I realized that religious belief and blind
faith are as much emotional issues as they are intellectual issues and to become
a humanist we need emotional as well as intellectual transformation.
In my
journey of personal growth my practice as a psychotherapist helped me understand
the mysteries of human mind and personality. My practice of psychotherapy helped
me see the sufferings of my religious patients and I could rise above our
ideological differences so that I could help them in relieving their emotional
suffering and develop a healthy, happy and peaceful lifestyle that I call Green
Zone Living. I could understand that people who experienced religious abuse had
to deal with their guilt and resolve their anger before they could lead peaceful
lives.
I also
became aware that many men and women who became political activists were more
anti than pro. Many feminists were more anti-men than pro women, many
gay activists were more anti-heterosexuals than pro-homosexuals, many black
activists were more anti-whites than pro-blacks. Similarly many atheists were
more anti-religion than pro-humanism. Such realization helped me integrate my
personal, political and professional positions in life and I became a humanist
poet, writer and psychotherapist.
Gradually I
realized that to create just societies and caring and compassionate human beings
were the goals of all religious, spiritual and secular philosophies. With
passage of time those philosophies became of historical importance. Life is like
a river and it has to keep on flowing to stay clean, pure and healthy. If the
river stops it becomes a pond and it develops algae. Many religious and
spiritual traditions became institutionalized and became closed systems and
stopped growing, as they did not learn from the developments in different parts
of the world. In the last couple of century’s developments in science,
psychology and philosophy has opened new windows in human minds and we need to
learn from them and integrate them in our personal and social lifestyles.
With passage
of time I learnt to respect all religious, spiritual and secular traditions. In
my professional life I worked with many mental health professionals from
different religious and spiritual backgrounds to serve our patients and their
families and in my social life I conducted seminars with people from other
professional, cultural and religious traditions to raise social consciousness
and fight for human rights of minorities.
In my
personal and professional journey I tried to develop a humanist personality
alongside humanist philosophy and learnt to work with people from other
backgrounds for common goals. For me serving humanity became more important that
having ideological and political debates. Last year when I presented my paper
Psychology of Fundamentalist and Humanist Personalities in Humanist
Association of Toronto HAT meeting and one of my Christian friends said, “I am
glad you are a loving humanist and not an angry atheist’ I was touched and
thanked her for her generous comments. I think it is important to build bridges
of caring and compassion and break down walls of anger, prejudice and
discrimination. We, as human beings, are quite complex and we have our inherent
conflicts and contradictions and to resolve those conflicts we not only need a
rational mind but also a compassionate heart. I am realizing that religions are
part of cultures that different communities have adopted over the centuries. In
the 21st century we need to encourage communities to adopt secular
and humanistic values and work together towards common goals that are important
for our social and cultural evolution.
It took me a
long time to realize that as a human being I have inherited all the religious,
spiritual and secular traditions and all of them have played a significant role
in helping me become a humanist. I have learnt from religious scholars like
Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz, Mohammad Iqbal and Paul Tillich and Martin Buber, gained
some wisdom from mystic poets like Bullay Shah, Kabir Das, William Blake and
Walt Whitman and acquired enlightenment from secular scientists and philosophers
like Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Bertrand
Russell, Jean Paul Sartre and Joseph Campbell. In the last decade I tried to
integrate all those philosophies to create my own philosophy that I call Green
Zone Philosophy that I use in my personal and professional lives to create a
happy, healthy and peaceful lifestyle. For me to expect others to respect me I
have to respect them even when I disagree with their philosophy and lifestyle
and follow the golden rule of treating others the way I would like to be
treated.
I hope this
letter helps you to understand why I do not get into heated debates and like to
work with all of my friends and colleagues from diverse religious, spiritual and
secular traditions.
Affectionately,
Khalid Sohail
Feb 29th,
2008
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