A bad example doesn’t make a bad religion

Recently, I picked a war of words with one of my close friends over his derogatory remarks on Islam. “Not all Muslims are bad people, but Islam is a religion with wrong principles,” he said to my utter disgust.

We were talking about widespread corruption and other social vices in Bangladesh and trying to find out their socio-historic roots. One of the discussion topics was the recent attack on a Buddhist community here, by an angry Muslim mob.

Hundreds of years ago lower caste Hindus converted to Islam en masse, largely to escape injustice and torture by the upper class in a society heavily based on social caste system. My friend says the decision to embrace Islam was wrong.

“No religion is inherently bad, because every religion teaches people to be good,” I said, but he didn’t change his stance. He countered by saying he had read Qu’ran and found its teaching ‘unacceptable’.

I tried to find some practical reasons behind his prejudice and misconceptions.

My friend has been a non-practicing Catholic for a long time, since even before we met four years ago; he was born in a Catholic parish to a Catholic father and Protestant mother. The family moved to a predominantly Muslim area due to his father’s job and he grew up in that area.

There was no Catholic church nearby, only a small evangelical Protestant church with about a hundred believers. Most of the children he knew were Muslims and some of them treated him like a crow among peacocks. So, he grew into adulthood hating Muslim, but also with ignorance about his own religious faith.

Then, a few months ago, his world came crashing down when a bad road accident left his right leg smashed. Most people didn’t think he would walk again, and he didn’t think so either, but he made it within six months. It was around then that he started believing ‘God does exist’!

But the more he turned to the Church, the more critical he became about Islam and Muslims.
While my friend’s case has unique aspects, most Christians in the country share the same views on Islam.

Taking sporadic cases of injustice and torture by opportunist Muslims, most Christians vilify the whole Muslim world. Is that fair?

Original Post: A bad example doesn’t make a bad religion