Sjajan članak koji se dotiče nekih tema koje smo ovdje pretumbavali. Autor je bivši musliman, sada ateista, koji polazi od premise da je islamski identitet više od metafizike, da dio tog identiteta neminovno ostaje u kulturnom DNA prosječnog murteda
, te da se harač, Nurudin i ostala ekipa na temi ne bi trebali, obavezno, ustručavati nazvati muslimanima zato što su se odrekli islama. Nekoliko odlomaka.
Once my uncle said to me with some suspicion: “You’re not a Christian, are you?” “No,” I said. “I’m an atheist.” “So am I,” he replied. “But I am still Muslim.” “A Muslim atheist?” I said: “It sounds odd.” He said: “Not as odd as being nothing, an unbeliever.”
The man at the cash register was someone I’d spoken to many times before. But this time, something was different.
“Are you Muslim?” he asked me.
I hesitated at the question, as I always do, being a nonbeliever. I have not been above taking some mischievous pleasure in telling the more pious members of my extended family that I’m an atheist. But that day, I realized that what he was asking had little to do with religious faith.
He was asking if I had family in a country to which American borders might become closed. If I might find myself on a secret watchlist due to my name or the stamps on my passport. If I tended to get selected for random screenings at airports that everyone knows are far from random. If I feared for my family’s safety, not just from domestic terrorism, but from the retribution, both by violent vigilantes and the legal state apparatus, visited upon scapegoats identified by a rough equivalence of skin tone.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m a Muslim.”
We exchanged salaams. Then he handed me the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich he’d just made me, and I headed for the train.
